Elizabeth Street - Laurie Fabiano [47]
She also noticed that she would need to teach Giovanna more about rules of sterility and how to inspect the placenta for clues to the baby’s health. But in their brief time together, she sensed that Giovanna would not scoff at new information. For all her confidence, she appeared to be an eager student.
Lucrezia planned to stay with the mother, but she suggested that Giovanna go home. “I’m sure your family is concerned. Tomorrow, come to my house at eight a.m., and we will make visits together. It is a busy time; I have seven women in their ninth month. You’re skilled, Giovanna.”
“I had a good teacher,” replied Giovanna, thinking warmly of Signora Scalici.
“But more than skills, you have a healing touch. It’s a gift.”
Giovanna blushed. She said good-bye to the family and turned to Lucrezia. She tried to think of something to say that would convey her happiness at meeting her, but as was often the case, these types of words failed her, and she simply kissed Lucrezia’s hand and left.
Giovanna felt triumphant entering her brother’s apartment.
“Tell us, tell us everything!” Lorenzo exclaimed. “Have you eaten? Teresa, get Giovanna her dinner. Sit, Giovanna. Tell me everything,” implored Lorenzo, peeling a pear for the children.
Giovanna began to chronicle her day, but soon she dropped her reporter’s tone and her excitement shone through.
“Working with a dottore! How wonderful!” Lorenzo practically shouted.
“Signora LaManna is not a doctor here in America.”
“That’s a technicality. Italy thought she was good enough to be a doctor, and she chose to work with you.”
“I asked her for work.”
“Another technicality.”
Giovanna smiled at her brother’s pride.
That night, Giovanna couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard Teresa crying in bed.
Opening what Lucrezia called her “little bag of tricks,” Giovanna searched for honey. The bag had grown since she had discovered the herb shops in Chinatown. One day, in an exhausted stupor after a long delivery, she walked in the wrong direction and found herself standing in front of the most magnificent store with barrels of herbs of every scent and color. She walked up and down the rows; the herbs she didn’t recognize on sight she rubbed between her fingers to smell. The proprietor watched her with interest; few non-Chinese came into his store. Seeing that Giovanna understood the herbs, he tried to explain those unfamiliar to her with pantomime and the three words of English they shared, good being one of them. After a few visits they had developed their own sign language. Giovanna became so accustomed to the signs that whenever she said “echinacea,” her hand would instinctively circle her head, meaning for everything, and when she said “ginger root,” she would gnarl her knuckles.
Taking the honey from her bag, Giovanna rubbed it on the stump of the baby’s umbilical cord. Lucrezia did not scoff at her herbal remedies. In fact, she was interested and asked to be taught. Lucrezia had cut the mother an inch to allow the baby’s head to be born. Giovanna whipped up a poultice of comfrey leaf for the mother’s perineum and handed it to Lucrezia, who applied it to the perfectly sutured area.
Giovanna shared her homeopathic expertise with Lucrezia, and Lucrezia taught Giovanna about obstetrics and the illnesses that plagued the tenements, such as whooping cough, chicken pox, and dysentery. Because the need for medical care was so great and respect for Lucrezia so high, Lucrezia had no problem getting the prescriptions she needed, and she began to teach Giovanna much of what she knew about modern pharmacology.
With her new knowledge, Giovanna reflected back on her more difficult births in Scilla. If she knew then what she knew now, could things have turned out differently? Francesca Marasculo was foremost in her mind. Lucrezia had taught her to be wary of quick births and showed her the signs that signaled possible hemorrhaging and how to massage a uterus to help it to contract instead of allowing it to be an open door for the blood in a woman