I laid them on his desk with the schoolteacher’s letter. The clerk’s blunt fingers left moist stains on each sheet. “A single woman in America. What are your plans?”
“It’s in the letter. I’m going to marry my brother’s friend in Cleveland.”
“And this brother’s friend has a name, perhaps?”
“Federico . . . Gallo.”
“Hum. And Federico Gallo has a job?"
“Yes sir.” What job? Butcher? Miner? Steelworker? His fingers drummed my letter. “He’s a blacksmith,” I said too loudly.
“Am I deaf, girl?”
“No sir.”
An officer in a fine blue suit hung with yellow braid appeared suddenly at his side and rapped a small baton on the table edge. “Too many questions. There’s hundreds in line. Signorina, can you buy a ticket?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good. Take her name, age and birthplace. New York’s not our problem.” Red-faced, the clerk filled out a card and flicked it toward me. I gathered my documents and moved to the next table.
There a doctor with a silk cravat did not touch me, but had a shirtsleeved assistant feel my head for fever and gingerly part my hair with two spoons he then dipped in kerosene, noting that I had no lice. He made me cough and peered in my eyes. “Heart.” The doctor yawned.
“Open your blouse,” said the assistant. In public? “To here.” He rapped my breastbone. When I hesitated, the doctor raised his hand to wave the next person forward.
“Wait, please,” I said quickly, fingers flying at the buttons. The assistant scanned my chest and listened to my heart through a flared wooden tube.
“She’s healthy, Dottore,” he said.
The doctor stamped a number on my wrist. “That’s your number,” he warned. “If anyone copies it, you’ll both be arrested. Understand?”
I nodded. “So there’s no typhus on the Servia?”
The assistant prodded me on to the purser. “Don’t bother him, girl. Everyone’s healthy.”
“Peasants,” the doctor muttered behind me.
“How are you paying?” the purser demanded.
I set out my francs and gripped the table as he examined them. “They’re French gold, sir.”
“I think I know my business,” the purser snapped. “You want the list?” He nodded at the exchange list, finely printed, inking his pen as I strained to read. “See? We aren’t highwaymen.” He wrote out a ticket and marked my wrist a second time. “If you wash it off, you pay again. Next.”
“Excuse me, sir.”
“What?”
“Are there separate dormitories for women?”
“Of course. Servants, feather beds and marble washstands too.”
Weariness made me bold. “I just asked, sir, now that I bought a ticket.”
The purser breathed a dry rasp like an angry bull, but when I didn’t move, he folded his hands together and said, “Single men sleep together. You’ll be with the families and other single women. Is that acceptable, signorina?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good. Then move along.”
At the next table I bought a straw mattress, soap for salt water and meal tickets for the lodging house where we’d sleep until the ship sailed, which would be “soon,” a clerk said vaguely. Peddlers milled around us, hawking playing cards, sea-sickness herbs, crucifixes and charms, tobacco, blankets and straw hats they swore all men wore in America. Many bought without bargaining. Who would do that at home? Did they think new money would come snowing down in America? Pulling free of one peddler, I backed into a man with cuffs rolled back to show numbers on his wrist like mine but I couldn’t recall his sleek red hair in the ticket line.
“They’re like dogs at fresh meat,” he laughed. “You’re wise not to buy blankets, signorina. We’ll sleep near the boilers, so heat’s the devil on board, not cold. But the crew sells food on the side so they keep rations short. If you’re hungry, you have to pay their prices, which go up every day. See what I got?” He showed me a sack of potatoes, onions, tea, hard cheese, biscuits, salami, dried apple and figs and a big pot of jam. “Just see Matteo over there in the red shirt. He’s the only one who won’t cheat you, and he’ll deliver your provisions straight to the lodging house.” Matteo watched us from under the brim of a wide, soft hat.
“No thank you, sir.” Did he take me for a fool? I had passed scores of food carts in the city. Two weeks of provisions could not weigh more than loads I’d carried up our mountain. The red-haired man shrugged and turned away, his eye flicking back to Matteo. So they did work together.
I made my way to the lodging house, where the din was worse than any thunderstorm. Shrieking children cut through aisles between the cots and men played cards, shouting their bets. A cobbler had set up shop, his hammer ceaselessly rapping, since dozens wanted shoes repaired for America. Women called from washtubs, slapping wet clothes against rattling metal racks. Dust and sweat filled the hot air. Matrons pushed through the crowd, assigning cots, stopping fights as one family’s bags bulged into another’s space and shooing out peddlers who had slipped inside. Two men fought bitterly over cards.
Teresa waved to me, her thick curls tumbling out of loosened braids. “Irma, there’s space over here.” As I unrolled my mattress she said that for a few centesimi we could store our bags in a guarded room, which seemed better than watching them day and night. The guard let me step behind a screen to fold the receipt into the chamois bag between my breasts and count the money I had left. Lire that I would spend for provisions went into a pouch I tucked inside my skirt. My great-grandfather’s gold pieces stayed in the bag. By the time I had threaded back to Teresa, my head was pounding.
“Lie down awhile. We have our tickets, there’s nothing to do now but wait,” said Teresa, calmly loosening her bodice as if there were no men around. Gabriella was sleeping, curled around a rag doll.
“I have to go buy some things,” I said. “And I can’t breathe here.”
“At least we’re not in line,” Teresa sighed, peeling back blood-caked stockings. “I’ll wash tomorrow. Be careful in the city.” She lay down and was immediately asleep, her arms woven through Gabriella’s.
Outside, afternoon sun still beat at the basalt paving, but sea breezes whipped across the port and gulls looped the blue sky. I stood in a patch of shade and then made my way to a cluster of street children by a fountain. I picked a sharp-nosed boy with wide eyes and black hair curled tight as a lamb’s coat who called himself Ciro and swore he knew a merchant selling good cloth at a fair price. He set off, darting between horses and carts so quickly that I lost him. He doubled back, took me by the hand and set off through a maze of streets so narrow that the sky was a blue stick above us.
“There,” he said finally, pointing to a wooden sign on which a careful hand had painted a pair of golden scissors and a bolt of blue cloth. “Franco the Dwarf.” The shop was barely four paces deep, a cavern lined in fabric bolts. At the center stood a table heaped with every kind of sewing notion. No taller than the boy, Franco leaped from his bolts to greet me. “Franco the Dwarf, as you see.” Stubby arms fanned his treasures. “What is your desire, signorina? I have silk, cotton, wool and linen, thread in many colors, chalk, pins, needles, buttons, thimbles and scissors. All excellent, excellent, first class for the seamstress.”
I bargained for a length of Egyptian cotton that would bear dense embroidery and admired a silky fringe and deep blue satin that shone like a moonlit lake. “Touch them,” Franco prompted. “Feel how fine.” He brought out hanks of embroidery thread, a shimmering rainbow of violets, blues, deep greens, reds, purples, and a yellow orange as rich as poppies. “Thread like this costs more in America, signorina. You’re wise to buy now.” My fingers tingled, yet Ciro stood motionless at my side. Did these colors not amaze him?
Too late, I tugged at my sleeve to hide the emigrant’s marks. It was then that I noticed a pair of embroidery scissors with brass handles cunningly fashioned like wings. One blac
k screw made a tiny eye and bright steel beaks completed the stork. Catching my gaze, Franco balanced the delicate tool on his fingertips. “See? Light as a feather. You try.” Yes, the scissors floated in my hand. He gave me a scrap of muslin. The sleek handles kissed my fingers and the blades moved as easily as though in curves, lines and angles, clever beaks slicing a warp line, turning a crisp angle to the woof. Even their sound was delightful, a bright snip like a sparrow’s chirp. Held against light, the cut edges were as smooth as the blades themselves. “Fine English import,” said Franco, “new this year.”
There were no such scissors in Opi. Mine were a gift from the blacksmith after my mother died. He had stepped out of the forge as I passed with our laundry and handed them to me. “For you, Irma,” he said gruffly. “In memory of her.” Then he hurried back, beating his anvil loudly to cover my thanks. The blades were as thin as any master smith could make them, but so heavy that much cutting made my hand ache.
“How often must you sharpen these?” I asked Franco. Mine I honed constantly on a heavy whetting stone.
“If you keep them clean and dry, they’ll hold this edge for a year.” He smiled at my astonishment. “Seven lire and they’re yours. Imported, remember.” The stork’s black eye gleamed at me. When I ran a thumb across the slender beaks they grazed my skin like a leaf edge. “They’ll cost double in New York, you know.”
Ciro tugged at my skirt, showing four dirty fingers. “Four lire,” I offered. Franco sighed and took back the scissors. I turned away to his basting thread, aching for that light lift. Then I bargained hard again and we finally agreed on the scissors, silk thread, a pattern book and rosewood embroidery hoop, all for ten lire.
“Where are you from, signorina?” Franco asked.
“Opi in Abruzzo.”
“It must be a hard place for merchants,” he grumbled lightly as he wrapped my package. “You know, my cousin in California cooks and washes at a mining camp. She makes as much as the miners. Gold or no gold, they have to eat.” Franco waved his stubby arms. “Here’s an idea. You could work for my cousin.”
I had been poor all my life but at least not a servant for a tribe of men. “Thank you, but I’m going to Cleveland,” I announced, spinning out my plan: a brother waiting for me, the silk and fine linen I would work with every day. I even named Federico, the fine blacksmith waiting to marry me.
Franco stroked a bolt of English wool with his nubby fingers. “Well then, signorina, God keep you in Cleveland,” he said, handing over the package. When he offered his compliments to Federico, I nearly answered, “Who?”
“Where now?” Ciro asked as we came out to the bright clatter of streets. To see Rosanna in her new home? But perhaps my visit would only draw the child back to a dark time better forgotten. “To buy food,” I said. So Ciro took me to the market in Piazza Montesanto where I bought tea, cheese, dried apples, potatoes, carrots, onions, nuts and salami at good prices, surely less than Matteo’s. There would be bread on board at least and even if food on the Servia was scant, two or even three lean weeks were nothing compared to a hunger winter at home. Besides, I’d be doing no work, so there was no need to eat like a laborer. In the lodging house I stored the provisions, tested my new scissors and tried not to think of Opi.
For dinner they gave us cabbage stew, bread, melon and wine. Two men from Puglia played accordions while couples danced. Others played cards, drank or argued about America. Children played around the tables, their languages laced together with laughter and shouts. I sat with a circle of single women listening to songs of home. As the city grew dark behind us, many cried, their tears glittering in candlelight. A man from Calabria tugged at my arm, wanting to dance, his body damp with sweat.
“I’m married,” I said, pushing him off. “I’m meeting my husband in Cleveland.” How easy to be a liar far from home. I slipped back to my cot and sewed myself to sleep.
Repairs for the Servia dragged on. Yet we must not go wandering, the matrons warned, for boarding could begin any time. African heat closed Naples in a breathless oven. Fights sparked easily, for many had counted their coins so tightly that extra days threatened hunger at sea. Yet at night, when street vendors sold cheap wine, many bought freely. Children played and couples found dark corners that hid faces but not muffled heaves.
By day, with hundreds of travelers suffering the pressing heat, any sliver of shade went to the strongest. Grumbles and curses ran down the long tables where we took our meals. “What repairs? There’s not a thing wrong with that ship,” a fisherman from Bacoli announced. “The captain made a deal with the lodging house. Besides, he has our ticket money. He could pull out one night and leave us stranded.”
“I saw the wood they brought on for repairs,” a carpenter said. “Second-rate pine. Could be we never reach America.”
“Shut up,” snapped a day laborer. “I talked to the steward. He says she’s stout enough. And at least we’re not back home working like donkeys in other men’s fields.”
On the third day I found a tree-shaded scrap of wall and climbed it “like a mountain goat,” Teresa said. Perched there before dawn, I watched fishermen row over the glassy bay, their voices floating to shore. A man jumped in the water and swam, not as our boys paddled like dogs in mountain lakes, but churning his arms overhead like a water wheel. Astonishing, but were all these new wonders washing Opi from my mind? Gripping the wall, I closed my eyes to piece out Zia’s high brow, thin lips and wrinkles nesting her eyes.
Suddenly, shrill whistles blew and Gabriella came running, shouting, “Come down, Irma! We’re going to America!”
The lodging house roared like a winter storm, the air thick with straw and wool fluff. We threw wet and dry clothes into sacks, rolled mattresses and shook the guard awake to get our baggage. Women changed shamelessly in daylight, pulling on traveling clothes. “Roll up your sleeves! Show your numbers,” the matrons ordered. “Hold on to your children.”
Outside the lodging house, we stood sweating as clerks checked our numbers against lists. They yanked a coughing woman out of line. “It was my sister’s number,” she cried. “What’s the harm in that?”
“The harm is defrauding the company. You could get prison for it,” a clerk snapped, herding her into a roped-off knot of old, lame and sickly travelers who had tried to sneak on the Servia. As the woman’s husband protested, begging for the ticket money back at least, the clerk stood stone-faced. “You knew the rules,” he said calmly.
“It’s better this way,” Teresa comforted a wailing woman torn loose from an old man. “If your father dies in steerage, they’d bury him at sea for fish to feed on. Get work in America and send him a first-class ticket. Doctors don’t test the gentlefolk.”
“He’ll die before then,” the woman sobbed.
So I would have to work hard to buy Zia a first-class ticket. What would Father Anselmo say of a land where only the young and healthy are welcome? As we culled lame sheep, perhaps America culled weaklings to make their country strong.
Gabriella tugged at our sleeves. “Let’s go or we’ll lose our place.” Trunks and large packs were taken, receipts issued and anxious passengers assured they would see their goods in America. Sailors and clerks barked orders in many languages, one laid over the other as travelers shouted, “What? What did you say? Where do we go?” In the end we only followed the waving hands and whistles. The Servia loomed over us with a steep plank up to the deck. I prayed. Teresa’s lips moved as well and she crossed herself for we would not touch land until America.
And then suddenly I was on the Servia, a rocking mountain of metal and wood. Masts rose between smokestacks wide as our church. Coiled rope, winches, pipes and levers filled the deck. How could this monster float? And how could it fit us all? Those from the lodging house packed the deck and yet passengers on shore stood three and four abreast, mounded with bundles like donkeys.
“Steerage below,” a sailor shouted.
“Look there,” Gabriella cried, pointing to a
line of rowboats hung along the ship.
A bald sailor polishing brass called out, “If any of you children give us trouble, we set you loose in there.”
“Bastardo!” Teresa shouted, clapping her hands over Gabriella’s ears.
“Shut up, Sal,” barked a younger man with a rusty beard. “Those are life boats, signora. But the child needn’t worry, my Servia’s a good solid ship. She’ll take you safe to America.” Gabriella clung to Teresa, shivering. My knees buckled and I grabbed a brass railing. Would we die on those tiny boats, bobbing in the ocean?
Whistles flew down from rigging where sailors hung like jeering bats: “Look at them, fresh off the field. Already scared and we’re still at port!”
“Down below, go on,” snapped a steward. Through cracks in the crowd I glimpsed a black hole to steerage, the ship’s deep belly. A hot line of sweat rolled between my breasts. No letters home had spoken of the crossing. Not one word of that hole, storms at sea or heckling sailors.
“Go on, move,” a sailor prodded. In the steep, narrow stairway, bodies pressed against my chest. Oil lamps swinging in dusty gloom showed flashes of a milling crowd, each traveler humped with bags. Standing on boxes or perched on pipes, stewards barked orders dividing us in groups: single men, families and single women. I squeezed through a narrow passage and down a second stairway as steep as a ladder.
Like sheep herded too closely in summer heat, many balked or turned against the flow. Single women who had been swept into a crowd of men fought their way back through grasping hands. A lost child was passed overhead to a woman shrieking, “Over here! Nicoló, Nicoló, come back!” In the rising heat and airless space we grew slick with sweat under layers of clothing. An old woman swayed and crumbled. I reached out, but a surge from behind bore her away. I must have briefly fainted too, for suddenly I stood in rustling grass with blue sky arched overhead and a tumbling stream. Teresa shook me.
When We Were Strangers Page 6
