We didn’t actually run. We more cantered in an awkward hobble, my arm around Benedetta’s waist.
The guaritrice’s voice barreled after us, disjointed and desperate. “Get them, Tizi. Bring them back.”
I hustled Benedetta faster, turning corner after corner in the darkening passage and gathering the yarn trail I’d left on my way in. Benedetta stumbled. I held on, got her steady. She sank against the sidewall. “I can’t.”
“Sure you can.”
“Leave me. I’m a terrible mother. Awful. Ready to trade my child for a piece of fabric.”
“It’s not a child yet. It starts as a baby. All you have to do now is give birth to it.” I pried her off the wall. “Then you’ll figure out the rest.”
I dragged her along, turn after turn after turn, spiraling inner to outer, the passage feeling increasingly uphill, our collective will slackening. The passage widened, the cross-passages, webbing the labyrinth, grew broader. I gathered skein after skein, the yarn a hopeless tangle, circling our arms, clinging to my coat buttons, twining about my skirt. I struggled with the tendrils.
Beside me, Benedetta thrashed. “Help me, Fiora. I can’t get it loose.”
I felt for her waist, patted down along her hips and down her legs, feeling for the threads. I unwound, and yanked, using my teeth to bite through the fibers, my thoughts wild. I needed a knife, a machete. I was in a dream. No. A nightmare. Brought on by anxiety. And exhaustion. And the . . .
I stopped my struggle. “Benedetta, listen to me. You must be calm. None of this is real. It’s the guaritrice’s tea, her medicine. It made us go to sleep. Not for real.” I tapped my temple. “In here.”
“In where?”
It was dark, pitch, she couldn’t see my movement. “In our heads. All of what we think is happening is in our heads.” I grabbed her hand, touched it to either side of the hollow. “Can you feel that? What do you think?”
“For a way out?”
“Yes.” A shortcut, a direct route. “There’s no thread, nothing entangling us. Believe me. Take a step. You will see.”
She tightened her grip. And stepped with me.
The yarn fell away. I felt the lines untie, then slither down my coat, and slide off my stockings.
Benedetta squeezed my hand. “Fiora. It’s working.”
We took another step, then two more, keeping our palms to the wall. A breeze fell fresh on my face, the sound of traffic rumbled in underfoot, a message from the outside. We were going to make it, to a world of sunshine, and blue skies, and a reason to continue.
Something moved, shuffley, then skittery.
Benedetta pull me back. “What . . . is that?”
Something dark. Something hungry. Something unaccustomed to being challenged.
Keeping us in. Keeping us from getting out.
I stuck my hands into my coat pockets and pulled out wads of verbena and held them over my head. I didn’t know why. All I knew was the old man put it in my pocket because I’d never know when it was needed. I directed my attention to what waited, and spoke in the most deep and menacing voice I could muster. “Stay back. I’m warning you.”
“Fiora?” A voice, pitiful and plaintive echoed from the hollow. “Help me. I lost my lamp and the passage is so dark.”
Benedetta let out a sigh, long and whooshy and full of relief. “It’s only Tizi.”
I held her back, a dreadful certainty gathering in my gut.
She pulled forward. “We have to help her. She helped us.”
“Benedetta, stop. That’s not Tizi.”
The verbena warmed in my palms. The skitter-shuffle grew closer. I strained to see, strained to know what lay in my path, what prevented me from my purpose. The image filled my mind’s eye, then resolved.
Eyes. Too large to be human, globular and glowing and galvanized on us.
I cranked back and catapulted the verbena forward. It spread out in tiny glimmers and coated the menace, revealing a bulk, bizarre and buglike, which sparked at each point of contact. Like fairy lights.
A hiss, spitting and spiteful, faded into the shadows.
Benedetta gasped.
I got hold of her shoulder and hauled her back, out of the hollow, back into the passage. I groped along the floor, seeking the yarn. We were close, we were always close, we were never as far as we thought we’d been. I just needed something to guide me.
Or someone.
Thud. Thud. Thud. “Fiora. Benedetta. Open up.”
Carlo.
Just ahead, another ten feet, maybe twenty. On the other side of the door.
We followed his voice and made a dash for it. I put a hand on the knob, turned it, and gave the door a heave.
And ducked with Benedetta to avoid Carlo’s fist, already descending to land another blow to the freshly opened door.
I pushed past him, Benedetta in tow.
“Fiora. Don’t leave me.” Not Carlo. The Tizi Voice.
I turned. “Carlo. Let’s go.”
He gazed through the open doorway.
The Tizi Voice’s plea came again.
I grabbed him, grabbed Benedetta, and heaved. “I. Said. Go.”
Like a cork popped from a bottle, we cannonballed to the corner.
The Tizi Voice came again, whining and wailing. “Pleeeeeaassse.”
Carlo stopped us. “We must go back. Can’t you hear that?”
I took his collar. “You must not. None of us should. If you do, it will be the last thing you do.”
“That sounds pretty final.” He hesitated, but I guess something in my face told him I meant it. He pried my fingers off his collar and tossed Benedetta’s coat about her shoulders. “Here. I found this outside the door. What are all those red stains? You were only inside a minute.”
We’d been there for hours. Days. Maybe years. We’d been in a bubble inside the bubble. A bubble created by the guaritrice, meant to confuse, to entrap. We were out of it, we’d escaped. And now we had to leave mine. Had to get on a trolley and cross the barrier. Because . . . “Benedetta’s having the baby.” I adjusted her mask back over her mouth and nose. “We gotta go.”
I don’t know why I was in such a hurry. We got to the hospital, the doors were shut, and a line snaked around the building.
“There’s no room,” a tired-looking man in a white mask told us.
Carlo spoke up. “We’re not sick. The signora is having a baby. What should we do?”
The man checked Benedetta’s eyes. He felt her forehead. He made her put her tongue out. “Take her to the Holy Sisters. They’re set up for people who do not have the influenza. It’s just a little farther.”
A little farther. Benedetta looked ready to drop.
“The exercise will help her progress. Is this her first?” the man asked.
I nodded.
“Then she has plenty of time.” He turned his back on us, moving to the next person in line.
Outside the bubble, a little farther wasn’t far. With a pregnant woman in the midst of another contraction, it was an eternity. Carlo scooped Benedetta into his arms and carried her.
The white-masked sister put a pen to her clipboard. “How far apart are the pains?”
I didn’t know. A minute, an hour, never-ending. I’d done my part. I’d gotten Benedetta there. The professionals could take over.
The nurse sat Benedetta in a wheelchair. Carlo and I headed toward a room with a makeshift sign labeled FAMILIES.
“Young lady?” The sister’s voice followed me. “We’re going to need your help.”
I turned. “But—”
“We’re understaffed. Somebody has to stay with her.”
Carlo knocked on the jamb. The jamb edging the door to the room marked for families. The room where I could sit quietly while people who knew what they were doing did what they were supposed to do. He flicked his head toward the sister. “Go ahead. Come get me when you’re finished.” He tapped me under the chin. “Don’t forget I’m here.”
Stay with her. Keep her company. Help her into the hospital gown. Hold her hand.
Sure, I could do that. I’d heard it could take a long time to have a baby. One of Mamma’s clients once complained she was in labor for two days.
Maybe I should have brought a snack.
The nuns assigned us a curtained space, with a bed and a chair. The space was one of six in a large room which was really a schoolroom, with a chalkboard on which somebody had listed the stages of labor, complete with illustrations. A pencil sharpener was screwed to the wall beside the heavy wood door.
On the other side of Benedetta’s privacy drapes, people grumbled and adjusted, snored and sniffled. I wondered if they were here to have babies, or tonsils removed, or maybe get a broken bone fixed.
Benedetta and I should be quiet. Speak in low, polite voices, about topics suitable for public display. I perched on the edge of the chair. “So. How are you feeling?”
Benedetta bent over the mattress, her belly hanging under her, and let loose a cry. Squawky and scratchy. Like a parrot at the zoo.
The sister rushed in, bearing a tray of instruments. “Sounds like we’re getting close. Into the stirrups, young lady.” She nodded to me, now glued to my place. “Stay there.”
Another nurse bustled in. She thrust her hand between Benedetta’s open knees. “All right now, dearie, deep breath.”
I couldn’t imagine, would never have guessed. Benedetta clasped my hand throughout, the touch neither gentle, nor soft, nor even particularly friendly. She held tight, near crushing my bones while the nurses poked and prodded and told Benedetta it would all be over soon, if she’d only just breathe.
This was what it meant to be with a man. It was ludicrous. Why would anybody put themselves in that position willingly? I imagined Carlo and I together, the actual mechanics of love fuzzy, and fanciful and, I was convinced, painful. I clamped on Benedetta’s hand as hard as she clamped on mine, unable to watch those instruments disappearing beneath the sheet the nurses had draped across Benedetta’s knees. Benedetta writhed beside me, eyes crazed. “I’m going to die, Fiora Vicente. I feel it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I told her. “Nobody is dying today. You’re having a baby.” Then I remembered something Mamma told me once. “It’s all perfectly natural.”
If natural meant rearing like a whipped horse, eyes bulged and all the neck veins stretched like piano strings. Sweat poured down Benedetta’s face. She pressed her lips together and arched, her eyes rolling into the back of her head. “She’s not dying, is she?” I asked the nurse.
“Hush,” she told me. Then to Benedetta: “Get your breath, young lady. I’m going to need you to push.”
Benedetta didn’t respond. She was too busy panting.
“She speaks English, doesn’t she?” the nurse asked.
I nodded, repeating the instructions in Italian anyway and adding, “Don’t frown, or the baby will come out frowning, too.”
“I don’t care.” Benedetta grabbed my waistband. “If I die, tell Nicco I am never ever doing this for him again. Do you understand me? Tell him, just like that. Never.”
“Shhh, relax. Tell Nicco yourself. You’re not going to die.” I gazed at the chalkboard illustration, at the chalk-drawn baby, grown to the size of a porpoise sliding down a passage expanded enough to accommodate it. I thought of my own anatomy, with which I only had a passing acquaintance. The illustration went blurry.
“You.” The sister’s voice came out of the fuzz. “If you are going to faint. Leave the room.”
Leave the room? Oh how I wanted to follow that instruction. And if I did, it likely would be the only instruction I ever followed willingly in my life. I even took a step in the direction of the door.
Benedetta ripped off her mask and plucked at my sleeve. “Don’t you leave me, Fiora Vicente. Do you hear? Don’t you dare leave. Please.”
I looked in her eyes, dark and deep and rich as hot chocolate, without worry she’d think I was casting her a curse. For the first and only time in my life.
Please stay. Please don’t leave. Please help me because I’m scared. I’m panicked. I’m frightened.
And more than that.
Please make sure my baby is all right. Care for him. Feed him. Give him a warm place to sleep. Keep him safe for the day you can hand him to his father.
“Benedetta,” I whispered. “You will be all right.”
The nun looked up from between Benedetta’s knees. “Ready, young lady? Deep breath and push.”
I had no expectation of this last part. No more than I’d had for the first part. Or for anything that happened in the middle. Benedetta took the biggest breath I’d ever imagined, a breath like I’d wished I could take in the bubble, a breath like what must have happened at the creation of the world, a breath like what would happen at the world’s ending. A breath like no other. Filled with faith, filled with hope, filled with the promise of tomorrow.
Long and loud. Really, really loud. I’m pretty sure the window-panes rattled.
Then her holler cut off, ending in a great whoosh, her face red, body trembling. I heard a cry, wet and lusty and oh so indignant coming from a purplish lump smeared with what looked to me like fruit mostarda.
The nurses wrapped the lump quickly, and I grabbed my friend’s shoulder. “You have a girl, Benedetta.” My excitement edged out every other emotion. Every emotion I’d ever had. Every emotion I thought I would ever have. “A girl. A sloppy, sticky, full of mozzarella girl.”
This was life, how it should be, squalling and flailing, then wrapped into a bundle and placed in my arms. Well, Benedetta’s arms.
The sister smiled, or so I presumed from the way her cheeks lifted under her mask. “Say hello to her, Mamma.”
Benedetta leaned over the baby, touching each tiny finger. “Une, due, tres . . .”
“We already counted,” the sister told her. “She’s perfect. Now relax. We need a few more minutes.”
The nurses could have removed Benedetta’s tonsils at that moment, and I doubt she would have noticed.
Not so for me. Every image, every movement, every uncomfortable and embarrassing aspect of the experience was to be forever seared in my soul. Again the hands and the instruments went diving under the bedsheet. “What are you doing?”
“The afterbirth, sweetheart. It comes after the baby. Then we must clean your friend up. She will stay here a few days. Then you or her husband must come to collect her.”
“Oh that’s not her husband waiting out there. Her husband is away in the war.”
“You then. And him, if you like.” The nurses brought out a giant needle and thread, and I all but lost my knees.
“I’ll be back,” I mumbled and was out the door and down the hall past the room marked FAMILIES, seeking out the water fountain. I splashed handful after handful onto my face, unconcerned most of it ended up on my shoes. Carlo found me there. He soaked a handkerchief and laid it on the back of my neck. I slumped against the wall and imagined how the next weeks and months would go.
Benedetta holding the baby while I made soup in her kitchen. Benedetta, Carlo, and I walking the baby to the park. Perhaps Carlo would hold the baby on his shoulders the way he’d held Etti the other day.
Hmmm. The baby would have to be older for that. I waved Carlo away, to let him know I was fine. Then told him about the baby. “She’s beautiful. Perfect. She has a lot of hair.”
“Because your friend was so overdue.” One of the sisters stood beside me. “You did a fine job in there. You’d make a fine nurse.”
I waited for the trailing remark, the sideways glance that really said, “I’m saying that to be polite. You are the daughter of the fortune-teller. No nursing school would ever consider letting you attend.”
But the comment didn’t come. The sister stood before me, her eyes as open and honest as Carlo’s.
“I almost fell over,” I told her.
“But you didn’t. You were brave. Very, very brave. You got her to the hospital all the way from your house. You kept her as safe and comfortable as you could. Childbirth can be dangerous, but because of you, this child has been brought safely into this world. Be proud of that and proud of yourself.”
“Is she all right?”
“She’s fine. Just exhausted. She’s asking for you. Come back when your stomach’s settled.” She turned. “And comb your hair. It’s a mess.”
I watched her go, my heart light, then followed on angel wings. Benedetta was already cleaned up, on fresh sheets, and nursing. She put out her hand. “Come, see our baby.”
A new set of imaginings replaced the others: How happy Nicco would be when he came home from the war. How proud Benedetta would be to place their daughter in his arms. How she would put an arm about my shoulders. “And this is my best friend, Fiora Vicente. She helped bring our baby into this world, so I want her to be godmother.”
And I would become a permanent part of the scene because that would make Benedetta and me family. I took her hand, felt the blush creep up my neck.
The bubble must go. Life must be allowed to continue. The guaritrice was wrong. Benedetta was fine. The baby was fine. They were outside the bubble and they were fine. I hadn’t killed her, hadn’t hurt her baby. The guaritrice was wrong, and I was never going to listen to the guaritrice again.
I leaned over, took Benedetta’s face between my palms, drew her toward me.
And kissed her.