Elizabeth Street - Laurie Fabiano [148]
The sound of little feet running up the stairs reached Giovanna. She dropped the baby in the bureau drawer that was his bassinet and lunged toward the door, throwing it open.
“Mamma! Mamma!” Angelina was halfway up the stairs when she saw her. In seconds Giovanna scooped her up and buried her face in Angelina’s neck. “Mamma, you’re hurting me!” called Angelina.
“Scusa, scusa, let me see your face!” Giovanna cupped her daughter’s face in her hands and sobbed.
Angelina was confused and angry. Hitting her mother, she shouted, “Brutta Mamma! Brutta Mamma! Brutta! Brutta! Why didn’t you come and get me? Why did you give me away?”
Angelina’s confusion was only magnified when she saw her mother, who was crying, start to laugh. “You talk like a little Sicilian!”
Rocco and the girls burst through the door.
“Angelina! My Angelina!” Rocco took her from Giovanna’s arms and kissed her face many times over. The child was completely bewildered. Her father never kissed her. And then he kissed her mother.
Mary and Frances pulled at her shouting, “You’re back!”
Angelina struck out at her father and sisters too, her little fists raining down on them. “Why didn’t you get me! Brutti! Brutti!” Her cries became louder when they, too, laughed with joy.
“My baby, my baby, don’t cry. We are so happy to have you back.” Giovanna stroked her face. “If we had known where you were we would have come at once to get you.”
“You didn’t know where I was?”
“No, bambina.”
“But you sent me away with Limonata.”
“She was a bad woman.” Turning to Frances, Giovanna said, “Go to Zio Lorenzo’s house and tell them Angelina is back.”
Word had already spread that people had seen a little girl in a red coat running through the streets. Teresa and her children arrived before Frances made it down the stairs.
Angelina had a hard time understanding all the crying and the laughing. There wasn’t a moment when she wasn’t being kissed and thrown in the air. Arms were everywhere, and her head was alternately pressed into someone’s body or cupped in someone’s hand. The happier they all were, the angrier Angelina got. “If they like me so much, why didn’t they find me?” she thought.
Her mother broke away, and Angelina saw her and Zia Teresa heating water and pouring it into a big tub by the stove. Frances, who Angelina hadn’t even noticed was missing because of all the commotion, returned from the pharmacist, her arms brimming with bottles. At one point in the mayhem, her mother brought her into the bedroom and said, “Angelina, this is your baby brother, Anthony.”
“I’m glad you didn’t give him away.”
Giovanna hugged her tighter.
“Let’s get these clothes off,” ordered Teresa. Teresa cut the clothes from Angelina’s body and handed them and the red coat to her oldest daughter, Concetta. “Burn them, they’re infested.”
Angelina was dipped in the hot tub. It was the first time in three months her body was immersed in water. The heat actually made her shiver; something inside was thawing.
“My baby, my baby,” Giovanna was crying, but there was no laughter as she gently washed her daughter’s emaciated body, which was covered in open wounds, scabs, and vermin.
“I’ll start on her hair,” offered Teresa. Taking a thin-toothed comb, she separated each strand, capturing and killing lice and nits. By then all her cousins were in the apartment as well. Everyone was laughing, and her cousins, especially Domenico, kept trying to ask her questions. But her mother would shush them, “Not now, not now.”
Concetta, who had left to burn Angelina’s clothes, returned an hour later with food. Soon everyone was eating, including Angelina, who ate in the bath while her mother and Teresa continued to minister to her body. Frances had emptied and filled the tub nearly ten times, and Mary was feeding her sips of hot tea and bites of meatballs.