by Rita Siligato
They were sitting together on the bottom of one of the two bunk beds, in the old room where the four sisters used to sleep so many years ago. Mama loved to keep the furniture as it was, and now the small bedroom was perfect for Nella and the children to sleep in. Redenta would have to sleep together with her mother in the double bed for a couple of months.
Rachel and the boys were in the kitchen with their nonna, as they called her now, helping her with the cooking, as they would say.
“Nella, how come you are so pale?”
The question hanged over the sisters’ heads like a grey cloud. Nella straightened her full skirt and with her head lowered began to speak: “I have to tell you something that I never wrote to you: Harry’s job… he’s in and out of work, he works for one month and is one month off. Life is tough at the Liverpool docks. It is difficult to raise three children this way. His mama is helping us, but I cannot ask. She lives off her retirement pension. We have no money. Do you remember our hand-me-down clothes? I can manage with the boys, but Rachel is growing fast and at school she sees all the girls wearing something new every week. By now she is beginning to understand we are penniless.”
“You had to tell me, Nella! I could have helped you!”
“No, Redenta. I am helping myself. I went to work as a cleaner, in a rich house.”
“But you were a clerk, here! You used to be the fastest typist I knew!”
“I cannot write in English, you know.”
“But you can speak English! I heard you! You were speaking with the kids!”
“It’s just what they call ‘pidgin English’. I can speak phonetically, but I don’t know how to write the words I say.”
Redenta took her hands, and caressing the whitish dry skin she noticed the split nails, the rough palm.
“The lady I work for is very kind. She dotes on me! She says I am the best cleaner she ever had. And she gave me this dress: I haven’t lost my knack at modifying a dress! It’s a boutique frock,” Nella said, blushing. “She is plumper than me, luckily. And she always gives me something for Rachel too, and for the boys. She has two grown up children: they are away, in college somewhere, and they have outgrown almost every single item of clothing. The dress you saw today on Rachel belonged to her eldest girl. It is almost brand new. It was a bit out of fashion, but I shortened it and made a few alterations. Rachel didn’t notice.”
Redenta was speechless, for the first time in her life.
“And Harry?”
“Harry is a good chap. He loves his pint sometimes on a Saturday night, but I love it too, mind you. He adores the children. And he makes me laugh. Do you remember how we used to laugh with him? When he did his impersonations? Stan and Ollie? He still makes me laugh. He mocks me when I try some new words. He is still able speak Triestino, if he is in the mood.”
“That’s why he did not come home?”
“For him,” said Nella, looking Redenta in the eye, “this is not home. Home is Liverpool, for him. For me this is home, and it will be home forever.”
Redenta was shaking.
“Are you telling me that you plan to leave him and stay here?”
“No, of course not. The children, as you know, were all born there and they don’t speak Triestino, even if I talk to them in our dialect while I am cooking or setting the table in the evening. They understand almost everything, but they don’t want to learn a language that will not be useful for them in the future.”
Redenta looked down, overwhelmed by her sister’s sincerity.
“But, Redenta, tomorrow we will go to the Bagno Lanterna with the children! You must teach them how to swim! We never go to the seaside, in Liverpool. In fact, there is no seaside there. And I am so glad to be here! The air has the right scent. The thing I miss more is the aroma of a fresh dried laundry in the open air.”
The children rushed into the small room, shouting: “Mama, listen, nonna is speaking English!”
And, proudly, mama peered into the room following the kids and said, laughing: “Kupp’ a tee?”
