of such important people in her home school would add to her reputation and make her business grow.
“Don’t talk to Rosa about her parents, please,” Madam C said with an imploring voice. “She’s heartbroken, and any mention of their trip will make her cry.”
“You can count on me, Miss Paraggi. My lips are sealed.”
Madam C took Rosa to Miss Bevilacqua’s the following day. Rosa, then seven years old, dressed like a perfect young lady, was not thrilled at all, because going to school meant the end of her morning passeggiate to the port. She said nothing against it, however, because she knew she had to get her education, whatever that meant, before being able to ride one of those ships and cross the ocean. Hand in hand with Madam C, Rosa stood at the door of the classroom and looked around. For the first time she was seeing a room filled with children. She stared at them with her curious eyes, intrigued by their different looks, expressions, and voices. “Come in, sweetheart,” Miss Bevilacqua said with an exaggerated smile. “Children, let’s all say, ‘Hello, Miss Rosa.’”
Rosa was a fast learner. Miss Bevilacqua attributed her amazing progress to her good upbringing, unaware of the fact that Rosa was learning as fast as she could in order to cross the ocean. After two months in the classroom, Rosa could read and write, and had caught up with the older children and even left a few behind. She was a respectful, neat young lady, and Miss Bevilacqua couldn’t stop saying good things about her to the governess when she came to pick up Miss Rosa at noon. One day, a few months later, Miss Bevilacqua gave the four children who could write best an assignment: write about your mother and father. She had remembered Madam C’s request that Miss Rosa’s parents not be mentioned, but concluded that after that much time had gone by, surely those wonderful parents must be back from their trip and living with their daughter. The following day Rosa showed up with two wide-ruled pages beautifully handwritten with her ink pen. Miss Bevilacqua asked the four children to read their essays aloud, beginning with Miss Rosa. Rosa stood up and read her composition with pride: “I have ten mothers and no father, but there are lots of men who come to my house to play a game. They are not very smart, so they lose all the time and pay my mothers money. My favorite mother is Madam C, but I also love Carla, Francesca, and Annaclara a lot. They tell me stories and show me their rooms, where they play the game. Madam C doesn’t know. Luckily, or I would be in trouble.”
The children in the classroom loved the story. As for Miss Bevilacqua, she showed the governess the essay at the end of class and asked for an explanation. Madam C looked at Rosa with sweet eyes. “You naughty girl. Making up stories again? I can’t believe it.” She turned to Miss Bevilacqua. “This child has the wildest imagination.”
Miss Bevilacqua didn’t buy it. “I’d like to meet her parents, if you don’t mind. They must be back from South America by now.”
Rosa looked at the two women with wondering eyes.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Madam C said, dragging Rosa outside.
“What was that about?” Rosa asked on the way home.
“Never mind, darling. We’ll just have to find you another school. It’s May already, so we won’t have to worry about it until summer ends.”
“I don’t want another school. I want to go on a ship to America.”
“You will someday,” Madam C said, caressing Rosa’s hair. “It may be a while.”
Rosa wasn’t quite sure what had gone wrong with her essay that day. She had told the truth, which is what Madam C always said she should do at all times, but after she was finished reading, Miss Bevilacqua had snatched her paper and said, “Dio Santo!” And now Madam C wanted to send her to a different school. That night, in the peace of her bedroom, Rosa struggled to fall asleep. She had this funny tingling in her gut that told her that there was something strange about her life. After reading her story, she had heard the stories the three other children had written, and she had gathered from what they had read that they all had one mother and one father, who lived together in a house where no one came to play games. Then one of the girls in the class had told her during recess that for a child to be born there must be a mother and a father, who are called husband and wife, so her story of ten mothers and no father had to be fake for sure. Three days after her last day in Miss Bevilacqua’s school, Madam C walked with Rosa to the port. While they watched the ships coming and going, Rosa asked, “Who’s my real mother? And where’s my father?”
Madam C sighed. They sat on a bench, facing the blue water. She took Rosa’s hand and said, “I knew you’d ask someday. Now I’ll tell you the story of how you were born.” They spent a long time on that bench talking and crying. When they got up to return home, Rosa knew that she had been born on the second floor of the Luna, in the room Carla had now, that Angela was her mother, that Madam C had been Angela’s friend all her life, that Angela and Madam C had played the game together for years, and that while Angela was dying Madam C had promised her that she would take care of her baby as if she were her own. “I also promised Angela I would give you an education, so come September, you’re back in school, Signorina.”
“What about the girls who live in our house?” Rosa asked. “Who are they?”
“Friends,” Madam C whispered, “who love you very much.”
“And my father?”
“Angela told me your father was a fisherman,” Madam C lied, “who worked on a boat. She said he’d be back soon, certainly in time for your birth. Maybe something happened to his boat. There are storms out there, you know. He would have loved you to pieces, I’m sure.”
“Have you met him?” Rosa asked.
“No,” Madam C replied. “I would have liked to.”
Rosa pondered a little. “So would I.”
“I love you,” Madam C said with soft eyes.
Rosa nodded and held on to Madam C’s hand tight. “Did Angela have red hair like mine?”
“She did,” Madam C lied again. “Red and wild.”
That summer, Rosa’s fantasies about the ships became more frequent, growing richer and longer every time. She imagined that the ships that crossed the ocean went to mysterious lands, where people talked funny languages and the towns were populated by humongous tame animals, trees with rainbow-colored leaves, and little birds with red-and-blue eyes who could talk to the fish in the water. Her father lived there, in a hut by the ocean. He was poor. All he had to eat was his catch, and that’s why he hadn’t come back to Genoa to see her. And then she imagined Angela with her red hair, flying over the hut like an angel and blowing her husband kisses when he was close by. She dreamed while she was at the port and also while she was at the Luna, when she sat at the kitchen table for the colazione, when she watched Antonia peel and dice potatoes, and when she stood by the parlor window looking outside. “She’s growing,” Madam C said of Rosa’s long silences and dreamy eyes. “That’s hard to do.”
The girls did all they could to make Rosa smile. They took her along when they went shopping, lent her hats and bracelets, told her all sorts of stories about their lives. One day, while Rosa and Annaclara were buying glass beads to make a necklace, Rosa saw for the first time a casket being carried out of a building and a crowd of teary people waiting in the street. Rosa asked what was going on. “It’s a funeral,” explained Annaclara, who didn’t believe in sparing children the truths of life. “When someone dies, they put the body in that box, a casket. The people you see around the casket must be the dead person’s friends, because they are sad.”
“Where are they taking the casket?” asked Rosa.
“To the cemetery,” Annaclara replied, “which is a large beautiful meadow where all the dead people rest. They lie in spaces called tombs, underground, so they can smell the earth. And then their friends can visit them, so they don’t feel alone.”
That night, when Madam C put her to sleep, Rosa asked, “Is Angela at the cemetery? In a tomb?”
Madam