I want to be happy!”
She started stroking me and kissing me.
“Oh, my poor darling, how could you be happy? Pietà! You can never be happy!”
I got furious. “I can so be happy!” I yelled, hitting the nun’s chest with my small fists as I struggled to free myself from her ominous embrace.
But how could I expect to be happy when I didn’t know what awaited me? How much longer could I be carried? What would happen to me when I grew up? What would my destiny be?
In Riposto, every girl learned at an early age that “a woman’s destiny” was to get married and have children. Unless, of course, she was too ugly to find a man who would marry her. Then, she could become a nun or, horror of horrors, end up a zitella, an old maid.
At an early age, I learned that getting married and having children was not my destiny. The message came across quite clear, though never loud; it came in hushed tones and sighs. Since I was not like other girls, I couldn’t grow up to be like other women.
The other girls, who came to our house to play with me once in a while, didn’t bother using hushed tones. They played with my dolls, dressing and undressing them. They unbuttoned their own shirts and held the dolls’ heads against their pink nipples, like they had seen nursing women do. I tried to do the same.
“No,” one of the older girls objected. “My mother says you shouldn’t play with dolls. You should give us your dolls because we need to practice. You’re never going to get married and have children. You’re crippled, ciunca.”
The others chimed in. How could I argue against them?
If I were ugly, I could at least become a nun or an old maid. I didn’t understand why the other girls thought being a nun or an old maid was so horrible. The nuns seemed content enough to teach us children, do their chores, and pray. I didn’t think the nuns were ugly, at least not all of them. They all spoke of Christ as their husband. I didn’t understand how that could be. But I figured, even if I were ugly, Christ wouldn’t want me as a wife. He already had all those nuns. He didn’t need another wife—especially not a crippled one.
The only old maid I knew, a distant cousin of my mother’s, seemed rather nice and not at all ugly. But whenever she came over, it was to ask for money.
“Why doesn’t she have any money?” I asked my mother.
“Because she has no husband” was always the answer.
If I couldn’t have a husband and children, like other women, what could I do? I couldn’t go around asking relatives for money, since I couldn’t walk. I didn’t know any women who worked outside of their homes. I had heard some women cleaned rich people’s houses. I knew I’d never be able to do that. My mother, who was an expert with needle and thread, told me women could earn money as seamstresses. She tried to teach me to sew, but I hated it. I pricked my finger with the needle and got blood on the cloth.
When I was in third grade, a young woman came to work as a teacher at the convent. I was surprised because I thought only nuns could be teachers. She had long hair, which she wore in a ponytail. I fell in love with her and decided I would not let my mother cut my hair anymore, and I would be a teacher. My heart was broken when she didn’t come back the next year. I heard the nuns say she had gotten married. So I let my mother cut my hair short again, and I called myself stupid for thinking I could be a teacher when I couldn’t walk.
In school I was a model student, the nuns’ pride and joy. The other children resented me. “My mother says the nuns give you good grades because you’re a cripple,” they sneered. Or: “My mother says you study because you can’t do anything else.”
My progress in school seemed to make my father happy. Other girls’ fathers didn’t care how their daughters did in school. With their sons, it was a different story. Was my father glad I could use my brain, since my body was no good?
I was constantly trying to figure out what my father had in mind for me. He seemed to be making plans. But what were they?
My father had been taking me to doctors and hospitals since I was quite small. We had been to Catania, Messina, Rome, and Bologna. Rome and Bologna were far. It took many hours for the train to get there, crossing the straight on a ferry and going through many dark tunnels.
In Rome, my parents and I stayed with cousins who lived there. A few times, my father carried me to the Trevi Fountain so I could throw in a coin. I liked being in Rome, though I was always nervous knowing that, without a doubt, I would be taken to a doctor.
Doctors scared me, because they always hurt me. One doctor in Messina gave me shock treatments to regenerate the nerves in my spine. The shocks went through my body like a thousand snakes on fire, burning and biting me inside, making me shake all over and pee on the treatment table. I was already big enough to feel embarrassed about peeing. After we got home, for weeks my mother squeezed aloe leaves on the blisters that formed on my back.
In Rome, the doctors made braces for me, but I never learned to walk with them. My mother put them on me, lacing them, starting at my feet and going all the way up my thighs. Then, holding me under my arms, she stood me up. I learned to keep my balance by holding tightly on to my mother’s hand.
“Look how tall you are!” she exclaimed, but I didn’t care.
“They hurt my legs, Mamma.”
When I got those braces, my mother, in order to hide them, made me a pair of pants. I must have been the only little girl in Sicily who wore pants. The other children laughed at me, but I rather liked wearing pants. The best thing about the braces was that when she took them off, my mother always massaged my legs. The doctor in Catania told her massage was the best therapy. I loved to feel my mother’s cool hands moving up and down my thighs and shins. Then she tickled my feet and made me laugh.
The braces made me too heavy for my mother. She put them on me less and less frequently, and when I grew out of them, I didn’t get new ones. But even when I stopped using the braces, she had me wear pants.
“This way, people can’t see your legs.”
My mother’s words forced me to pay closer attention to my legs. I noticed they weren’t growing as fast as the rest of my body. They seemed smaller and thinner than the legs of other girls my age. In place of calf muscles, I had only soft flesh. My mother thought it best to keep my legs hidden, because she was ashamed of them. So I learned to be ashamed of them, too.
If I had to choose between going to doctors or being taken by one of my grandmothers and my aunts to healers and witches, I’d choose the witches. Oh, they scared me, but it was an exciting kind of scared. All they did was say funny words, rub my legs with weird-smelling herbs, or have me drink something bitter. They didn’t hurt me like the doctors did.
I never thought they could make me walk, but I secretly wished they would teach me how to fly. Some people swore they’d seen the witches flying in a circle, holding on to one another’s hands in the dark of night! My grandmother said that wasn’t true. But I liked picturing the circle of flying witches. What a great game it seemed. Even better than girotondo, ring around the rosie, which all the girls loved and the boys snubbed. Once in a while, I played girotondo. My mother sat me in a chair in the middle of the circle and I sang along, watching the other girls go around me.
Whether I was taken to doctors or witches, it was clear to me that I was no good the way I was, ciunca. I needed to be fixed. I wished my father could fix me himself, like he fixed everything else. The people who loved me—my parents, my grandparents, all my relatives—none of them wanted me to be the way I was. Only the nuns thought I should accept my destiny and offer my suffering to the Lord. But they agreed such a destiny was a cruel one.
My father worked hard and saved money so he could take me to the best hospitals and the best doctors. Every time we went to a new doctor, his hope was renewed, only to turn into disappointment afterward.
“Italian doctors are