The Creeds that Move Men's Hearts

by Melody Veltri

  Marcello and Lindo look at each other—this is not something Pa ever asks to do.

  “Why, Papa?” asks Lindo.

  “Oh, it’s a beautiful night. I think maybe the exercise will do me good, and the fresh air might help your stomachs, too.”

  Mama looks up as she is re-seasoning the cast iron skillet. “Pietro, what are you doing? That air is cold—they’ll get a chill and be even sicker.”

  Pa winks at Mama. “I think I know what I am doing.”

  Mama is still frowning. “I hope you know what you are doing. You make sure they are wearing hats and mufflers. And don’t be gone long.”

  My curiosity is piqued as well. I think Pa has something on his mind, but I don’t know what. Ten minutes later, while Giova is fidgeting with the radio dial, Pa walks in with the boys—and with Bruno.

  “Madonna Mia!” gasps Mama. “Get that animal out of here!”

  “The good news is that the boys are not sick,” says Pa. “The bad news is that they are trying to hide this beast from us. He was out in the shed.”

  The dog is frantically wagging his tail and trying to now jump up on Giova. Giova is an animal lover, so he is immediately on the boys’ side. Mama is positioning the skillet between her and the dog just in case he turns his attention to her.

  “I should beat you both,” Mama tells Marcello and Lindo. “You make me sick with worry when all along you are trying to give my delicious lamb to this animal.”

  “The boys are going to take him to the basement and make him a bed. Then they are going to finish these dishes while you and I have a talk in the dining room. Carolina, you can listen to the radio with Giova.”

  As the boys head to the basement, I slip Marcello the lamb that is in my napkin. From the living room, I can pretend to be listening to the radio while I strain to hear their conversation. I suppose Pa will tell her that the dog will be gone in the morning.

  “How do you feel about that dog?” Pa asks Mama.

  “How do I feel? He’s a monster. He’s filthy dirty, and he’s the size of my table. How should I feel?”

  “Well, I didn’t intend to get a dog, but that kind of dog is special. That kind of dog develops loyalty to its owners. I think there might be some sense in keeping him.”

  “Pietro, we have four kids, and now you think we need a dog?”

  “Lena, you worry and worry about the kids. This dog would be a good watchdog. He would be good protection for them.”

  Papa knows exactly how to appeal to Mama. I honestly think that he likes the dog and wants to let the boys have it. But he has to tell Mama the dog would watch over us because now the dog is a done deal. I don’t need to see Mama’s wheels spinning. I know, from the other side of the wall, that she would do anything if it means that her children are somehow safer because of it.

  Dear Diary, May 6, 1925

  We have a new member of the family. His name is Bruno, and he’s a stray dog that Marcello and Lindo found in the schoolyard. I was terrified of him when I first saw him. Turns out, he is really a gentle giant. I am glad that Pa is letting us keep him, and I am shocked that Mama has agreed to it. Just when I think that everything they do is completely predictable!

  I have started to read a chapter in my history book. I am interested in this Civil War story. Maybe what I am always complaining about is freedom. Maybe I want a kind of freedom—not from my family, but a freedom to choose to have any kind of life I want. I would choose a life of education and travel. I would choose to see the world outside of Sharpsburg.

  I bet Bruno has seen a lot more of the world than I have. If he could talk, he might have all kinds of stories to tell.

  * * *

  I always look forward to Wednesdays because I meet with Sister Norbert after school hours, but today I feel so achy. The boys pretended to be sick, and now I really am sick.

  “Carolina, what’s the matter? You keep playing with your breakfast, and you look flushed.”

  “Mama, my head hurts, my throat hurts, my ears hurt. I don’t feel well.”

  “Don’t tell me now you’re hiding a cat! We are not taking in any more animals!” jokes Pa.

  “I’m not hiding anything, Pa. I feel like my whole body hurts.”

  “Let me feel your head,” says Mama. “You’re burning up. Get upstairs right now. We need to get you back in bed. Pietro, you’ll need to buy a chicken from the man.”

  The “man” is a farmer from out in the country who sells eggs and live chickens to people in the city. Mama and many of the other women did not trust the local butcher to have fresh meat. If one of us is sick, she always buys a chicken from the man and kills it for chicken soup. It never bothers Mama or her sisters to do that—they were raised in the country in Calabria. They are no strangers to the life and death cycles of livestock. Sometimes Marcello and Lindo watch as she whacks the chicken’s little head off, but I can never take it. I have to admit, though, that her soup is the best in the world—even with the little chicken claws floating in it. I’ve watched her pluck the chicken and boil the carcass for the broth. It’s my job to chop the carrots, celery, and onions and to make the noodles. It’s too bad someone has to be sick for Mama to make the soup.

  “I’ll pick up a chicken, but I think she should see the doctor,” says Pa. He worries, too, but he never says it. I know that it doesn’t take much for a sore throat to become scarlet fever or rheumatic fever. I know that’s what he worries about—that, and influenza.

  “Doctor, doctor, doctor. I would do better to have Izzy come sit with her,” says Mama. The doctor had come when Maria Luisa had pneumonia. He couldn’t save her, and Mama lost all faith in him.

  Papa mumbles under his breath, something about the stench of Izzy being enough to make anyone sicker, and he and Giova get ready to leave for work. Before he goes, he strokes my head and rubs my cheek with his thumb. “You get some rest, figlia.”

  I nod my head, and Mama helps me back up to bed. I think it is none too soon because I am so so cold now. I can’t stop shivering.

  Mama piles the blankets on top of me, but we don’t really have heat upstairs. Pa has cut away a little bit of the floor to allow heat from the stove to come through, but it is much colder upstairs than it is downstairs. I’m huddling in a ball and keeping the blankets over my ears. My knees are literally knocking against each other.

  “Carolina, try to sleep. I’m going to bake you an onion with sugar, and I will mix you some wine and honey and lemon.”

  “I can’t eat, Mama.” My back is to her, and I can’t see her face. My teeth are chattering, so it’s hard for me to talk.

  “You’ll try. And I’m going to make a mustard plaster for your chest.”

  I would argue with her, but I am so tired. Too tired. Those compresses that she makes are always steaming hot. They’re enough to take the skin off your chest. And I don’t want the onion, but who can tell her that? I have to save my strength for keeping warm. It’s so very cold.

  Mama goes downstairs, and I am in and out of consciousness. Sometimes I hear her praying—“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you”—and I know she is saying a rosary for me while she works. The prayer is repetitious, and I hear, but then I don’t hear. I wake to it, and then I am falling asleep to it. Has she been praying for a minute or for an hour? I have no concept of time.

  Eventually, Mama comes back upstairs.

  “Carolina. Carolina, wake up.”

  I moan because I just want to die in peace, and she is making me move. She’s taking my warm blankets from me.

  “Maamaaa.”

  “Come on. Just let me put this on your chest.” The compress feels like fire, and I jump from the shock of it.

  “Ouch, Mama! Too hot!”

  “It’s not too hot. Let me button the shirt up high now. Here, you sip this.” She is piling pillows behind me so that I can sit up. The wine drink is almost like syrup, but it coats my throat, which is horribly sore, so I drink what I can.

  “Your
shaking has stopped. That’s good,” says Mama. She coerces me into eating two bites of the baked onion. Mama’s medicine is onion and garlic. I know the boys will be wearing garlic around their necks after they get home today.

  Finally, Mama lets me try to sleep, and she returns the blankets to my chest. My body hurts everywhere. I feel as though someone has been punching me, and I didn’t fight back. My shoulders, my chest, my legs—everything aches.

  I don’t know how long I sleep—minutes or hours—but Mama is there when I awaken and frantically throw off the covers. She is sitting in a chair beside the bed. I know she won’t leave me when I am sick. I’m so hot now. I’m sticky in my own sweat. My nightgown is twisted and clinging to me. I throw the poultice off my chest and push my hair from my damp neck. The pillow is hot and wet with my perspiration.

  “Mama, get this off me.” I’m kicking the blankets that are entangling my feet. “I’m too hot! I’m too hot!”

  Mama has a basin of water and a sponge on the end table beside me. She has a worried look on her face. “Your fever is up. Lie back.” She takes the sponge and wipes down my face, my neck, and my chest. She pushes up the sleeves of my nightgown and washes the insides of my wrists and forearms. The evaporation of the water cools me down a bit. She bathes my feet and legs as well, but she’s quick to cover me with a sheet. In two minutes, I feel hot again. I’m like a human oven.

  “Carolina, you have to drink some water now.”

  I drink as much as I can, but Mama wants me to drink more. I don’t want more. I’m tired and sore and sick, and I’m ashamed to say that I’m acting like a child. I push her arm away, and the water spills on the floor.

  Mama shakes her head but says nothing. She will never yell at me when I am sick. That much I know. I don’t mean to be rough on her, but I can’t drink anymore, and I can’t eat anymore. I just want the pain to stop, and I can’t get comfortable. Mama gets me a fresh nightgown and flips my pillow for me. The coolness of them both is some degree of relief to me.

  By dinnertime, Papa comes home with two chickens, and Mama takes them out to the chicken coop in the backyard. We have a small one for the visiting chickens—they never have a chance to get too used to it. Papa also has a surprise—Doctor Pohlman is with him. If there is anything worse than seeing a doctor when you already feel bad, I don’t know what it is. First, he checks my glands and looks in my ears and throat. Then he listens to my chest as I breathe in and out. It’s a short exam, but I’m exhausted just from sitting up.

  “Well, Pietro, it looks like the flu to me. She should be better in a few days, provided that throat clears up. It’s quite red. I’m going to give her some painkillers for the ear, and this is an elixir to help loosen the congestion. I’ll be back to check her in a couple of days, but let me know immediately if she seems to get worse.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. Thank you for coming. Let me show you to the door.”

  I can hear them descending the steps. Mama is in the room with me, and she’s rolling her eyes. She picks up the bottle of syrup. “My soup will fix you up before this does—I don’t know why your father thinks the doctor knows so much.” She’s still shaking her head as she bends over to give me a kiss on the forehead. “Get some sleep.”

  Even before she says it, my eyes are already closed. I am far too tired and miserable to engage in a conversation about the usefulness of modern medicine.

  * * *

  Three days later, thanks to Mama’s soup and Doctor Pohlman’s little pills, I am finally among the living. Because it’s Saturday, Mama wants to walk to Madonna Church for confession with Sara, but she doesn’t want to leave me. I’m much better, but I’m still weak and very fatigued. Papa and the boys have tickets to see the Pittsburgh Pirates, and they’ve already left for the streetcar to Forbes Field.

  “How terrible would it be if Zia Izzy comes over?” asks Mama. “I won’t be more than an hour.”

  What can I say? An hour of Zia Izzy’s undivided attention is a cross to bear, but Mama has waited on me tirelessly since Wednesday. She deserves a bit of fresh air—even if she does end up in a confessional. Fortunately, I have Bruno. While I’ve been sick, he lies beside the bed and doesn’t leave me. At least not until the boys are home from school.

  “It’s okay, Mama. I might just sleep anyway.”

  I’ve decided to come downstairs and lie on the couch for a change of scenery and to be nearer to the stove. Mama tucks blankets around me and props me up on pillows. In just a little while, I hear Sara at the door. Mama opens it, and I hear her gasp. My back is to them, so I don’t understand her reaction until Sara comes into the room and the light from the window illuminates her face. In spite of her attempt to angle her hat so that it covers the side of her face, it is obvious that she has a black eye. The purple discoloration reaches from her eyebrow to her cheekbone, and her eye is fiercely bloodshot.

  “It’s nothing,” she tells Mama. “I know what you are thinking, but it was an accident. He was reaching for something in the kitchen, and I got in the way.”

  “You got in the way, all right. I’d say you got in the way of his fist hitting you head on. He could have killed you.”

  Unlike Mama, Sara is a quiet woman. She comes from the Italian-Austrian border, and there is something different about her look. She’s more German looking and fairer skinned.

  I’ll never forget the story of how Mama met her. She was outside picking tomatoes in the hot sun, and she could hear, several houses away, a loud argument. Eventually, she heard slapping and a woman’s cries. Mama didn’t know Sara then—she had only seen her from the porch and thought she was unfriendly. She wouldn’t even glance at or wave to Mama back then. Mama thought she was a snob, but she was young, and her feelings were hurt. How could anyone be a snob in Sharpsburg? Everyone was struggling to survive back then, and Sara most of all, but Mama didn’t realize that. She didn’t realize that Sara was shy and that she had so much to hide.

  When the cries ended, Mama was afraid that he had knocked her unconscious. Luca stormed out of the house and slammed the door. As he became smaller and smaller on the road, Mama decided to approach the house. Pa wasn’t home, and she knew she had to do something. The hatred she felt that day toward Luca was just a seed of what it has become.

  Normally, Mama is one to mind her own business, but that day she was feeling bold. She walked up to the door of Sara’s house and hollered in through the screen. Sara came to the door with a cut on her cheek. Mama started to cry when she saw her. The two women embraced, and that was the day that Mama and Sara became best friends. It would not be the last time that she cried for her, of course. She was so ashamed of herself for thinking that Sara was unfriendly. She was like a broken china doll, so fragile and so vulnerable.

  Since then, Sara and Mama have gone to daily mass together during the week and to confession on Saturdays. They can’t talk during either, but they fill the short walk there and back with conversation. On the days that I go with them, I can’t get a word in. Mama does most of the talking. Sara is reserved—not unemotional, but slow to open up to anyone, guarded. If she is this way by nature, being married to Luca has made her more so.

  Mama never asks Sara why she would put up with him. She knows why. Marriages are arrangements. Sara is trapped in a bad arrangement, but divorce is not possible in the church, and she cannot support herself financially. Does Sara love Luca? Mama doesn’t know, and she doesn’t ask. It doesn’t matter.

  There’s a forceful knock, and Zia Izzy pushes the door open, hollering her hello while she wipes her feet on the mat. “I’m here . . .” There are really no words to accurately explain the look on my aunt’s face. She is in an eye lock with Sara, and then, with eyes glaring and breath coming fast and hard, she says to Mama, “That’s it, Lena. Something has to be done now.” Mama knows what that means, and I know what that means, but Sara doesn’t actually appreciate the full import of that statement—not when it comes from Izzy.

  “Come on, Magd
alena,” says Sara. “We’ll be late for confession.” She hurries past Izzy and out the door. Mama follows behind, but she and Izzy share a look, and I know that this will be a matter of discussion for them when Sara is out of earshot.

  I don’t know why I thought I would be able to sleep because Zia Izzy loves to talk, and she can’t talk without a captive audience. Once Izzy is here, I am the obvious victim. She pulls the rocker up to the couch, and her words flow like a raging river.

  “There are men in this world who are no better than dogs, and Luca Vassari is one of them. There was one man who stood up to Vassari. His name was Gino Sirotti. Have you heard this story?”

  I shake my head no, but everyone knows the story of Gino. He is a famous tragic hero in Sharpsburg. I’d rather let Izzy ramble on than have to talk myself.

  “Anyway, Vassari frightens everyone because they know he is fearless. You don’t let him have his way, he’ll challenge you to a duel. Most men back down from that—especially with Vassari because he prefers knives, and he’s a devil with a knife. And, of course, he never has just one weapon—he has knives strapped to his ankles and hidden in his belt.”

  “He killed Gino?” Of course, I already knew the answer.

  “He challenged Gino to a duel at Clark Field. No one remembers why. It doesn’t matter anyway. Vassari slit his stomach open and gutted him like a pig.”

  “Why didn’t he go to jail, Zia?”

  “He’s in the Black Hand, the Mano Nero. They have connections, you know. For a while, he disappeared. When he came back, he had this young wife with him. People thought he had changed, that he was going to start a family. But every time Sara became pregnant, he beat her until she miscarried. He will never change. I really think I have to take care of this now—once and for all.”

  “Zia, you can’t fight him!”

  “Who’s fighting, Carolina? What did I tell you about the craft? We can fight behind closed doors. I just need to think for a while. I need to think of just the right spell.”

  “I don’t think a spell is going to make a difference. Do you think you can turn him into Rudolph Valentino, Zia? He’s never going to be a good man.”