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The words she used to describe her passion for healing tugged at something in me. She loved her work as much as I had loved mine. Her pride was palpable in every sentence.
I collapsed to the floor in awe the first time I held the small frame of the infant as it gasped its first breath. I shouldn’t be allowed to do this, I thought. I don’t deserve this honor.
It’s how I always felt about feeding people, about nourishing them.
And then there was Marco. I blushed when I read the passages about Marco. They were imbued with a passion that Serafina never once used to describe her husband in the one or two lines where she wrote of him at all. Gio, as she called him, was nearly a ghost in her story. I could picture Marco from Serafina’s many descriptions—his raven-black hair, his broad chest, thick lips. It was more than that though. It was his kindness that truly stood out, the things he did to protect his people. He refused to tax the citizens of Caltabellessa at the rates Palermo asked for. He found ways to get excess food stores to the poorest among them. According to Serafina, he wrote long letters to the husbands who went to America reminding them to send money home to support their families.
And yet despite what Giusy had told me about Serafina being an adulteress, there was no proof in Serafina’s written words of her actually committing to anything besides a fantasy. But, there were pages missing, ripped violently from the worn leather binding.
The most striking entries were the ones about her friendship with a woman she referred to only as C., about the intense love and devotion she felt for the other woman. Their friendship was a refuge of care and support, salted through with moments both tender and violent. Serafina wrote of pulling C. out of her young husband’s grave as C. sobbed that she would rather be buried alive with his corpse than live without him. C. was there for the birth of all of Serafina’s children, sleeping in her bed to care for her and the babies in the postpartum weeks. My only parallel to that kind of devotion was what I felt for my sister, or for Aunt Rose. I’d worked so hard to be successful in a world dominated by men that meaningful connections with women fell by the wayside. I’d never had many close girlfriends, something I regretted only now, as a grown woman, when I could use more witnesses and confessors to assure me I hadn’t made all the wrong decisions.
As I devoured Serafina’s moments of joy, as her words turned her into flesh, I tried not to think about what else I knew about her, about the police report detailing her untimely end. Her neck would be tied to a stake, her bones would be shattered, her skin would be slashed. I tried to keep those images out of my mind, but it was impossible. The end of her story haunted every page.
—
When I woke up the next morning the diary was splayed open on my chest. I tucked Serafina’s book in between my mattress and the box spring and headed down to breakfast.
In the dining room Giusy appeared in front of me with a steaming cappuccino and a slightly amused expression on her face. She leaned in and kissed me on both cheeks. Her easy intimacy disarmed me.
“You slept in,” she said.
“You must not have slept much.”
“I do not need more than a few hours. Il mattino ha l’oro in bocca.”
“The morning has gold in its mouth?” I translated the jumble of words.
“How do you say in English? It is like the importance of waking up early to catch the worm.”
“Yeah, but the worm makes sense.”
“It’s disgusting. Wouldn’t you rather have gold in the mouth than a slimy filthy worm?” She laughed, baring all her teeth.
I looked at her carefully, wondering when she returned from Luca’s restaurant and if she noticed that I had been in her apartment. If she missed the diary she didn’t let on. She looked unaccountably no worse for the wear. In fact, she was fresher than ever. Her skin a little rosier, her hair a wild mane of sandy beachy curls, a wide smile on her lips. Did she get laid last night?
“Are you going to go to Palermo to deal with your passport?” she asked, taking a sip from my coffee cup before handing it to me.
“Yeah. I’m gonna leave after I eat something.”
“I wish I could come with you, but I have another couple checking in any minute. It is busy for us. Five guests. That’s the most I will ever have in a hotel of ten rooms. You see why the hotel does not work for me. I want to burn it all to the ground.”
“You could do that. Burn it down.” I had no doubt that she could and she would.
“Then I’d be poor and homeless. Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. There is a bus that you can take. They leave from Sciacca but you can take the taxi from right outside the city wall to Sciacca and make the late-afternoon bus and be in Palermo tonight.”
“Thanks.” I sipped the cappuccino. It was perfect.
“While you’re gone, I’ll find out more about when the town council will meet to discuss your property.”
I had so much to confront her about: the diary, her cousin owning the land next our family plot, her weird dossier on me.
But before I could say anything the German husband beckoned Giusy to their table with a guttural grunt and she swished away to attend to them.
My fingers fluttered up to the Band-Aid on my head. Giusy hadn’t mentioned it. Could someone already have told her how I hurt myself? Her cousin? I began to walk over to her to ask all the things but then I saw a new couple walk through the front door and into the lobby and I knew Giusy had no more time to spend on me.
Xanax helped to quell the tightness in my chest and I felt lighter as I packed a bag for my journey. Momentum will do that to you. The potential for money and security will do that to you. I threw in a pair of jeans, a couple of tank tops, a bikini, because why not. Maybe I would go to the damn beach and try to enjoy myself for a couple of days. I considered bringing the diary along for safekeeping but decided it would be safest if it stayed tucked under my mattress.
I jumped as the church bells in the town square ushered in a new hour and suddenly I was eager to get out of this village where everyone kept reminding me to watch my back.
