Things That Happened Before the Earthquake

by Chiara Barzini

  I walked down a few steps to hear better, making sure they would not see me.

  “She’s not ready for runs yet,” Rosalia said, pointing to the donkey’s stretched belly.

  “Mind your own business!” Santino replied.

  His arms moved in grand circles, then turned to smaller, contrite movements. His right hand sealed into a crooked fist like a capricious child’s. He stomped his foot, demanding attention. His rage mounted. There was no way out of it. A fury was taking over his body as he screamed nonsense against rabbits and donkeys and chewed-up electrical cords.

  The mosquitoes were starting to come out. I could feel them on my bare legs. I wanted to swat them against my thighs and ankles, to splatter myself in blood marks, but I let them eat me. My eyes were fixed on Rosalia and Santino’s lips.

  “Accà!” he screamed to the donkey. “Let’s go.”

  He pushed Rosalia out of his way and hit Angelina on her side.

  Angelina trotted up a few more stairs and stopped in front of Rosalia, asking for help with her eyes. Even though it was almost dark, I could see her expression and what I couldn’t see, I could imagine. She wanted to go back to her baby.

  Santino flogged her again to keep her moving up, but Angelina stood stubbornly next to Rosalia, her heavy eyes as big as a cow’s, begging for help.

  “Stop it! Can’t you see she’s tired? She just had a baby,” Rosalia protested.

  “Accà!” Santino screamed, ignoring her.

  I walked down the steps, trying to catch every bit of their wind-distorted words.

  Rosalia now faced her husband, appearing stronger than him, like a bigger and better person.

  “Let me take her back down with me. You’re almost there. You can unload her here and bring the rest of the stuff by hand,” she said as she patted Angelina’s soft snout.

  “You think I’m going to do ten trips back and forth for a donkey?” Santino’s chest grew wider as he spoke—the man of the stairs.

  “Accà!” He hit Angelina harder, staring into Rosalia’s eyes.

  He grabbed a thick branch from a dry olive tree next to the stairs and doubled his whipping. He beat Angelina again, this time on the belly.

  “She just had a baby!” Rosalia screamed.

  I felt my legs tremble. I was outside my body, right there next to Angelina.

  “I’m taking her up, you understand? And you’re going home!”

  Santino hit Angelina harder, a second time, and a third. He stared down at his wife and raised his arm toward her, threateningly now. Either she got out of the way or she’d be the next one to get hurt.

  “Basta, Santino,” Rosalia screamed. “That’s enough!”

  She pushed him away from the donkey. Santino pulled a loose rock from the staircase, sending part of it crumbling down. He hit Angelina with it. She pulled back and started braying, hopping in place, trotting from front to back legs, trying to kick up, but was blocked by Santino’s reins. I noticed her belly bleeding and stepped down farther, emitting a small cry to get their attention. They didn’t look up at me.

  “What are you doing? She’s bleeding!”

  “Shut up!” Santino replied. He searched for another rock and lifted it toward Rosalia to scare her off. “I said go home! And don’t tell me we’re having scrambled eggs for dinner tonight. I’m not eating them!” he screamed after her.

  Rosalia started running down the stairs, looking for help. She peered through the sparse windows of the empty houses, crying. Nobody heard her. Nobody was around except for me, but I was paralyzed with fear at the top of the stairs. I wanted to rush back to the crater and get my uncle, but I couldn’t stop staring, afraid something terrible would happen if I moved away, convinced my mere presence might be enough to protect Angelina.

  The donkey pulled on Santino’s reins and kicked backward. For an instant she freed herself and I felt my body open up. My foot stomped the ground with the same urgency that was in her trot. Go, run! Fast! The words wouldn’t leave my mouth. Angelina ran down the stairs with wild, uncoordinated movements. I saw her eyes flash sideways like those of a crazy horse—all tenderness gone. Santino leapt down four steps at a time and caught the tail end of the reins. He pulled her back and fell forward, scraping his knee, the reins never leaving his grip.

  “Look, stupid donkey! Scemunita! Look! I’m bleeding now!”

  He held Angelina’s reins under his foot to keep her still. With both free hands now, he hauled out another boulder from a different part of the staircase and threw it on her back.

  “Accà!” Santino hit Angelina with it.

  He beat her again on the flanks, on the belly, on her legs. Every time the rock fell off his hands, he picked it up and bashed it against her. She knew she couldn’t win and stood, impassive—no trotting, no kicking. She took it all until she fell to the ground. The groceries for the Germans spilled off her saddle. Tomatoes and bottles of water rolled down the stairs.

  Finally my voice came back. I let out a shriek—a loud, desperate cry like that of a gutted chicken. Santino glanced up, squinting. He waved at me, his hands soaked in blood.

  “There you are! The animal-rights and wife-rights girl. You think my wife is done showing herself around to the entire island?”

  He turned toward the bottom of the staircase, addressing Rosalia, who didn’t answer. She just stood there panting and staring.

  “Yes. I’m done,” I said. “Now leave Angelina alone, though, okay?”

  Santino grabbed the reins, trying to get Angelina back on her feet again, but she was bleeding too much and could not move.

  He picked up the loose groceries that had fallen off the saddle and tried to load them on her back.

  “Leave her alone, Santino. I’ll deliver the groceries myself. Just leave her alone,” I screamed.

  I began to walk down the stairs as nonthreateningly as I could. Angelina did not move from the ground. Blood gushed out her legs and back. Her eyes stared into space. She panted so heavily I could hear her breath from where I stood.

  “Lasciala! Leave her,” Rosalia yelled from the bottom of the stairs, encouraged by my presence.

  Santino glanced up at me, then back down at his wife. “Stop! Stop talking to each other, you two!”

  He sprawled himself over the donkey, claiming her body like a child claims a toy when he feels the presence of another wanting to take it away.

  I made my way down more steps with caution.

  “Don’t fence me in!” he screamed.

  He pranced up a few steps, and extracted another stone from the now disheveled staircase.

  Angelina wasn’t moving.

  Santino raised the rock to the sky and crashed it on her head. He lifted it up and came down on the center of her forehead—the space I used to kiss her on. He did it again and again until blood streamed out. It flowed down the stairs, onto the caper plants and dry olive tree roots.

  Before dying, Angelina made a sound that was different from her usual bray. It was a kind of “Oooh” or maybe a “Noo.” It was the sound of disappointment.

  Santino untied the remaining groceries from her saddle and stacked water bottles on both his shoulders. He started walking up the stairs toward me, swaying from side to side to keep his balance.

  “Are you happy now? I’m delivering the water on my own.”

  I turned away and ran back up the steps, afraid I might be next.

  When I reached my uncle and Alma at the crater, we heard the sound of the islanders rushing up the mountain followed by Rosalia’s wails. Alma and Antonio went to take a look. My brother came close to me and squeezed my hand. We spent the night under the moon. Antonio and Alma didn’t return until hours later. They spoke in whispers and went to sleep on the other side of the stone cabin.

  At dawn when I got up, their clothes were in a bundle on the ground, covered in blood. I woke Timoteo and we went back to the staircase. The blood was still there, mixed with donkey mane and a few tomatoes from the lost groceries,
but Angelina’s body was gone.

  “Maybe she survived,” my brother suggested.

  I shook my head.

  —

  Over dinner I asked Alma who was going to be in charge of reporting Santino to the police.

  “There are worse things happening on this island than a donkey dying,” my uncle replied dryly.

  “Islanders settle these matters by themselves,” Alma answered simply. “There are different rules here.”

  My brother and I looked at each other like everyone was crazy, like they were going to stop talking like that soon, and we would finally have the conversation about what happened the night before, but the conversation never came.

  “Nobody can afford to have Santino in trouble. He’s the only handyman we have, the only one who knows how to get furniture up all the stairs.” My uncle picked up his fish leftovers and scattered them off the terrace to the cats.

  —

  I went to the public pay phone at the travel agency and called the carabinieri on the mainland, convinced I could take matters into my own hands. The police laughed at me.

  “You want us to get all the way there on an aliscafo, because on your island, in the middle of nowhere, a donkey died? I’m sorry. Call back in December when we have nothing to do.”

  They hung up.

  On my cot in the kitchen, I thought about the islanders’ quiet pact and the silence that followed Santino’s actions over the next days. I thought about how Alma and my uncle had gotten rid of Angelina’s body with the islanders in the night, how they came back with their clothes covered in blood and just went to sleep. People on that island developed a forced affinity to nature, but something arid also grew in their chests. The volcano’s barrenness was present in every living thing. They were all like rocks. Rock people. My mind wandered back to the parking lot of the Woodland Hills Mall and I thought about Audrey and Natalie and how they were rock people too, and how wrong my uncle was. Rules in America were not so different after all. They’d gotten away with murder while two black kids would spend their lives in jail. A matter of convenience. White girls were needed more than black boys, and Santino was more necessary on the island than in jail because he lifted heavy objects and hauled furniture. I thought about the weight on Rosalia’s chest and how she was a rock person who had tried not to be a rock person anymore. Toward the end of August Tindara had announced her take on what happened. She said domestic animals were our filters, our shields against people’s envies like the island’s stray cats with their missing paws and the half decapitated fish in the sea. Maybe Angelina had been a screen, placed at the right place at the right time. A body taken in place of Rosalia’s. The weight Rosalia had felt all winter long, the one she begged me to get rid of, were the rocks pressed against Angelina’s heart now.

  —

  Santino abandoned his farm and moved to the top of the mountain. He came down infrequently. I never saw him again. The night ship that would take us back to the mainland was delayed because of more storms. Each day my brother and I waited on the dock, dressed in our American clothes, waiting to go back. Each day the sea told us it wasn’t time yet. But when the boat finally came, I ran back to Nerino before embarking.

  I opened the farm gate and threw my arms around his neck as he walked in circles around the big metal container, looking for his mother.

  “You are lucky she never came back,” I whispered in his ear. “Sometimes coming home only makes it worse.”

  He brayed. It sounded different now. It was a sad, lonely cry, like the sounds of all the animals on that island. He’d become one of them.

  part three

  arrival

  12

  In the customs area at LAX, the immigration officer asked my brother and me where we’d spent our summer and whether we had a right to be back in Los Angeles. I knew the drill. Ettore had told us, “Whatever they ask, say you are entitled to everything and are dependent on your father who is a journalist.”

  Our passports said we depended on his visa, but my father had gotten us in the States on the pretense of his being a journalist, so there were always difficult questions to answer. We looked at the long line behind us in the huge hall. It was such a big room, so promising. Anything could happen in a country that had a room like that. American citizens zipped right through the lines. They were greeted with smiles and questions about their holidays, but everyone else had to answer a different set of questions.

  “Where are your parents now?” the officer asked.

  “In the arrivals hall, I think.”

  “Yes, but why are you traveling alone?”

  “Because we spent our summer in Italy and our parents didn’t come.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because…they were working?” I ventured.

  “Here?”

  “Yes…here, but for an Italian company.”

  The extent of their work permit was never clear. The gist of it was that the government was willing to look the other way for people working in the media as long as they paid taxes and stayed in that realm.

  “Say you’re dependent on your father who is working as a journalist. Tell them I work here, but don’t ever tell them I work here.” Those were the kind of paradoxical instructions our father gave us regarding immigration officers.

  “What do you mean, Dad?”

  “That we work here, but we don’t work here. You know what I mean.”

  I pretended I did, but I didn’t and I always thought he’d do all the talking if it ever came down to it. But now it was on me. I tried to bring back memories of our conversations.

  “Don’t fall for those Nazi immigration officers’ intimidations. They’ll interrogate you like SS sergeants, but they have nothing on you. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. So fuck them and their deportation tactics. If they press, tell them you are visiting your father, but don’t tell them your father lives here. Just tell them he is temporarily working here. The purpose of your trip is not business related. You are here to go to school. Actually forget it, never mind. Don’t tell them you go to school here. I’m not sure you’re actually allowed to go to public school. Whatever you do, do not mention the fact that I’m a director. Oh, yes, and if it looks like they’re really getting pissed off, just take back everything and say you’re on vacation.”

  “I’m going to ask you this again, miss: Why did your parents not come to Italy with you? Let me remind you that lying to the government will jeopardize your entrance to the United States.”

  “Because they’re making a movie!” I broke down, feeling at once guilty and relieved.

  “They’re making a movie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do they have a permit to work in the United States?”

  “I’m sure they do,” Timoteo intervened.

  “You’re not allowed to make movies with an Italian media visa. You’re only allowed to work for your Italian employer. So are they making an Italian movie?”

  I remembered my father’s advice and took it all back.

  “No, I’m sorry, I got confused. I meant to say they’re on vacation…we’re on vacation…we’re…all on an extended family vacation.”

  “Please step aside. Take your passports and follow us.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I’ll tell you where you’re not going, and that’s inside this country.”

  We were escorted to the baggage claim area where our bags were sniffed at by a German shepherd.

  “Must be the island cats,” I joked to the officer. He arched his eyebrow at me.

  “Our dogs are not trained to smell cats. You spent your whole summer in Italy and you are trying to tell me you have nothing to declare?”

  I looked away. How did he know?

  Our bags were opened and displayed for public shaming: prosciutto, mortadella, pecorino, parmigiano reggiano, pizza bianca—my favorite—from the oven in Campo de’ Fiori in Rome, salami, and a huge wheel of caciocavallo cheese. Office
rs came by and shook their heads at us.

  The other Italian passengers from the flight walked by our cured-meat and cheese exposition.

  “Oh my God,” a perky Louis Vuitton–covered woman I had spotted in business class exclaimed, covering her nose. “What are you, Sicilian immigrants from the 1800s? We’re in LA and it’s the twentieth century. International food markets exist, you know.”

  We were removed from the baggage claim area into a private security room surrounded with one-way mirrors. We sat there on the other side of the mirror, the side where they kept the bad people.

  A Pakistani guy next to us cried, saying his family was in the arrivals hall and they wouldn’t let him see them. He had to go back to Pakistan. The last time he’d seen his daughter was three years ago. When I tried to console him he looked at me hopefully and asked if I had kids. For some reason I replied yes, that I did.

  My brother furrowed his brow. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he asked in Italian.

  “Shut up,” I replied and turned back to the Pakistani guy. “My daughter is here…with my husband.”

  The guy shook his head. It made him feel better.

  A British man came in arguing with an officer. He was a writer and performance artist who wasn’t being allowed to tour the United States on account of his “moral turpitude.”

  “I’ve been questioned for eight hours in the other room. I’m not going to tell you anything I haven’t said before. It’s all in the book. My whole life. You can read about it. It’s a best seller in England…that’s why I’m on tour here, you know.”

  He was tall and handsome with glazed brown eyes and full lips. He looked more like a rock star than a writer. I had heard about the book. It was a hit in Europe.