The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [333]
Across the road was Uncle Theodore's cabin, where clumps of privet hedge in front were shaped into a set of porch furniture, god-size, table and chairs, and a snake was hung up in a tree.
We drew out of the line of vehicles, and turned back down the dark blue country road. We neither talked, confided, nor sang. Only once, in a practical voice, Kate spoke.
"I hate going out there without Mama. Mama's too nice to say it about Sister Anne, but I will. You know what it is: it's in there somewhere."
Our lips moved together. "She's common...."
All around, something went on and on. It was hard without thinking to tell whether it was a throbbing, a dance, a rattle, or a ringing—all louder as we neared the bridge. It was everything in the grass and trees. Presently Mingo church, where Uncle Felix had been turned down on "knick-knack," revolved slowly by, with its faint churchyard. Then all was April night. I thought of my sweetheart, riding, and wondered if he were writing to me.
GOING TO NAPLES
The Pomona sailing out of New York was bound for Palermo and Naples. It was the warm September of a Holy Year. Along with the pilgrims and the old people going home, there rode in turistica half a dozen pairs of mothers and daughters—these seemed to take up the most room. If Mrs. C. Serto, going to Naples, might miss by a hair's breadth being the largest mother, there was no question about which was the largest daughter—that was hers. And how the daughter did love to scream! From the time the Pomona began to throb and move down the river, Gabriella Serto regaled the deck with clear, soprano cries. As she romped up and down after the other girls—she was the youngest, too: eighteen—screaming and waving good-by to the Statue of Liberty, a hole broke through her stocking and her flesh came through like a pear.
Before land was out of sight, everybody knew that whatever happened during the next two weeks at sea, Gabriella had a scream in store for it. It was almost as though their ship—not a large ship at all, the rumor began to go round—had been appointed for this. "Why do I have to be taken to Naples! Why? I was happy in Buffalo, with you and Papa and Aunt Rosalia and Uncle Enrico!" she wailed to her mother along the passages—where of course everybody else, as well as the Sertos, was lost.
"Enough for you it is l'Anno Santo," said Mama. "Hold straight those shoulders. Look the others."
The others were going to pair off any minute—as far as pairing would go. There were six young girls, but though there were six young men too, they were only Joe Monteoliveto, Aldo Scampo, Poldy somebody, and three for the priesthood. As for Poldy, he was a Polish-American who was on his way now to marry a girl in Italy that he had never seen.
Every morning, to reach their deck, Mrs. Serto and Gabriella had to find their way along the whole length of the ship, right along its humming and pounding bottom, where the passage was wet (Did the ship leak? people asked) and narrow as a schoolroom aisle; past the quarters of the crew—who looked wild in their half-undress, even their faces covered with black—and the Pomona engines; and at last up a steep staircase toward the light. Gabriella complained all the way. Mrs. Serto, feeling this was the uphill journey, only puffed. On the long way back to the dining room—downhill—Mrs. Serto had her say.
"You saw! Every girl on ship is fat"—exactly what she said about school and church at home. "In Napoli, when I was a girl, your Nonna told me a hundred times, 'Little daughter: girls do well to be strong. Also, be delicata.' You wait! She'll tell you the same. What's the matter? You got pretty little feet like me." Mama framed herself in the engine-room door, and showed her shoe.
But not every girl coming into the dining room had to pass seven tables to reach her own, as Gabriella did—bouncing along sideways, with each table to measure her hips again as briskly as a mother's tape measure; while Joe Monteoliveto, for example, might be looking her way.