Beautiful Secret Read online

  I shivered, realizing I was alone with these women whose emotions were drier than long-dead bones. They led me through the dormitory hall and down the stairs into the main building. After one more flight down into a corridor that was dimly lit by naked yellow bulbs, they urged me forward until we came to a steel door. It hung halfway open on rusty hinges.

  I screamed as another contraction ripped through me, forcing me once more to my knees. “Dear God,” I silently prayed, the words dancing through my dizzy consciousness, hardly able to make their way to my lips, “Please grant me the strength to do this. By the power of the Virgin Mother, please…”

  The sisters stood back then, wordlessly waiting on the threshold of what looked to be a birthing chamber for my pain to subside. They provided no comfort, no kind words, not a hand of support on my back or a cool rag to wipe the sweat from my brow.

  As the wave of misery ebbed, I caught my breath and tried to stand before the next contraction swept me into its unrelenting tide of pain. Sister Benjamin pushed me forward then, her unnaturally large hands on my bare arms, pressing me into the white-walled room in front of us.

  A guttural groan that escaped my throat sounded as if it had come from an animal, not from me. My fists clenched into themselves, half-bitten fingernails digging into my fleshy palms as Sister Benjamin shoved me onto a bare mattress that was stained with what looked like blood and urine. The steepness of the pain crossed my eyes, and the horror in front of them doubled.

  I squeezed my eyelids shut and saw strings of red and orange behind them.

  The sour smell of rot came alive on my tongue, gagging me. I coughed and opened my eyes as the intense cramping began to subside and noticed that two more sisters had joined us. I was struck by the utter disarray, the stark difference between the bleach-inspired cleanliness of the rest of the convent and the squalor of this strange hidden room.

  White tiles caked with a film of greasy dust. Balls of hair nestled into corners of both the floor and ceiling. Rust stains, fat and orange on flat white walls. Exposed and sweating pipes, feeding into a small metal sink. Flies…so many of them, circling like little vultures above a large bin I assumed was an overflowing trash can. Rags that looked old and petrified, stained with red and brown, hung from the side of the trash. Some even lay scattered on the floor around it.

  “Santa Maria,” I whispered as the sisters stood like four great stone pillars, two at each side of the mattress. Sister Benjamin gestured to my skirt, indicating without a word that I should undress.

  I shook my head and curled my legs as closely into my body as I could in my state, refusing to remove the only material that separated my skin from the filth of this horrible place.

  “Sporca,” I told them. Dirty. I gestured wildly at the mattress. Respect for my elders, for the Church, had left me. I was too paralyzed by pain and the shock of my circumstances for propriety to matter at all. Defiantly pulling the long folds of skirt around my lower half, I looked up at Sister Benjamin. “No.”

  Seconds later, I sat bare-bottomed on a mattress that was stained with another woman’s blood, my freshly smacked face resting sullenly in my hands. Sister John Anne eyed me sharply before tossing my borrowed skirt to the floor. An angry welt grew under my fingers and, as my face surely grew red with the testimony of assault, I almost folded.

  In that moment, my mother came to me.

  Along with the sting of leftover cruelty, I felt the cool softness of her knuckles caressing my cheek, the back of her hand slowly erasing my shame.

  Over the terrible silence of the sisters’ breathing was my mother’s gentle whisper, assuring me of my strength, loving me because I was hers and I was good. Her lips brushed my forehead and told me these things as she smoothed the moist hair from my eyes, picking the guilt from my heart and replacing it with unconditional love.

  At that very moment, I felt her hands leaning into my shoulders and bearing down, steadying me and building me up. My shame drained away. I began to fight back.

  As the wrath of God seemed to rip through me with a contraction that I was sure was tearing me from east to west, I began to desperately want my child. In this frenzy of hurt and anticipation and even rage, I suddenly realized that before my baby had breathed even one breath on this earth, he was mine to love and protect. These cold, colorless women could never understand this.

  I’d hardly wrapped my mind around the fact of my mother’s presence before I could feel the head crowning between my legs. Part of me wanted to die rather than face the unavoidable pain of pushing the baby out. Again, my mother wrapped me with her tangible presence, promising me that we would do it together, that she would not leave me.

  “Don’t touch me,” I told Sister Benjamin as she came at me. I said the words with as much force as my strength allowed. My voice, tired from screaming, was still quiet, but I’m certain my eyes spoke at a decibel level that shook the sisters’ silent worlds.

  With my mother’s strong hands balancing my shoulders, I pushed and pushed. Behind closed eyes, I saw Gio and Concetta, both scowling at me.

  I pushed at their spite.

  In my imaginings, I heard Luisa’s fists pounding the door of her room, screaming French obscenities in my defense.

  I pushed and pushed with her defiance.

  Then I saw Giuseppe Domani, laughing at the cruel joke he’d thought to play on me.

  I groaned as I pushed away his wickedness and, smiling, I gave birth to the most beautiful boy in the world.

  I swear it was my mother who helped me take hold of my son before the nuns could get their hands on him. As he slid out of me, howling, my mother supported my back upright, and helped me to reach out and grab hold of his slippery body. The very moment I held him in my arms, my mother’s presence disappeared.

  Later, after my breathing had slowed, I allowed Sister Benjamin to cut the cord and watched, amazed and tearful, as he took his first breaths. If I was never anything else to this world, I would be this child’s mother. And that would be enough.

  Never would he fall into their silent realm of black and white. They would have to rip my own arms from my body before I would let them take this child from me.

  “Domenico,” I whispered and pressed my cracked lips to his tiny, creased forehead.

  When he opened his eyes, I gasped. God had gifted my son with eyes that reminded me of the most serene moments of my life. The times when my father had lifted me high enough to play in the clouds. When the sun had kissed my bare shoulders and I’d danced to the music of sea gulls and beach laughter.

  When my Domenico opened his eyes, I saw the sea.

  Chapter 14

  Maria

  Luisa took to Domenico like a coddling old auntie. I wasn’t sure how she would react to a baby after the novelty wore off, but in truth, I’d never seen her happier. Domenico’s presence distracted her from her daily lamentations of her plight at Santa Genoveffa.

  After his birth, and when I was able to walk, I made my way directly to Luisa’s room. Before she opened her mouth to speak, I told her everything, and in the space of an hour, she’d met all of the players—Concetta, Giuseppe, Gio, my mother. For once, Luisa was speechless.

  She eyed Domenico with a serene smile and stroked his tender cheek.

  “He’s beautiful.”

  “I have to take him home, Luisa. I can’t stay here at the convent with him.” Luisa didn’t seem to even hear me, already drowning in the deep of Domenico’s eyes. I watched her fall in love with him as I pondered our future, how I would possibly care for this little gift from God. Only hours after his birth, I already felt the weight of being solely responsible for another life. Every step I took made a difference for him, so I had to step in all the right places. “He deserves to know his family…his father.”

  Luisa eyed me sharply. “His father is the last person he needs, Maria.” She made a kissing sound with her lips and cooed at him. “What an angel you are.”

  And he was. Even some of the
sisters softened to him. Sister Diana came every day to see him. I often heard her singing to him when none of the other nuns were around to notice her break her vows of silence.

  Domenico’s birth brought drastic changes to our lives at the convent. For one, the nuns left Luisa and I to our own devices, seeming to give up on us. We were no longer expected to adhere to the strict schedule of Santa Genoveffa, and we swiftly moved Luisa’s mattress into my room. Often, Domenico woke during the night, whimpering not from hunger but just to be held for a few moments. Although it disturbed her sleep, it was clear that Luisa lived for these moments. She would sit with him on the edge of her bed, visibly relishing the warmth of his tiny form, singing French lullabies until he was quiet again.

  We continued to attend meals as well as masses at the convent, but we lingered longer and marched less. It was as if the sisters had forfeited their control over our lives, realizing perhaps that I would do what I deemed fit for my child, with or without their permission. Or maybe they were simply biding their time, waiting for the right opportunity to take him from me. I couldn’t know for sure, but I was grateful for the respite from their thirty-minute time limits and even more thankful for my son. Luisa seemed to always have been a lost cause to the sisters—so much so that they probably welcomed a reason to remove her from their keeping. They would have forced us out had it not been for Domenico. His sparkling eyes must have brought a hint of blue to their colorless world that they couldn’t help but cling to. He was a bright, shiny miracle within their drab walls.

  In a way, he was my salvation.

  * * *

  “Mmm, smell the freedom in these streets, Maria.”

  Domenico was three weeks old, and Luisa and I had decided to test our limits and attempt to walk out the convent doors and into the town of Nicotera. No one had paid us a lick of attention other than Sister Diana, who’d stopped to kiss and draw the sign of the cross on Domenico’s forehead. She’d smiled at us and walked off, her soft-soled shoes shuffling steadily in the opposite direction. One minute, we were breathing the stale air inside the gray-green walls of Santa Genoveffa. The next, we were out in the streets under the bright fall sun, inhaling the freshness of blue sky and St. Martin’s summer.

  Squinting as my eyes adjusted to the change in light, I peered at the stone and wrought iron scroll of the convent door. A shiver scurried over my skin as I recalled the last time I’d stood on this street—the very day Zia Felicia had brought me here to the convent. So much had changed since then.

  “You’re going to be hot with that sheet wrapped around you,” Luisa said. “I’ll carry him, Maria.”

  “I’m fine, Luisa,” I told her and gently straightened a sleeping Domenico within the folds of the bedsheet I’d wrapped around my body to create a sort of sling for him. “He seems comfortable like this.”

  “You’re right,” she said, grinning. “I only said that because I want to hold him, really. Let him sleep like that.” She pointed ahead down the alleyway toward the main street of Nicotera. “Shall we take the little prince into town?”

  I nodded and looked down at my child, marveling at how his full, thick cheeks glowed a soft rose in the warm mountain air. Domenico’s tiny heart-shaped lips were pursed into a pink suckle. Perhaps he was dreaming of nursing. His long eyelashes fluttered every once in a while, his brows moving up and then down again. I laughed quietly at his mysterious expressions, as usual feeling blessed by the very presence of my child.

  “It’s hard to believe all of this life was happening right here, just steps away from where we were, Maria.” Luisa stared into the main thoroughfare, and my eyes followed hers. Fruit and vegetable carts lined the sides of the road, their vendors casually chatting with one another, seeming to be more interested in learning the news of the day than they were in closing a sale. A lazy gray cat sat basking in the sun next to a wheelbarrow of speckled peaches and deep purple eggplants, its tail twitching rhythmically. The animal opened one eye and looked at me as I approached the cart.

  Luisa shooed the cat away as I reached out and plucked a peach from the bin.

  I held the ripe fruit to my cheek, its yellow fuzz leaving a pungent odor on my skin that was all too familiar.

  “It’s harvest time,” I said in an almost-whisper, years of familiarity washing over me with those three words. I was suddenly off kilter from the sensation of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In all my life, this time of year was for the reaping of seeds well sown, for gathering the fruits of our labor from nature’s lap. I placed the peach back in its bin and peered down at Domenico again, a pang of guilt piercing me between the eyes.

  Home was tugging on my heart. The simple fragrance of harvest bent my body southward, beckoning me home and claiming my son. I couldn’t hide from the truth that the scent so plainly brought to my attention.

  This beautiful angel belonged somewhere else. And, I was afraid, if I didn’t somehow find a way to get him to his rightful place in the world, the sisters would find a place that they deemed fit for him instead. For now, they were allowing me my transgression, choosing not to push the issue of my sin. But how long would this reprieve last? Were they already planning to take Domenico from me and place him with another family? Someone else’s family?

  I would die if that happened.

  A soft breeze tickled my arms, and I found my hands reaching around the bundle of sheets that hung from my body to cradle my son. Somehow, some way, I had to take him home to his family—Giuseppe’s family. No matter what shame I had to face, it was only right to take Domenico home to Valanidi. But how?

  “Maria?” Luisa’s voice waded into my fear, shoving into my consciousness for attention. “Come on, let’s keep walking. The air is perfect today, harvest or no harvest.”

  We passed by a barbershop where a trio of men sat out front at a rickety wooden table with a broken leg. They sipped coffees and sucked on fat cigars, so lost in relaxed conversation that they didn’t notice us. We continued over crooked cobblestones to a residential section of the street where a string of row houses greeted us. The very air felt different here, so vastly apart from the haze of tobacco and caffeine that laced it just a few steps away. Here, it smelled like fresh-baked bread and sweat, the scent of the daily grind in Nicotera.

  Women bouncing fat babies on their hips, one-handedly hanging laundry on tight strings. Babushka-topped faces with stories of hard work written in deep lines on their skin. Tireless signoras hauling sacks of fruit, yelling at their hordes of wild children, and carrying jugs of water into their houses.

  “Look at all those clothes,” Luisa said, gesturing toward a dark-skinned woman in a checked blue housedress. She had one baby strapped onto her chest and was clothes-pinning dozens of shirts onto a line. “Either she’s the town laundress or she has a pile of babies.”

  As if on cue, the woman hollered at three small boys who whirled into the side yard just then. They ignored her and continued their game of chase.

  We continued down the street, passing homes where shouting matches advertised the marital bliss within.

  “Almost makes you wish you had a husband, doesn’t it, Maria?”

  I laughed at Luisa’s sarcasm. “Yes, I want one just like him.” I pointed to a sleepy-eyed man sitting on his front stoop. He wore a white T-shirt with yellow stains bleeding their way out of his armpits, and he drew on a cigarette with gusto. Behind him, wearing a crisp red apron and black heels, stood a woman. Her black hair fell in ringlets to her shoulders, and in her arms was a baby with a head full of the same curls. Her deep brown eyes would have been beautiful had it not been for the look of utter contempt they held as they gazed down at who I assumed to be her very own knight in shining armor. From the sound of her hushed rant, he’d gambled their month’s worth of money on a card game and lost. Seeming unaffected by her scolding words, he stood up, stretched slowly, and warned her to shut her mouth and get out of his face before he broke hers.

  “Yes, I want one just like
that too,” Luisa said flatly. I sighed, silently admonishing myself for peeping in on other people’s lives and for playing lightly on someone else’s hardships.

  “Come on, Luisa.” I tugged at her sleeve. “Stop staring at that poor woman.”

  “Why would anyone want to live that kind of life?” Luisa asked, following me across the street and back up the hill toward Santa Genoveffa.

  A memory stirred then, causing me to draw in a sharp breath as a vision of my younger and more naïve self swam into the forefront of my mind. My feet followed Luisa through Nicotera, but behind my eyes, I was in Valanidi. In the company of my cousin and a gathering of brothers who were arguing over a card game gone bad.

  A pair of wanting black eyes trailing my shaky smile everywhere it went that night.

  A sense of foreboding lingering on my sweaty skin.

  Turning, I stole another glance down the street at the pretty woman with the curly black hair. She was still on the front stoop, sitting next to her gambling man, wringing her hands over and over again. A minute ago, I’d pointed at them in jest. I’d placed myself somewhere above them when, in reality, I had been staring into the face of my future, mocking it. I hadn’t escaped her fate. I was simply on the cusp of it.

  Swallowing, I imagined Giuseppe’s guilty grin and made my peace with what I knew to be true. My life was bottled up and corked, just waiting to be popped open and drained out of me. It was only a matter of time.

  Chapter 15

  Maria

  Luisa said we were lucky, but I always believed in divine intervention. I’d prayed and prayed to be allowed to keep my son. Every night, I whispered my thanks to God for having granted me one more day with Domenico, and I begged Him to be gracious for a little while longer. When Sister Isabella came to us, I knew my prayers had been answered. I also finally understood why Zia Felicia had brought me to Santa Genoveffa, miles from our tiny mountain town.