Читать книгу Malafemmena - Louisa Ermelino - Страница 9

MOTHER LOVE

Piero would ride in a basket that his mother had set upon her head. She would cover him with a white cloth and go walking in the streets of the city.

From the basket he would put out his hand and snatch off the hats of the men passing by. The men would look around and they would see a woman with a basket on her head, a basket covered with a white cloth.

These were his beginnings.

Piero and his mother were everything in the world to each other. The father had gone long ago. “America ate him up,” the mother said when Piero asked. “But you are my little man, and I don’t need any other.”

When she said this, she would wet her fingers in her mouth and smooth down his hair. His hair was thick and black like his father’s before he went to America.

Piero would stand very close to his mother when she did this. He marveled that he could feel the heat of her through all the skirts she wore, one over the other like the gypsy women at the edge of the city.

The gypsy women would steal him, his mother said, if he weren’t careful. They would cover him with their skirts and take him away. No one would know where, his mother told him. Piero secretly wanted to go close to them, to be caught under their skirts. He wanted to know if they had heat like his mother but he was too afraid.

On Saturdays Piero and his mother would go to the market to sell the hats. He would set up the table for his mother and step back when he was finished. And then he would think about slipping under her skirts. He wanted to sit with the silk of her underskirt in his fingers while she bargained for the price of the hats. He liked the darkness under her skirts. He closed his eyes and remembered the smell of her. It was their secret.

“Go away now,” she would shout at him when he came close, loud enough to make the shutters open. She would sit on the small stool she had carried from home and spread her skirts around her. “A boy must not stay too near his mother,” she told him in a whisper. “Remember Anzio? Anzio who stayed near his mother? Remember Anzio?”

“Was that God? Did God do that to Anzio?” Piero asked, terrified.

“The witches did that,” the mother said, “the witches here in the rione. They don’t like a boy who stays near his mother. They’re jealous.”

Piero was afraid when he though of Anzio. His mother’s words made him run away and he would not come back until it was time to take down her table and carry it home.

But when they came to the small room where they lived together, Piero’s mother would close the curtains on the window that looked over the street and she would call him to her, even before she made their meal.

Everyone in this city stayed where they were born. Everyone stayed in their rione and married in their rione and died there. But not Piero’s father. He went outside to marry. His bride was a stranger in the rione and she had red hair. He married outside the rione which is not what young men should do.

“So many beauties here,” the gossips said. “Why did he go outside?”

Piero’s mother called them witches. When Piero was born she hung cornetti of coral and silver and even a tiny one made of gold over his cradle. He was such a beautiful and strong baby boy, Piero’s mother said, that they were powerless to harm him and so they used their evil magic on his father and his father went away.

This is what Piero’s mother told him.

“Won’t he come back? Don’t you think he’ll come back?” Piero wanted to know.

“No,” his mother said.

“Why? Why won’t he come back to us?”

“The witches,” his mother said. “There was black rain when he left. He is never coming back.”

“Aren’t you sad? Don’t you cry for him to come back?” Piero asked her.

The mother kissed the top of his head where the black hair parted.

“Don’t I have you?” she said. “How can I be sad?”

Piero would put his head in her lap and close his eyes when she said this. He didn’t care about his father or the witches who worried her. He would close his eyes and touch her there. He would sleep in her heat and her smell.

Piero grew bigger and his mother older. The shine was gone from her hair that was red like no one else’s in the rione. When Piero grew too big for the basket she used it to carry washing.

Piero moved through the streets in far parts of the city by himself now, and took the things they needed. Sometimes he went to the edge of the city to watch the gypsies who could no longer steal him away under their skirts. He was a grown boy.

The mother prayed to keep Piero hers. She put blessed palm under his mattress and made promises to her saint. But the summer that Piero was big enough, he got himself a girl. The girl was of the rione, from the family that mended umbrellas, and she was small and soft like the bunnies Piero kept at Easter. The girl would take him into the alleys and lift up her skirts for him. Piero loved her smell.

The mother prayed to her saint. She explained that all she had ever had was Piero and her red hair. She asked the saint to make Piero like Anzio even though that was a terrible thing for a mother to ask. She asked for a sign but the saint was silent while Piero’s girl whispered in his ear. She pulled up her skirts. “We should marry,” she said.

“My mother . . . ,” Piero said.

“Your mother is a witch. She has that red hair,” the girl said.

Piero got angry. He pinched the soft flesh on the inside of the girl’s arm. “I am my mother’s son,” he told her.

“You are your father’s son,” the girl said. “Your hair is black. You belong in the rione. Your mother is from outside.”

“She only has me,” Piero said.

“She only wants you,” the girl told him. “She made the black rain so your father would leave and never come back.”

Piero stepped away.

“Your mother is a witch and you are under her spell.”

This is what the girl told Piero.

On Piero’s wedding day, the mother did not touch her son. She could see in his eyes that he did not want her to touch him. The mother embraced the bride and smiled at Piero. She put her hand slowly through her red hair and made Piero afraid.

When Piero came out of the house the morning after his wedding night, his mother was there. The empty basket was set upon her head.

“I am here to hang the sheet,” she said. “It’s my right as your mother. The rione is waiting to see the blood on the sheet.”

“There isn’t any blood,” Piero said.

“All virgins have blood,” she told him.

His mother reached out to touch him but he moved away. He didn’t want to be so near her. He remembered Anzio.

“Don’t worry,” Piero’s mother said to him.

Piero left her and walked to the coffee bar. He stood with the men who teased him about his wedding night. They sere-naded him with bawdy songs.

The women leaned out of the shadows, their arms folded across the windowsills. They were waiting to see the sheet, to see the blood.

They all watched when Piero’s mother came out of the house with the basket on her head. They watched as she hung out the bloodied sheet.

The men squinted their eyes in the morning sun. Piero’s mother moved along the clothesline. She held the clothespins in her mouth. The blood from the sheet dripped onto the paving stones.

“So much blood,” the women in the windows said. “We’ve never seen so much blood.”

The mother fastened the last clothespin to the edge of the sheet. The blood ran in little rivers between the blocks of stone. The mother turned and smiled at Piero and put her hand through her red hair.