A Girl Returned

by Donatella Di Pietrantonio

  Later Pat asked me to go with her to a party the following week. I had no desire to, and she couldn’t understand why. We were sitting opposite one another, legs crossed, on the Indian rug in her room. From the night table, the light of the lamp with its multicolored glass shade. She listed the boys we knew who would certainly be there and showed me her first pair of high heels, which she had bought in a store in the city center. I could wear a pair of her mother’s, she insisted, we wore the same size. Vanda passed at that moment to say goodnight, and Patrizia asked her to intervene, to try to convince me. I repeated that I wasn’t interested in parties.

  “You have nothing to be ashamed of, you didn’t choose what happened to you. It’s the adults who are responsible.” She said just that, her index finger pointing up like a warning.

  “Well, thanks. But I wouldn’t last in a crowd of kids having fun, I don’t feel the same as other people anymore. I thought I was, but it was all false. Now I know, I have a different fate.” I was talking to Vanda, as if Patrizia weren’t there facing me, on the rug.

  “Fate is a word for old people, you can’t believe in it at fourteen. And if you do, you’d better change. It’s true you’re not like other people: no one has your strength. After what happened, you’re still on your feet, clean and orderly, with an average of eight in your first semester. We admire you,” she said, looking at her daughter for a moment as if in search of a confirmation taken for granted.

  “You can’t imagine how much effort it costs me to stay clean and orderly, as you say, and to study.”

  She sat on the bed with a sigh. “I know, but keep it up, don’t let yourself be distracted by ugly thoughts.”

  Pattrizia grabbed my wrists, she squeezed them.

  “You’re my friend, between us it’s the same as before.”

  “Between us, yes,” and I bowed my head forward until our heads bumped with a very faint noise.

  Down in the street there was a salvo of fireworks in anticipation of Epiphany.

  32.

  I undressed in the dim light of the nearest street lamps. The cloudless sky had an unusually bright glow that hung over the city. On Signora Bice’s balcony the chaise longue was still open from the previous summer, and I leaned against the backrest while I took off pajama top and bottom, socks, undershirt still warm from my body. Pale reflection of the stars on my breast. I had left Sandra in the room dreaming, her leg in the cast like a pillar under the covers.

  The cold gripped me, as I’d hoped. It just needed time. I shivered and trembled, my teeth chattering. I had decided to sit there, naked, for half an hour, I would check the minutes with the alarm clock I’d brought with me. I held it in my hand for a while, observing the almost imperceptible movement of the phosphorescent minute hand, then I put it on the floor and sat on the chaise. I felt my nipples contract painfully, while my toes, farther from the heart, slept as if dead. With my eyes on the luminous figures and the pale green line that moved so slowly, I resisted going over again what I would say the next day. It was the night between the last Thursday and Friday of January, I had to get myself a fever for the morning.

  A little before eight the silhouette of Signora Bice, who hadn’t seen me leave the room, appeared behind the opaque glass of the door, but I was already sick. She heard me coughing and looked for the thermometer in her daughter’s night table. I had a fever, above a hundred.

  “Then stay home. I’ll bring you breakfast,” and she took a few steps in the direction of the kitchen. She stopped, arrested by a sudden thought. She looked at me.

  I stayed in bed with a book, but I couldn’t get past the first page. I would read a few lines and they left no trace, I had to keep starting over with the same paragraph. I waited for the sound of the bell. The first time it was only the mailman, with something to sign. Attempts at conversation by Sandra, after she woke up, fell into the void of the hours. At eleven it was Adalgisa. As she was coming up the stairs, Signora Bice stuck her head in the room, with a questioning expression.

  “I have to talk to her,” I said.

  “All right, as soon as we’ve settled our business I’ll call you,” and she closed the door.

  The footsteps arriving and then in the entrance, muffled, the click of the lock behind the woman who had brought me up. The voices greeting each other, Adalgisa still ignorant that I was straining to hear. They went into the kitchen, maybe for coffee. After a few minutes a sound of chairs moving; I was afraid she would elude me, again. I didn’t wait to be called.

  Her look when she saw me is one of the most vivid memories I have of her and probably the most damaging. She had the eyes of someone who is caught in a trap and finds no way out, as if a ghost had re-emerged from a buried time, to pursue her. It was me, barely more than a child, and children don’t inspire fear.

  She remained seated, tilted a little to one side after a slight sudden movement of her chest. The broad mole on her chin seemed darker, perhaps an effect of the pallor around it. She had shaved the hairs that grew on it, they just barely emerged from the surface. The money she paid for me every month stood out on the brown wood, beside the sugar bowl.

  “You’re not at school?” she articulated, with difficulty moving lips painted a brighter red than usual.

  I didn’t answer. I was burning, and I stayed on my feet, with the help of the wall.

  “She has a fever,” Signora Bice intervened. “She wants to talk to you, come into the dining room, no one will disturb you there.”

  She led us in, Adalgisa went ahead of me and seemed unsteady on the heels of her suede shoes. Her figure had softened into more feminine curves, I watched her moving in the hall in a sort of milky haze. We sat at the rectangular table in the room that was almost never used, as Signora Bice wished. Then she went out and we were alone with the silence, facing each other. Her green wool dress was tight under the pressure of her bosom, which had grown larger.

  I looked at her now in no hurry, I felt strong thanks to the wrong I’d suffered. And furious, but also calm, after all that time. I’d been waiting a year and a half for her, it was up to her to begin.

  She brought her hands from her lap to the table. Her fingers were bare, she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. I thought of the child, wondering who was taking care of him right now; noon was approaching and she wasn’t on the way home. A sigh lifted the presentosa that hung on her chest, making it flash.

  “I loved you and I love you now, too,” she began.

  “I don’t care anymore about your love, it’s obvious how much you wanted me. Tell me why you sent me away.”

  “It wasn’t easy. I don’t know what ideas you had about . . . ” and she traced the carved edge of the wooden table with her index finger.

  “What ideas should I have had? All you told me was the lie about the family that wanted me back—in the town they knew and didn’t say. When I left, you were in bed throwing up, I thought you were seriously ill. I was worried about you. I called and no one answered, I went to our house twice and it was closed up. I thought you were far away, in a hospital, that you might die. And for months I waited for you, hoping you’d be better and would come and get me.”

  She dabbed at her tears with a handkerchief that she took from her purse, which was hanging on the back of the chair next to her.

  “It wasn’t easy,” she repeated, shaking her head.

  “You could have simply told me the truth,” and I leaned toward her across the table.

  “You were too young for the truth, I wanted to wait till you got a little older.” She, too: like the other.

  A fit of coughing, which hadn’t dared to interrupt until then, gripped me and gave us a pause.

  “Didn’t you always preach that marriage is an indissoluble sacrament?”

  “The child had to have his father nearby,” she justified herself. “I understand your rage, but I wasn’t alone in the decisi
ons.”

  “I would have come with you, just to stay close to you.”

  I tried to control my voice and hold back my tears. Suddenly I felt every single degree of my body temperature and an irremediable weakness.

  “I tried to arrange things in the best possible way. I didn’t want to be separated from you, but that’s what happened.”

  “Didn’t your husband say anything? Couldn’t he keep me with him?”

  “It was a difficult moment for him. He didn’t feel up to it.”

  She brought her hands back to her lap, her head lowered. I slumped against the chair back and stared at the cut-glass pendants of the chandelier, with their countless facets. They seemed to be quivering, as if there had been an earthquake, but it was only my fever.

  “You didn’t come to see me once, in fact you purposely avoided me.”

  “I was waiting for the right moment, I told you. I helped you from a distance.”

  I no longer remembered what I had imagined shouting at her or it came out of my mouth without energy, as if it counted so little now. In the end what could I do to her? Even the pajama button that I had been twisting for several minutes, when it shot out toward her didn’t hit her.

  We were silent for a while. Her lips a thin double line of lipstick. Then she raised one finger slightly.

  “I’ve stayed informed, you know. Don’t think I don’t feel responsible for you.”

  “Forget it,” and I turned sideways, toward the print of old Florence on the wall. From the kitchen came the smell of the ragú that Signora Bice was making. Then the sound of keys and the front door opening and closing, Signor Giorgio was arriving for lunch.

  “Are you happy now?” slipped out, somewhere between an accusation and a kind of curiosity.

  She didn’t answer, but after a few seconds she brightened and took her wallet out of her purse. Carefully she removed a photograph, smiled at it and put it on the table, pushing it toward me with satisfaction. I disobeyed the impulse to tear it up right in front of her, I felt superior to such a gesture. Without deigning to glance at it I turned the child over and pushed him back toward the mother, right up to the edge of the table. She caught him just before he fell.

  The clatter of silverware in the other room, Signora Bice was setting the table. Adalgisa roused herself, she looked with a start at the small gold watch I’d always seen on her wrist. She got up, I didn’t move. I didn’t know much more than before.

  “Just a minute, please, I need help for my sister Adriana. She can’t stay in the town much longer.”

  “What class is she in?” she asked, trying to hide her impatience.

  “First year of middle school.”

  “We’ll talk about it next time, don’t worry. Remember I’m here. And I urge you, continue to do well in school.”

  Quickly she wrote the new telephone number on a sheet of paper.

  “If you need to, call.”

  She hesitated a moment longer, at the time I didn’t understand why, since she was in such a hurry. Maybe she was wondering if it would be right to come close to me and how close, to say goodbye. My attitude must have discouraged her; she stayed on the other side of the table. I got up, too—my legs weak—and went to the window, as if she were no longer there. I looked outside, at the street and the balconies opposite faded by winter, the city bus that was taking the children home.

  33.

  Starting that Friday in January Adalgisa began to surprise me. I imagined that I wouldn’t see her again for I don’t know how long, maybe forever. She would spend money on me as usual, from a distance. Instead she telephoned two days later. Signora Bice answered, “She’s here,” looking at me deliberately. I pointed toward the bathroom with a nod of urgency and shut myself in. Sitting on the edge of the tub I heard them talking about me—my studies, meals, the usual subjects. She called again later and I couldn’t escape.

  “I thought of renewing the pool membership, we could go together one of these afternoons.”

  “I’m not interested,” I said immediately.

  “Dancing class, then.”

  “Not that, either.”

  I used to like it a lot, she insisted, and I would see my friends again.

  “They’ve probably forgotten about me by now. And I’m sorry, dinner’s ready.”

  I didn’t want more than what was necessary from her. But the no to dancing class weighed on me at night like undigested food. I really had liked it.

  I found her outside school on a rainy day that had started out clear. In the crush of parents who had come to get their children, she was waiting with a big man’s umbrella. I pulled back, but was immediately shoved forward by the kids who were swarming away. She was there just for me, already she was saying hello and I couldn’t avoid her.

  “I was sure you didn’t have anything to keep the rain off. It was sunny this morning.”

  She offered me her arm and I ignored it, I walked beside her hoping that none of my classmates would notice us. I wouldn’t have known how to say who she was.

  At the same time I felt a kind of relief, a temptation to imagine that I was like everybody else, for once. Someone had come to get me, too, in the winter weather.

  She talked about the car that was parked a little too far away, everyone had started out at the same time in that storm. Above us, water in torrents. There it was, washed by the rain, her blue SUV. She sheltered me while I got in the car and went around to get in the driver’s seat. A slightly sour smell lingered inside, from when she’d spilled a bottle of vinegar, years earlier. But I was hit more powerfully by her perfume, as soon as she turned her head. In the morning she bathed the hollow behind her ear and her wrists, I knew by heart those gestures at the mirror.

  On the dashboard was a shiny San Gabriele magnet, with a small color photograph of the baby and the legend “Don’t hurry, think of me.” Next to it was the old one with my face, faded, in black and white. I looked at the drops dripping down the fogged-up glass and was silent until we arrived.

  “Here’s some beef with tomato sauce that I made today, you can warm it up,” she said at the door, handing me a pot wrapped in a napkin.

  I stopped for a few minutes on the stairs. What was happening? Why was Adalgisa unexpectedly so available? It frightened me, confused me. I’d given up on her, lost faith. But suddenly, after the meeting I had forced on her, she appeared so kind. I felt the danger of yielding to her again. And the inexpressible desire.

  For several weeks I heard nothing more. She seemed to have disappeared again. The pot that had contained the meat waited for her on a shelf in Signora Bice’s kitchen, washed and dried. Had my sullen behavior driven her away? No, it was only the start of her erratic appearances. In time I got used to her being there and disappearing every so often, for longer or shorter periods. She divided her time between me and her new family. I waited for her without admitting it. I acted a little offended when she came back. It was always like that, at least as long as my need for her lasted.

  I didn’t care about her visits, I was convinced of it, but I started at the sound of the bell.

  She showed up with a sweater in my favorite color, I took it from her with a movement that was too abrupt.

  “I got red. Is the size right?”

  I shrugged and went to put it away without even trying it on. She followed me into the bedroom. She looked around.

  “You’re a little tight here,” she said thoughtfully. She told me she was moving, that was why she’d disappeared. “I’m sorry you haven’t seen me, I’ve had a million things on my mind.” She had returned to the house by the sea.

  “Everything has to be put away. With Guido always gone for work and a small child it will take months.”

  I’d never heard her say the name of the man who had changed our lives. She smiled at the name of her child: Francesco, like one of the sa
ints she prayed to. I listened attentively even though I had turned away so that she couldn’t see.

  “Your bed is still there,” she murmured, more to herself, fingering the Abruzzese blanket that kept me warm at night.

  In her bag she had other things for me: knee socks, a silver bracelet, a stick of cocoa butter for my chapped lips. I accepted it all without embarrassment, without thanking her. While she put the things on the night table I was deciding what to bring to my sister.

  “Sunday will you come to lunch with us?” she asked suddenly.

  “Weekends I go back to the town,” I answered after a pause, without looking at her.

  “Maybe the next one,” she proposed.

  Many Sundays passed.

  During the Easter vacation I told my mother about the invitation, in one of those moments of intimacy that occurred when we were alone in the kitchen. I was helping her peel hard-boiled eggs that the priest would bless.

  “Accept. Remember that Adalgisa raised you.”

  It wasn’t her only attempt at reconciliation over the years. She felt toward her cousin a kind of joyless gratitude for having brought me up so differently from her other children.

  “If not for her, instead of going to school now you’d be laboring in the countryside. You haven’t known poverty, poverty is more than hunger,” she said to me one day, as a warning. And then: “She was wrong, but you can’t sulk about it your whole life.”

  Adalgisa stopped talking about the lunch, but I felt that it was an obsession. We continued to see each other at Signora Bice’s, except once when she persuaded me to go with her to the department store. She was in the mood to spend, she bought things for me, for the baby. As we wandered from one department to another we really might seem mother and daughter again.

  She tried again in early May. She came upstairs excited and warm, with a strange restlessness.

  “Guido would really like to meet you now,” she said, repeatedly joining her hands, as if in a sort of slow, silent applause. “Don’t answer me no right away, I’ll call you Friday.”