was more, much more he wanted to write, but this was his first letter home and he wasn’t sure if it would even reach the little village. It was August 1914, and the war his grandfather had feared was beginning. Besides, he needed to check on Anna. She hadn’t been feeling well the past few mornings and could not keep down the food she ate. He did not know why. He wished he understood women better.
The postman left letters on a table in the boardinghouse foyer for the residents to sort out for themselves.
She felt a stirring within her as she descended the five flights of stairs and saw the envelope Antonio had sent away several months before sitting on the table. At first she couldn’t understand the words stamped on it: LETTER REFUSED.
Then she realized. Pietro must have seen the return address and handed the letter back to il postino, rejecting it as he had his son.
She did not carry it back up the stairs. Instead, she asked the housemistress for an envelope and piece of paper. She stuffed the first letter inside. Carefully she addressed it to Father Infante at Saint Paolo’s Church and enclosed a note asking him to give it personally to Maria Gallini.
Quickly, while her Antonio was still at work, she walked to the post office and paid the twelve cents to the man behind the window. She used the pennies she had saved from the laundry and sewing work she did for the housemistress and other boarders. She added a silent prayer to go with the letter. She wanted to hurry back. Antonio did not like her being out at all, now that he knew she was carrying their child.
When she turned to leave the building, the pain hit her and she collapsed to the floor.
“Mr. Galen, your wife is very sick. I’m afraid the baby came too soon.”
He stammered the question he wanted to scream out: “My wife, Anna, will she…?”
“No, she’ll be all right; she’s a strong woman.”
A little while later he walked out of the charity hospital that cared for the poor and the immigrants of the city.
God is punishing us. We should not have gone to City Hall for a marriage license. We should have gotten a priest’s blessing—and I should have made things right with Papa.
Why hasn’t Mama written?
She sat in the rocking chair on loan from the housemistress. It now had been several months since she had lost the baby. She continued to sew for the lady, and for other boarders who had helped out when she returned home from the hospital. She heard the knock on their door, and then the mistress called out.
“Anna, it’s me, Mrs. Flaherty. I have a letter for you.”
Her heart jumped.
“Come in, Signora Flaherty, come in.”
“Looks important. Got foreign stamps on it, like what my late husband Sean would send me when he went back to Ireland for The Cause. He never returned. Aye, but I’ve told ye that before, haven’t I? Ah me, that man.”
Tears filled the woman’s eyes, but she shrugged, the universal language of women, and wiped them away.
“Maybe it’s from your folks back home?”
She leaned forward to peek at the envelope as she handed it to Anna, who smiled as she took it and saw the name on the upper left corner: Maria Gallini. She opened it quickly and the older lady held her breath as Anna read to herself.
Dearest Anna,
It has been hard here. Your father and my Pietro joined the army four years ago. We have not heard from them. There is a strange sickness, some call it the Spanish flu, and some call it the Hun’s Curse. Please tell Antonio that his grandfather Pasquale caught the sickness. He passed away very quickly. I am not well either. Father Infante is helping me with this.
Go with God, my child.
Another’s handwriting was below.
Maria passed away shortly after this was written.
Pray for us all.
Giuseppe Infante
“Bad news, dear?”
“Si, Signora. Antonio’s mother and grandfather have passed.”
“Oh no! Not after all what’s happened to ye both. I’ll fix something special for when he comes home tonight.”
“Thank you, Signora.”
“Eh, do ye have the sewing ready yet?”
“Si, Signora.”
The Armistice arrived and none too soon. America started drafting eighteen-year-olds less than two months before the war ended, and by then Antonio had come of age. Military service would have moved up his citizenship, but it would have left Anna alone. As it was, though, the foundry was considered an essential industry, and so he managed to avoid the war from which his grandfather had done so much to protect him.
They had moved nearer to his work after Mrs. Flaherty died from the flu that was now raging throughout their adopted country. So far he and Anna had been lucky. Maybe the fumes from the furnaces kept the devils away.
“It is our curse, Antonio.”
His head lay against her chest, his left hand holding hers. Their fourth miscarriage. The loss seared his soul far more than any foundry furnace. Always the bitter taste when you had been so near.
The Roaring Twenties had brought them the hope of minor prosperity. Anna’s scrimping and seamstress work had added enough pennies to their little bit of savings that they had done what their American-born friends had advised them to do: They opened a savings account at the local bank.
Then October 1929 arrived and their meager nest egg vanished when the bank failed.
Now, for the fourth time, she lay on the hard bed in the hospital charity ward run by an order of nuns. The sisters were thorough but compassion was a scarce commodity and she heard them whispering about God’s punishment for living in sin.
“Antonio, I spoke with the priest. He is willing to do the Wedding Mass for us. Please, do this for me.”
His heart had toughened from the hard times and endless workdays. Fortunately, the foundry had stayed open during the years of the Great Depression, and he had risen to senior foundryman. His identification, stamped into each of the tools he made, was Number 3. He was one of the lucky ones because he had a job—though the work was killing him, slowly sucking the very air out of his lungs.
He wanted to pound the walls; he wanted to shout at her, even while she lay there under time-yellowed hospital sheets. His mind screamed as he shook his head. How could his wife still believe in the goodness of God? What kind of God would take children—four angels—from a father and mother?
He buried his face in Anna’s chest. He could not let her see the tears.
Then he felt the touch of her calloused hands on the roughness of his furnace-burnt face and his bitterness dissolved. He could refuse her nothing.
“Si, if it is your wish, cara mia.”
Once more the drums of war resonated across Europe
A voice on the radio announced the news from the Old World that Hitler had annexed the Sudetenland. Austria fell to the charismatic beast without a shot. Soon the world would learn the meaning of the word Blitzkrieg.
She could hardly believe it, but she felt it again, that familiar stirring. She went to the free clinic run by Dr. Agnelli.
“Yes, Anna, you are right, but you are thirty-nine years old. We must watch you very carefully.”
She nodded, dressed, and walked out of the clinic.
A newsboy in knickers shouted, “Peace in our time, Chamberlain says. Peace in our time!”
“Big breaths, Signora