In the normal world, a week measures no more than seven days, each of those days lasts a mere twenty-four hours, and each of those hours slips past minute by relentless minute. In the bubble world, time ceased to have meaning. Every stuporous second extended into an infinity in which all things happened, but nothing progressed. What did hours and days matter when each resembled the last? I slept. I woke. Prepared food and took baths. The sun rose. It set. So did the moon. The world turned on its axis, yet in the bubble, all we perceived was an increasingly unwieldy, unrelenting, and inexorable Now.
And despite the lengthiness of every moment, the typewriting school’s deadline for making an application loomed. I needed a job.
Etti pulled on my skirt. “What if Mamma and Poppa die?”
I wrung out the mop and set the bucket into the corner. “They won’t die.”
“What if they do? Mamma says we cannot stay with you.”
I combed that question out of my hair, tucked my clothes in properly, straightened my skirt, and checked the set of my collar. “You boys be good. I’ll check on you later.”
“There’s no more bread.”
“There’s soup on the stove. Don’t touch the burner. Eat it cold if you have to. There’s tea already brewed if your parents want it.”
“You make a lot of tea.”
“It makes your parents feel better.”
“Can you make them hotcakes? Hotcakes would make them feel better, too.”
Not my hotcakes. “Maybe I’ll do that when I get back.”
Fipo called me into his parents’ room. “Poppa threw up again.”
I sent Fipo for the mop, wrung out a cool cloth from the basin on the dresser, and placed it over the tailor’s fever. His breathing was labored, his face hollowed and haggard.
Germs didn’t grow in the bubble world, so the Lattanzis did not get worse. Germs also didn’t die, so the Lattanzis did not get better. They still needed to breathe, still needed to sleep, still needed to use the toilet, so I held to the hope that given the time, the Lattanzis would build resistance. Meanwhile, they needed to eat, but if they could not keep their food down, the Lattanzis would starve.
I headed out the door. I had to do something. Find something to take away the agita. The old man wouldn’t like it if I went to the pharmacy, but the reasons for his disapproval grew fuzzy. Something about not liking the pharmacy lady’s tea.
Benedetta called to me from her landing. “Are you going out?”
“Yes. Is there something you need?”
Her hair was tousled, her face wan. She lay a hand over her bulge. “Find me a box of sleep. What I wouldn’t give to be able to lie on my stomach again.” She moved toward the bathroom. “So sorry. Can’t wait. I’m bursting.”
Now I had a double reason for going to the pharmacy. Maybe the druggist had something to make Benedetta more comfortable. I could bring it up to her. I warmed to the idea. An excuse to see her that didn’t involve the boys or my fortune-telling.
The old man’s warnings suddenly seemed laughable. He got his pills from the pharmacy. No logic I shouldn’t go there to get something to help Benedetta, to help the Lattanzis.
Unless Carlo’s warning about the monsters were true.
“Signorina?”
Like my thought had poofed him into existence, Carlo stood between me and the street door. “I didn’t mean to startle you. You were lost in thought, gazing to the ceiling like you saw stars. Are you going out?”
I had on my coat and hat. Of course I was going out. “How do you keep getting in here? How come you never knock?”
“I have a key, signorina.”
A key. Like he was one of the family. “Excuse me, please. I don’t have time to chat.”
“The don had mentioned it might be better for you to stay close for a few days.”
I clenched my fist, letting every nail slice a groove into my palm. “And because you have a key you think it is your job to keep a list of everything I should and should not do? Maybe you should see the don now. See if he has any further restrictions.”
“Please, signorina.” His tone went from conversational to contrite. “At least let me accompany you.” He indicated the satchel under his arm. “I’ll bring these to the don and come right back. He doesn’t have to know.”
I stood to the side so he could pass.
“Five minutes. No more.” He darted up the steps, his pace demonstrating none of the damp despair which pulled at all else in the vicinity.
Of course I didn’t wait. Carlo belonged to Don Sebastiano. He wouldn’t like me going to see the guaritrice, either.
There were one hundred and seven steps from our stoop to the grocer. Before the bubble those steps were without effort, accomplished without notice. In the unrelenting Now, the steps felt twice as many and mired in mud, weighted by the gravity of a hundred disapproving stares.
The grocer’s offerings were slim, the activity in the market subdued. Shoppers passed, aromatic with the scent of camphor and onion necklaces, worn to ward off the sickness. I looked over the stalls, feeling hopeless. This is what we had come to, camphor and onion, probably sold by the guaritrice, a woman only trying to feed her daughter, a woman whose tea upset the old man.
The clip-clop of horses cut through my sloth. A wagon approached, much like the one on Parade Day, filled with what I first took to be rolls of blankets. As they had on Parade Day, men slid caps off their heads. Ladies crossed themselves. Children were admonished to “hush.”
Down the block, a jumping rope rhyme rose in the sudden stillness. The rhythm of a little girl’s shoes slapped the cobbles in complement to the rhythm of the hooves:
“I knew a little bird,
Her name was Enza.
I opened up the door,
and IN-FLU-ENZA.”
The wagon driver stood, his voice rising over the child’s. “Bring out your dead.”
The blankets in the back of the wagon weren’t rolled. They were wrapping bodies.
We all looked, one building to the next, waiting for a window to open, a door to unlock, some notice of who had died in the night.
All remained silent. There were no takers. There couldn’t be. Not that day. Nor the next. Nor the next day after. Inside the bubble, nobody could die.
But that didn’t mean we lived.
The market activity resumed, solemn, and cautious, the shoppers wary, the merchants suspicious. A man pointed to the wagon receding down the cobbles, then pointed to me.
One woman whispered, “Strega.” Witch.
Another, “Remember her mother.”
A different man, two stalls down, muttered, “She needs to be controlled.”
“The don isn’t thinking straight.”
“That Carlo should be careful.”
“Shhhh . . .”
“Not now.”
“She’ll hear.”
And other voices, springing to protect:
“Stop it. A sickness is carried by germs. She’s only a girl.”
“She has her mother’s curtain. That’s how.”
“Pfft. It’s a piece of fabric. Leave the girl be, she’s not bothering you.”
I went on my way. The kind speakers faded, their attention returned to everyday tasks. The fearful followed, their menace coagulating in my wake.
“Her parents died, but she did not even get sick.”
“The DiGirolamos saw her. They said she looked them in the eye.”
“She has her mother’s curtain. What other mischief might she cause?”
Return to the old man’s apartment seemed impossible, the path behind crowded with enmity.
A tub of water overturned on my shoes. An odor, fetid and sharp, rose before me.
“I was washing the trays.” The fishmonger’s wife retrieved the bucket. She spit over her left shoulder. “You should watch where you step.”
Somebody jostled me and something damp and pasty soaked into the front of my coat. A rotten squash. I scraped at the clod, the seeds embedding under my fingernails.
A handkerchief appeared. I took it and scrubbed it across the stain. A gelatinous swath smeared into the mess. Snot. I dropped the hankie and looked to see who had handed it to me, but the once familiar countenances of the people in the market contorted. They melted into a featureless mass of gray. My face went hot and the inside of my nose stung.
I shed the coat, threw it over my arm, and pushed on, plodding to a new rhythm marked by anxiety and fear. Ten steps, then five, repeated once, then twice. And still, the people followed me, the pharmacy in sight.
“Get out.”
“We don’t want you.”
“Cover your eyes. Don’t let her look in them.”
I pushed into the pharmacy, the crowd pushing in behind. The druggist, eyes shadowed above his mask, rappa-tap-tapped on his counter, pointed to a notice tacked to the wall behind him—BE POLITE. GET IN LINE. WAIT YOUR TURN.
I wasn’t going to be polite, wasn’t going to get in line. I was tired and tattered and smelling of fish. A finger tapped my shoulder. A voice whispered in my ear. “Take their rage, swallow it whole, turn their emotion against them.”
I obeyed, consuming their hatred, their fear, in chunks and shards. I let it pound in my temple, beat against my chest. I imagined my tormenters sick, lying in putrid piles around me, the red dust coating the insides of their lungs and their bodies stacked like cord wood.
Power gathered behind me, like sunlight behind the curtain, except this power was dismal and desperate and determined to find a way out.
Another hand came out of the chaos, pulling me back from the entrance.
Carlo. All he got was my coat. “Don’t go with her, signorina. All you will find is monsters.”
The guaritrice emerged from the mess. She pointed to the crowd. “I think she’s already found them.”
The pharmacy filled. Carlo got in close, got hold of my hand. He stepped this way, then that, trying to keep himself between me and the people. So many people. I circled with him, but the crowd seemed to multiply. They pressed in. From every angle.
The guaritrice’s voice rose above the hubbub. “Let us through.”
She might have been Moses, or rather, Moses’s wife, for the way the crowd parted, falling away to either side.
Tizi rushed forward. “Are you here about the job? I knew you’d come. I keep telling Mamma, ‘Don’t worry, Fiora will return.’ We’ve been so busy. So many orders to fill. You have no idea. There are so many more here than in the last place, and—”
A hand fell on Tizi’s shoulder. “Enough, my love. We are not so busy we forget our manners. Have you even said ‘Good afternoon’ to Fiora’s young man?”
I let go of Carlo. “He’s not my young man.”
Tizi played with the end of her braid, twirling it and untwirling it as I used to when I wore my hair that way. Why had I thought she was older when I saw her from the trolley tracks? She appeared even younger than the day we first met. She looked Carlo up, then down. “If he’s not your young man, what is he?”
The guaritrice lowered her mask. She looked over Tizi’s head at Carlo. “Don’t be rude, Tizi. Signor Lelii is our Fiora’s friend of course. And how nice. We can all use a friend.”
Our Fiora. The designation puffed me up. Lightened the effect of the bubble. Nobody had referred to me as our Fiora since that last time my parents introduced me to somebody. “And this is our Fiora.”
Tizi turned her back on Carlo. “Well, I can be Fiora’s friend, too.”
Carlo touched my elbow. “Come on. Let’s go. The don will be expecting us.”
The guaritrice stepped between us. She wisped a hand by my hair, at the chignon helping my hat to sit at a jaunty angle. “And look at you, little one, all grown up, and so fast, doing a woman’s work before you’ve even had time to be a girl.”
She wrinkled her nose and slid her mask back into place. She eyed my coat, still slung over Carlo’s arm, eyed the snot on its collar, then side-eyed Carlo. “But friends should protect each other, don’t you agree?” She put an arm around my shoulder, turned me so she and I faced Carlo, where a moment before, Carlo and I were facing her. “Perhaps I can help.”
Carlo reached across the chasm. “Thank you signora, but we only need to see the druggist and we will be on our way.”
“I insist. Look at that line. Where men founder, women can often move events forward. Tizi, why don’t you get Fiora’s . . . friend some tea.” The guaritrice stepped away, drawing me with her, like I was pulled with a thread, sucking me into a sphere which did not include Carlo.
“You don’t have to go with her.” Carlo’s fingers grazed the back of my blouse. “You can think for yourself.”
Of course I could think for myself. I looked over my shoulder. “You don’t need to stay.”
The guaritrice snapped her fingers and a wall of people filled the space behind us. I lost sight of Carlo. “Don’t worry about him, little one. Tizi will get him settled. Men. They think they know what’s best. Too often, they don’t know anything. Tell me, why are you here? Nobody braves the streets these days without a mission.”
I explained about the Lattanzis. About Benedetta. She took my arm and led me toward her little alcove. The wall of people followed, like iron shavings chasing a magnet.
“Please, signora, I’ve been waiting hours.” A man, frantic and familiar, broke from the pack, beady eyes flitting back and forth above a bulbous nose.
The landlord.
The guaritrice went to stand behind the counter. “We expected you yesterday, signore. Tizi was up before the sun preparing your order, but you went to the druggist first.”
The landlord took on the air of a hunting dog. Eyes forward, ear cocked. “How could you have expected me? They got sick only yesterday morning.”
“Word travels, signore. How sad you did not come right away. I’m told your children are much worse, especially your oldest.”
“So many of my tenants are sick. Collecting rents is difficult. I thought possibly the druggist might have something . . . less expensive.”
“Ah, yes. We all have to make hard decisions. Each mixture is unique, compounded for the individual. Yours is spoiled. Tizi can make you another batch, at least enough for your oldest, but we will have to charge you extra to cover our costs.”
The landlord clutched at his cap. “I hoped—”
“We would be able to provide enough for your whole family.” The guaritrice finished for him, her voice smooth as polished metal. “We should be able to get you the rest tomorrow, maybe the day after.” She glanced pointedly at me. The landlord followed her gaze. “It is proper to do right by our neighbors.”
The landlord seemed petty and small, nothing like the imposing figure who’d put me out in the rain. My heart soared to see his heart brought low. My spirit lightened to see his spirit in the dirt. I bet his house was filled with snot. I bet there was coughing and hacking and nights without sleep. I bet he scrubbed and mopped and washed blood from the sheets without end. I stared at him the way I’d stared at him the day the old man brought me to get my things. Open and angry and full in the eyes.
He looked away.
And I bet he was sorry he’d tried to keep my mother’s curtain.
The guaritrice put a hand on the strongbox. “We will take your payment now. Come back in two hours. Do not be late. Or we will need to do this negotiation again.”
The landlord lowered his head. He dug into his pocket, and counted out the cost. He laid it on the counter. “Thank you, signora. Two hours.”
The guaritrice turned and marked another red X on the map tacked to the wall behind her. The pattern had changed from the bloom rising along Broad Street on Parade Day. Now the Xs made a spiral four blocks to the east, a spiral circling the market. The landlord’s X was on an outer ring, right at the spot where Mamma and Poppa and my brothers and I had lived. The crowd pushed forward, swarming to fill the landlord’s place. The guaritrice sniffed at the air. “Tizi. We have customers.”
Tizi popped out from behind the curtain, two steaming cups of tea in hand. She placed one before her mother and slid the other before me, then took her mother’s place by the strongbox, handing out bags that looked much like the one the guaritrice had handed me on the day we met. She named prices, collected the money, and marked the map. One signora’s face squinched. “But that is twice as much as yesterday.”
Tizi looked to her mother.
“Because demand is so high.” The guaritrice pointed to the map, to the multiplying red Xs. “We would never think to put a price on your family’s survival, but our suppliers’ prices are rising by the hour, so we must pass the cost on to you.”
The signora did not appear to believe her. Nobody in the crowd did. Still, they continued buying, their pleas growing more desperate as the minutes passed. I drank my tea and watched, letting the lavender remind me of all I had lost, how very fortunate these people were to even have the guaritrice’s tea. She came and settled beside me.
I wasn’t feeling very friendly. “How come you did not make a mix for my parents?”
Her face went sad. So very, very sad. Like the responsibility of every bad thing in the world suddenly took up residence in her forehead. “Your mother did not come to me soon enough. When tragedy strikes, we must not be overly cautious in our decisions. We must move quickly, do what is recommended, or miss our opportunity.” She put her hand over mine and gave it a squeeze. It felt squishy and cold. I pulled away, lay my palms in my lap.
The guaritrice’s face went hard. “Ah, I see you don’t agree. But, look at you, little one. So busy. So very, very busy. But have you money to show for all that busyness? Has it brought you one step closer to your ambitions? No. It’s produced tomatoes that won’t ripen, babies that won’t be born, and sick people who refuse to get well. I told you there is a price to pay when we do not use things properly.”
Her recitation washed over me like acid. “How did you know?”
“How could I not? People may not have a name for their prison, but all feel the effects.”
“I call it a bubble. And I don’t know how to make it burst.”
“Burst?” Her eyes went wide and alarmed. “Oh no. You cannot allow that to happen.” She cupped her hands before her face to demonstrate a bubble, then splayed her fingers, and threw her arms wide. She waved them, moving them chaotically in all directions. “You cannot control the result.”
Fine. I guess there wasn’t any reason for me to be there. I stood and straightened my hat. The guaritrice reached a finger and lifted my chin, as the old man had when the tailor’s wife first brought me to him. “You are a smart girl. A wise girl. You went down a road you did not intend. And now you return to the place where you might find counsel. Yet you arrive empty-handed, looking for remedies, not for a cure. I owe your mother a debt. A great debt. But without the proper tools, I am helpless.”
I thought of the verbena, my attempts to bring the curtain to her before. “It would be better if you came to my house.”
“Don Sebastiano would not like that.”
Her words were pointy little pinpricks of annoyance. “I don’t have to listen to Don Sebastiano.”
“But Don Sebastiano thinks you do. Men. So helpless on their own. So certain they know what is best for us.” The guaritrice handed me two bags, bags very like the ones Tizi dispensed. “The large for the Lattanzis. A little before every meal and all will be well. The second for you, my own blend. Take them and take yourself. Return with your mother’s curtain. Don Sebastiano is a good man, a wise man, but men do not always know the best way to proceed and not all are wise enough to let a greater wisdom prevail.”
She put a hand to her nose, and I again became aware of the fish-monger’s stink, the stain on my collar, the embarrassment, the fear of being left on my own.
“It is late little one. Don Sebastiano will wonder where you’ve gotten to.” She looked to the front of the pharmacy. “And your young man will be waiting.”
I followed her gaze. Thought of Carlo waiting, when I’d told him to leave. How he’d followed when I didn’t wait. The pinpricks became spikes, driving a wedge of resentment between who I was, and who everybody wanted me to be. “I told you. He’s not my young man.”
She dug into her bodice and pulled out a key. She went to the door behind the counter and drew back the hanging strings of beads. “Ah, then I will let you out a side exit.”
“But, but . . .” I picked up the bags. These weren’t enough, only a fraction of the help I needed. How could I bring a curtain that refused to be brought? How could I control a bubble that was bound to burst? And there was Benedetta. “Her time is now past. Is there nothing you can do for her?”
All the guaritrice’s edges went soft. She pulled me close, her scent mixing with that of the tea’s lavender, again the comforting presence I craved. “It has been many years, and now there are so many modern methods.”
She was talking about the knife, about cutting out the baby. My stomach cramped with the thought. “You know about these things.”
“I used to attend many births.” Her voice grew vague. “It is easier if the help is sought willingly. You will know what to do when the time is right. If it seems necessary, bring the girl to me. Such a privilege to help Rosina Vicente’s daughter. Such a privilege to help her friend. But don’t tell Don Sebastiano. He’s such an old-fashioned man. Set in his ways.”
“How could Don Sebastiano not know? Carlo came in with me. He will tell the don I was here.”
The guaritrice led me down a dark passage, more crooked and looped than would seem possible, one we navigated mostly by touch. She turned the key in the lock and twisted the handle. “Do not worry about Young Carlo. He won’t be telling Don Sebastiano anything. He has been drinking my tea.”