“Carlo. Carlo, Carlo, Carlo.”
We pounded on Benedetta’s door. The boys were elbow deep in flour.
We dusted them off. “Quick. Hats and coats for the boys.” Rapid explanations.
And Carlo keeping an eye out the window. “How can you know the Children’s Bureau is coming when they are nowhere to be found?”
My every instinct grasped for some explanation that would be reasonable. And found none.
Benedetta wiped at jam on the edge of Etti’s mouth. “Carlo. She’s a fortune-teller.”
Bless her. “Take them to the park maybe. Anywhere.” I shoved bread into Carlo’s pocket. “In case they get hungry. Where’s the old man?”
“Gone for a walk.”
“The doctor told him to stay put.”
“He feels confined.” Carlo waved a hand. “Everything is so . . . compressed.”
“Like when Mamma keeps the lid on the soup.” Etti piped up from the depth of his scarf. “Do I have to wear this? It’s hot.”
Carlo rewrapped the scarf, a little looser. “Keep it around your mouth and nose, little man. Your mamma would want you to. We are going out in disguise. Do you know what a disguise is?”
Etti nodded. He looked around the room. “Can Mamma see us?”
Fipo wound his scarf so tight, it should have cut off his breath. But . . . no such luck. “Mamma can’t see us. She’s dead. So is Poppa. We have to leave, or we can’t stay with Signora Bruni.”
I thought Etti would cry. Thought he would crumble into a ball, wrap himself away from the rawness of Fipo’s truth. He didn’t. He took Fipo’s hand. “All right.”
Carlo headed for the door. “How long should I keep them?”
“An hour, maybe two. I don’t know.”
Benedetta shooed them down the stairs. “If the door is ajar, stay away. I’ll close and lock it after the ladies leave.” She peered across the market. “Go. Go.”
Carlo stepped off the stoop.
I put my hands on his shoulders and turned him around. “The other way.”
They were gone.
Benedetta and I closed the door after them. We locked it. We held hands, backing up one step, then another, the front door transformed to every monster we’d ever feared. We ticked down the seconds. Waiting.
Somebody knocked. A polite, but officious ratta-tat-tat, the kind of sound the Reverend Mother made when she wanted to get our attention.
I don’t know what I’d expected. Maybe a deep and ominous thud, one that echoed off the walls and resonated down my spine. A thud weighty enough to match the drama of the last five minutes.
I smacked my forehead. “Don’t answer. The boys’ things. What if they check the apartment?” I ducked into the Lattanzis’ and went through the boys’ clothes. Nightshirts, socks, shirts, and caps. Books and toys, and the rubber band–propelled airplane. Into a box.
The knock came again.
I left the apartment and scooted across the landing, box in hand.
The knock came a third time.
Benedetta gave me a hurry-up-hurry-up wave. I pulled open the door to the basement.
And kicked the box into its murky depths.
I turned . . .
. . . and caught the cuff of my shirtwaist, the cuff I hadn’t bothered to button while alone in my attic, the cuff that flapped as I moved, in the deadbolt.
I twisted, wrangling my wrist back and forth, up and down and around, keeping an ear for Benedetta.
“Hello, may I help you?” Muffled words from somebody on the outside. I imagined Benedetta holding the door open as had the landlord, so only the smallest rectangle showed, and doing her best to keep the sound of my efforts to liberate my sleeve from being heard. Then Benedetta spoke in Italian, fast and loud enough for me to hear. “Fiora Vicente? She left a few days ago. Our neighbor died and she was distraught.” She switched to English and repeated herself. I peeked from under the stairwell, as had the boys, the first day I met them, the day they left their airplane on the bottom tread of the stairs and told me they planned to fly their airplane to Oz.
Benedetta waved her hand behind her back, a silent and emphatic Go. Hide. I shrank back to the basement steps. Closed the door. And pressed my ear to the keyhole.
The latch clicked.
“Yes, of course. Please. Come in. I don’t understand, why would anybody make a report? Signorina Vicente has been doing well. Very busy in the neighborhood. People love her.”
One of the Children’s Bureau ladies spoke. I had no idea which, but I imagined it was the thin one, her voice high and tense, like a clothesline in the wind. I didn’t catch the words, but Benedetta’s answer, again loud enough for me to hear, filled in the blanks. “Oh no, the boy’s injury was not serious. He is already recovered, from what I understand. They went to live with their aunt. In Coatesville.”
More talking, this time I presumed from the short and thick one. Her voice was even quieter, with rounded syllables that made English sound smooth and refined.
Then Benedetta. “The boys will be fine. I plan to take them myself. I’m their cousin. We are all from the same village, but, as you can see I will be . . . how do you say? Indisposed. So just until things settle here. Then I will get them and fill out all the proper paperwork.”
“She’s in there. Go upstairs and search.” A fresh voice spoke from a farther distance, harsh and hateful. “Go on. Find the little witch and take her to the orphanage. She can help you there. Here, she is nothing but trouble. We will not—”
“Which of you called the Children’s Bureau?” Benedetta cut through the troublemaker. “Which of you has been so ungenerous toward a house of grief?”
Silence.
“I see how brave you are when you have to own up to your actions. Please, feel free to wait on our stoop. Don Sebastiano will be back later. Perhaps he will have questions, and perhaps you will not be so quick with your comments.”
I could see her in my mind’s eye, standing straight, and valiant, staring down the crowd, unafraid.
One of the Children’s Bureau ladies spoke. I think the tall, thin one, a long stream of which I understood nothing except, “. . . police.”
I clutched the stair rail, blind to the discussion not twenty feet away, wishing, when Benedetta waved me away, I’d gone up to my attic, instead of down to the basement. I could be watching from Mamma’s curtain, would already know what would happen five minutes hence. Maybe I could have entered the curtain world, made my way to the back edge of the crowd, deflected their attention, drawn them off.
I felt for the tread and sat.
And kicked the box, the box with the boys’ things, the box I’d tossed down the stairs seconds after the third knock on the door, the box which, I realized after I kicked it, I hadn’t tossed all the way down the stairs. Because when I kicked the box just that moment, there, in the dark, the box tumbled the rest of the way.
It bumped. It thumped. It rattled. It clattered. It shook and it shimmied. It clanged and it banged.
I hung on to the rail, ready to run, ready to do battle, ready to go stand with Benedetta and dare the Children’s Bureau, dare the crowd to make me go anywhere, make me do anything, make me feel bad about my mother, my station, my life. I was Fiora Vicente, Rosina Vicente’s daughter. And I did not scare easily.
The door to the basement opened. A figure blocked the light. Maybe the short and thick Children’s Bureau lady with the melodious voice, and an official paper that would send me to an orphanage.
I screeched.
The figure blocking the light jumped, and I saw she wasn’t the short, thick lady from the orphanage. She was Benedetta, hand clapped over her heart. “What are you hollering for? What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter? I’ve been here in the dark. I thought the Children’s Bureau lady said something about the police.”
“Oh. That.” She swept her hand downward. “I drew this for them.”
She pulled a paper from under her waistband, written over in Italian. Some kind of chart with boxes and arrows.
I examined the chart. “This says I’m your cousin on your mother’s mother’s side. And Signora Lattanzi’s niece on your father’s side.” I didn’t actually know anything about my ancestry, and this would explain even more Signora Lattanzi’s willingness to help me. “Am I? Related, I mean.”
She giggled. “Not at all. But the Children’s Bureau thinks you are. And that’s enough for them for now.”
“What if they come back?”
“They won’t. They think you’re in Coatesville with the boys. Good thing my aunt has a lot of bedrooms. It’s getting pretty crowded up there.”
“So now what? I walk around with my scarf wrapped around my head, too?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” She took hold of my hand and crushed my fingers, every angle of her face crowding toward its center.
Pain, crampy and complete, took a direct route from her fist and clutched at my midsection. “Oh no. Oh no no no. You’re not. Not now, I mean.”
“Shut up. Be calm. We have to think. Because this baby is finally coming.”