Mrs. Martinelli walked so fast it was hard to keep up with her.
“Are you hungry?” the diminutive woman asked as she bounded up the steps and strode past the collection of mismatched chairs on the porch.
“No, ma’am.”
Mrs. Martinelli opened the front door and stepped inside. Elsa followed her into the house. In the parlor, she saw a collection of wooden furniture and a scarred oval cocktail table. Crocheted white doilies hung on the backs of chairs. There were large crucifixes hanging on two of the walls
Catholic.
What did that mean, really? What had Elsa promised to become?
Mrs. Martinelli moved through the sitting room and went down a narrow hallway, past an open door that revealed a copper bathing tub and a washstand. No toilet.
No indoor plumbing?
At the end of the hall, Mrs. Martinelli pushed a door open.
A boy’s bedroom, complete with sports trophies on the dresser. An unmade bed faced a large window, framed by blue chambray curtains. Elsa saw a photo of Gia Composto on the bedside table. A suitcase—no doubt packed for college—lay on the bed.
Mrs. Martinelli scooped up the photograph and tossed the suitcase under the bed. “You will stay here, alone, until the wedding. Rafe can sleep in the barn. He loves that on a hot night anyway.” Mrs. Martinelli lit a lamp. “I
will speak to Father Michael promptly. No need to draw this out.” She frowned. “I will need to talk to the Compostos.”
“Perhaps Rafe should do that,” Elsa said.
Mrs. Martinelli looked up. The small woman was a study in contradictions: she moved with the fast, furtive motions of a bird and looked fragile, but Elsa’s overwhelming impression was of strength. Toughness. She remembered Rafe’s family story, how Tony and Rose had come to America from Sicily with only a few dollars between them. Together they had found this land and survived on it, lived for years in a sod dugout they’d built themselves. Only tough women lasted on Texas farmland.
“I think he owes her that,” Elsa added.
“Wash up. Put your things away,” Mrs. Martinelli said. “We will see you in the morning. Things often look better in sunlight.”
“I don’t,” Elsa said.
Mrs. Martinelli studied Elsa for an agonizing moment, obviously found her lacking, and then walked away, closing the door behind her.
Elsa sat down on the edge of the bed, unable suddenly to catch her breath.
There was a quiet knock on the door. “Come in,” she said.
Rafe opened the door and stood in the opening, his face dusty. He took off his cap, twisted it in his hands.
Then, slowly, he closed the door behind him. He came toward her, sat down on the bed. The springs protested at the additional weight.
She glanced sideways at him, seeing his perfect profile. So handsome.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Aw, heck, Els, I didn’t want to go to college anyhow.” He gave her a strained smile; black hair flopped across one eye. “I didn’t want to stay here, either, but…”
They looked at each other.
At last he took her hand, held it. “I’ll try to be a good husband,” he said.
Elsa wanted to tighten her hold on his hand, give a squeeze to show how much those words meant to her, but she didn’t dare. She was afraid that if she really held on to him, she’d never let go. She had to be cautious from
now on, treat him as she would a skittish cat; be careful to never move too fast or need too much.
She said nothing, and in time, he let go of her hand and left her in his bedroom, sitting on his bed, alone.
 |
THE NEXT MORNING, ELSA woke late. She pushed the hair from her face. Fine strands were stuck to her cheek; she’d cried in her sleep.
Good. Better to cry at night when no one could see. She didn’t want to reveal her weakness to this new family.
She went to the washstand and splashed lukewarm water on her face, then she brushed her teeth and combed her hair.
Last night, as she’d unpacked, she’d realized how wrong her clothes were for farm life. She was a town girl; what did she know about life on the land? All she’d brought were crepe dresses and silk stockings and heels. Church clothes.
She slipped into her plainest day dress, a charcoal-gray with pearl buttons and lace at the collar, then pulled up her stockings and stepped into the black heels she’d worn yesterday.
The house smelled of bacon and coffee. Her stomach grumbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s lunch.
The kitchen—a bright yellow-wallpapered room with gingham curtains and white linoleum flooring—was empty. Dishes drying on the counter attested to the fact that Elsa had slept through breakfast. What time did these people waken? It was only nine.
Elsa went outside and saw the Martinelli farm in full sunlight. Hundreds of acres of shorn wheat fanned out in all directions, a sea of dry, cut, golden stalks, with the homestead part taking up a few acres in the middle of it all.
A driveway cut through the fields, a brown ribbon of dirt bordered by cottonwoods and fencing. The farm itself consisted of the house, a big wooden barn, a horse corral, a cow paddock, a hog pen, a chicken coop, several outbuildings, and a windmill. Behind the house was an orchard, a small vineyard, and a fenced vegetable garden. Mrs. Martinelli was in the garden, bent over.
Mr. Martinelli came out of the barn and approached her. “Good morning,” he said. “Walk with me.”
He led her along the edge of the harvested wheat field; the shorn crop struck her as broken, somehow, devastated. Much like herself. A gentle breeze rustled what remained, made a shushing sound.
“You are a town girl,” Mr. Martinelli said in a thick Italian accent. “Not anymore, I guess.”
“This is a good answer.” He bent down, scooped up a handful of dirt. “My land tells its story if you listen. The story of our family. We plant, we tend, we harvest. I make wine from grape cuttings that I brought here from Sicily, and the wine I make reminds me of my father. It binds us, this land, one to another, as it has for generations. Now it will bind you to us.”
“I’ve never tended to anything.”
He looked at her. “Do you want to change that?”
Elsa saw compassion in his dark eyes, as if he knew how afraid she’d been in her life, but she had to be imagining it. All he knew about her was that she was here now and she’d brought his son down with her.
“Beginnings are only that, Elsa. When Rosalba and I came here from Sicily, we had seventeen dollars and a dream. That was our beginning. But it wasn’t what gave us this good life. We have this land because we worked for it, because no matter how hard life was, we stayed here. This land provided for us. It will provide for you, too, if you let it.”
Elsa had never thought of land that way, as something that anchored a person, gave one a life. The idea of it, of staying here and finding a good life and a place to belong, seduced her as nothing ever had.
She would do her best to become a Martinelli through and through, so she could join their story, perhaps even take it as her own and pass it on to the child she carried. She would do anything, become anyone, to ensure that this family loved the baby unconditionally as one of their own. “I want that, Mr. Martinelli,” she said at last. “I want to belong here.”
He smiled. “I saw that in you, Elsa.”
Elsa started to thank him, but was interrupted by Mrs. Martinelli, who called out to her husband as she walked toward them carrying a basket full of ripe tomatoes and greenery. “Elsa,” she said, coming to a stop. “How nice to see you up.”
“I … overslept.”
Mrs. Martinelli nodded. “Follow me.”
In the kitchen, Mrs. Martinelli took the vegetables from her basket and laid them on the table: plump red tomatoes, yellow onions, green herbs, clumps of garlic. Elsa had never seen so much garlic at one time.
“What can you cook?” she asked Elsa, tying an apron on. “C-coffee.”
Mrs. Martinelli stopped. “You can’t cook? At your age?” “I’m sorry, Mrs. Martinelli. No, but—”
“Can you clean?”
“Well … I’m sure I can learn to.”
Mrs. Martinelli crossed her arms. “What can you do?” “Sew. Embroider. Darn. Read.”
“A lady. Madonna mia.” She looked around the spotless kitchen. “Fine. Then I will teach you to cook. We will start with arancini. And call me Rose.”
|
THE WEDDING WAS A hushed, hurried affair with no celebration before or after. Rafe slipped a plain band on Elsa’s finger and said, “I do,” and that was pretty much that. He looked to be in physical pain throughout the brief ceremony.
On their wedding night, they came together in the darkness and sealed their vows with their bodies, just as they had done with their words, their passion as silent as the night around them.
In the days and weeks and months that followed, he tried to be a good husband and she tried to be a good wife.
At first, in Rose’s eyes at least, Elsa seemed unable to do anything right. She cut her finger when chopping tomatoes and burned her wrist taking freshly baked bread out of the oven. She couldn’t tell a ripe squash from an unripe one. Stuffing zucchini flowers was nearly impossible for someone as clumsy as Elsa. She converted to Catholicism and listened to Mass in Latin, not understanding a word but finding a strange comfort in the beautiful sound of it all; she memorized prayers and learned the rosaries and kept one always in her apron pocket. She took confession and sat in a small, dark closet and told Father Michael her sins and he prayed for her and absolved
her. At first none of this made much sense to her, but in time it became both familiar and routine, a part of her new life, like no meat on Fridays or the myriad saints’ days that they celebrated.
Elsa learned—to her surprise and to her mother-in-law’s—that she wasn’t a quitter. She woke up each morning well before her husband and got into the kitchen in time to make coffee. She learned to make and eat and love food she had never heard of, made from ingredients she’d never seen
—olive oil, fettuccine, arancini, pancetta. She learned how to disappear on a farm: work harder than anyone else and don’t complain.
In time, a new and unexpected feeling of belonging began to creep in. She spent hours in the garden kneeling in the dirt, watching seeds she planted sprout and push up from the earth and turn green, and each one felt like a new beginning. A promise for the future. She learned to pick the rich purple Nero d’Avola grapes and turn them into a wine that Tony swore was as good as his father could make. She learned the peace that came with looking out at a newly tilled field and the hope those fields inspired.
Here, she sometimes thought, standing on land she cared for, here her child would flourish, would run and play and learn the stories told by the ground and the grapes and the wheat.
|
Throughout the winter, snow blanketed the landscape, and they settled into a new routine at the farmhouse. The women occupied their days with cleaning, sewing, darning, and knitting, while the men tended to the animals and prepared the farm equipment for spring. On snowy evenings, they gathered around the fire—Elsa reading stories aloud and Tony playing his fiddle. In these moments, Elsa discovered small things about her husband: he snored loudly and tossed in his sleep, often waking with a cry, haunted by nightmares.
“It’s quiet enough on this land to drive you mad,” he would say sometimes, and Elsa tried to grasp his meaning. Mostly, she listened, waiting for him to reach for her—though he did so rarely, always in the dark. She sensed that the sight of her growing belly unsettled him. When he did talk, he often smelled of wine or whiskey, and he would smile, spinning tales of their imagined life in Hollywood or New York.
Truthfully, Elsa never knew how to respond to the charming, elusive man she had married. Words had never been her strength, and she lacked the courage to express how she truly felt—that, amid the challenges of farm life, she had discovered an unexpected resilience, and her love for him and his parents had made her almost fierce. Instead, she retreated in the face of his emotional distance, holding her tongue and waiting—sometimes desperately—for him to see the woman she was becoming.
In February, rain graced the Great Plains, nourishing the seeds buried in the soil. By March, the land burst with vibrant new growth, green stretching for miles. One particularly bright, sunlit day, Elsa opened every window in the house, allowing a cool breeze to flow through, carrying the scent of new beginnings.
At the stove, she browned bread crumbs in rich, nutty olive oil they had bought at the general store. The fragrant aroma of garlic sizzling in hot oil filled the kitchen. These breadcrumbs, mixed with cheese and fresh parsley, were a staple, enhancing everything from vegetables to pasta.
On the table behind her, a crockery bowl full of flour, ground from last year’s abundant crop, waited to be turned into bread dough. The Victrola in the sitting room played a “Santa Lucia” record loudly enough that Elsa felt compelled to sing along, even though she didn’t understand the words.
A pain came without warning, stabbed her deep in the abdomen, doubling her over. She tried to be still, held her stomach, waited it out.
But another pain came, minutes later, worse than the first. “Rose!” Rose rushed into the house, her arms full of laundry to be washed.
“It’s…” Elsa’s water broke, splashed down her stockinged legs, and puddled on the floor. The sight plunged Elsa into panic. For the past months, she’d felt herself getting stronger, but now, as pain upended her, she couldn’t think of anything except the doctor telling her so long ago not to get overexcited, not to put strain on her heart.
What if he’d been right? She looked up in terror. “I’m not ready, Rose.” Rose put down the laundry. “No one is ever ready.”
Elsa couldn’t catch her breath. Another pain hit, wrenched through her stomach.
“Look at me,” Rose said. She took Elsa’s face in her hands, although she had to get on her tiptoes to do so. “This is normal.” She took Elsa by the hand and led her to the bedroom, where she stripped the bed and threw the quilts and sheets on the floor.
She undressed Elsa, who should have been ashamed to be seen that way, with her swollen belly and shapeless limbs, but the pain was so great she didn’t care.
Such teeth in this pain. Gnawing at her, then spitting her out to breathe for a moment and then biting again.
“Go ahead and scream,” Rose said, helping Elsa to the bed.
Elsa lost her hold on time, on everything but the pain. She screamed out when she needed to and panted like a dog in between.
Rose positioned Elsa as if she were a doll, spread her bare legs wide open. “I see the head, Elsa. You can push now.”
Elsa pushed and strained and screamed. “My … heart’s going to stop,” she said, panting. She should have told them she was sick, that she wasn’t supposed to have children, that she could die. “If it does—”
“It’s bad luck to speak of such things, Elsa. Push.”
Elsa gave one last desperate push, felt a great whooshing relief, and sagged back into the pillows, exhausted.
A baby’s cry filled the room.
“A beautiful little girl with a good set of lungs.” Rose cut and tied off the umbilical cord, then wrapped the baby up in one of the many blankets they’d knitted over the long winter and handed the bundle to Elsa.
Elsa took her daughter in her arms and stared down at her in awe. Love filled her to the brim and spilled over in tears. She’d never felt anything like it before, a heady, exhilarating combination of joy and fear. “Hello, baby girl.”
The baby quieted, blinked up at her.
Rose reached into the velvet pouch she wore as a necklace around her throat. Inside the pouch was an American penny. Rose kissed the penny and held it out for Elsa to see. The coin had two wheat shafts imprinted on the back. “Tony found this on the street outside my parents’ home on the day we were to leave on the boat for America. Can you imagine such good
fortune? The wheat revealed our destiny. A sign, we said to each other, and it has been true. This coin will watch over another generation now,” Rose said, looking at Elsa. “My beautiful granddaughter.”
“I want to call her Loreda,” Elsa said. “For my grandfather, who was born in Laredo.”
Rose sounded out the unfamiliar name. “Lor-ay-da. Beautiful. Most American, I think,” she said, placing the penny in Elsa’s hand. “Believe me, Elsa, this little girl will love you as no one ever has … and make you crazy and try your soul. Often all at the same time.”
In Rose’s dark, tear-brightened eyes, Elsa saw a perfect reflection of her own emotions and a soul-deep understanding of this bond—motherhood— shared by women for millennia.
She also saw more affection than she’d ever seen in her own mother’s eyes. “Welcome to the family,” Rose said in an uneven voice, and Elsa knew she was talking to her as well as to Loreda.
1934
I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill- nourished.… The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
