Elizabeth Street - Laurie Fabiano [92]
Lorenzo was also mumbling prayers not far from where Father Longa was trying to comfort the many families surrounding him. Giovanna knew Father Longa came from Messina and wondered how he had the strength to comfort others when his own family’s fate was unknown. She decided Father Longa was either blessed with this diversion or had a higher calling.
DECEMBER 31, 1908
It took Angelina a day to figure out what was happening, but when she did, she was inconsolable. Her Nonna and Nonno, who had lavished her with attention in Scilla, might be buried in rocks, drowned in a gigantic wave, or burned in a fire. Everywhere she went, adults were talking or reading the paper. And if she didn’t understand what they said, she could understand the grief of women who sat in doorways with their aprons thrown over their heads, wailing and rocking.
When she wasn’t thinking about Nonna and Nonno, she was thinking about Antonio and his brothers and sisters. How could that same calm, beautiful water that Antonio taught her to swim in swallow people up? She heard one lady reading that the survivors were going insane and walking around naked. Frances said that meant that they were crazy. Was Antonio crazy, with no clothes on?
That morning when she woke up, her mother was already kneeling beside her bed praying. Angelina started crying again, but she tried to muffle her sobs with her pillow. The only time her mother cried was when she saw Angelina cry, and she didn’t want that to happen. Seeing her mother cry was worse than imagining all those horrible things.
When Rocco came home from work, earlier than usual, he looked at the sad expressions on his children’s faces and his wife still on her knees in prayer and said, “Come, children, let’s all go for hot chestnuts and visit your cousins. It’s New Year’s Eve.”
Mary, with Angelina clinging to her hand, whispered to her father, “I don’t want to leave Zia.”
“Zio Lorenzo will come sit with her.”
Rocco sensed that his wife didn’t want him around and was only finding comfort with her brother. Her grief and anxiety were far too great for him to resent her feelings, so he tried to stay out of her way.
The door closed on Giovanna’s solitude; her shoulders slumped in relief, and she laid her head on the bed. Her mind wandered to the New Year’s Eve she spent as a voiceless widow traveling in the bowels of a boat to a foreign land. Six years later, worse than sailing away from the land and people she loved, she might have lost them completely. The memory of the pink icing on that little girl’s finger burned in her throat.
JANUARY 1, 1909
The first day of the New Year brought confirmation of Giovanna’s worst fears. The headlines of the New York Herald were each more horrifying than the one before.
IN ONE INSTANCE THE GROUND OPENED AND FROM A CHASM EIGHTY FEET WIDE THERE SPOUTED BOILING WATER IN WHICH THOUSANDS WERE SCALDED TO DEATH
CLOUDS OF CROWS MYSTERIOUSLY ATTRACTED TO THE STRICKEN DISTRICTS ADD TO THE TERRORS THERE
HUMAN BEINGS FIGHT WITH DOGS FOR FOOD
Scanning the first page, she ignored details while desperately looking for the word Scilla. Turning the page, her search ended, for there was the name “Scilla” staring back at her. A box listed