WHEN SHE FINALLY WOKE, she didn’t know where she was. For a moment she thought she was back at the rectory. Then she was sure she was home, at the Robertson Scale factory. A line of stitches across her abdomen itched and burned. Mercurochrome made them scream.
“What happened to me?”
“You just had a baby.”
It all came hurtling back.
But did it really happen?
She was weak and empty. Like one of her pots before it was filled with tomato gravy. And she was starving. She inhaled three plates of gray-looking beef melting over mushy noodles and four small bowls of chalky strawberry ice cream.
“Keep eating, young lady!” the young nun from the delivery room encouraged. “You have to regain your strength!”
She did as she was told, then she went back to sleep.
The next morning, after Bella had a long, greasy bowel movement, the young nun reappeared holding a squirming bundle in her arms. “Here he is,” she whispered. “He’s a regular heritage from the Lord. Would you like to hold him?”
It was true. She had a baby. A wave of nausea like the ones she had experienced during the rocky early days of her pregnancy washed over her and she gagged and coughed.
“No.”
The nun ignored her.
“Don’t be silly. Of course you do.”
The beaming woman gently placed the baby on Bella’s chest. “You need to be careful. If he starts to cry, I’ll have to take him away. If the others catch me doing this, there’ll be holy hell to pay.”
Not since Little Luigi had Bella held anything so helpless. So vulnerable.
This is a small part of me. How fucking strange.
Bella’s first impulse was to throw the bundle against the wall. He started wriggling around in the wrapped blanket, but his eyes were closed.
“I think he’s sleeping,” Bella said.
“Count your blessings. This one’s a real yeller. A regular Kate Smith when he’s hungry.”
He had the longest lashes Bella had ever seen. Ruby-colored pimples blotched his cheeks, but the rest of his face looked Flirty Eye Princess Beatrix baby doll perfect. A tiny nose, crusted and wheezing; mini rosebud lips, kiss-ready and glistening. He had big hands. He had Bella’s hands.
“Tomato-picking hands. Just like me,” Bella whispered.
She reached down and gently touched one of them with her finger. Without opening his eyes, the baby grabbed and squeezed.
“He’s so strong,” Bella said.
Just like Francis Anthony Mozzarelli.
“He’s a regular little strongman, this one is,” the beaming nurse whispered.
“Peekaboo, I see you …” Bella sang and her tits spit, soaking the front of her hospital gown. When the wet struck the baby, he opened his eyes, flecked gold and green.
Without thinking, Bella pulled the top of her hospital gown open and brought him to her damp breast. When he latched on to the tip of her ripe nipple, the skin jumped off her bones.
“Ouch! He’s biting …”
“Poke his cheek.”
Bella pressed her finger into his pimples and he let go for a second. Then he took the tip of the nipple and a fair amount of the plum-colored skin around it into his little mouth again, mostly with his tongue and lips instead of his gums.
“Bend forward a little bit,” the nun coaxed.
The stitches across Bella’s abdomen pinched like a son of a bitch.
“That’s it,” the nun whispered.
When he latched on properly and started sucking, Bella felt the first flush of a release. It was a painful tug at first, almost as painful as her hissing stitches. Then her whole body tingled. Then it was soothing. Then it was pure ecstasy. Her breast felt like it was housing a hive of bees.
Honeybees.
“William,” she whispered. “Your name is going to be William Francis Anthony.”
William after Mrs. Concannon’s long-lost son. Francis Anthony so he will always know who he came from.
“William Francis Anthony is such a nice, sturdy name,” the nun said. “You can call him Billy!”
While William Francis Anthony suckled, Bella told him her life story.
She told him about meeting his papa.
“He was prettier than Jesus. He made me feel like a Queen.” She told him about her own papa. “He used to be nice but now he’s really mean.” She told him about her silent mamma. “She used to sing, but then she got the great depression.” She told him about her entire family. “They’re all crazy. All of them except Little Luigi.” She told him about her cooking. She whispered her secret meatball recipe into his little cavatelli ear. “You taste that?” she whispered as he slurped from her buzzing breast. “That’s olive oil. Sweet and peppery. Ain’t it delicious?” In response his gums massaged her nipple and her whole body turned to cheese. “That’s mozzarella.” His flecked eyes grabbed hers. “Here comes the Pecorino and Locatelli,” she whispered. The baby’s cheeks blazed flamingo pink. “That’s the cannoli cream your papa fed to me. Those are my meatballs. That’s Big Betty’s tomato gravy.” As he suckled, Bella rocked him and softly sang,
Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby, ooh,
Who will I give this baby to?
Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby, eee,
I will keep this baby for me …
The young nun snuck William into Bella’s room every day.
The physical relief Bella felt when he suckled made her feel serene. When he left, she was bereft. The bees in her breasts were furious. They stung. It wasn’t until her breasts filled back up and anticipated his tiny lips, cried out for them by hardening and leaking and stinging and singing, that she felt happy again.
As the wound across her belly started to heal, she found it easier to handle him. The stitches had hardened. But they still itched. After they were removed, she almost felt like her old self again.
Everything was falling back into their improper proper places.
She fed and sang to her son three times a day, every day, thinking it was always going to be that way, just the two of them, Madonna and child, completely connected, until another nun, an older one like the one that had tried to change her name when she was a scrappy young thing, swooped in and told her it was time for her to leave.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re all better now. You can go home,” the old crone said.
Home? To her family?
It wasn’t until Bella was packed and sitting with her discharge papers in her hand, that she realized they expected her to leave without William.
Every vein in her body constricted. For several seconds she couldn’t see. She couldn’t breathe. For a moment her heart stopped beating.
“What about William?”
“Your father arranged for us to take care of him for you.”
“What? Why?”
“You’re too young to properly look after an infant yourself, young lady.”
Bella didn’t understand. She had taken good care of Little Luigi when he was a baby. She had dropped him twice and sometimes she forgot to feed him, but he was still alive. He was thriving.
“I’m taking my baby home with me.”
The nun cackled. “You poor thing. Don’t be silly. You’re only sixteen. You don’t have a husband. How can you possibly take care of a baby?”