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“We know.” He flicked his hand in a little shooing motion toward the ground. “Go.”
The last thing I wanted to do was lie face down on my belly and shimmy under this wire, but they were giving me the option to escape, no matter how humiliating, and I had no choice but to take it. I tried to squirm my way through the barbs as quickly as I could, aware of my shorts sliding up the backs of my thighs and the men laughing. But once I was through, blood dripping down the backs of my legs, they made no further move to chase me. I didn’t turn back again as I walked to the car, but I heard one of them grumble at my back. He said it in English to make sure I understood.
“Women like you disappear every day here.”
FOURTEEN
SERAFINA
I woke to the sound of women’s voices all around me. They’d been coming and going since Paola drove me as far as she could up the hill to Rosalia’s and then carried me the rest of the way.
“She is coming around,” I heard the old woman announce as I tried to open my eyes. My entire body ached. When I tried to sit up a sharp pain stabbed me in the side, reminding me of Carmine’s boot to my ribs.
“Be still, my girl,” Rosalia whispered. I kept my head on the pillow and looked around the room. They were all there: Paola, Gaetana, Saverina, Leda, Tonina, Ninetta, Vincenza. Only Cettina was missing. Everyone sat around the old wooden table sipping from glasses and mugs, their faces stoic.
“We were so afraid for you,” Paola said.
“Thank you for getting me here.” I coughed out the words. It was not easy to breathe, but there was no blood.
“Who did this to you?” Paola blurted out. What was safe to tell her or to tell these women now? And why wasn’t Cettina here? What did she know about what her brother had done to me? So many questions swirled through my mind. Chief among them was whether I would put my friends in danger if I told them what really happened. So I just shook my head. “Could I have some water?”
Rosalia lifted a glass of cool liquid to my parched lips. My intestines clenched in pain after I swallowed but I took it all.
“Three of your rib bones are broken,” Rosalia explained. “And there is a nasty gash on your head, but I stopped the bleeding.” She rose and fetched more water from the pitcher and looked me straight in the eye as I began to drink. “Did you fall?”
I knew what she was doing. She had always known things she could not know and now she wanted to protect me from revealing too much.
“I fell.”
“Donkey shit,” Paola said. “You didn’t fall.”
“I fell,” I insisted, staring into Rosalia’s eyes to search for more words. “I was birthing a foal, the mother was in pain. She kicked me in the ribs, and I fell backward onto a rock and hit my head.” The old woman gave me this story, planted it in my head. I was certain of it.
—
Carmine went missing after the day he attacked me. And it was a long time before he would tell anyone of my involvement in the money man’s death, a long time before he would assign me the blame.
I rested for a week and then went about my life. My bandaged ribs ached with every movement, but the bruises were hidden by clothes and they would heal in time. The missing patch of hair on my scalp disappeared beneath my scarf and I tended to the wound as best as I could late at night so the children wouldn’t see it.
I waved to Marco on my way to the market one morning. He appeared restless, uneasy. His lips parted as if he wanted to speak, but he stayed silent as I passed.
It was a surprise when there was a knock on my door later that evening, well after my boys were in bed. I was stretched out on the rug reading in front of the fire, a novel that Maestro Falleti had slipped me, something by a woman named Elvira Mancuso. A woman writer! La Maestra Annuzza, the story of a woman who chooses to forgo marriage to become a teacher. It read to me like a fantasy, and I was so absorbed in the story that the knock on my door startled me before sending a rush of adrenaline through my veins. I feared it was Carmine, or maybe the Black Hand back from the dead. I did not want to answer it, but a knock this late could also mean that there was a medical emergency, that someone, most likely a woman or a child, needed me. I pulled myself away from the warmth of the fire and glanced in the corner to make sure I had a bag packed with medical supplies. Then I wrapped my fingers around the handle of the carving knife I had left on the counter after preparing dinner.
Panic rose in my breast. I kept the knife hidden behind my back as I went to the door, gripping it harder as I peered through the tiny peephole.
“Marco?”
I ushered him through the door, taking care to look down the street for gossiping mouths. It was a Saturday night and laughter still rang off the stone walls from the piazza several blocks away, but our street was blessedly empty.
Marco gently gripped my waist, his hands brushing against the many bandages binding my wounds beneath my thin linen nightgown.
“Who hurt you?” he asked as I winced at his touch.
“Who told you?”
“Cettina. She has worried herself into a fever about it.”
I wondered who had told her and why she hadn’t come herself.
