When We Were Strangers

by Pamela Schoenewaldt

  “Federico,” I shouted. In the sudden silence the teacher inked his pen.

  “And where does Federico work?”

  I thought of Alfredo of Pescasseroli. “In a steel mill?”

  A one-eyed man they called Salvo scoffed. “With all those Irish and Poles? Why not gold mining in California?”

  “With all those brothels and bars?” demanded a woman.

  “Sara, you think all America’s a cesspool!” he snapped.

  “Well, isn’t it?” Sara huffed, but other voices covered theirs. As spring rain pours into valleys, stories poured into the room. Everyone knew someone in America. A cousin made glass; brothers or uncles worked in saw mills or breweries, packed fish, made bread and or drove spikes on the railroads. A sister kept a boardinghouse; an aunt cooked. A city’s worth of people gone and I knew nothing of it. Their misfortunes came rolling out too: a man robbed on the boat to New York, others cheated at cards, sold false railway tickets, crushed in factories, buried in coal mines, dead of diseases or shot in taverns. “Listen, Irma,” the people called out. “Listen to this.”

  The schoolteacher thumped the table. “Let’s say Federico’s a blacksmith in Cleveland. Yes, Irma?” I nodded, a little dazed.

  “Why Cleveland?” Salvo demanded.

  “Because my brother went there,” I reminded him, but now everyone called out better places: Boston, New Haven, Philadelphia, Chicago, Saint Louis, Baltimore.

  “In Dakota,” someone announced, “they’ll give her free land.”

  “Why? So she freezes to death?” Salvo demanded. “Dakota’s worse than Russia.” When the teacher suggested New Orleans, a blast of voices cried, “Malaria!”

  “Malaria, malaria, malaria!” a small boy chanted gaily until his mother hushed him.

  “There’s lots of Italians in New York City,” said a hook-nosed man. “Markets and shops and churches. You’ll never have to speak English.”

  “And live in a tenement like my sister Anna Maria?” demanded a woman in a corner. “Noise, drunks, you boil in summer and freeze in winter. Bad water. One outhouse for seven families, children always sick, filth in the street. My sister works twelve hours a day trimming ladies’ hats and now the boss says he’ll give her work to Russian Jews. She’s spitting blood. Three little ones, another on the way and a no-good American husband who beats her. He’ll leave when she dies and they’ll have nothing but the streets, poor babes. Go back to Opi, girl. At least you have family there and good air.” Silence spread over the room until someone coughed and a rush of voices tumbled in speaking of money, good farmland, clean air in the country, a friend’s cousin with his own tavern, two brothers with a dry goods store in Pittsburgh and a sister who married well and even kept an Irish girl for cleaning.

  A sweet dream lifted my heart like a leaf: I was returning to Opi in a fine dress and feathered hat. I had bought Zia a house with three rooms and a carved wooden door, new pots, painted China plates and a tiled floor. Children born since I left tugged at their mother’s skirts, whispering, “Who is that American lady?” Everywhere people would smile and welcome me and I would nestle home like a child.

  “Once you cross the ocean,” the hook-nosed man intoned, “you’re always on the wrong side, even if you come home rich. Old friends will cheat away your American gold. It happened to my uncle. Now he’s too poor to leave again. There’s nothing left to sell and he’s back to day labor for the landlord.”

  “Irma,” said Attilio quietly, “do you still want Cleveland if Carlo—” he coughed. I know what he meant. If Carlo wasn’t there. I closed my eyes. Names of American cities tangled together like skeins of bright thread on a merchant’s table. True enough: if I wasn’t sure to find Carlo I could go to any city. But Cleveland was woven through my mind now.

  “Yes, I’d go there if it has mountains and work,” I said.

  “I think—” Attilio began.

  “There are mountains,” Salvo declared. When Lucia asked how he knew, he hit the table boards as my father did when Carlo challenged him. “Cleelan is built on mountains.”

  “Cleveland,” the teacher corrected. As winter wind blows hard, changes course and blows again, talk around the table turned now to local matters, troubles with landlords, water rights and grain markets, while the teacher finished my letter, signing: “Your loving brother, Carlo Vitale.” He gave it to me, carefully stopped his ink bottle and put on his cloak. I gave him two lire, which seemed to be the price for letters, since he took them without protest.

  “Addio, Irma,” he said gravely. “May the Lord be with you in America.”

  Neighbors drifted after him. Some pressed saints’ tokens into my hand. Women grasped my arms and hands, telling of men who had gone to America and never written. “Look for Domenico DiPietro and tell him that we’re worried. We pray for him every day.” One man had a scar on his chin; one named Antonio had a lazy eye, I couldn’t miss him. “Francesco’s hair is just like mine,” said a woman, pulling back her scarf to show dark chestnut curls. “He’s in Boston. Make him write.” I promised to try. But it would be hard enough to find Carlo.

  When the women left at last, I saw that Lucia had filled a large linen sack with straw and laid it over the table boards. “You’ll sleep here, Irma,” she said. The others found or made their beds as Lucia banked the fire.

  I whispered my prayers and stretched out on the sack, picking out the sleeping shapes of six people, three cats and a sheepdog pup. Attilio snored. In the darkness, I felt Zia’s voice close by: “At least you have a warm bed now. You’ve done well on your first night. And perhaps you will marry a Federico. Better than a Gabriele or Old Tommaso. Buona notte, Irma.” Her scent hovered briefly and then drifted away. The darkness filled with rustles and sighs. In the corner a cat killed a rat so neatly that its last squeak snapped like a dry twig. I groped for my embroidered sketch of Opi and fingered the thread lines. Here was the shoemaker’s house, here the wall and hump of road where I last saw Carlo and here the slow rise to our house. I pressed the scrap to my face as sleep folded over me.

  Lucia woke us before dawn. She set out bread, onions and watered wine for everyone and a package of cheese and dried figs for Attilio and me, refusing the coins I offered. “Keep them for America,” she said, kissing me. From the cart, I waved until a long curve swallowed her.

  “Do you have a sister, Irma?” Attilio asked.

  “No.”

  “That’s a pity.”

  “Can Lucia read?”

  “No, but if you send a letter, the schoolteacher can read it to her.” Of course I'd have to pay a scribe. In our few lessons with Father Anselmo we had learned only enough to piece out a few prayers and catechisms and slowly sign our names. I’d have to find a scribe in one of the American piazzas.

  “What would we write about?” Carlo had demanded when I lamented our poor learning. “Every year is just like the next in Opi, and all our lives are the same. We’re all the same.”

  That much wasn’t true, I protested. “There are hunger years and good years. And you aren’t like Gabriele or the mayor. I’m not like his wife—or Filomena.” Surely not like Filomena.

  Carlo sighed. “Irma, you think too much.”

  “Lucia would be proud to have your letter,” Attilio was saying softly. “She would keep it always. Look, there’s a fine day coming.”

  I followed his finger to a violet band glowing to the east. When there was light enough to sew, I mended Attilio’s shirt and outlined the first rose at a village market. “What does America look like?” I asked as we moved through low hills covered with olive trees.

  “They say it has everything: cities, towns, villages, rivers and huge lakes, plains, deserts, swamps, mountains and forests bigger than all Abruzzo.”

  “Where there aren’t Italians, people speak English?”

  “I think so.”

  Working the first petals, I remembered how we stared at the African juggler who could not speak our language. No, better to thi
nk of roses, how curled each petal must be and how thick the stems.

  Attilio hummed and sang, sometimes asking Rosso, “What’s the next verse, old friend?” On a flat stretch he said, “Irma, you might find a real Federico on the ship, you know. Or in Cleveland.”

  “The mayor’s wife in Opi said that in America, women don’t need to marry. They can find work.”

  “True. Still, you needn’t be lonely.”

  But what about the bruises on the mayor’s wife and Assunta’s desperate wail at her husband’s funeral? Or Attilio’s own sorrow when fever made his wife a child again? Why risk such pain? “I don’t need to marry,” I insisted. He opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it.

  We were silent through two shabby towns until he noted, “We aren’t stopping at the next one. Malaria came through and no one’s buying pots.” I had seen malaria when deaf Eduardo’s sons returned yellow and shaking from a summer of roadwork in Calabria. They died soon after, limp as rags although they had been ram-strong men before leaving Opi. “Don’t worry, it won’t touch us so early in spring,” Attilio assured me. “But you’ll see where it passed.”

  I did. We saw Death’s trail in abandoned fields and the gaping door of a silent abbey. “Look, no bell in the tower. I bet you won’t find a crucifix in the church either, or a silver chalice. Stealing from the Lord’s house.” Attilio shook his head.

  Beyond the abbey we passed a village strung along a dusty road. Listless men and women sat in doorways weaving baskets. Children curled like cats in the shade, blankly watching us pass. From the houses came coughs so deep and ragged that my own chest ached. When a man cried out for blankets, the weavers sighed and crossed themselves.

  “Can’t they help him?” I asked.

  Attilio shook his head and clicked to hurry Rosso. “In a few minutes he’ll be freezing. The most they can do now is make some coins by weaving. They’re too weak for fieldwork.” A haggard priest came out of a dark doorway, passing a hunched, laboring woman as he made his way toward us. He raised his hand slowly in blessing, as if any movement pained him, and Attilio pulled Rosso to a halt.

  “Father, take this,” I said, holding out three lire from my pouch, but the priest ignored me, grasping the sides of our cart with hands as stiffly curved as a shepherd’s crook.

  “You’re headed south?” he asked Attilio.

  “Yes, to Naples.”

  “There’s a little girl down the road who’s still healthy. Her name is Rosanna.” The priest’s head shook like a weight in the wind. I glanced at Attilio. Why wasn’t one child’s health a joy in this den of sickness? “Her whole family’s dead. These others,” the priest waved behind him, “can barely care for themselves. The child can’t stay alone.”

  Attilio chewed his lip. “I’m a peddler, Father, and Irma here is bound for America.”

  “Take the child to Naples, at least. She has an uncle near the port. Here’s his address.” The priest pulled a scrap of paper from his cassock and held it out, the gnarled hand wavering.

  I knew why Attilio hesitated. The child might be infected. We might not find this uncle or he might not want her. Then what? “I’ll do it,” Attilio said finally, taking the paper scrap.

  “God bless you both. Give the lire to Rosanna. She’s in the last house on the left. Say that Father Martino sent you.” A howl rose behind us. “Go,” he whispered. “We’ll bury her family when we can, but take her away.” The weavers barely raised their eyes as Attilio clicked Rosso to trot. Father Martino shuffled towards a woman’s shrill cry.

  We found the girl sitting by the stone stoop of her house, rope thin and gray with dust. Death rot poured from the door, a sickening stench. “Rosanna,” I said, “Father Martino sent us. We’re going to see your uncle in Naples.” Her dry lips barely wavered. Death had scoured her face with sadness, yet she gazed at me through lank, tangled hair like a child who had once been loved. She was as light as a gourd when I lifted her but the dark eyes never left mine.

  From rustling squeaks within the house, we knew that rats had found the bodies. “Is there anything you want in there?” Attilio asked. When the child shook her head, I set her in the cart on a mound of packs and gave her a water pouch that she sucked dry and then devoured a fistful of my bread and cheese.

  “Not too much at once,” Attilio said. “Sleep now, Rosanna.” She curled under his traveling cloak, still as a copper pot.

  “Suppose we can’t find the uncle?” I whispered to Attilio.

  “Then she’ll have to go to an orphanage.” We were silent then, both knowing how children were used in those places. Rosanna slept steadily. I woke her from time to time for water and bread and bits of cheese. She would not speak, but each time she curled back to sleep I saw that she had edged closer to us.

  With every town, the hills flattened slightly, as if a great hand was smoothing the land. Fields stretched wider and some had two ox teams plowing. The roads smoothed as well and I sewed more quickly, the bright sun sparkling on my needle as I finished the first rose. “Amazing,” Attilio said. “It looks so real.”

  “The next one will be better.”

  Awake now, Rosanna propped herself against a copper soup pot and watched me work, following each stitch as if her eyes were threaded to my needle. “Can you sew?” I asked. She stared, unblinking as my father’s sheep. I imagined what Carlo would say: “Probably an idiota. Don’t waste your time.”

  “Watch,” I told Rosanna. I threaded a basting needle with coarse thread and made running stitches in a scrap of cloth. “Now you,” I said. Each stitch crawled, for she poised the needle over the cloth, held a long breath before easing it through and drew out the thread as carefully if it were spider spun. After a fair piece of road, she had made ten tiny stitches, precisely equal. She slept with the cloth that night in the tent we made beneath the cart.

  The next day, in Caserta, while Attilio set up his goods in a market square that was larger than all Opi, Rosanna hunched over an old cloth sack I had found for her, working tiny stitches in an intricate tangle. Often she tore out an hour’s work to make a new design that seemed as random as the first, but still with careful, even stitches. She never spoke, but smiled when I brought her a clutch of ripe tomatoes, my first. We ate them all, licking the sweet, seed-studded juice from our fingers.

  Attilio was in good humor, for he was doing a brisk business in Caserta. Sewing steadily, I started the last rose and winding, leafy stem. It looked real; even my mother would have said so. Near noon, when Rosanna finally stopped stitching and uncurled her slender fingers, the dark eyes fixed on my needle working the shawl, watching avidly, as if I were spinning gold. Sometimes her mouth moved, but words melted in the dry air. “Here are the French knots,” I said instead, “and here the satin, bullion, back, feather, running and couching stitches.”

  “They’re beautiful,” she finally breathed in a gauzy voice so unexpected that Attilio looked up from a haggle over flat-bottomed pots.

  “You can make some stitches on the shawl, child,” he said. “My wife won’t mind.”

  A customer snapped, “I gave you a fair price, man. Will you take it?”

  “Watch me, Rosanna,” I said, taking up her sack. “You make a knot like this. They’ll go inside each rose.” When her practice knots came out as round as pearls I let her make one on the shawl. She gazed at it awestruck, one spindle-thin finger hovering over the flower. “In Naples you’ll learn to sew better than I do.”

  She sat rigidly, staring at the shawl, slowly opening the thin, cracked lips. Her voice rasped like a rusty hinge—an aged voice, horrible in a child. “They all died. My grandmother. My father. My mother. My little brother.” She pushed the shawl away. “I tried to take care of the baby but she died too. Everyone. One by one.”

  “The priest told us.”

  “I knew I’d be next.”

  “But you weren’t, Rosanna. We’re taking you to Naples and you’ll be safe there.”

  “Don’t promise,”
Carlo would say. Rosanna slowly stroked the sack as Attilio tried to explain what a fine city Naples was. She turned away, curling around a stack of pots with her head cushioned on my bag and slept all afternoon. She was still sleeping when we lifted her into the cart at dusk, for Attilio said that we must ride all night to reach Naples by daybreak.

  “We’ll try to find the uncle first, and then I’ll take you to port,” he said. “Look there, you’ve come a long way to see it.” He pointed west to a long silver line, straight as a needle beneath the red-streaked sky.

  “What is it?”

  “That’s the Tyrrhenian Sea, which joins the Mediterranean. Further west are the Straits of Gibraltar and then the Atlantic Ocean and then America.” I stared at the line. I knew these names from Father Anselmo who had once showed us a map, but I had never imaged this silver line or the great width of water to cross. The line shimmered like glacier ice.

  “Attilio, when someone dies on a ship, what happens to the body?”

  “You won’t die, Irma.”

  “But if someone does?”

  Attilio slapped the reins although Rosso was moving steadily. “It’s buried at sea.”

  “Buried?”

  “Well, wrapped in a weighted shroud and dropped. With prayers,” he added quickly.

  “There’s a priest?”

  “Perhaps.” So there was no priest, only a body falling like a stone beneath the waves with no one to know where it lay. Eaten by fishes. I pulled out my rosary. Yes I was healthy, but death could find us unaware, Father Anselmo said. The Lord may claim us in our strength for we are His. Perhaps He had already taken Carlo.

  “Look at the sunset, Irma,” urged Attilio, touching my shoulder and pointing to red-violet streaks over the silver line quickly turning black. Save me, Lord, from death at sea. Work, one must work. I turned the shawl over to clip thread ends in the dying light.