The Pages of Time

Gilded Summers-11

I took the hand she offered, felt my own tremble as I took it.

Shadows blanketed the room. Closed shutters blocked the sun, the air. I could barely breathe. I could barely see the small being my mama had become. Her skin lay thin on her cheeks, fell in the deep hollows of her sunken face. Her swollen stomach protruded from her body. Whatever lay in there grew ever stronger as she grew weaker. I closed my eyes to the sight, my mind replacing it with the beautiful woman who had smiled with the twinkle of stars whenever she looked at me.

My aunt nudged me forward and I moved on feet brushing the floor. I sat in the chair by her bed and stared, wondering where my mama had gone, where she was going, for I knew she was going.

Reaching out, I put my small hand in the unmoving one lying on the bed in front of me. The cold of it was one I had never felt before. My hand trembled as it took hers and gave it a squeeze. My fingers sank into her skin like toes in the sand.

“Mama?” I thought I shouted but knew it was no more than a whisper. I swallowed; my tight throat hurt. “Mama?” I tried again.

Her head moved, barely. Her eyelids fluttered, opened only to slits.

“Ginevra,” her voice was a pale sound of the one I had always known, yet my heart warmed to hear her say my name. “You must take care of Ginevra. He—” she coughed, frail body quaking with it. My aunt rushed to the other side of the bed, held mama"s head, and held a cup of water to her lips. Most ran down Mama"s cheeks. Only a few drops made it past her dry, cracked lips. The coughing stopped.

“Ginevra,” she said again.

“I"m here, mama, right here.” I squeezed her hand harder. She turned her head toward me.

“You must take care of Ginevra,” she croaked. “He doesn"t know how.”

She spoke of me, but she didn"t know me. She didn"t know me but in her frightening words, I knew she loved me. I had little as a child, little in the way of clothes or toys. Though my father"s talent as a musician was great, there was little place in this small town on the east coast of Italy for it to shine. He made the most beautiful violins. His hands made magic out of wood. Few here could pay much for them. What I always had was her love. I would have it still. She had just told me it was so.

Her sick face swam in my sight. Her eyes closed as breath rattled in her chest.

Zia Domenica came to me. Her hand on my shoulder pulled me. I shrugged it off, leaned over, and kissed my mother"s cold cheek. Our last kiss.

After she died, he left all her things exactly where they were: plain dresses hung limp in the wardrobe, small trinket boxes stood open on her bureau, her few simple pieces of jewelry gathered tarnish.

I would find him, sometimes, staring at the boxes and their lowly treasures. Did he look at them with regret, hearing my mother"s unspoken desire for more, or perhaps his need to have given her more? Or did guilt hold him there, relieved that he would hear such silent need no more?

For months, my father and I simply existed, living together in a purgatory of nothing. We ate at the same table, slept in rooms beside each other, saying only words that needed to be said.

“Dinner,” he would announce as I sat at the table doing schoolwork. I cleared my papers, placed the dishes, and we"d sit over them, feeding our bellies but nothing else. Not the grief eating at us both.

I wanted—needed—him to help me through it. I know now he simply didn"t know how.

Like dreams that kept repeating, so were our days, days that stretched to months, to years. Until the fancy man came.

I had been in my room reading…or trying to. Mostly I stared out the window. I spent many hours this way since I lost her. I thought I saw her in the sky, the clouds, in the trees, in the sound of the ocean in the distance. I searched for her in every waking moment. I dreamt of her as I slept.

The tie binding me to the world was gone, and I floated aimlessly. Did I want to return, or did I want to let go? I was so young, only eight, and yet I knew my loss would be a part of me for the rest of my life. I didn"t know if I could live this.

I heard someone come in but didn"t care who it was. Until I heard their voices grow louder, harsher. I snuck out of my room, sat on the top step, and listened.

“We are going to America. A very rich man wants me there, wants me to work for him. He is paying good money, a lot of money, for me and Ginevra.” They were more words than I had heard my father speak in months, and with more strength and determination than in my whole lifetime.

“Who is this man?” Zia Domenica sounded just as determined.

I listened as my father told my aunt of the man who had come to our home before…when mother was still well, or so we thought. I remember the man"s clothes, like nothing I had ever seen, a coat and a jacket and a waistcoat, some sort of scarf wrapped intricately around his neck, a hat tall upon his head. So fancy and precise. My father told her of their conversation, of the money he had paid for one of my father"s violins. I remember the meal that night, more meat than I had ever seen on our table.

“He has sent me a letter. He wants me to teach his son the way of the violin now that he is old enough. To make some for him. He believes I could make other things too, furniture.”

“Furniture.” It was a huff. “You are no simple furniture maker.”

“I don"t believe he wants simple furniture. He is a grand man. His home, he says it is quite grand.”

Silence settled until he broke it, shattered it.

“He believes in me, Domenica.”

A sigh. “Ah, so, yes. I know what that must mean to you. She believed in you too. Always.”

My father said nothing. He knew my mother had always allowed him his work. Never once did she pester him to do something else, something to make more money. Never once did she question him as an artist, though it kept us always struggling. Her family was not always as kind.

“And what of Ginevra?”

“He said there will be a place for her always, as long as I am there. Even longer should the need arise. He has promised me of it.”

“She will be a servant then?” I could taste the bitterness of my aunt"s thoughts on the matter.

“A servant in a very wealthy household. It is better than I can do for her here. What would she become here but a servant to whichever man she married? It is all that is here for her.”

“And what is wrong with such a life?” huffed my aunt who lived one. “She needs us, her aunts. She needs women to grow into a woman.”

I heard his low grumble. I"d heard it so many times before. In this meager way, he would voice his displeasure.

“There will be women there.”

“What? Other servants? Dio mio.” My aunt did not hide her irritation as he did. “They will not love her.”

Dio mio“I love her.”

My hands gripped the railing. How strange to hear him say those words about me. I can"t remember when he had said them to me.

“Si, you do, I know you do.” Her voice softened as a chair scrapped on the floor. Did she stand beside him? “But do you love her enough?”

SiShe asked the question as if she stole it from my mind.

“It is the best I can do for her.”

I heard footsteps, a door opened, sounds of birds entered.

Before it shut, I heard, “Promise me, Felice, that when she is old enough to decide, if Ginevra wants to return, you will let her.”

I didn"t breathe as I waited, as I wondered whether this life my father spoke of in America would be better than the one I lived now. I wondered, when the time came, what I would want. I could not know.

“I promise,” he"d said. My fate had been sealed.

1895“He kept promise.” I shrugged a shoulder. “He think he kept promise.”

“I won"t ask you if you"re happy to be here,” Pearl fretted. How silent she had been through my story, even when I floundered and grasped for the correct words. Her face had changed many times. Each change spoke its own tale. “How could you be?”

She did not speak as if she gave advice to a servant; we spoke as travel mates on a winding, bumpy road. To be understood by someone else is sometimes the best we can hope for in life.

“My papa, he happy, is happy,” I told her. I did not want her to feel badly about my life in her home, in this home.

Pearl looked at me; her eyes were so like mine, as was our hair, though hers was not quite as curly. She smiled with half her mouth. “Fathers and mothers.”

I nodded. The day grew long, but there was no time within our leafy cave.

“They make us who we are,” she said, to me, to the tree. “In the good and bad ways.”

I nodded again. I understood her as well as she did me.

“Your papa, he is happy?” I remembered the conversation I had overheard last night. I wouldn"t tell her. Such things would pass between us, but not yet.

“In his way, I suppose he is, yes.” Was she trying to convince herself or me? I thought she wouldn"t say more about him. I was wrong.

The moment had come. Would I trifle with this girl or truly befriend her? My eyes closed for a moment, my stark vision drawn inward, seeking truth, looking for what was right, what I wanted against the consequences of wanting it. With my words came the answer. No one reveals their dark truths to trivial acquaintances.

“My father is a railroad baron, as so—”

“Bar-ron?” Ginevra said the word strange to her as if it were two.

“A businessman, a very successful businessman, like most of the men who come here in the summer. But he is also a descendant of…” I would have to watch my language, not because of Ginevra"s mind, but because of her lack of knowing all the words. “He was born into a great family, with a descent that can be traced back to the Mayflower. They became very rich. But my great-grandfather had somehow—Father has never told me; I think he is ashamed—lost the family fortune. My father earned it back, doubled it. Now he is on both sides of the line.”