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Vittoria
I shudder, exhaling as I watch the space he just stood. A hint of aftershave lingers as the minutes pass, and I remain sitting on my heels, unable to move.
Hannah Del Campo. Fourteen years old. Dead.
Nameless child to be buried separately.
The field of rich green grass dotted with the brightest yellow flowers flashes in my mind’s eye. The soldier who’d been left to watch me while my dad and brother ran an errand had gone off to piss against the wall of the tiny house. I don’t know how many children that age hold on to memories, but I remember giggling at that before slipping out of the car to pick a bouquet. I thought they were daffodils.
I glance at the dandelions on the table now. The book sits like a dark thing before the limp, dying flowers. I push myself to my feet. My knees feel raw, scratched by the carpet. I sit back down in that chair, and I remember his eyes. The almost unbearable pain I saw inside them when he opened it to that page. To the girl’s photo.
Does your brother still like to fuck little girls?
Nausea swells in my stomach, and the food I ate threatens to come up. I force it down and open the book to that page. I look at the girl’s face. She was pretty with big brown eyes and a dimple in her right cheek as she smiled at the photographer. Although the smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. Inside them is a shadow.
I force myself to read Hannah Del Campo’s obituary. She was at the top of her class at the school she attended, a large public school in a lower-middle class neighborhood of Philadelphia. We had a two-story penthouse just minutes from the neighborhood but a world apart. She loved to dance. Ballet was her favorite, but she’d recently fallen in love with modern dance. The cause of death isn’t stated, but the date is the same as the unnamed child who was stillborn. Did she die in childbirth?
I look at her photo again. She looks too young to have been pregnant. Fourteen is too young. I went to an all-girls catholic school where my every movement was monitored. I know circumstances are different for most people. I know I grew up with a silver spoon in my mouth with a mother who loved me and a father who would dote on me. Who made me feel like the center of the universe. It caused trouble between Lucien and me. Lucien was jealous of our father’s attention, but he was thirteen years older than me. Our father had divorced his mother to marry mine, and I know Lucien resented her and probably me as a product of that love that took his father from his mother.
Blinking, I refocus on Hanna’s photo. Pregnant at fourteen?
Does your brother still like to fuck little girls?
I shake my head and turn the page to read about the fundraiser, smiling when I see my mother’s photo. She’s been gone for a year, and I still miss her every single day.
My mind wanders to Emma at the thought of Mom. She was with her in the car. Was trapped inside it with the dead body of her mother for almost six hours until another car drove by and saw the wreckage. One of the photos the papers had printed showed Emma’s small pink suitcase beside my mother’s larger one lying along the side of the road, the trunk having popped open during the collision. They were almost to Atlanta. I’d been at school most of the day and had so much work to do I’d holed myself up in my bedroom after getting home. When dinnertime came and my dad and I were the only two at the table, he said they’d gone out overnight. A little trip for mommy and daughter. I remember being surprised and a little hurt that I hadn’t been invited. She hadn’t even mentioned it to me.
I flip the pages of the book finding clippings from events my family attended, some with me, through the years. When I get to the one of my mother’s funeral, I stop because a flood of emotion rushes through me. It was raining, the clouds heavy and dark over our heads. I’m wearing a dress similar to the one I’m wearing now and holding little Emma’s hand. She’s wearing black too. She didn’t understand why she had to wear black. I remember how she tried to take the dress off. She’d already stopped talking by then. Hadn’t said a word since they’d found her. We’d thought it was shock, but it’s not.
I can’t imagine what Emma felt during those hours alone in the car with our mother’s body beside her. How scared she must have been out there in the dark all alone. What is she thinking now? Is she wondering where I am? Did she see them take me? See the violence those men did at her father’s funeral? Does she think I’m hurt or worse?
A feeling of hopeless sadness overwhelms me. I close the book and stand to go to the window. It’s a clear night. Emma would count stars with me if she were here. I leave the light in the bathroom on and the door slightly ajar so it’s not full dark. I need to be alert for the next visit by one of the brothers, but I’m tired. Exhausted. So I climb onto the bed and lie down, staring up at the ceiling, wondering what happens next. Wondering if I’ll walk out of this house and get back to Emma. If I’ll walk out at all.
