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Over the years Cetti and I talked many times about her making a trip across the ocean to see me, but cancer took her before she could make the journey.
By the end of my life I truly believe I did accomplish the things old Rosalia thought I could accomplish. Each time I learned something new I felt she was with me. She was there when I assisted in an open-heart surgery as a licensed nurse. She was there each time I set a bone or placed a newborn baby in one of those new incubators that kept them warm and healthy. She was there when I got my degree and walked across the stage clutching it to my chest at the age of fifty-five, joy and pride coursing through my veins.
I never saw my husband or my boys again, but I made sure that I saw my daughter’s face before I died. The month after I was diagnosed with an illness I knew would take me within the year, I traveled up to Philadelphia on a train. I always felt like the richest woman in the world when I traveled on a train, and throughout my years in America I had ridden them as far away as Florida and San Francisco. America certainly was as magical as all those advertisements in the newspapers had promised. Every city sparkled with a different kind of possibility.
Rosalia’s home address in the Poconos was easy enough to find in the white pages. After arriving in Philadelphia, I rented a car to drive the two hours into the mountains.
I pulled up to Rosalia’s house in the middle of town, the house that would have been mine if I had come to America with my husband. I did not have a plan for what I would do. I worried I would be overcome the moment I saw her, that I would rush out of the car and run to her, tell her I was her mamma, and scare the hell out of the poor woman, then well into middle age. She might call the police, tell them a crazy old lady had escaped from the senior home and someone needed to come take her away.
No, I could control myself. I had controlled so many things for so long.
She walked out of her door soon after I pulled the car behind a hedge in front of her neighbor’s home. She was fifty-four that year, yet she carried herself like a much younger woman, head held high, bright red lipstick curled into a smile as she sauntered out to her own car, a black Mustang convertible. When she got in, she put the top down and turned the radio up so loud I could hear it down the street. I didn’t know the song, but it was something catchy and I watched in awe as she shimmied and danced in the front seat of her car, performing for no one, moving her body only for herself.
Tears pricked my eyes. A tremble of sorrow traveled through me. I felt the weight of her small body in my arms from the last time I held her. Despite the heady rush of nostalgia and longing, I was content just watching her. I never could have imagined this woman, not in my wildest dreams. She was so much more than I ever expected.
I hid, lied, and disappeared to create this marvel, this brilliant, educated, independent woman singing alone in her car in front of a house that she owned, a woman beholden to no man. I saved myself, but I also gave my daughter the chance to be her own person.
I watched her for maybe a minute more before she pulled out of her driveway, checked her lipstick in her rearview mirror, and blew herself a kiss.
