“How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
Serafina shuddered.
“Unless you’ve had a child taken from your arms, you’ll never understand, never. I walked until I came to a land that looked foreign to me. A new land, a new life. Stayed with a family near Naples. They fed me, gave me work, but something happened. Too long ago to matter. Ran away. Fishermen brought me here. I worked in Palermo, but the girls talk, you know, and Villa Rosa, well, it has a reputation. I was fifteen when I knocked on Rosa’s door.”
Shadows covered Lola’s face. She blinked several times. Her mood changed. “But you have to make your life, don’t you? You have to heave the past, just chuck it out and move on. My good fortune to find Rosa. Bad times, these. If I can help her in any way, please let me know.”
“You can help me right now. Tell Gusti I’ll talk to her another time.”
The Fight
Serafina stormed into the office. “Was my daughter here?”
The madam looked up from her ledger, still whispering numbers. “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Carmela. Was she here?”
Rosa bit her lip.
“Say something. My daughter. Did she come here four years ago? Did you let her in? She worked here? You didn’t tell me?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“Never mind. Answer my question: did my daughter work here as a prostitute?”
“Fina, that was long ago. Only a few months she stayed. She had no roof over her head after you made her leave.”
“I made her leave? Not on your life. Giorgio and I told her she had to finish school. Women of our class do, you know.”
“Women of your class? Putting on airs, is it?” Fists in her armpits she cocked her elbows and strutted with her torso like a clown. “ ‘Women of our class!’ Well, women of my class never talk to our children the way you talked to her. Mean, snarly words you used to your flesh and blood. Sicilian I am and proud of it, not ‘pretend noble.’ Nasty they are to their offspring, shipping them off to school barely weaned. We love our children. Ashamed, you should be.”
“What would you know about children?” Serafina asked.
Rosa stood. “Strega!” She stabbed the air with a finger. “I fought for my child. Flesh and blood? No. But I’m the mother, she’s mine. Ever in my heart, she is.”
“I take it back.”
Silence.
“I take back the part about Tessa. But you believed my daughter’s story. You never asked for my side. Worse, you took her in to work in your…your bordello, and never came to me. Never told me, even though I was here. Whenever you summoned, I dropped everything in the middle of the night, cared for your prostitutes as if they were my own clients. Saved them after they’d taken the strega’s evil draughts to rid themselves of their baby. And all the time, Carmela was right here, under your roof working on her back and not a word out of your lips about her. A child came to your door, not yet fifteen, and you took her in!”
“Take this handkerchief. I hate it when you cry. And sit down.”
“Keep your damn linen! Running around with boys, Carmela. When I saw her in the public gardens with that soldier, half undressed she was, I became incensed, yes. Mad. Wild. Perhaps I used words.”
The madam snorted. “Perhaps?”
“You know nothing, you shrew. Carmela found school ‘boring.’ Said she knew more than the teachers. ‘Only children attend’ and ‘I’m a woman now.’ We insisted she finish school, Giorgio and I. She refused. We told her, ‘Follow our rules while you live under our roof,’ never suspecting, never dreaming that she’d leave. She packed.”
“Did you try to stop her?”
“Of course we tried! Giorgio and I pleaded with her, so did Carlo. But no, she left, running down the steps one horrific night. Haven’t seen her since.”
“And you looked for her?”
“What a question to ask! Of course we did. And she was here, right under our noses, and you didn’t tell me!”
“Not here long.”
“Over a year.”
“Who said?”
“Gioconda.”
“What does she know?”
“Lola, too.”
The madam was silent.
“And she doesn’t know about the deaths of her grandmother and her father. You had the chance to send for me when she knocked on your door. And what did you do? You saw a child. You saw coins, the coins you think I know nothing about, and you never told me. You groomed her, ate off her earnings. You slut!”
Serafina slowed her breathing. “You never told me. Fine. You can get yourself another detective. You can find yourself another friend.”
The Discovery
Tuesday, October 16, 1866
The next few days were a blur. When she wasn’t delivering babies, Serafina helped her children with their schoolwork, accompanied Renata to market, went with Maria to her lessons, or watched Giulia sew their garments. Evenings, she spent in her mother’s room on the third floor. She read, thought, frowned up at the stars.
Despite her best attempts to banish it from her mind, Serafina could not forget her behavior the other day. Vicenzu had berated her for spending too much money on fabric. Her face flushed as he showed her the ledger. While he chattered on about red ink, Renata clattered in the kitchen. The domestic shuffled. Maria played her scales. Totò raced around the table like a wild specter.
Something inside her snapped. “Enough!” she yelled, slamming a platter to the floor. Shards of porcelain flew all over the kitchen. She saw fear in her children’s faces. It must never happen again, never.
The following morning she traipsed around the Duomo and piazza, climbed up to the promenade, wound down to the sea. The sun bounced off waves. Gulls cried. Sitting on the edge of the arena between the remains of two Greek pillars, she breathed in the salt air, glimpsed shards of porcelain in her mind, watched fishermen leaving with the tide. In the distance a steamer plowed the waves.
She decided to walk on. Where she was headed, she did not know, maybe as far away as Cefalù, maybe farther. She wanted to be on that steamer unfurling her sails and kissing the waves. The stones bit into her boots. The wind tore at her clothes, but she continued walking, past a platoon of boats heading out to claim their catch, past the cove on the edge of town, past citrus groves now picked clean of fruit.
She walked on as if walking would kill the lump in her throat, sinking into the soft soil, on and on until her legs hurt and her vision blurred. Soon she came to steep rocks jutting out almost to the water’s edge. Straight above her and some thirty meters from the edge stood a decrepit building, its lawns replaced by sand and clumps of grass, its gate rusted, its shutters askew. Guardian Angel Orphanage read the sign, Mother Concetta’s domain. As Serafina stood there staring up, she heard laughter, carefree, guileless. She smiled.
Something glinting near the rocks broke the moment. She walked over to the offender, lost or discarded in sea grass and picked it up. A reticule, brown velvet, with a gold chain and clasp. Inside she found Bella’s identity card, a fifty lire gold piece, a pair of yellow gloves, a rosary. She kissed the cross, dumped the articles back in the bag, and headed for home.
Shutting the gate behind her she saw the caretaker perched on a ladder pruning the bougainvillea. His shoulders bladed in and out as he cut. When Serafina waved to him, her skirt snagged on a prickly pear, and, yanking to free the silk, she pulled another thread. Her hem, wet from the sea, now puckered. She’d blame it on the goat.