Elizabeth Street - Laurie Fabiano [32]
The passengers already knew to call Giovanna for their aches and pains. On the first night, when she could no longer bear the sound of a child’s rattling cough and his mother’s admonishments to be silent, Giovanna rose from her bunk and walked to the buckets of saltwater that were set aside for baths. She poured water into a washbasin and headed to the ship’s boiler room. The crewman was stunned into compliance at the sight of such an imposing, mute woman motioning for him to make the water hot. While the soot-faced young man heated her water, Giovanna dug in her trunk for the poultices and herbs she was carrying and put together a salve for the child’s chest. Retrieving the hot water, she went and sat on the woman’s bunk. Because the steaming saltwater made her intentions apparent, or because Giovanna’s manner was so matter-of-fact, the woman did not protest. Giovanna rubbed an oil of eucalyptus and archangelica on the child’s chest and, taking the shawl from the mother’s shoulders, created a tent filled with saltwater steam for the sick child.
“Grazie, mille grazie, signora,” mumbled the mother, kissing the hands of Giovanna, who then left as wordlessly as she had come.
“Signora,” an arm tugged on her skirt. Giovanna got up and reached for her bag of herbs. “No, no, signora, I want to talk to you. I know you can hear; I see how you listen. Why don’t you talk, signora?”
Giovanna looked down at a girl of perhaps eleven with cascading dark hair who steadfastly gazed up at her. Her first instinct was to shoo the girl away, but something in the girl’s quizzical expression and forthrightness softened Giovanna. She came down from her bunk and sat on the floor with the girl.
Realizing that Giovanna wasn’t going to answer her question, or any questions, the girl decided to do all the talking.
“We’re going to l’America,” she said proudly.
Giovanna nodded and pointed to her chest indicating, “Me too.”
“You see, my father died. Now it’s just my mother, my little sister, and me. My grandparents said they couldn’t take care of us, and in our village there are no men left for my mother to marry—they all went to l’America. My grandparents wrote to my father’s sister and asked her to take us in. They work on a big farm and pick red berries in water. I’m going to do that, too!”
Giovanna noticed that the girl had not stopped scratching her head. Retrieving a small comb from her bag, she motioned for the girl to sit with her back to her.
“Mamma may even find a husband, and I’m going to make enough money to buy new shoes for the entire family!”
Giovanna combed small sections of the girl’s hair and used her nails to catch and crush lice and pick their nits off each strand.
“My aunt, she went to l’America when she was fifteen to get married. I don’t want to get married. Boys are disgusting. Don’t you think so?”
She stopped talking long enough to turn and look at the smile on Giovanna’s face. Hours passed this way with the girl recounting her life story and her grand plans for l’America while Giovanna methodically deloused her head.
At some point Giovanna tuned the girl out, wondering what Nunzio’s voyage had been like. He had written little about his time on the ship, only saying that his plan was to work hard enough so that if Giovanna were to ever visit l’America she would travel with a second-class ticket. She wondered if Nunzio had met a young boy and if they’d built boats out of nutshells. Had he slept on the top or bottom bunk? Did his ship smell as sickeningly awful as this one? She imagined that boredom drove Nunzio to join in one of the many games of briscola or scopa, even though he didn’t like playing cards. It was one of their few differences—Giovanna loved card games.
The shuffling of bodies and the clanging of tin plates signaling a meal snapped both Giovanna and the girl out of their own worlds. They rose and each got her plate, which had been issued by the shipping company, and stood in line. The evening meal was no different from the previous evening’s meal or