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“What is it?”
“Blood orange juice and some other things it is best you don’t know about.”
I raised it to my nose and took a whiff. Even though it smelled like something died in the glass I did what she said, swallowing so quickly I hardly tasted it, but still gagging at what was definitely an egg yolk slipping down the back of my throat.
The German woman nudged her husband and shot me another look.
I returned to my room to put on sneakers and sunscreen, having no idea where we might be walking or if a “walk” was code for something else.
“Let’s go!” I heard through the door.
Giusy was halfway down the stairs by the time I grabbed my backpack and made it into the hallway.
The German couple was sitting in the salon with their guidebook and walking sticks. Giusy picked up a picnic basket from behind the front desk and smiled angelically at them. “Have a glorious picnic at the Segesta ruins. I will make your dinner reservations for tonight but do not worry about rushing.” She beckoned me out the front door.
“Germans make me want to stab my own foot,” she exclaimed, pulling out a cigarette once we were a block from the hotel. “Amunì.”
We wound our way through town. It was quieter than the night before, but not as silent and deserted as during siesta.
“During the week many men leave go to work in Sciacca or Palermo. There is little for them to do here. For anyone to do here.”
An overfed man zipped past us on a motor scooter with a broken muffler and smacked Giusy squarely on the ass so hard it had to have left a mark. Giusy didn’t cry out, merely bit her thumb and mumbled, “Faccia da culo.” Face of the ass.
He called out over his shoulder, “Puttana a buon mercato.” Cheap whore.
“What the hell, Giusy?” I said, enraged on her behalf.
She shook her head. “Many men here think they can treat me like shit because they know I live alone.”
The further we walked from town the more rustic the homes became. Some of them were embedded into the rock and seemed to be merely caves with doors and windows added much later. The streets gave way to stairs carved directly into the cliffs. I stumbled, but Giusy never faltered. I rushed to catch up to her, but there was no room to walk side by side. Instead, I ended up behind her, close enough that I could hopefully grab onto her waist if I slid again.
She must have felt how close I was because she started talking again. “Do not feel bad for me. I am used to it. It is the way it is here. I don’t know how it is back in America, but in Sicily we have very... I don’t know how to say it. Pazzi... crazy... absurd... ideas about how a woman should be. Ideas that don’t always agree with one another. It is hard then to know how to act in the world.”
I tried to reach for my own words to explain that I got it, but I was wheezing from the hike. It was the cigarettes and the fact that I hadn’t done any form of real exercise since having a baby four whole years ago. We turned a corner, and the stone walls of a massive castle came into view, but Giusy walked in the other direction.
“Can I sit for a minute?” There was a stitch in my side and a piercing cramp in my stomach. “I feel like I ate a horse for breakfast.”
“You didn’t.” She paused. “Maybe there was some in the soup last night.” She didn’t get my joke or maybe she was making her own. “Keep going. Only a little further.”
In a couple of minutes, we arrived at the entrance to a small cave. Outside it a grove of palm trees perched on a cliff overlooking the pastures below and beyond them the sparkling sea. Giusy settled down on the grass, sitting cross-legged like a child and pulling items from her basket: a crusty loaf of bread, some cheese, and a perfectly ripe avocado.
“I can’t eat another thing.”
“I can.” Giusy tore a piece of the bread apart and smeared the creamy cheese on top of it. “I haven’t had breakfast. I’ve been serving it all morning.”
Heat spread up my neck and across my cheeks while shame stuck in my throat for ignoring her labor. I sat next to her and grabbed a plastic bottle of water that she had thoughtfully packed while I stuffed my face with her food earlier. I knew what it was to serve people. I also knew how invisible a woman could be when she was providing a service. I let Giusy eat.
Her bites were fast and furious and she scowled in between them. She was probably still pissed about that guy slapping her ass.
“Did that hurt? When the guy hit you? The one on the bike?”
“It was nothing. The men in town treat women like whores if there is not a husband around. We cannot escape it.”
“Was your husband from here too?” I asked.
She swallowed what was in her mouth. “No. I met him down in Sciacca when I went there to study at a liceo linguistico. Orlando was a bouncer at the beach club and a low-level goon for some crime boss. I was very good in the school. High marks. I wanted to be a translator, so I studied English, German, French. Translator is a job they pay good money for on the mainland. But there was no money for college. Then my parents died within two weeks of one another the summer I graduated from school. The hotel was passed down to me.”
“At least you got the hotel. And an old palace at that?”
