The Godmothers

by Camille Aubray

  Filomena suddenly felt overcome, with the heat, the news, the crush of aggressive people. Her heart weighed heavily in her chest, as if it were made of stone; this had happened to her only once before, when her mother abandoned her.

  But Rosamaria dragged her off, once again careening around street corners with a jubilant energy that Filomena could not share. When they arrived at the church they were both breathless. Rosamaria paused on the steps and pointed up, then put a hand under Filomena’s chin to make her tilt her head far back.

  “Look! See the little statue standing on the very top of that skinny pole? That is the Spire of the Virgin Mary. Isn’t she beautiful? She’s higher than everyone. Let’s go inside and light a candle to her.”

  There was no service going on inside the church, so the pews were mostly empty. Just a few old ladies in black, praying to their favorite saints. The girls dipped their fingers in the holy water and crossed themselves, then sat down in a pew that smelled of finely-polished wood, and incense. Excitedly Rosamaria tore open her envelope and scanned its contents.

  “It’s all here!” she whispered triumphantly. “My ticket for the passage to America, some money for the trip, and the documents I need so that they’ll let me into New York.”

  She tucked the packet into the bosom of her dress, then knelt on the padded kneeler, and closed her eyes and clasped her hands to pray.

  Filomena knelt beside her but could not pray. She doubted that God had room in his heart for more than one desperate girl. She knew that she was not blessed like Rosamaria was. This church of stained-glass windows and marble pillars was too beautiful for the likes of Filomena; it was more like a cathedral, built for important people. Somehow Rosamaria, with her insistent vitality and courage, had managed to inveigle her way into this gorgeous holy place. But it meant that Filomena would never see her again; of that she was sure.

  “When do you leave?” Filomena asked when they emerged from the cool, dark church, blinking in the bright sunlight and the stifling heat.

  “Early next month,” Rosamaria said in a low voice. “No one must know, Filomena. Don’t breathe a word of this to anybody. If the signora found out, she’d find a way to stop me, I just know it.”

  “I won’t tell,” Filomena promised miserably. “You know that.”

  Rosamaria said, “Come on, then. We have to go back to the farm now.”

  Filomena felt as if she were finally waking up. “What did you tell the cook? Why did she let us go out today?”

  “I told her that one of our uncles died and we had to go to the funeral.” Rosamaria paused before a man who was selling gelato in cones. “We’ll buy one and share it,” she said, paying for a pistachio one. They plunked themselves on the stone steps outside the church and took turns eating this cool, creamy treat, watching crowds of remarkably energetic people scurrying by, chattering loudly with broad gestures.

  Just as the girls finished their gelato, they heard a hum and then a roar that made them gaze upward. It was a fleet of military planes. They shaded their eyes to see where the fliers were headed today. But even before she realized that these were enemy planes, Filomena detected a shrill buzzing sound that quickly intensified into a deafening whine.

  A split second later, the bombs fell, and the city simply erupted all around them.

  Eventually, Filomena would find out what happened that day. She would learn that the city caught fire when four hundred B-17 airplanes dropped their bombs and killed three thousand people in Naples; and another three thousand were injured when a ship blew up in the harbor. The Santa Maria di Loreto hospital and the very church of Santa Chiara whose steps they had just been sitting on were completely destroyed.

  But all Filomena actually remembered was the explosions, louder than thunder, whose very sound hurt her eardrums, her chest, her whole body to its very core, even before a harsh, forceful wind knocked her clear to the ground. It felt like an earthquake, a fire, and a hurricane all rolled into one. She felt Rosamaria clutch her just as the stones of the church began their downward tumble. Then, just as suddenly, everything went black and silent for a long time.

  When Filomena opened her eyes, the entire city was like a ghostly skull, emitting an agonized shrieking sound, and she was in the very center of it. The city was so eerily dark from the billowing black smoke that she couldn’t see at all. She gasped for air, but the air itself was full of ash and the acrid smell of everything—flesh, metal, oil, tar, wood, bricks—burning in a hellish bonfire. Something was pinning her down, something much heavier than Rosamaria, who lay on top of her.

  “Rosa! Rosa! Get up, I can’t breathe!” Filomena cried out in panic, wriggling and panting to be free. She staggered to her feet, with the ashy air still blurring her eyes to the chaos all around her. Choking, she fumbled for her kerchief to put over her mouth and nose, but her eyes felt as if a hundred tiny needles were piercing them.

  Now she realized that this awful keening sound was coming from the blend of air-raid sirens, fire engines, horns, and crowds of people screaming in a way she’d never heard grown people scream before. She could feel that everyone was running around in panic—but where were they running to? They seemed to be shouting from all directions.

  “Rosamaria, we’ve got to get out of here, before something else falls on us!” Filomena cried. In the rubble at her feet, she spied a hand reaching out to her. For a fleeting moment she thought of her mother’s hand—just before her mother let her go. But this one was child-size. Filomena grabbed it and the hand came loose—for it was not flesh, it was made of stone.

  Numbly, she put it in her pocket, hardly realizing what she was doing. Now the wind blew away enough smoke to admit a brief shaft of sunlight. She saw that, amid big stones and bricks, the statue of the Virgin Mary, having toppled spectacularly from its spire, had shattered into powdery fragments nearby. Still stunned, Filomena looked upward and finally realized that the entire church was gone. There was only a frightening gap in the sky, and nothing but piles of rubble here on earth below, as if a vicious child had knocked down all the building blocks.

  Rosamaria still lay motionless as a discarded doll, face-down near a heap of stones. It was the first time that Filomena was able to actually see her cousin through all the smoke.

  “Rosamaria, get up!” Filomena cried desperately, dropping back to her knees and turning her over. Rosamaria’s face was full of blood, and when Filomena hastily wiped it away with the skirt of her dress, she saw that Rosamaria’s nose was crushed.

  “Rosa! Rosa!” she sobbed, frantically unbuttoning her cousin’s dress to try to hear if her heart was still beating. Filomena had to push aside the matchmaker’s brown envelope—full of all Rosamaria’s hopes and dreams, still tucked close to her heart—in order to listen to her cousin’s chest, which was as silent as the stones around her. No heartbeat, no breathing. Already, Rosamaria’s flesh was like cold clay.

  “Rosa!” Filomena sobbed. “Please, wake up!”

  A man in white hospital garb that was smeared with black dust emerged out of the drifting black smoke like a phantom. A policeman followed, not far behind. Filomena hastily buttoned Rosamaria’s dress so that her chest would not be exposed. As the wind tried to snatch up the matchmaker’s envelope, Filomena caught it and tucked it inside her own dress, just before the policeman clamped a hand on Filomena’s shoulder.

  “You can’t stay here. Get out while you can,” he bellowed.

  Filomena pointed at Rosamaria. “Help her,” she begged. She could barely hear her own voice; the incessant noise all around her had made her ears go numb, as if they were padded with wool.

  The man in hospital whites shouted into her face. “Is she alive?” He signaled to other men in white to bring a stretcher over, motioning toward Rosamaria.

  “I don’t know,” Filomena said, hoping that somehow he could revive her.

  “Name?” the policeman demanded, staring at Filomena while the hospital men were bending over Rosamaria’s limp body.


  “Filomena!” she cried obediently. He asked for the last name and she gave it.

  Too late, she realized her mistake. Someone had written Filomena’s name down on a tag and tied it to Rosamaria’s foot.

  “Come back tomorrow,” the policeman advised. “Her family can claim the body then, if any of us are still here. Go home, girl. There may be other bombers coming.”

  * * *

  But Filomena did not return home that night. It was impossible—the roads were jammed with wild, fleeing survivors. A short distance from the city, Filomena discovered that tents had been erected to shelter the lost souls and keep them from becoming hordes invading nearby towns. Some people dressed in white were distributing water. Filomena took her place on line.

  The next day, she crept back to Naples. The weather was already so hot that people had hurriedly begun to bury the dead. She managed to get there in time to locate Rosamaria’s body and sprinkle some holy water on her cousin, which Filomena got from a priest who was making the rounds. An enterprising mason was selling gravestones that he could hastily scratch names onto. Filomena took some of Rosamaria’s coins to pay the mason. The gravediggers had so many people to bury that it was all done quickly in the terrible heat. Filomena said nothing, even when she saw that the tombstone she’d paid for had her own name on it, because that was the name on the body tag. The brave girl who’d died too young now slept under the wrong name.

  Feeling dazed, Filomena moved slowly, as if she were walking through water.

  The priest, seeing her lost, devastated face, touched Filomena’s shoulder and told her of a convent on a nearby hilltop that was sheltering orphaned girls.

  Filomena heard the sobbing of other mourners at other headstones as she said a silent prayer over Rosamaria’s grave, and stared briefly at her own name on the tombstone. She knew now that she was indeed an orphan. Her parents would never come looking for her, of that she was certain; but even if they did, they would find only this marker, telling them that their unwanted daughter had died in the bombing of Naples.

  And only a few weeks later, when Naples was finally “liberated” and the harbor was working again, a girl going by the name of Rosamaria got on a ship bound for New York.

  6

  Lucy

  New York City, February 1935–1937

  “Say, Fred, who’s the doll?” Frankie asked, peering out the window of a room that was called the janitor’s office. But Fred himself seldom actually occupied this room; it was really an office that Frankie occasionally used to make his mysterious phone calls.

  Fred glanced at the pretty redheaded woman walking purposefully toward them, and he shook his head. “Never saw her before in my life, Frankie,” he muttered. Fred was almost seventy, so he said “in my life” a lot these days.

  As Lucy approached the office, she saw that the door was ajar, but she knocked on it anyway. “Come in,” said the younger man, called Frankie.

  Lucy pushed the door farther open. She had the distinct impression that both of these fellows had been talking about her. Men were like that. She chose to ignore it. A businesslike attitude was what was called for. She sized them up. The janitor was a slightly wizened older man in overalls, staring at her now. The younger one was a well-dressed buck who looked to be Lucy’s age; he was seated at the desk with his head down, reading the newspaper racing results, pretending to be unaware of her.

  “I’m here about the apartment for rent,” she said.

  Old Fred gave her the once-over now and asked, “You live alone?”

  “Me and my baby boy,” Lucy said crisply. “My husband went missing and they say he’s dead. He was in the British navy.”

  She’d been telling this incredible lie ever since that strange night when she was ordered at gunpoint by an Irish gangster to deliver a baby and “get rid of it.” In the wee hours of the morning that followed, a lovely little boy had been born, and the thuggy men had gone away, after repeating their dire warning and extracting a promise that she would take the baby to the orphanage that very day.

  Lucy had waited until they were gone, then she asked the girl on the bed if she really wished to give the baby up. The girl wanted to know about the orphanage, so Lucy told her all about the kindly nuns. Yes, you take him, the young mother said finally. I’m a working girl. I can’t keep him. It turned out that the room in Harlem belonged to the girl’s cousin, who worked nights as a hat-check clerk, so the young mother would be cared for until she was well enough to go back to Hell’s Kitchen.

  Quickly, Lucy had bundled up the baby and carried it off to the nearest bus stop. She’d paused to pick up baby formula and other supplies, truly intending to take the infant to the orphanage upstate. But this boy was one of those sweet babies who slept quietly and gurgled gently when awake. He’d reached his little sausage fingers up to her face and cooed at her. People on the bus had smiled at Lucy as she climbed aboard, and a man gave up his seat for her.

  “Your first?” asked the lady beside her. Lucy only nodded. The baby nuzzled his warm, sweet head against her chest, gave a tiny, weary yawn, and fell asleep on her bosom.

  Over and over Lucy reminded herself that the orphanage was run by good, gentle people, but to her own great astonishment, she simply could not go through the actions of giving up a baby to the nuns, just as she’d once been forced to do back in Ireland when she was only fourteen and they’d shaved her head and made her work in the laundry. Glancing down at this infant when he stirred awake briefly and gazed back at her so trustfully, Lucy’s heart swelled with ferocious desire, and she whispered, “No, never again. You’re safe now.”

  She knew it was madness. But she rode the bus past the train terminals and continued on, even past the place where she lived, because it was for single girls only. She went beyond Hell’s Kitchen, farther downtown where no one knew her, to a cheap rooming house that took people on a temporary basis, no questions asked. All the while, she peered over her shoulder and, seeing no one suspiciously watching her, she checked into a furnished room.

  She called the boy Christopher, registering his birth under her name as the mother, with the father “deceased.” An older lady who lived in the room next to Lucy’s said that this baby had Irish looks just like “his mama,” and a sweet temperament; Lucy paid her to care for little Chris while she was working at the hospital. It all had evolved so miraculously that she was sure God was on her side this time, for doing what she felt in her heart was right.

  But Lucy couldn’t keep Chris in that rooming house for long. He was getting bigger and needed to play, somewhere safe and clean. In every free moment she had, she walked around town, searching for a good building on a nice street. Finally she spotted a sign in the window of a genteel apartment building on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village; she calculated that she could catch a subway to work at the hospital.

  Now, when Frankie folded his newspaper and looked up at her, Lucy suddenly experienced something she’d never felt before with any man. It was as if her body reacted to his gaze without consulting her mind. Her brain stopped thinking about the apartment and the money, and she found herself wondering what it would feel like to have those strong arms around her, and that chest close to hers, and those lips kissing her. This sensation came over her in a flash, and it was so engulfing that she wondered if her thoughts and feelings were plainly visible to everybody, as if all her clothes had fallen off. She was stunned.

  “I—I’d like to see the apartment right now, if possible,” she stammered.

  Frankie spoke to Fred, without ever taking his eyes off Lucy. “I’ll show it to her,” he said, holding out his hand. Fred obediently placed the key in Frankie’s outstretched palm.

  “This way,” Frankie said, leading her to the stairs.

  They climbed to the second floor and entered a spacious one-bedroom apartment at the back of the building, blissfully quiet, which overlooked a small yard. A bird was singing contentedly in a nearby tree. The apartment had hardwood
floors and plenty of windows to let in the sunlight.

  “You work around here or something?” Frankie asked casually.

  “I’m a nurse,” Lucy said, and she told him about St. Clare’s hospital. “I can give you references,” she assured him.

  But Frankie only smiled and shook his head. “Not necessary,” he replied.

  Taking a deep breath, Lucy asked cautiously, “What is the rent?”

  When Frankie answered, her face must have fallen, because she saw his reaction, and then he said quickly, “But for you, I can make it half that.”

  Lucy gave him a cynical look. “What sort of malarkey is that, eh?” she demanded.

  Frankie threw back his head and laughed. “I’m not foolin’ with you,” he said.

  Lucy still wouldn’t believe him. “And how on God’s green earth are you able to perform such a miracle with this rent?” she asked.

  “My family owns the building,” he answered with a grin.

  Lucy and Christopher moved in the next day, and she found a girl to look after him while Lucy worked. She didn’t see Frankie again for three weeks but thought of him often; he was unlike anyone she’d ever met. The boy in Ireland had been just that, a callow youth by comparison. In America, she’d flirted with doctors at the hospital but was wise enough to avoid dating them; nothing must jeopardize her job. And none of these men had Frankie’s utterly desirable maleness and confidence in his own power. She could not help remembering the gaze that had thrilled her, no matter how resolutely she tried to forget about him.

  Then, almost as if she’d summoned him, he turned up at the emergency room of the hospital, just as Lucy was going off her shift. It was midnight. There was nobody there, and the doctor was away on a coffee break.