Beautiful Secret

by Dana Faletti

  Tate strolled along a dusty path, inspecting not-quite-red tomatoes. She lifted one to her face and inhaled its pungent spice. Nothing like the scent of a garden tomato not yet plucked from its vine.

  “You like tomatoes?”

  “Oh!” Tate gasped, startled that someone had been watching her.

  Like a phantom, Zio Nino appeared in the doorway of the aluminum chicken house. He was dressed in jeans and brown leather sandals, his dark, gnarly toes peeking out at her like miniature gnomes keeping watch over their garden.

  “I’m sorry to have frightened you,” he said to her in Italian. “I was in my laboratory, working on my next batch of grappa.” He gestured toward the chicken house then paused, seeming to study her face. “You like grappa?”

  “I’ve never tried it.” What is it? Candy, maybe?

  “Come,” he said, and gently took her by the elbow, leading her into the little outbuilding that smelled of mildew and chicken shit.

  Gross. Whatever he was batching up in here was certainly not going to be on her menu today.

  Zio gestured to an array of tubing and other equipment and began explaining a process Tate didn’t quite get. Fermentation? Grapes?

  “Oh!” she exclaimed. “You’re making wine.”

  “No. Not wine,” he told her, shaking his finger at her face. “For grappa, we use what’s left after the wine is finished—the skins, the seeds.” He picked up a bottle of something clear and held it up for Tate to see. Turning it this way and that, Zio examined his product, his face beaming as if he’d won first prize for the best barbecue sauce at the state fair. Tate didn’t really start to worry until he’d cracked the seal and grabbed a couple of shot glasses that she knew could not possibly be clean.

  “Taste,” he ordered, handing her a tiny glass and clinking his own against it. He stood there watching her then, waiting for her to drink with him before he brought his own glass to his lips.

  Oh boy. This was definitely a test she wanted to pass, but… What if these chickens had that bird flu? One of the hens cackled loudly, as if it were offended by Tate’s thoughts.

  Okay, okay. Here goes nothing.

  Tate raised her glass and smiled nervously before closing her eyes and shooting the poison in one fell swoop.

  Down the hatch.

  “No! Tatiana, no, no!” Zio Nino’s shocked laughter erupted from him and lit up his eyes as he stomped his foot in hysterics at Tate’s action.

  “Jesus Christ!” Tate’s gurgled words hardly made sense. “What the hell did you give me?” She clutched her throat as if she were choking, but that wasn’t her problem. Her throat was completely on fire. It was as if she’d downed a jug of habañero juice.

  “Sip, Tatiana, sip.” Zio was still laughing. “Not glug, glug, glug, Tatiana,” he said, taking off his glasses to wipe his eyes with a handkerchief.

  “It’s not funny, Zio,” she croaked, still holding onto her scorched throat.

  “It is funny,” he said. “Sorry, Tatiana.” He took another small taste of his grappa and laughed some more. Patting her back, he shrugged. “Next time, you sip.”

  Next time?

  Tate started to laugh too. Zio Nino had not changed, it seemed, since the days in Nana Maria’s story. An image of a younger Zio flashed behind her eyes, the picture that Nana had painted for her through the gift of story. Tate’s lips bent into a small smile as she remembered.

  “He was a diavolo, Tati,” Nana had told her. “But with a little halo. Nino was always the first to kiss you hello, the friendliest—but if he liked you, you were in for some trickery. Every evening, he’d wait at the second-story window for his brother Carmelo to walk past. He’d dump a bucket of cold water out the window at just the right time, and Carmelo would shriek and curse.” Nana had winced through laughter that shuffled the sheets across her belly. “Carmelo fell for it nearly every night, and for Nino, this prank never got old.”

  Tate studied her uncle’s face, the thick wrinkles and trace stubble on his cheeks, the slight limp from his war injury that Nana had told her about. She noticed how he leaned all of his weight into the uninjured side of his body and wondered if he was in any pain. If he was, he didn’t let on. In fact, Zio seemed to stand content in the moment, regardless of his circumstances.

  What was his secret?

  “What do you remember about my grandmother?” she asked him suddenly.

  This time, he choked a little on his drink.

  “Everything,” he said and put down his glass. “She was not a woman you could forget.”

  “No,” Tate agreed. “She wasn’t.”

  Silence descended upon them, and Tate inhaled deeply, despite the nasty smells, trying desperately to still the wells of water that brimmed in her eyes. Here and now, in this dirty chicken house, grief had snuck up on her, but she’d be damned if she would allow it to spill forth.

  Last night, she’d enjoyed the breeze from the guest room, where the windows opened out with no screens. She’d been worried about bugs, but the purity of the night air had erased her anxiety and eased her into the most perfect night’s sleep of her life. If only she’d bottled it up and saved it for moments like right now. She could breathe it in and let it perform its magic on her emotions and quiet the tears that threatened to rain on such a moment.

  “Nino, oh!” Zia Luisa’s pink, pursed face appeared through a small, square window of the chicken hut, and, if looks could kill, Zio would have been skinned and gutted on sight. “What are you doing, you idiot?” She threatened him with a few shakes of the wooden spoon she wielded in her hand. “You gave her that shit? What’s wrong with you, you horse’s ass?” Tate couldn’t help but notice how dainty the dirty words sounded coming from her aunt’s rosebud lips. Luisa sighed deeply through her nose. “It’s lunch time. Come eat, you two.” And she was gone.

  Once the shuffling of Zia’s footsteps could no longer be heard, Tate and Zio Nino glanced up at each other. Zio started to shake again, slapping his knee and bouncing with a laughter he didn’t seem to want to control. It was contagious. Tate joined in, praying that her aunt’s shrewlike persona wouldn’t resurface just then.

  “Come, Tatiana. Shall we bring some grappa for lunch?” her uncle teased as he beckoned her back up the walk toward the house.

  “None for me, thanks,” she told him.

  It had been right to come here, Tate thought, slipping her arm into the crook of her uncle’s elbow. Even as he hobbled, she pictured him as a young man, unable to resist the impishly youthful Zia Luisa that Nana Maria had described. She had no doubt that her grandmother would love that she was here with the two of them. Although the idea of heaven was not something Tate could commit to, she pictured her grandmother, after years of loveless suffering, smiling down at her from a sweet hereafter.

  Chapter 6

  Maria

  It wasn’t until Zia Felicia canceled the Christmas festa that I saw the consequences of my actions being set into motion. One damp afternoon in December, my mother and I stood listening once again to Giovanni as he read the letter that had arrived that morning.

  “…Concetta is brokenhearted. She cries all the time and will eat nothing. I worry for her health and ask that Maria come to pay her cousin a visit. It may raise her spirits. Perhaps sometime in January. Giuseppe’s brothers seem to honestly know nothing of his whereabouts, and, as usual, his mother doesn’t say a word.”

  My brother shrugged sympathetically and continued. “Again, we will miss you all for Natale, and, God willing, we will all be together again soon. I ask for your prayers for my Concetta, that her broken heart may heal. All my love. Felicia.”

  “Dio mio,” my mother said, the look in her eyes drowning me with guilt.

  Gio scratched his head and clucked his tongue. “He seemed fine at San Nicola. Wonder what happened.” Setting the letter down on the kitchen table, he patted my mother’s shoulder before strolling outside to get back to work.

  My mother’s eyes were wide and tra
ined on me, her open hands glued to her face as if they were holding it in place.

  “God knows,” she said, almost too quietly.

  But I heard.

  Silence had become my ally since that night of the San Nicola feast. It was as if my lips were afraid to open lest my secret would fly out of them, so I said as little as possible. I’d been avoiding my mother’s eyes, afraid she might see the changed version of me inside of them, wringing my hands and praying constantly.

  Please let no one know.

  But my mother was right. God knew. He’d watched it all unfold upon my moonlit mountain under a prickly pear tree. I felt like Eve must have felt in the Garden of Eden when she realized she was naked.

  Exposed.

  Guilty.

  Wretched.

  I started to turn away, to flee my mother’s knowing presence.

  “Maria,” she said flatly. “Look at me.”

  I didn’t move, afraid to face the single woman who was the grand jury of my character.

  “Maria, please.” Her voice cracked then, and if there was any shred of innocence left within me, any speck of white alive in my black, black soul, it died the moment I made my mother cry. I turned around then and buried myself in her arms, crying with her, my silence broken, hers only about to begin.

  I believe my mother knew I was sorry before she died. I never got the chance to tell her before she collapsed in my arms. Moments later, her heart stopped beating.

  Days afterward, when the shock had faded but reality’s whispers were still far too loud for my ears, I realized something else my mother had probably already known. When the blood did not appear as it should have at its marked time, I wondered. My mother had known my longing, my secret, selfish act of lust, my sorrow. There was no doubt in my mind that before my mother’s heart had stopped beating, she’d been aware of the new one that beat inside of me.

  * * *

  We mourned our mother through silent rooms, Gio’s icy blue eyes blaming me each time they crossed my face. He knew nothing of my indiscretion with Giuseppe, nothing of the consequence growing inside me, but somehow he knew that my mother’s death was undeniably my fault.

  The souring of my relationship with my brother was yet another weight of worry I carried at that time. Add to that the fear that every few weeks or so, when Zia Felicia visited to bring meals and check in on us, she would start to see my signs. I grew to dread her visits, to fear her shock and Gio’s anger, but most of all I was terrified of the one question she would surely ask.

  Who is the father, Maria? Who did this to you?

  By April, I was fat. My breasts were swollen and heavy, and they hurt when the wind blew. Only then, when my body was visibly no longer my own, did I view my consequence as a child, a living child of God growing inside of me.

  I began to daydream about it. Would it be a boy or a girl? I imagined myself rocking the child to sleep with lullabies my mother had sung to me, and I cried, thinking that my baby would never know her. I hardly thought of Giuseppe Domani. He was a phantom father who’d floated away on the steam of his own laughter before he could claim responsibility for anything. When he did invade my thoughts, I found myself tortured by the possibility of the baby looking just like him. Everyone would know then.

  When Zia Felicia came through the front door one afternoon in mid-April, she called out to me. I didn’t answer her but stood in our small kitchen, in full view of her, waiting. Her eyes took in the roundness of my face, then lowered to my belly.

  “Jesu Christo, Maria.” Her cheeks were flushed, and she reached out to grab hold of a kitchen chair for support.

  “Yes, Zia, I am with child.” I should have looked away out of respect, but instead I faced her, knowing that my mother would have wanted me to be a rock for my child. There was no room for emotional fragility now, and in her absence, I could hear my mother’s voice telling me that what’s done is done. Now I had to be brave and face life with my eyes wide open.

  “How?” Zia asked. “When?”

  “I am about four months along.”

  “Maria, does Gio know?”

  “No, Zia. We don’t speak much, and I guess he just didn’t notice.”

  Her hand went to her forehead, and she slouched into the chair. “Who is the father, Maria?”

  The one question I was unprepared to answer. I looked at the floor and shuddered as I tried to push away the image of him walking backward, away from me, buckling his belt and laughing.

  My aunt surrounded me with her arms. “It’s okay, Maria. You don’t have to talk about it.”

  I got the feeling she believed I’d been violated, but I was too grateful for her reprieve to explain otherwise. When Zia left me that afternoon, I fell into a deep sleep, my mind finally at rest. I didn’t know how short-lived that peace would be.

  She was back at six the next morning.

  “Pack only a few things, Maria. You won’t need much.”

  “Where are we going, Zia?” I asked as I watched her place my small suitcase in the trunk of Zio Cristo’s car.

  “There is a place in Nicotera—a convent, Maria. One of the sisters and I were friends when we were children, and she will help you.”

  “But I know nothing of this town, Zia. What will I—”

  “Shh, Maria. There are others like you there, girls who are in a shameful way.” She started the car and I sat back, shocked by the news of my destination but following my aunt’s lead nevertheless. “When we arrive at the convent, you must remember only to obey their rules. They run on a very strict schedule. The sisters there have taken vows of silence and will expect you to stay quiet as well.”

  Zia talked of this place as if she knew it well, and suddenly it occurred to me that perhaps she did. I lowered my eyes out of respect.

  Before she pulled away from my home, Zia Felicia turned to face me with flushed cheeks. She swallowed hard and placed a cold hand on my knee. “It will not be easy, Maria, but you must do as they say.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she looked away, gazing out the window. “Even when you think you can’t…just do exactly as they say. It will all turn out for the best.”

  As the car snaked down our mountain and later up another, I kept my eyes closed and my tongue silent. I wanted so much to ask my aunt for guidance, but I sensed her need for privacy. For me, Zia was opening a door to her past, to a time that had obviously been painful for her. I couldn’t ask her for more.

  “This is the main street of Nicotera, Maria.” I noticed how Zia Felicia’s white knuckles gripped the steering wheel as we approached a street sign.

  “It looks like a smaller version of the city of Reggio,” I said as we drove slowly over bumpy cobblestones, past a bakery and a fruit stand. The street was empty of people except for a couple of men sitting at a table in front of the town barbershop and an old woman sniffing a head of cabbage at the vegetable cart. Nicotera, it seemed, was a sleepy town, a perfect retreat for a young woman with something to hide.

  Zia turned the car down a narrow alley, away from the open thoroughfare. My stomach churned as the car came to a stop in front of what looked like a fortress, its massive gray stone walls announced by the gong of church bells.

  “Ah,” Zia said, the hint of a faded smile crossing her face. “It must be time for mass.”

  She rang the bell next to a black wrought iron gate that covered a tall wooden door, and moments later, we were ushered inside by a stern-faced nun dressed from head to toe in black and white.

  “Sit here, Maria.” Zia gestured to a small wooden bench in the tiled foyer, and she followed the nun further inside.

  I watched Zia speak to the sister in a hushed tone, feeling like everything was happening too fast. I’d never been so far from home, so tucked away inside walls that didn’t allow me a view of the sea. I felt choked for air in the closeness of the pale green walls, with the eyes of popes past and present lining the hallway. A wooden crucifix hung at the end of the corridor, and a statue of the Blessed Moth
er stood next to the bench where I sat.

  “Dear Mother Mary, give me strength,” I prayed, kissing the palm of my hand and touching the smooth stone of the statue’s face.

  A moment later, Zia was back at my side. She bent to kiss me.

  “Be brave, Maria,” she whispered. I felt her tears on my cheek before she turned and left me without saying another word.

  A tall, broad-shouldered nun approached and gestured for me to follow her down the length of the hallway and up four flights of stairs. The click of her black shoes echoed over pristine white-tiled floors until we stopped in front of a solid walnut door. She pulled out a key from a jangling ring that hung from a rope beneath her robes and unlocked the door, revealing a passage that ran between dingy white walls.

  We passed a tiny kitchen with an electric stove and icebox and a community washroom with white porcelain sinks and brown-curtained shower stalls. I scrunched up my nose at the musky odor that hung in the air as we walked purposely past black doors that lined the hallway on either side.

  Were there others here? It was quiet enough to hear my own heartbeat.

  The sister stopped in front of door twelve, although the number two was hanging upside down, making it look like the number five. She rapped her knuckles on the door in three decisive knocks, and immediately the silence was broken by the sound of shuffling feet and a sharp gasping giggle as the door swung open.

  This was my first introduction to Luisa.

  Her gray eyes were wide with surprise as they took me in from head to toe and back. Her already small frame was made more petite by the strings of brown hair hanging in long, messy curls past her shoulders. Skinny as a stray dog and almost as dirty, when Luisa smiled at me that morning, her yellow teeth reminded me of sunshine.

  Placing one long, wrinkled finger to her lips, the nun narrowed her stare at the girl in room twelve. She crossed herself as she pulled the door closed, then motioned for me to follow her to the next door, ignoring the confusion she must have read in my eyes.