The high rim of the tub fits the curve of her neck and spine, and as she sighs with contentment, she feels the cats out there in the night, listening, purring. She adds a steady trickle of hot water, reminds herself to stay awake, but already she is drifting off, drifting and warm, warm and dreaming. Dreaming of traveling on a bus. In some foreign country she can’t identify. Saffron dust sweeps across the landscape, shrouding donkeys and temples, while the bleached road is already pulling the bus forward into the next scene of the dream, tires bouncing, blue rectangles of sky bobbing in the open windows. Inside, warm so warm. Two long narrow benches are bolted against the sides of the bus. Most of the passengers are farmers, faces olive-brown and lined. Floria can’t understand their language. The men wear frayed jackets, and hats pulled low over their foreheads. The women have knotted scarves beneath their chins. Layers of skirts, once colorful, are now faded and smudged with red and yellow. Blood and pus? Stains from vegetables and fruits? In the hollow of skirts and spread knees the women balance wide baskets. What Floria carries is small enough to fit in one hand: an open box padded with pink cotton, the kind Woolworth displays with jewelry. On top of the pink lies Bianca, barely two inches long and perfectly formed. It’s absolutely normal that she is that size. Sun bakes the metal roof of the bus on the long stretch of road bordered by open fields. Hot, too hot. Then the slamming of brakes. Baskets tumbling—tomatoes, onions, peppers…rolling beneath seats. Floria holds her small box, safely. But when she looks closer, Bianca is no longer inside. Frantically, she checks beneath the pink cotton. Nothing. She can’t breathe. Other women, already on the floor, scoop vegetables from beneath the benches. Floria drops to her knees and tries to make them understand she’s lost her child. They beam at her, nod, pile tomatoes and onions and peppers into their baskets. Sit back down. While Floria is still crawling through the bus trying to get breath inside herself, crawling and staring past legs into the shadowy spaces where—
Water—
In her eyes—
Her mouth—
Hot water. Soapy water.
She spits it out. Coughs as she slides herself upright and turns off the faucet that’s hot to her touch. Her throat is aching, and she’s terrified of being pulled back into her dream. Because she knows where it will lead her: to never being able to find her daughter again. To that certainty. That history. That fear of the sadness. But she doesn’t succumb to it, gets out of the tub, dries herself, searches for something to soothe her throat. Hoping to find some of the blood-orange juice she gets every morning, she slips on her black raincoat, walks barefoot down the flights of stone steps to the lobby, empty now, and into the breakfast room.
Already, the tables are set; but the altar is still empty except for one vase with an arrangement of flowers so fresh as if someone had just picked them in the moonlight. In the courtyard, the air surrounding the fountain is blue, and thicker than air gets during the day. Behind the netting, the scaffolding looks surreal, airy treads leading beyond the roofs and melting into one shimmering path above the town, where ancient gods might choose to walk.
A shadow separates itself from the wall by the marble altar. The signora. “You want I get you something?”
“Grazie, no. When do you sleep?”
Lips closed, the signora smiles her mysterious smile as if to say, “Who needs sleep?” She motions to a chair, and when Floria sits down, she steps in front of her.
The strawberry jacket sways against Floria’s face as the signora rests both palms on her shoulders, palms that feel callused even through the fabric of Floria’s coat as the signora kneads her shoulders the way she might cause bread to rise beneath her touch, steady and spare and competent, each hand followed by the weight of the signora’s body as she leans forward, her jacket releasing smells of church—myrrh and dust and candles—that evoke the crushes Floria felt as a schoolgirl, crushes she believed were her secret alone. But she’s no longer the girl who envied the postulants on their walk to the altar. She’s the woman inside a convent in Italy with the palms of another woman on her shoulders, weaving with the motion of that woman’s body.
Nuns used to pray in this space. Did those who had more imagination than other nuns reach higher levels of immersion with their bridegroom? Was it only that lack of imagination that kept her from becoming a nun?
But now Floria has the imagination. “What have you lost?” she asks.
The hands of the signora rise to stroke her neck.
“What is the worst you have ever lost?” Floria insists.
As she tilts her head to glance into the face above her—unique, and yet so familiar in its combination of features: nose; mouth; eyes; ears—she longs to know language that would link her to the signora: yet, instantly it comes to her that they don’t need words between them, that they can rely on touch, on sight, and that, if the signora were to open the buttons of her strawberry jacket, take Floria’s hand, and pull it to the skin beneath her breasts, Floria would touch her cooling sweat with joy, with recognition. Not unlike the cat who carries the markings of a wilder cat, Floria sometimes feels wilder on the inside than she lets others see, wild and bold and—though it’s vain to think so—gorgeous. Already she knows that what feels like a tug toward the signora measures far more; and this time she is not afraid of where it may take her.
For now, she takes in the mystery of her sensations as the signora sits down next to her. Side by side, they gaze out into the quiet courtyard, where for hundreds of years nuns walked, following the square outline of the court, lips murmuring prayers and exclamations of enchantment. And perhaps, one dawn, two nuns sat here in this chapel, and as the stone floor released the ancient and cold smells you only find in places of worship, one of the nuns reached across to the other the way Floria is now laying one hand across the folded hands of the signora as they both contemplate the changing light between the columns.
Belinda 1979
Ordinary Sins
In my family, priesthood was valued. While my cousin and I were growing up, the relatives sometimes speculated that he’d become a priest. Not that Anthony ever spoke of such an inclination. But his magnitude of guilt was an ideal start for a priest who’d strive for redemption. Not redemption for himself—that request would be judged as greedy by God and had to come last, in the proper sequence, and only as result of his prayers for others—but requests for redemption for those close to him. Meaning: the relatives. Who did everything except line up.
But Anthony did not want to be a priest. Anthony wanted to be a chef. And he applied to cooking college, got in, seemed more content than I’d seen him since we were kids, even laughed when my mother and Riptide harassed him about being too skinny.
“…beyond skinny.”
“Extremely skinny.”
“Don’t you taste the recipes you make in school, Antonio?”
“Let’s hope he finds work in a restaurant where part of his job is to taste everything.”
“In great quantities.”
Halfway through Anthony’s first year of school, Papa snared him. “Just a few hours a week,” he coaxed, “something temporary…while I’m restarting my business.”
That was EZ Roofing. Though Papa lost that company soon, he launched it again as Ideal Roofing. New starts. New names. Discount Roofing. Empire Roofing. Anthony’s few hours became a few days. Became full-time. Overtime. Wholesale Roofing.
Then I met Franklin and took him away from Jesus, and now we had two men in my family who should have belonged to God, who should have led the relatives in the rigorous and perpetual climb to the one heaven that was exclusively for Catholics.
But Franklin believed in a God who let others into heaven, even Protestants and hot-tub salesmen. A more generous God, altogether. Franklin also believed in miracles, which was fine with me, since he considered our first meeting a miracle. It happened at a picnic to welcome him to St. Raymond’s, Riptide’s parish, and he was eating barbequed ribs with blissful concentration, his lips and fi
ngers so dark with the spicy sauce that I wanted to taste him. I didn’t really understand what the word “rawboned” implied till I saw Franklin, who was defined by bones: by their length; by their grace; by the lack of flesh to hide their exquisite shapes. Rawboned.
“You’re staring at the priest.” Riptide nudged me.
The priest raised his face toward me, flipped his red-kinky hair from his forehead.
“Belinda? The priest knows you are staring.”
Riptide was the one who had dragged me to this picnic though she rarely managed to drag me to mass. She also was the one who figured out about me and Franklin, when she noticed me at early mass every morning that week. Since I lived just a couple of blocks from St. Catherine’s Academy, where I taught music, it was obvious I’d made quite a detour to be here. To avoid her questions, I rushed off right after Franklin touched my tongue with the communion wafer.
But the Wednesday of my second week, Riptide stood waiting for me on the steps of St. Raymond’s, robust and trim, purse hinged on her crossed arms. “The thing is to see that attraction for what it is,” she announced, “to enjoy it for what it is, to feel it through your entire body.”
“Whatever are you talking about?”
“We had handsome priests in this parish when I was young.”
“Good for you.” I walked away from her.
But she stayed alongside me. “To confuse your lust with love would be naïve.”
“Jesus Christ, Grandmother. The man is a priest.”
“True.”
“You’re shocking the hell out of me.”
We were at the corner of Castle Hill Avenue, and I stopped to say good-bye to her; but she headed with me in the direction of Westchester Square, where I had to catch a bus to school.
“When I was your age, Belinda, I thought I invented sex.”
“You did. It’s in all the encyclopedias of the world: ‘Natalina Amedeo invented sex in the year of our Lord 1920.’ Wasn’t that the year you married Grandpa?”
“Yes, but I invented sex three years before I met him.”
“Not with Grandpa?”
“Don’t be fresh.” She kept to my pace without sweat, the result, I was sure, of swimming her mile a day in Great-Aunt Camilla’s pool.
“So here’s a correction, then: Natalina Amedeo invented sex in the year of our Lord 1917, when she—”
“—believed her parents were forever finished with sex.”
“They probably were.”
“All young people want to believe that. So naive about everything else that they convince themselves they know more about sex than their parents…at least sex the way they do it. As if there were so many different ways.”
“Eighty-two, actually.”
She peeked at me from the side.
“Just testing.”
“Enjoy the lust, Belinda.”
“Really, Grandma.”
“Really. Lean into the lust.”
“You make it sound like…sailing.”
“Funnel your lust into your passion for music. Balance it there on the highest note. Know it’s normal and don’t flagellate yourself over it.”
“How do I lean and funnel and balance and flagellate all at once?”
“Keep your lust on the highest note.” She grasped my sleeve, stopped both of us. “Remember, you’re not taking anything away from the church. As long as you don’t complicate this by making it physical. Let that lust feed you. Have fun with it. Your mama—she was like that the moment she first saw Julian, like you with that priest. Five thousand candles burning at once. Should have left Malcolm at the altar and driven away with Julian. Except then she wouldn’t have you and Bian—Except then I wouldn’t have you. Or you wouldn’t be you then, would you?”
“Are you saying she had an affair with Mr. Thompson all along?”
“Of course not. She only lusted for him. Sad thing is, she didn’t keep a sense of humor about lusting. She should have enjoyed it. Too serious…You’re more like me. But she’ll get even.”
“Even for what?”
“We all get even with our children. For leaving us. We get even by stealing our grandchildren’s love from them. You wait, as soon as you have children, your mama will wrestle their love from you.”
“There’s nothing to wrestle, then. Because I’m not having children.”
“Then you’d better stay away from this priest. If he quits priesthood, it won’t be for a woman alone. He’s the kind of man who’d want children.”
“I just said I was not—”
“And take this for your encyclopedias of the world: Natalina Amedeo invented sex in the year of our Lord 1917, and not necessarily with the man she would eventually marry.”
Franklin didn’t know he was ready to quit priesthood till four months later, when I was no longer content to enjoy bliss with him in my imagination—funneling and leaning and balancing and flagellating in amazing configurations—and told him during confession that I couldn’t sleep.
“And why is that?” he asked from the dim alcove behind the carved partition, willowy fingers linked across his eyebrows.
The confessional smelled of stale incense and musty velvet. As a girl I used to imagine most smells from what others told me, until I had my sinuses operated on and understood what it was like for scents to move freely through me.
“Why can’t you sleep?” Franklin asked.
I shivered. Stared at the pale skin of his wrists where they vanished into the black cloth. I imagined his bare shoulders against my palms, the skin there smoother than on his upper arms. And, as often, imagining replaced doing, became stronger than doing, changed the air between him and me.
Turned his voice urgent and cautious when he asked, “Why?”
As I wondered about the texture of his back, the cold of the stone walls pressed against me, reminding me I was inside the church where this man—this priest—drank the blood of Jesus every mass. I hadn’t been to confession in years, though I’d accumulated a list of sins, guaranteed to trap me in purgatory for a dozen life-times—even slam me into hell, judging by what I was about to do. And still…Still I said it, though a hundred voices inside were trying to hold me back, the voices of the relatives, of my ancestors, of all of Italy.
I said: “I can’t sleep because I keep thinking about you.”
When I took Franklin to the relatives, some of them flinched if I touched him—frequently, intentionally—to get them used to us being together. They didn’t quite know if they should ask him to say grace before dinner, an honor they’d offer any visiting priest. But this priest was a disgraced priest, and I was Maria-Magdalena-minus-redemption, who’d caused his tumble from virtue into my bed.
Except so far Franklin had not tumbled into my bed.
Franklin slept on my couch.
Though willing to quit priesthood, he was unwilling to quit celibacy, keeping to Catholic rules there, and he consoled me by swearing he was trembling to make love to me. And I held back, didn’t rush him. In the meantime, we spent quite a few evenings with other ex-priests and ex-nuns. They must have been out there all along, but they were not at all like the nuns and priests of my childhood: some wore shorts or smoked, and his friend Ruthie swore worse than my Aunt Leonora. From Ruthie, I was learning to spot ex-nuns from five hundred feet away by their sensible walking shoes and their short hair edged along their earlobes.
Franklin was fascinated by people who had not decided by age twelve that they had a calling. “How old were you the first time you let a boy inside you?” he asked one morning when we met by the coffeepot. Branches crowded against the windows, turning the kitchen into a tree house, a secret place where you could live without curtains.
“Fifteen.”
“Where?”
I pointed to my crotch.
He laughed aloud.
“At Freedomland,” I said. “Behind the New Orleans Mardi Gras ride.”
“You’re so brave.”
“You te
ll that to all the teenage girls who come to you for confession?”
“Only you.” Franklin pulled me toward him, hip against hip, as if we were about to pivot in a ballroom tango across the landlady’s yellow-and-orange linoleum. “Remember that jingle? ‘Mommy and Daddy take my hand, take me out to Freedomland, two ninety-five is all you pay in Freedomland all day….’”
Franklin was twelve when he fell off his horse, hit his head on the neighbors’ stone wall, and rose to his knees, unhurt and certain that God wanted him for the priesthood.
“And he wasn’t even Catholic,” his mother told me when Franklin took me to White Plains to meet his parents. “He’d just seen too many young-priest movies.”
His father nodded. “After his riding accident, Franklin insisted on switching to Catholic school. Very uncharacteristic for our Franklin, that level of insistence.”
“Very uncharacteristic,” his mother said.
“Not really,” Franklin said. “You taught me to always be looking for signs.”
His parents glanced at each other, startled, then set their features into expressions of tolerance. Since they were Unitarians, they knew they were supposed to be tolerant. Yet, in the weeks leading to our wedding, they thanked me at least three times for talking Franklin out of being a priest. “We attempted to prevent it.” So much for Unitarian tolerance.
Still, it was more tolerance than Franklin and I got from my relatives—except from Aunt Leonora, of course, who advocates tolerance. For the relatives our marriage was unthinkable—imagine, a divorced woman and a disgraced priest—more unthinkable even that we weren’t allowed to marry inside a Catholic church. And yet, the ceremony, held at the VFW hall that Uncle Victor liked to rent for Festa Liguria, felt weirdly Catholic, not just because our guests included several ex-nuns and ex-priests, but mostly because I was terrified someone would step forward when the justice of the peace asked if there was anyone who had final objections. Every Catholic bride I knew had feared that disruption, and our wedding was made for a legion of bishops to intervene.