Murder in Little Italy gm-8

by Victoria Thompson

  “Her water broke,” Maria reported solemnly.

  This time Sarah knew there was no hope. The baby would be born, no matter what. “How long ago?”

  “About an hour. That’s when we sent Joe for you.”

  “Another one’s coming,” Nainsi announced, holding the bulge of her stomach with both hands. “Make it stop! It hurts so much!” she cried, biting her lip against the scream that threatened.

  Sarah laid her own hands over Nainsi’s stomach to feel the strength of the contraction. It was strong enough to qualify as real labor, but certainly not the forceful contractions that would come later. Like most of the young girls Sarah had delivered, Nainsi didn’t tolerate pain very well and lacked the self-discipline to deal with it. They were in for a long evening. The thought had no sooner formed in her mind than Sarah noticed something very interesting about Nainsi’s baby.

  As the contraction eased, Nainsi fell back on the bed, pant-ing. “Don’t let me die,” she begged. “Please don’t let me die!”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Maria snapped. “You will not die.”

  “She said to let me die!” Nainsi whined, obviously referring to Mrs. Ruocco. “She wants me to die!”

  “She was just reminding me of the Catholic doctrine to save the child first if a choice must be made,” Sarah said to soothe her fears. “That’s not going to happen to you, though, so you don’t have to be afraid. Try to rest now. You’ll need your strength later.”

  Nainsi looked skeptical, and Sarah couldn’t blame her for doubting. She apparently wasn’t a cherished member of the family.

  Sarah began preparing the room. Someone had already covered the bed with an oilcloth and a clean sheet. Sarah ordered some hot water and more clean towels to keep Maria busy. When Maria was gone to fetch them, Sarah finished fluffing the pillows to make Nainsi more comfortable and said, “I’d like to check your stomach again, to make sure the baby is in the right position.”

  “How can you tell that?” the girl asked, her eyes wide.

  “I can feel his head,” Sarah said as she began to knead the mound of Nainsi’s stomach, tracing the outline of the baby’s body. “You can tell a lot of things by just feeling.”

  “Is it?” Nainsi asked when Sarah was finished. “Is it in the right position? I knew a lady whose baby wasn’t, and they had to cut it out of her. She . . . she died.” The girl shivered with dread.

  “It’s in the right position,” Sarah assured her. “And it seems awfully big, too.”

  Nainsi’s hands went protectively to her stomach again.

  “Does it? Does that mean it’s too big to come out?”

  “No, it should come out just fine. I mean it seems big for only seven months.” In fact, it seemed big even for nine months, Sarah thought, but she didn’t say it.

  Nainsi was a sturdy girl, and from what Sarah could tell, she was carrying low and all around instead of straight out in front. Depending on how they carried, some women hardly looked pregnant even when they were full term. If Nainsi had lied and the baby wasn’t early, perhaps it would have a chance.

  “Nainsi, could your baby have gotten started earlier than August?” Sarah asked.

  Nainsi looked up at her, and for the first time Sarah saw a hint that she might be more clever than she’d seemed. “It could’ve, but it didn’t,” she informed Sarah with a hint of satisfaction.

  Before Sarah could ask what that meant, Nainsi’s eyes widened as another contraction began, and Maria returned with an armload of towels. After that, the contractions came in earnest. Sarah gave Nainsi a towel to bite on so she wouldn’t scream and draw Mrs. Ruocco’s wrath again. Maria helped Sarah support the girl when the time came to start pushing, and just as the sun was setting, Sarah delivered her of a strapping baby boy.

  He wasn’t the biggest baby Sarah had ever delivered, but he was certainly one of the biggest. His body was rounded and padded with the fat that forms during the last month of development. His cheeks were full, his chin double, and his head was covered with coal-black hair. He let out a wail to match the one his mother had given earlier as soon as the cool air of the room touched his wet skin. So much for Sarah’s fear that he wouldn’t be able to breathe. That was the problem that killed so many infants born before their time. But this baby wasn’t early at all.

  “It’s a boy,” Maria said happily, showing the first real emotion Sarah had seen. She had towels ready to dry him off, and Sarah handed the baby to her.

  As Maria took the baby and cradled him, Sarah couldn’t help thinking she looked almost beautiful as the joy lit her face. Under ordinary circumstances, no one would consider Maria Ruocco beautiful. If anything, she was plain, her face round and nondescript. Her figure was squat and would probably run to fat later in life, just as the dark fuzz above her upper lip would eventually become a mustache. Her hair was thick and dark, but it grew low on her forehead, and she wore it parted in the middle and pulled straight back, a style that only emphasized how plain her face was.

  “Is it over?” Nainsi asked weakly. So far she’d shown no interest in the baby, only relief that she was rid of it.

  “Almost,” Sarah said. A few minutes later, Sarah had her cleaned up and resting comfortably in a clean nightdress.

  “Would you like to hold your baby now?”

  Nainsi frowned slightly. “I guess. I don’t know much about babies.”

  “You’ll learn,” Sarah assured her.

  Maria had washed the baby and wrapped him in a blanket that had obviously been purchased for his arrival. Maria had quieted him down, and he now lay peacefully in her arms, staring up at her face in fascination. As it dried, his hair had begun to curl. Sarah thought of the handsome Ruocco boys and their glistening black curls.

  “You should try to nurse the baby right away,” Sarah said. “It will help you recover more quickly.”

  Nainsi frowned again, looking askance at the bundle in Maria’s arms. “Do I have to?”

  “Of course you have to,” Maria said sharply. “You are his mother.” Even still, she surrendered the child with obvious reluctance. Perhaps she was thinking how eager she would be to nurse her own child. Sarah knew how anxious Maria had been for a baby when she’d first married Joe. That was five years ago, and she still had yet to conceive. She’d consulted with Sarah several times, and Sarah had given her every scientific and old wives’ remedy she knew, but to no avail. Not for the first time, Sarah questioned the ways of the world where women like Maria were barren, and girls like Nainsi had babies they didn’t want.

  “I’ll go tell everyone,” Maria said when Nainsi had settled the baby in her arms. “It’s dinner, our busiest time, but they’ll want to know. I should be helping them, too, now that the baby is here.”

  “Let Valentina help,” Nainsi said nastily. “She never does anything but sit on her skinny bottom and complain.”

  Maria’s lips tightened, but she swallowed whatever reply she might have made. She’d probably gotten good at that with a mother-in-law like Patrizia, Sarah thought. “I will send Mama up to see the baby,” she said instead, knowing that would have more effect on Nainsi than anything else she could have said.

  The girl’s face flamed, but Maria was gone before she could respond.

  “Let me show you how to feed the baby,” Sarah said to distract her.

  Nainsi showed no enthusiasm for the process, but the baby’s instincts prevailed and soon he was latched on and sucking vigorously. Nainsi looked down at him doubtfully.

  “I don’t think I have any milk.”

  “It hasn’t come in yet. That takes a few days.”

  “What if it doesn’t, though? What if I don’t have any at all?”

  “You will,” Sarah assured her.

  “Some women don’t. I’ve heard the old biddies talking.

  Can’t I feed him with a bottle instead?”

  “It’s not very good for the baby,” Sarah warned her.

  “Sometimes they even get sick.” And d
ie, Sarah thought, but she didn’t say it.

  “She wouldn’t like it if it got sick, would she?” Nainsi asked.

  Before Sarah could think of an appropriate reply, they heard the stairway door open and the sound of footsteps hurrying down the hall. Mrs. Ruocco appeared in the doorway, and this time she was breathless.

  “Maria say he is alive,” she said in wonder.

  “Yes, he’s just fine,” Sarah said.

  She said something softly in Italian that might have been a prayer and crossed herself, then went the bed where Nainsi was still nursing the baby.

  Someone had come along behind Patrizia, more slowly, and now he reached the doorway, too. Antonio looked no less apprehensive than he had when she’d seen him downstairs.

  “You’ve got a healthy son,” Sarah told him.

  He gave no indication he’d heard her. He was staring at the girl in the bed.

  Mrs. Ruocco leaned over and whipped open the blanket covering the child. He was too engrossed in suckling to even notice, but everyone else saw how Patrizia reared back in shock at the sight of the chubby, pink, obviously full-term infant.

  She turned accusingly to Sarah. “He is not too early.”

  Sarah drew a deep breath, choosing her words carefully.

  “He’s healthy and strong. Your grandson will live,” she added, reminding the woman that that had been her wish.

  Mrs. Ruocco glared down at Nainsi, who had taken a sudden maternal interest in her son. She tucked the blanket carefully back over his bare legs and actually cooed at him.

  Then she lifted her gaze to her mother-in-law with an odd defiance, as if to ask what she intended to do now.

  Mrs. Ruocco turned to Antonio, who didn’t seem to have understood the meaning of any of what had happened. She asked him something angrily in Italian, and he answered her defensively.

  “What are you saying about me?” Nainsi demanded.

  “Talk in English so I can understand!”

  If Sarah had thought Mrs. Ruocco’s gaze intimidating before, it was positively murderous now. “I ask when was the first time he go under your skirt,” she said between gritted teeth.

  Nainsi’s cheeks burned scarlet, but she looked over at Antonio. “And what did you tell her?”

  “August,” he said, still not certain what it meant. “You should be glad the baby isn’t sick,” he told his mother plaintively.

  “He not sick because you not make him in August,” the woman said fiercely. “And if you did not, who did?”

  “What are you saying?” Antonio asked. “That this isn’t my baby?”

  “Yes, that is what I say,” Mrs. Ruocco informed him.

  “She’s crazy!” Nainsi insisted. “You’re my husband. This is your baby!”

  The baby had lost his grip on Nainsi’s breast, and he started to cry in protest. No one paid any attention, least of all his mother.

  “Don’t listen to her!” Nainsi pleaded. “She hates me because I’m Irish. She’d say anything to turn you against me!”

  Sarah thought that might well be true, but in this case, she had to agree with the older woman, who was shouting at Antonio in Italian again. He started shouting back, and they both began waving their hands to emphasize their points. Sarah couldn’t understand a word, but she knew exactly what they were talking about. Mrs. Ruocco was jab-bing her finger into his chest, and he was throwing his hands in the air to indicate he was as puzzled about the situation as she was.

  Between the shouting and the baby wailing, no one heard Maria coming until she stepped in between the two and pushed them apart. “Stop yelling! You’re making the baby cry!”

  For the first time they seemed to notice it was crying.

  Maria gave them both a look of disgust and strode over and snatched the baby from Nainsi’s limp grasp. Maria started to bounce him and make soothing sounds, but he continued to scream.

  “He’s hungry,” Sarah said. “He won’t stop until he gets something to eat.”

  “I’ll get him something from the kitchen,” Antonio offered, earning a scornful look from every woman in the room.

  Mrs. Ruocco glared at Nainsi. “Feed the bastard, you whore.”

  Maria gasped in shock. “Mama, what are you saying?”

  Her nerves fraying from the baby’s cries, Sarah took him from Maria and gave him back to Nainsi, forcing her to offer him her breast again. The baby’s cries ceased instantly, leaving the room in silence except for the happy sounds of suckling.

  Maria was still gaping at Mrs. Ruocco. “Mama?”

  “I know it,” the woman said angrily. “Antonio, he just a boy. He not know what to do. She must show him.”

  Antonio flushed scarlet, revealing the truth of his mother’s theory, and he shot Nainsi a glance that could’ve curdled her milk.

  “She is whore,” Mrs. Ruocco continued. “She try get husband and home for her bastard. She trick Antonio. She trick whole family!”

  “No, Mama,” Maria insisted. “You can’t know that. Look at the baby. He looks just like Antonio!”

  Newborn babies seldom resembled anything more closely than an elderly man who’d lost his hair and his teeth.

  This one did, at least, have the black curly hair of the Ruocco family, but beyond that, any resemblance would be entirely in the eye of the beholder.

  “Look at baby, Maria,” Mrs. Ruocco said, pointing an accusing finger. “Is he sick, like baby born too soon?”

  Maria looked at the baby, her face reflecting her refusal to accept the truth. “We are lucky, Mama. God has blessed us by making him strong enough to live. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” she reminded her.

  “I want my grandson to live,” Mrs. Ruocco corrected her.

  “This baby, he nothing to me.”

  “You can’t be sure,” Maria argued desperately. “Mrs.

  Brandt, tell her! She can’t know for sure!”

  This was what Sarah had dreaded. If she confirmed the truth she knew, she would condemn Nainsi and her baby to abandonment and perhaps even death. A woman with a newborn would fare poorly on the streets, and few families would welcome a daughter back home after such a scandal, if Nainsi even had a family. But if Sarah lied, she would be doing an injustice to Antonio and his entire family. She thought of King Solomon with the sword, ready to cut the baby in two. If only she had his wisdom, and if only one of her choices were the right one.

  “Look at her,” Mrs. Ruocco said, gesturing at Sarah.

  “She know truth, but she cannot say. She want protect baby. Look at baby. He too big and too fat. Count to nine, Maria. Nine month was June. Antonio did not know this whore in June.”

  Tears stood in Maria’s eyes, and she looked at Sarah, silently pleading for her to deny it. Sarah still couldn’t bring herself to say the words, but she gave Maria the slightest nod.

  Maria’s face crumpled, and Nainsi howled in fury. “You can’t believe her!” she cried to Antonio. “Mama is paying her. She’ll say anything to get her money! You know this is your baby. Come and look at him, and you’ll see!”

  But Antonio was already shaking his head. He’d obeyed his mother all of his life, and he wasn’t going to defy her now. He turned and fled the room.

  “Come back here!” Nainsi shrieked hysterically. Then she turned to Mrs. Ruocco. “This is your grandson. You have to believe me! He promised!”

  This time it was Maria who slapped her into silence. The baby, who had drifted off to sleep, startled and then settled down again into sweet oblivion.

  “That husband of yours almost knocked me down the stairs,” a new voice said a few moments later, and Sarah looked up to see a buxom Irishwoman in the doorway. Her faded orangey hair and the curve of her face made her an older version of Nainsi. “What’s the fuss about, anyway?”

  she asked of no one in particular, seemingly unaware of the tension in the room. Then she saw the infant cradled in Nainsi’s arms. “Ah, and that would be my grandson, would it?” she asked, a smile breaking
across her worn face. “What a handsome lad, and look at all that hair.”

  Nainsi gaped at her for a long moment and said,

  “Mommy.” Then she burst into tears.

  2

  Sarah would always remember the next few minutes as a blur of angry hands gesturing and lots of incoherent shouting. Nainsi blurted out the accusations the Ruoccos had made against her, and Mrs. O’Hara rose to her daughter’s defense, or at least her voice did. The two older women started screaming invectives at each other in a variety of languages while Nainsi sobbed and Maria wept silently.

  Sarah took the sleeping baby from his mother, marveling for the thousandth time how infants could sleep through anything. She laid him gently in the cradle that had been lovingly prepared for him, probably by Mrs. Ruocco herself, and wondered what would become of him. At least Nainsi had a mother. Judging by Mrs. O’Hara’s clean but well-mended clothes and her work-roughened hands, she might have a difficult time taking not only her daughter but the baby back into her care—but at least there was a chance they wouldn’t end up on the street.

  When the din had died down to a manageable level, Sarah said, “Excuse me,” startling everyone into silence.

  When she had their full attention, she continued. “This is an unfortunate situation, I know, but Nainsi and the baby need some peace and quiet and some rest.”

  Mrs. Ruocco looked at the girl in disgust. “We will not bother her anymore. I want her out of my house, her and her bastard!”

  “You dago cow!” Mrs. O’Hara cried. “You’d put her out five minutes after she birthed your grandchild?”

  “That bastard is no my grandchild!” Mrs. Ruocco replied indignantly.

  “Mrs. Ruocco,” Sarah said as calmly and reasonably as she could. “Nainsi and the baby shouldn’t be moved tonight. I know you’re angry right now, but if anything happened to either of them, especially that innocent baby who has done nothing to deserve it, you’d regret it for the rest of your life.”

  Sarah wasn’t sure if this were true or not, but she hoped Mrs. Ruocco would be willing to assume the finer feelings Sarah had assigned to her.