“Goats represent prosperity,” Stella explained. “And a house is a place where people come together. A house on fire is a sign of hatred.”
“I don’t hate anybody,” Rosa said with a smile. She turned to Madam C. “But if you keep hurting me with that comb…”
Madam C dipped her fingers in Rosa’s hair and fluffed it twice. “All done, dear. And don’t you worry about Stella’s goats. You’ll have a prosperous life, and we all love you to pieces.”
“Any last minute birthday wishes?” Margherita asked.
Rosa shook her head, wishing quietly and with all her heart that Angela were there, to help her with the party and be the one to comb and fluff her hair. “How can you love so much someone you’ve never met?” she had asked Maddalena earlier that day.
“Love is strange, dear,” Maddalena had replied. “The elders in my family used to say it’s a Gypsy spirit that wanders endlessly about the earth touching people’s hearts as it passes by. True or not, it’s a fact that love can play major tricks with your head. But you shouldn’t worry about loving Angela, because we all know that she loved you madly before you were born.”
“Sometimes I can feel her next to me,” Rosa had added. “I talk to her as if she were in the room.”
“Maybe she is in the room with you,” Maddalena had whispered. “We don’t really know what happens to people after they die.”
Rosa had nodded. She never told Maddalena or anyone else inside or outside the Luna that at night she often dreamed of being in a warm darkness inside Angela’s womb, feeling her movements and hearing the sound of her voice. And then she started kicking and elbowing her way out of the darkness, until she felt heat on her face and saw a ray of sunshine. To Rosa, the story of Angela’s life and of how she had given birth to her child was like a fairy tale. She was certain she didn’t have all the details. Madam C had told her portions of the story, and in the rooms of the Luna, over the years, Rosa had overheard other bits and pieces. In any case, for whatever reason, Rosa had grown up feeling that her mother was always by her side.
There had been no heat or sunshine on the day Rosa was born. It was 1894, a gray and cold spring day, rare in that region of Italy known for its temperate climate and clear, sunny skies. Madam C and her girls had waited on the second floor of the Luna, in the hallway outside the corner bedroom, for Angela to give birth with the help of a midwife. They heard the moans and the screams, the midwife’s orders to push and not to push, and then the loudest scream of all followed by the squeaks of the newborn. A moment later, the midwife came out of the bedroom, holding the little bundle that would be Rosa. It wasn’t a happy event, by any means. Angela died three days later because of an infection that spread fast and uncontrolled through her abused body. Like Madam C, she had been a prostitute most of her adult life and had no family or friends other than Madam C and the girls who worked at the Luna. So was it that Madam C, who was not fond of children and had sworn many times she wouldn’t raise one, nevertheless found herself a mother. She did the best she could under the circumstances: she named the child after Angela’s favorite color; for Rosa, she set aside a room at the Luna on the first floor, in the back, behind the kitchen, as far away as possible from the parlor and the rooms where the girls worked with the clients; she devoted a significant portion of her free time to play with Rosa; and every evening she sat by Rosa’s bed and sang her to sleep. She owed it to Angela, and, to paraphrase her, there was nothing else to say.
Angela and Madam C went back a long time. They had been born one year apart in the same shabby building on Vico Caprettari, Angela the only child of a single mother, Madam C, Clotilde in those days, the only daughter in a family of seven: her mother, her father, Clotilde, and four loud boys. She was the youngest child. Vico Caprettari was a caruggio few people knew beyond those who had family there and those who called it home. It was dark, narrow, and impregnated with the smells of seaweed, garbage, and minestrone. It was a world apart, with tall buildings stuck to each other to mark its boundaries, ensuring that the world of the neighboring streets would not seep over.
Clotilde’s family lived in three rooms on the seventh floor, with stairs so steep and narrow Clotilde’s father, a tall, strong man with shoulders much wider than his waist, had to climb sideways, and the younger children had to climb on all fours or they wouldn’t reach the steps. Angela and her mother had one room on the first floor, darker than a manhole. As a child, Angela used to hang out with Clotilde and her siblings in the dirty street, chasing pigeons. None of them went to school. One after the other, as soon as they were strong enough to lift, the boys went to work with their father in one of the warehouses by the docks; the girls were not educated, period. Angela’s mother was a seamstress, and she had done that for so long in that dark room on the first floor that her eyes were failing. When Angela was old enough to find her way around the maze of the caruggi, about seven, she made pickups and deliveries of clothes, sheets, and bedspreads for her mother. The rest of the time, she sat quietly next to her and watched those swift hands push the needle in and out of hems and buttonholes. At eight, Angela did her first repair all by herself: a white linen sheet, thin and torn in the middle, where someone’s body had been lying at night for years. As she mended, she thought she would meet this person someday, certainly a fat woman, and she would tell her to her face, “I know what you did to that sheet with your big behind.”
Meanwhile, on the seventh floor, Clotilde and her mother worked around the clock to keep their men fed and clean. They scrubbed, cooked, washed, ironed, and made beds. With all their chores, Angela and Clotilde had little time to spend together, but when they managed to do so, it was the best part of their day. Sometimes Clotilde helped Angela deliver the mended pieces; sometimes Angela accompanied Clotilde to the fountain to wash clothes. They always talked about their dreams: Angela, of the store she’d open in Via Luccoli some day, where beautiful rich ladies would have their Sunday dresses made to measure; Clotilde, of the trip she’d take on the back of a white horse on her eighteenth birthday, up and down the hills, to see the world.
Clotilde’s father had his own ideas about Angela and her mother and voiced them often and openly in front of his family at dinnertime. Who was that Angela, anyway, he’d mumble, dipping his bread in pasta sauce, who lived in that hole down below, and what kind of family was that without a man to give it respectability? And who knows who Angela’s father was to begin with, possibly a drunken sailor, but there was no point asking that question, was there, because no one knew the answer, not even Angela’s mother, who these days, with those tiny crossed eyes, looked more and more like a mole. Plus, who knew what was going on in that dark room when Angela was out, he’d continue, and in any case, even if nothing happened any more, surely those two females were no good for Clotilde, the daughter of a warehouse shift leader, respected by all and strong like a mountain. Clotilde’s heart sank when her father spoke of Angela that way, but she was careful not to show her tears, which she pushed hard down her throat, as she knew better than to contradict her father, especially after he had stopped at Lorenzo’s, the neighborhood bar, on the way home. Her mother had talked back to him one evening, over a bowl of soup that wasn’t warm enough, and the little blue scar across her lip was there to remind everyone who was in charge.
A father’s words, no matter how silly or mean, do make an impression on a daughter, so eventually the talk about Angela and her mother convinced Clotilde that she deserved better friends than the daughter of an unknown drunken sailor. Unconsciously, she began to avoid Angela in her outings, until the girls became estranged. So estranged, in fact, that years went by without Angela and Clotilde exchanging words. It took Clotilde a long time to realize that Angela no longer lived downstairs.
Clotilde’s family fell apart suddenly when Clotilde was sixteen. Her mother died of consumption, and her father began spending more time at Lorenzo’s than at the warehouse, until he could hardly stand up and finally got himself fired. He walked out of Vico Caprettari one morning, cursing his fate, and never came back. Clotilde was left alone with her brothers, who hardly talked to her at all. When they did, it was only to give her orders for a meal or ask for clean clothes. Her routine became more strenuous, as there was now one woman to take care of four men instead of two women to take care of five; her mother’s absence made the routine