“Angela is not alone,” Madam C said. “She is with you all the time. And with me. And with all the people who loved her. She can see you from up in heaven, and that’s all that matters to her.” She paused. “Dead people are not really dead if you keep thinking of them and loving them as if they were alive.”
Rosa gave a sigh of relief. She hadn’t liked the idea of Angela being locked up in a casket at all. Much better for her to be in heaven, she thought, flying free with the angels, so she could keep visiting her husband in the hut across the ocean. She moaned when Madam C kissed her on the cheek, then fell into a dreamless sleep.
When September came, Madam C enrolled Rosa in a different school. It was larger than Miss Bevilacqua’s home school, with about thirty children divided into four grades based on their skills, not their ages. The school was in Salita Santa Caterina, a beautiful old, steep street that led to a large piazza with trees. To be admitted, children needed a recommendation, and Madam C obtained one from Beppe Marenco, owner of ships and warehouses and a faithful client of the Luna. Based on her reading and writing abilities, Rosa placed in third grade. She sat next to Clarissa, a girl her age, who asked her how she had learned to read. Rosa explained that she had learned at Miss Bevilacqua’s school, which she had to leave because Miss Bevilacqua didn’t like what she wrote.
“Now I know why you look so familiar,” Clarissa said. “My older sister Lara used to go to Miss Bevilacqua’s school. I saw you a few times walking down the hallway, while I was waiting for Lara with my mom.”
At dinner, Clarissa told her parents that one of her classmates, who had long red hair, used to go to Miss Bevilacqua’s school. At once, the parents recognized from that description the girl who had written the essay about the ten mothers. “Santa Maria,” the father exclaimed. “Stay away from her. That girl lives in a brothel!”
By the end of the first week of school, all the kids knew that the girl with red hair had ten mothers and lived in a brothel. Most kids didn’t know the meaning of the word brothel, so legends began to flourish: that a brothel was a place where one hid from the police, a place where homeless people could sleep on the floor if they helped with the chores, a dungeon guarded by giant spiders. One of the older boys set things straight for everyone one morning. “A brothel is where men go to spend the night with prostitutes.”
“What are prostitutes?” a second boy asked in dismay.
The older boy explained. “They are women who walk around with no clothes, and if you give them money, you can poke at them with your fingers.”
Clarissa said, “Is that what Rosa’s ten mothers are? Prostitutes?”
That was how Rosa earned her nickname, Prostitutes’ Daughter. Before the second week of school was over, all the children called her that when she walked by. “Hello, Prostitutes’ Daughter.”
“Prostitutes’ Daughter!” they chanted. “Prostitutes’ Daughter!”
Rosa didn’t know the meaning of the word prostitute, but figured it must be something bad if the kids made fun of her that way. For the first time, she felt scared, and because she felt scared, she didn’t have the courage to ask Madam C or the girls what that nickname meant. She cried often, at the Luna and in school, and when Madam C or her teacher asked her what was wrong, she said, “Nothing,” and turned her face away. “She’s still growing,” Madam C told the girls, who were worried sick about Rosa.
The rumors about Rosa spread quickly beyond the student body. The children’s parents began to talk, as did the parents’ neighbors. Gossip was fueled by Miss Bevilacqua, who over the summer had told everyone she knew about Rosa and her essay, unable to get over the fact that the elegant lady she had thought a governess was in reality a Madam, who had duped her over and over with her stories.
Soon Miss Cipollina, the school’s direttrice, got wind of Rosa’s nickname and gave Rosa a note to take home. In the note, she asked that Rosa’s mother (whom Miss Cipollina believed to be Madam C) come to school the following day for a consultation. As she gave Madam C the note, Rosa broke into tears. “I don’t want to go to that school,” she sobbed, “or to any other school. The kids make fun of me. They call me Prostitutes’ Daughter.”
In a fury, Madam C took the note and ripped it into shreds, then ran upstairs to the third floor. The third floor was the Luna’s smallest, with only two rooms—a sitting room and a bedroom. These were Madam C’s private quarters. The walls of both rooms were painted off-white and the windows had pale yellow curtains Madam C had chosen in memory of the dress Angela had given her on that long-ago night. The sitting room had a fireplace that had been out of order for years. On its marble mantel, Madam C kept mementos of her life: a hand-painted vase with a lid that had belonged to her mother, a purple scented candle that had belonged to Angela, letters from old lovers tied gently with a ribbon of white satin, stones she had picked up on the beach over the years. Santina had specific orders not to dust or touch those objects in any way. Next to the fireplace was an iron enameled tub with lion feet where Madam C took hot baths when her nerves needed calming. The second room, the bedroom, was a place once reserved for the Luna’s best clients. Madam C had stopped entertaining men there the moment Rosa had begun climbing stairs.
This day, holding the pieces of Miss Cipollina’s note in front of her, Madam C kneeled in front of the fireplace, which was what she did when she wanted to ask Angela for inspiration. “Angela, dear,” she said, fighting back tears, “there are only two things we can do. One is to send Rosa away from the Luna, to live with a respectable family, so she won’t have to worry ever again about what people say. The second is to keep her here, forget about school, and teach her to be proud of who we are. What do you say?”
Five minutes later, Madam C was back downstairs. She found Rosa in the kitchen, sobbing in Annaclara’s arms. “I’m going to that school and I’m going to chop some of those kids’ tongues off with an ax,” Annaclara said with a wicked grin.
“You will do no such thing,” Madam C stated. “Rosa? You don’t have to go back to school if you don’t want to. But if you decide not to, you must promise me you’ll keep reading.”
“I’ll read anything,” Rosa said, drying her tears. “Just keep me here, please.”
“I’ll go buy books later today,” Madam C said, leaving the room. She stopped at the doorway. “And you,” she told Annaclara, “take this lady out for an ice cream.”
By the following morning, Rosa’s tears had disappeared. “This is a new life for you,” Madam C told her when she got up. She pointed to a pile of ten books. “In the afternoon you’ll read, and in the morning you’ll have chores and duties like everybody else around here. You’ll do the shopping, you’ll go to the fountain with the girls to do the wash, and you’ll help Santina clean the rooms.”
“Does that mean that I can go to the second floor?” Rosa asked, half naughty, half surprised.
“Only in the morning.”
“And you want me to go shopping all by myself?”
“Do you think you can do it?” Madam C asked.
“I don’t know,” Rosa whispered.
“Angela did it when she was your age. She delivered the clothes her mother mended.”
Rosa squared her shoulders. “I can do it.”
“Good. Just stay on our shopping route.”
Rosa brought her right hand to her temple. “Sissignora,” she said, giving Madam C a big smile.
She settled into her new routine with ease. She woke up at eight in the morning, helped Santina for an hour with the cleaning chores, had colazione in the kitchen with the girls, and then went to see Madam C, who gave her a daily list of things to buy. “Got it,” she’d tell Madam C as she rushed out of the Luna into the street. Her first stop was the vegetable stand, where she picked out fresh vegetables and ripe fruit; then she moved to the fishmonger cart, where she made sure the fish she bought