A Girl Returned

by Donatella Di Pietrantonio

  “They don’t want me here, in this house, that’s why they torture me. Why don’t you send me back where I was?”

  “Eventually even Sergio will get used to it. But try not to cry out in your sleep, it gets on his nerves.”

  She stopped for a moment, with the pile of laundry in her arms. She looked me in the eyes—which she rarely did—as if following a thought.

  “Do you remember when we met at the wedding? You might have been six, seven.”

  She reopened my memory with a lash of the whip.

  “I remember something, only here you’re different, in your everyday clothes. That time you looked elegant,” I admitted.

  “I can’t tell you how many times I wore that suit. At a certain point I put on some weight and I was afraid the seams would burst.” She smiled. “It was a Sunday in June, the bride and bridegroom had wasted time with all that picture-taking,” she began to recount. “Everyone had gotten so hungry, at three we were still looking for seats in the restaurant. All of a sudden I turn around and see you, I didn’t recognize you, you’d gotten so big and pretty.”

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “First of all I had a feeling, and then there was Adalgisa, you know? She was talking to a relative and didn’t notice me right away. I called you, and you looked up. You were surprised, maybe because there were tears in my eyes.”

  Today I would ask for every last detail of that encounter, but at the time I was too confused. She continued on her own, she had put the laundry down on a chair.

  “As soon as she saw me, Adalgisa got in the middle, between you and me. But you peeked out from behind her with that curious little head and looked at me.”

  I stared obliquely at a lock of hair on her forehead, white before its time, as a sign of recognition all its own. When I was returned to her it was beginning to blend in with her hair, which was prematurely gray, and would soon be lost in its total whiteness.

  That day at the wedding I didn’t know anything. My fathers were distant cousins; I bore their surname. During the month when I was weaned the two families divided up my life with a few promises: without specifying anything, and without wondering what I would pay for their vagueness.

  “I couldn’t say too much, because you were small, but I gave your aunt a piece of my mind.”

  “Why?”

  “She had sworn that you would always come here to us, that we’d bring you up together. But the only time we saw you was at your first birthday. We went to the city.” Her voice failed, for a few seconds. “But afterward you moved and no one let us know.”

  I listened carefully, intent on her story, but I didn’t want to trust her. Adriana had said so, the day I arrived, not to believe too much of what she said.

  “She used the excuse that she had a sick sister-in-law and couldn’t leave her, but, just as she said it, Lidia came over to greet me, so pretty, and in good health.”

  “Lidia had asthma, sometimes they had to take her to the emergency room,” I replied curtly.

  She looked at me and added nothing else. She understood which side I was on. She picked up the pile of laundry from the chair and carried it into her room.

  13.

  After my letter with no response, there must have been some new arrangements that I didn’t know about. Every Saturday the mother in the town was obliged to give me a small sum, which came by some means or other from the mother on the coast. Clutching it in my hands, sometimes a little reduced by the one who delivered it, I felt reassured about the health of my distant mamma: maybe she was getting better. And I was always in her thoughts. I believed that I was receiving, along with the coins, the warmth of her palm, preserved in the metal of the hundred-lire pieces, as if she really had touched them.

  I exchanged a nod of understanding with Adriana and we went to Ernesto’s wine shop. I opened the ice cream refrigerator and searched through the cold white vapor. Two ice cream pops with a crunchy coating, chocolate for me, cherry for her: we ate them there, sitting at a table outside, like the old men absorbed in their card game. The rest I set aside, or sometimes I’d buy a pacifier for Giuseppe, who was always losing his.

  In a few weeks I had scraped together enough money for bus tickets and some sandwiches. Adriana got scared when I told her, so we proposed to Vincenzo that he come with us. He was taking the last drags of a cigarette at the end of the big square, before coming up to dinner. He blew out the smoke with his eyes closed, as when he was reflecting.

  “O.K., but no one at home has to know where we’re going,” he agreed, surprisingly. “We’ll tell them you’re coming to work in the countryside with me—they don’t give a damn anyway,” he added, with a dark look up at the second floor.

  At dawn we got on the bus for the city. Adriana had never seen the city, Vincenzo only certain outlying neighborhoods where his Gypsy friends camped with the rides. The bus stop was very close to the beach club where I had spent all my summers. From our lotion-perfumed shade my mother and I watched the swarms of bathers marching toward the stretch of free beach beyond the roped enclosure. On those end-of-season days we’d eat grapes, picking them one at a time from the bunches she’d brought.

  There was no one there, so early. A new girl was sweeping the concrete walkway between the sidewalk and the entrance to the café. The attendant was opening the umbrellas with their green and yellow sections, one metallic click after another. He didn’t open mine, in the first row, as if he knew there was no point.

  “Hey, here you are, where’d you go?” when I went by. “You all really disappeared, not even your mother’s been here—were you on vacation somewhere? Anyway, I’ll open it right away, number seven.”

  The lounge chair squeaked from disuse. Suddenly the man in the faded shirt turned to the two who were following me, several steps behind: they were different from the usual clientele.

  “They’re my cousins, they live in the mountains,” I said softly.

  Captivated by the novelties, they wouldn’t have heard it anyway. They sat on the sand, even Vincenzo slightly intimidated. Small lazy waves licked the shore, without foam and without sound. The sun was still low above the horizon, and seagulls perched on the rocks of the breakwater.

  “If the water comes over will we die?” Adriana asked, frightened. She let the fine sand run between her fingers, in disbelief. We took off our clothes: she had on a bathing suit that no longer fit me, and Vincenzo wore his underpants. We hung the clothes on the ribs of the umbrella; a hair band I thought I’d lost was knotted around the pole. Here it was. I struggled to loosen it with my bitten nails; I put it in my purse. I’d had it for years. When I was younger my mother would comb my hair and then put on the hair band, grazing my face with her hands. Every morning she sat on the edge of my bed and I’d stand in front of her. The sound of the brush on my head was pleasant, with the faint vibration of the metal teeth.

  My sister didn’t want to go swimming or even get her feet wet, afraid that the sea would suck her in. She crouched on the dry sand, chin on her knees, her gaze dissolved in all that blue. Silently I went in, gliding under the water for the length of a breath, without disturbing the surface. Then, with my head out, I saw the beach filling up with early risers, Adriana squatting, waiting for my return, Vincenzo’s impetuous run and a dive that sent water spraying into the air. He had learned to swim at the river, with his friends. He headed toward me with powerful, uneven arm strokes, tracing a line in the sea. When he’d almost reached me he disappeared for a second, and, sticking his neck between my legs, suddenly lifted me up. I found myself on his shoulders, as he kept himself afloat, spitting water. We didn’t feel the cold.

  “It was great of you to bring us here,” he said. “I’m really having a good time.”

  He slipped away and, showing off, did handstands and somersaults; he grabbed me by the waist and threw me like a toy, again and again. He laughed, and
the salt whitened his gums. My foot accidentally touched him near his penis, it was swollen and bulging. He covered my ears with his hands and kissed me on the lips, then his tongue went into my mouth and explored it, circling it with desire. He had forgotten who we were.

  I swam away, without hurry or disgust. Only on the shore did I realize that my heart was still beating rapidly. Adriana was sitting there, as I had left her. Maybe not much time had passed, even if the world seemed different. I lay down on the sand next to her, waiting for the confusion in my breast to settle.

  “I’m hungry,” she said, whining.

  I had sandwiches in my bag, but to cheer her up I took her to the café and got a pizza and Coke, with the last of the money. When we returned to the umbrella, Vincenzo came out of the water, exhausted, like a rough, wild god who had descended to the sea for a single day. If now I remember his tired steps, I imagine that he left the blue expanse behind him fecund. A few people noticed him; his underpants clung too closely to the shape of his body and the waistband was lowered to reveal a strip of hair. But the sweaty crowd of August was no longer here, in this serene close of summer. Now clandestine on the beach that had brought me up, I could avoid being recognized by the regular swimmers. Vincenzo and I also avoided each other, for the rest of the day. I put out the sandwiches, without saying anything. I took Adriana to the swings and, making some excuse, left her.

  I only had to cross and take the street almost opposite. I walked alongside the garden fence, looking at the signs of abandonment. A chair overturned by the wind, the table we would set when we were having dinner outside scattered with the first fallen leaves. A rag stuck on the thorns of the rose, my mother’s favorite flower—in the month of May she’d pin a bud to her bosom before going out. The grass was tall and the flowers, unwatered, were dead and dry. I arrived at the gate with lead in my feet. The mailbox wasn’t too full, maybe someone was picking up the letters now and then: mine, too, had been received. The path was invaded by sand the libeccio blew in, the shutters were all pulled down, as when we left for vacation. Sheltered under the eaves was my bicycle, with one tire flat. I rang the bell into the emptiness of the rooms and after a vain wait rang it over and over again, for a long time. I leaned my forehead against the bell and stood like that until the heat became unbearable. I ran back across the street, nearly getting run over, and sat down in the shade of the cabanas.

  She must be dead, then, as in my dream, like her tulips, otherwise she wouldn’t have abandoned the house. But it was she who had sent me the bunk bed and everything else, and the other mother said that they had talked on the phone. Why didn’t she talk to me, too? Where was she? Maybe she didn’t want to upset me with a sick voice, from a distant hospital. Or what if, rather, my father had been transferred to another city? He said it was possible. No, they would have taken me with them wherever. And did Lidia know? Did she know and not look for me? But they didn’t talk often. Shortly before she was transferred to the north she’d gotten up to one of her old tricks, and maybe my mother had never completely forgiven her.

  Lidia had met Lili Rose, a dancer who lived in the attic apartment of the building across the street, and sometimes they talked furtively through the gate of our garden. Lili Rose worked in a nightclub on the beach and slept until afternoon. Every so often refined-looking men discreetly rang her bell. Lidia wasn’t allowed even to say hello to her, for fear she’d be contaminated.

  But one hot, muggy Sunday my parents went to a funeral and left us at home. Lili Rose came to ask if we’d also lost our running water—her taps were dry. Above her eyes, smudged by the makeup of the night before, was a tangle of bleached hair, and she was scantily dressed. Lidia had invited her in, offered her a cold drink and then a shower. Lili Rose came out of the bathroom barefoot and dripping, with my mother’s bathrobe half open in front.

  They started dancing in the living room, sedately at first, then more closely entwined, to the slow, sensual rhythms of particular records. With her pelvis thrust forward Lili Rose showed how to move and rub against a man’s body. She stuck her leg out through the opening in the terry cloth, and rubbed it against Lidia’s, but in fun, for laughs. As the minutes passed, I felt a little nervous and kept looking at the door. Not them. They had pushed the coffee table to one side and moved on to a frenetic and pounding Shake, jerking as if possessed. Lidia had taken off her sweaty shirt, and was in short shorts and bra. At the end of a 45 they collapsed on top of each other on the sofa, panting. The belt of the bathrobe had come loose around Lili Rose’s waist and exposed it.

  My mother, returning early from the funeral, had found them like that.

  I stayed behind the cabanas. Adriana, wandering around in tears, ran into me by chance. She must have fallen off the swing; she hadn’t even wiped the sand off her lips and nose. In that alien setting she was defenseless, and hadn’t been able to find the umbrella in the first row, where she could have waited for me with her brother.

  “I didn’t fall off by myself, those guys pushed me,” she complained when we reached him. “They said this wasn’t my beach and I couldn’t go on the swing.” She pointed to some boys who were hanging around the playground area.

  He charged like a bull. I don’t know if they exchanged some words or immediately started fighting. When Adriana and I got there they were rolling around on the ground, locked in struggle like statues of sand, many against one, ours. We called the owner of the beach club, he shouted at them and pulled them apart. But afterward, taking me aside, he told me not to bring that half Gypsy in underpants here again, who was he? Certainly not a relative of such a respectable family, and my father a carabiniere.

  Vincenzo washed in the shallow water, without the pleasure of a swim. In the middle of the afternoon people under the neighboring umbrellas were eating melon, and they looked at us. The man with the whistle passed by, walking along the shore hawking fresh coconut.

  “Is he selling fresh eggs?” Adriana was amazed.

  “No, it’s an exotic fruit.” But I didn’t have enough change.

  He smiled at my sister’s curiosity as she approached the bucket and gave her a piece, a small one, for her first taste.

  We got dressed and set off toward the bus stop, and for a second I thought I heard behind us a general sigh of relief. From the window I waved at the five-story building where Patrizia lived and silently promised I would come back to see her.

  “I’ll take the later bus, I’m going to see some friends,” Vincenzo said, standing up suddenly to get out at one of the stops on the outskirts. Seeing him on the sidewalk through the dusty glass, all bruised, I no longer knew what I felt. Looking at me, he touched his lips with an index finger while the driver started off, and I don’t know if he wanted to blow me a kiss or tell me to be silent.

  Adriana slept until we reached the town, but at night she complained because of the irritation of her sunburn. At home no one paid attention, the mother asked only if we had brought some fruit from the countryside. Vincenzo returned after two days and the father didn’t punish him; maybe he hadn’t noticed, or by now he had given up correcting that son.

  14.

  Come down, I have to show you something, behind the garage,” he called from below the window.

  I went down a little later with Adriana and he gave me a dirty look.

  He sent her to buy him some cigarettes in the square, she could keep the change. Vincenzo must have had a lot of money in his pocket: when he was reaching in for the coins a banknote fell out. With a glance he blocked my intention to follow Adriana.

  “She’s still too young, she doesn’t know how to keep a secret,” he said when she turned the corner. “Now wait here for me.”

  He returned quickly, with his habit of glancing back suspiciously, to one side and then the other. Taking a blue velvet bag from under his armpit, he knelt on the ground to open it and show me his treasure. He lined up the pieces on the strip of cement
around the building, as if on the counter of a jewelry store. They must have been secondhand: their brilliance seemed slightly diminished. With delicate fingers he unknotted two tangled necklaces and laid them down next to each other. Finally, pleased, he admired his small display of bracelets, rings, and chains, some with pendants and some without, before turning to see the effect of this spectacle of gold on me. He was surprised to find me silent and anxious.

  “What’s wrong, you don’t like it?” he asked, standing up in disappointment.

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “I didn’t get it, I was paid, with these,” he explained with the expression of an offended child.

  “They’re worth a lot of money. You can’t earn that much in two days.”

  “My friends wanted to thank me before they left. I’d helped them, you know, for nothing.”

  “What are you going to do with the stuff now?” I persisted.

  “Resell it,” and he knelt again to pick up the jewelry.

  “Are you nuts? If you get caught with stolen goods, you’ll end up in the reformatory.”

  “Oo-ooh, what do you know about it? Who says it’s stolen, anyway?” And he turned to show me two bracelets that he was holding in his trembling hand. His nostrils, too, were quivering above his new beard.

  “You can tell. And then my father is a carabiniere, he’s always talking about how the Gypsies rob houses.” It escaped, just like that: I made a mistake again in naming my adoptive parents.

  “Yeah, lucky you, still thinking about your father the carabiniere. That guy, your uncle, doesn’t even remember you. He never comes to see how you’re doing here.”

  Tears fell, catching me unawares—I hadn’t felt them coming. Vincenzo had spoken like Sergio, but he immediately got up and came over. He dried my face, brushing his thumbs roughly over the skin, and repeating no, head and voice contrite, don’t cry, he couldn’t bear it. Wait, wait, he said, and he finished picking up his jewels and putting them back in the blue bag. All except one.