The Pretty Little Italian Girl

“Kill him, kill him. He is a worm”, the voice in Josefina’s head was louder.

“Josefina, why don’t you sit down? Why don’t you drink this water?”, said Margherita, placing a glass on the kitchen table in front of the girl, “maybe it will help you calm down.” Margherita placed a hand on the Josefina’s shoulder and was shocked at how thin she was, just skin and bone beneath the woolen jacket. It only made the message more difficult to deliver.

Josefina gulped at the water, spilling as much as she consumed, then held the glass in her hand as if weighing a weapon until Margherita, sensing danger, grabbed the empty glass from her and placed it in the sink.

“Kill him, kill him”, the voice would just not shut up. Was it real, or was it in her head? Josefina looked at Margherita for a clue, but the older woman, her sister-in-law, was speaking to her about something else.

 “You must leave Josefina. There is nothing left for you here now,” said Margherita.

“Where can I go, what shall I do?” said Josefina.

“That is no longer our problem”

“But it is not fair! It is not right! I have done nothing wrong. I am the victim here!”

“Not right! Not fair!” snapped Margherita, exasperated by the endless torment. How often must they rake over the dying ebbs of her brother’s failed three-week marriage? How often must they torture each other with the ugly truth revealed in Uncle Gaetano’s disgusting tease? Marguerita gripped both hands into fists. “How can you say that you are the victim! Guiseppe is downstairs, and he has barely stopped weeping since you told him. He is ashamed and will not show his face. You should have told him before you got married. The shame is on you!”

“But Margherita…” Josefina reached out to grab her sister-in-law’s dress as she walked across the small apartment toward the front door. Margherita was leaving.

“Go Josefina, just go!” Margherita could not bear to look at the seventeen-year-old girl, the little sweet-heart, the girl-bride, the “prettiest girl in the Bronx”. They had danced and sang after the wedding; Josefina delighted them with her laughter and charm. Guiseppe was so happy, so proud. 

Margherita went outside and ran down the steps to her own front door, heaving as if about to cry. Guiseppe was sitting in a chair by the window, in the gloom, but she ignored his expectant gaze, ran to her room, fell on the bed, and sobbed into her pillow. Margherita cried and cried, until she could cry no more, and then she prayed for forgiveness.

+++

Josefina Terranova closed the door on the small apartment in Brooklyn and on twenty-two days of happiness; it was the only place where she had known joy in her short life. She stepped into the chill February air and the outside world rushed at her, overwhelmed her senses. The wind seemed to speak to her, to urge her back to that other place, that hell on earth.

She had some money. She had the clothes she was standing in. 

She rapped at the downstairs apartment door until her knuckles were raw. The curtains were drawn but she knew Guiseppe was inside. She pleaded with him to come outside and to give her one last chance, but he was hiding, waiting for her to leave. “You are no longer my wife” were the last words he’d said to her.

“Do you love me still?” she shouted, but the curtain remained drawn, the door did not open.

There was no one left to turn to, and only one place to go now.

The wind said, “kill him, kill him,” and urged her to move along and avenge her loss, “go back, find him and kill him”. 

Dressed in black, a fallen angel, hungry, weak, hopeless, Josefina shuffled along Atlantic Avenue. Charles, her brother-in-law, was walking toward her, deep in thought, his head bowed in the cold wind, so he didn’t recognize her, not even when she removed the shawl from her head and shoulders, not even when she stepped directly in his path and blocked his way.

“Charles! It is me, Josefina”, she said. She searched his good face for understanding, and it came with a rush on the man.

“Josefina!”, he said, startled by her pallor, her dark eyes sunk deep beneath her pleading brows, her lips blue with cold. For the briefest of moments, when their eyes met, he looked like he might be the one to embrace her, to save her, but his face hardened, he broke away from her pleading gaze, and he stepped to one side, seeking a way past her. She blocked him again, so he stepped to the other side.

“What Josefina? What? What can I do for you?” he pleaded. He was desperate to get away from her, “we are all cried out, our hearts are broken. You should have told Guiseppe everything before you got married. It might have ended differently”

“More likely, it would never have begun” she said.

“You have brought shame onto the Terranova name. What are we to do now?” said Charles.

“What is shame compared to what I have been through? This was done to me, not by me. And now I have nothing. Nothing.” Josefina collapsed to the sidewalk in a heap, her tearful face turned to the sky. She felt like her heart was shriveling inside her and became like a lead weight. She wished for a quick end to it all.  

She was a pathetic sight on the sidewalk, drawing attention from passersby. Charles pulled Josefina to her feet, but the strength had gone from her body. He hoist her halfway up, held her awkwardly against his hip, but she sagged to the ground. At the third attempt she staggered about like a drunk, then snatched the wedding ring from her finger and thrust it at Charles, “here, take this ring, it is the only thing I have left. Give it back to Joey”.

“What should I tell him?” said Charles, clasping the tiny gold object in his hand. The girl-bride’s ring.

“Tell him that he is free.”

“What will you do now?” asked Charles, “where will you go?”

“There is only one place that I can go now.”   She drew the shawl back over her head and walked away from him in the direction of the bridge.

The Brooklyn Bridge loomed overhead. A terrible thought entered Charles’ mind, and he nearly acted on it, but every alternative seemed just as bad as a watery death. 

+++

Josefina stopped at the mid-point of the Brooklyn Bridge, leaned against the railing and stared at Lady Liberty, just visible beyond the Battery Park Ferry Terminal. She was eight years old when the Oceanic, a White Star Liner docked in Manhattan. Her Aunt and Uncle greeted her when she was ferried to Ellis Island. It was a brilliant summer day. Concetta pulled her up to her breast and swung her about like a doll, Gaetano patted her on the head. The Reggios would be the parents she’d never had. They promised her a good life in America. It was a dream.

But the dream turned to a nightmare, at first as unending drudgery and solitude, and then deprivation and punishment. The men in the Reggio bakery felt sorry for her when her aunt beat her on the back with a stick, but they never came to her aid. The tenants felt sorry for her when they watched her eating the food left by the dogs, but they ate their meals, uncomplaining. The doctor, the teacher, the priest, they all felt sorry for her, but nobody did anything to help, nobody stopped the cuts and bruises. School ended, church instruction ended, the priest refused her confessions. Sometimes, while scrubbing the floors, doing the laundry, or tidying up after the tenants, she would see children playing on 220^th Street; hoops, stickball, singing, laughing and shouting. It was like watching creatures from another world.

One night, a February night, she bled from the inside, staining her bed, but when she cried for help Concetta came to the room and beat her mercilessly with her hands, with a stick. The next night Concetta came to Josefina, woke her, picked the girl up and carried her to her Uncle Gaetano’s bed.  

“She’s the prettiest girl in the Bronx”, said Gaetano proudly to a visiting customer.

The customer was called Mr. Clarke, he had a kind smile, a twinkle in his eye, and knew not one word of Italian. She wanted to run to him; he would save her, take her away from this prison and away from her Uncle.

“You are a lucky man, Mr. Reggio. If I had a daughter this beautiful, I would keep her under lock and key”, said Mr. Clarke, tapping gently at the ground with his cane walking stick.

Lady Liberty held her torch aloft, but it shed no light for Josefina. She was alone in the world.

Josefina leaned over the railing and looked down at the East River which seemed to be flowing in both directions at once. She imagined plunging headfirst into that dark gray flux, but would she be carried up to the Bronx, or out to the sea? Her leaden heart weighed so heavy that she would sink directly to the bottom of the river, become lodged in the mud and filth where she belonged. 

“Uccidilo, uccidilo”. It was God that was speaking to her – in Italian - this she understood now. He would not tell her to do something that was wrong or sinful. “Kill him, kill him. You will find peace in revenge.” She would kill him.

She walked over the bridge and through the lower East Side to the pawn shop on Park Row.  Mr. Scarpello was grim as a reaper as he took her money. Not one word was uttered as she placed the knife and the loaded gun into a small cloth bag that she tucked under her shawl.

She rode the elevated railroad to Williamsbridge. She walked in darkness through the Bronx to Reggio’s on 220^th Street. The voice in her head urged her on. The ground floor bakery was lit up and busy; Gaetano’s men were cleaning up for the day. The lodgers and tenants were in the adjacent parlor room. 

Ciccio, the driver, was the first to see her. “Josefina!” said Ciccio. He was confused to see the little Italian girl, but then she crossed herself three times and the blade flashed in her hand and Ciccio knew why she was there. “He is upstairs”, said Ciccio. 

“What are you doing here at this time of night?” said Gaetano, rising from the table as she entered the kitchen from the outside stairway. He appeared to her like a giant worm.

“Uccidilo”.

“You know why I am here”, said Josefina and she walked directly up to him until her face was inches from his. “Why did you tell him? You have ruined the one good thing that ever happened to me?”

“You know why. It wouldn’t be right for him to carry that burden,” said Gaetano, feigning disgust and irritation, “I have no time for you.”

“Kill him”

Josefina leaned forward like a lover and kissed Gaetano on the cheek, then quietly said “traditore”.

“You are an outcast!” shouted Gaetano, pushing her away from his face.

“Traditore!” she screamed.

“Stop, stop” cried Concetta, who saw what Josefina was about to do, and threw herself at the girl.

“Traitor!” The potato knife went in and out of Concetta’s abdomen so swiftly that there was no blood on the blade, nor on Josefina’s hand. Concetta screamed and fell to her knees on the floor, and in that same instant Josefina’s hand struck upwards at her Uncle’s belly, and he roared with pain. “No, not now, not today”, he gasped, clutching at the red stain that was spreading across his white shirt. The blade was still clean, Josefina was unsullied by the blood that was now falling to the wooden floor from Gaetano’s stomach, the blood accumulating on the floor beside Concetta. 

Josefina stepped back and pulled the revolver from under her shawl, but Ciccio, who’d followed her up the stairs and had watched the drama from the doorway, leaped forward and grabbed her around the waist. She pulled the trigger and two shots discharged into the ceiling as he pulled her backwards and wrenched the gun from her hand.

“I’m dying, I’m dying,” cried Gaetano, lying on his side. Concetta was gasping for air, lying on her back.

Ciccio let the girl loose and watched her walk calmly from the kitchen and down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, Reggio’s men and a handful of tenants stood with their backs pressed against the hallway wall, and watched the pretty little Italian girl calmly walk past them out the back door and disappear into the night. Nobody stopped her. Nobody thought to alert the police, to call for a priest, or fetch a doctor. Not at that moment.   The courteous thing was to wait a while.

+++

On a tram, on a trolley bus, down the elevated railroad on third avenue. She ate at a street stall near Union Square, wandered the lower East Side tenements, but a cop on patrol became alert to her so she rushed downtown, mixed into the crowds on Mulberry Street and walked through the Italian neighborhood, where, for a moment, the noise of tradesmen in the street, the smell of pork roasting in garlic, reminded her of San Stefano only without the sun and the brilliant blue sea, without the constant poverty, hunger, and disease. America was a busy place, a prosperous place, a safer place, you could make a go of things here… if you worked hard and were lucky. Maybe her luck was about to change.

Josefina was standing on the Brooklyn Bridge again, Lady Liberty was still there, but the voice – in her head, in the wind – it was gone. She had done God’s will and He had moved on to his next fallen angel. What she had done was just and virtuous; she had no regret or sense of remorse or shame, her mind was at ease and there was satisfaction, just as the voice had promised. There was satisfaction, but not happiness. 

She leaned over the railing. The tide was going out and her heart was lighter this time. If she jumped, she would float to the surface and drift out to sea. Maybe she would float all the way to Sicily, go back to where she started her long voyage. But the child could not survive such a fall. The tiny infant, growing inside her womb, delicate and small, deserved a good life and love, no matter the ugliness of its conception. The worm was dead and Guiseppe could be brought around; he was a weak man, and the ring would bring him back to her, and she would forgive him.

What to do, what to do? 

She had done the honorable thing, she had nothing more to fear now. Lady Liberty was merciful and just. There was a path back to happiness. Josefina was hungry and tired, homeless and tempest-tossed. She would go back to the tenements, find the cop, and turn herself in.