I opened my mouth to ask him if Niello was what I used to call him, but I closed it when he spoke.
“She was never meant to be with you forever.”
“No one is,” I whispered. “But—”
“You are,” he said. “You were meant to be with me forever.”
His words completely undid me. Maybe because, even though he was in the same room with me, I felt utterly alone. Even though I knew he was keeping things from me for a reason, it still made me feel like a gap came between us, and unless I could walk on that bridge with him, we were separated by the chasm.
Cilla was the first person in my life to be completely honest with me. Whether I liked it or not, she told me how it was. I could do what I wanted with it after, but her opinion was her opinion.
Aniello was an enigma that I was totally in love with, but I needed more of him and less of the secrets. I wasn’t sure how to just ask him, though. Or if I really wanted to. Shouldn’t he want to tell me? To share with me what we’d shared before?
The next thing I knew, he had me in his arms, holding me close. I felt as if I couldn’t breathe from how hard he was holding me, but his lips were gentle when he pressed them against my temple.
“Ti amo,Rosalia,” he whispered. Then he did that thing he did, where he kissed me on the forehead, on my chin, on each of my cheeks, and then on my lips. “Ti amo.”
My tears didn’t slow, but I managed to pull away from him some, to look him in the eyes.
“Ti amo, Aniello,” I whispered back. Then I asked him, “Why do you that?” Then I did it to him. Kissed him on the forehead, on his chin, on each of his cheeks, and then his lips.
I started to pull away, but he kept me there with a hand to my head for a moment before he released me.
“My mamma,” he said. “She kissed me that way every morning and every night before bed. Except she didn’t kiss me on the lips. You did that. She kissed me on the nose.”
“I kissed you that way every morning and every night?”
He shook his head, using his thumbs to dry the tears falling from my eyes. “When I left for work and when I came back to you.”
“Oh,” I said, understanding. “She did it as a blessing.”
He nodded. “You did the same.”
I went to pull away from him, yearning to know more about his mamma, about whatever he’d told me back then, but he refused to let me go. Instead, he situated me on his chest, so my head fit right below his chin, and our arms and legs entwined in the bed. Bambina lay at our feet, curled up in a blanket.
In the silence, I realized that somewhere in the room, a fan blew. The whirl of the blades calmed me some, but it only made the hurt feel more real in the silence, like a loud screeching thing that terrified me because I wasn’t sure how to kill it.
“My mamma was from Naples. Mypapàwas from Palermo,” he said, his fingers stroking my skin as he spoke. His touch was as melodic as his voice. It made goosebumps appear on my skin. “For generations mypapà’s family was part of the honored society, including him. He was an intelligent man.Furbo, they call it. He was cunning and wily. Even until today, he’s known for his unmatched criminal intuition in Sicily.”
He shrugged. “My mamma matched his wits, but after she gave birth to me, she decided that she didn’t want that life anymore. Maybe she’d always known it, but after she had me, shetold me that childbirth had brought her closer to God, and she gained a conscience. Our life was our life, though, and in that world, we had a place.”
As he spoke to me, his words went back and forth from English to Italian. Actually, I wasn’t sure if some words were of Sicilian or Neapolitan dialect, or a mixture. I understood when he used the word in a sentence, but I didn’t know some of the words he used. I’d heard him speak the dialects before, but he’d never spoken them directly to me.
“We had a place,” he said, his voice even, but gruff, “until mypapàwas murdered. My world is rife with jealousy and greed, Rosalia. It will drive normal men to do things that they are not always prepared to do.” He paused there for a second, like he was thinking of his next words. “He was a powerful man, and another man wanted all he had for his own. He succeeded in killing mypapà,but my mamma took me and hid. There is a rule. You never leave an opposing family still standing. One of them might come back to haunt you.”
“He wanted you and your mamma dead,” I whispered.
He nodded. “She knew our time was limited. I was a baby then, and we were moving constantly from place to place. Her family could not help us, and friends turned into enemies. We were always only one step ahead of being caught, but we were able to run for ten years. One day she sent me to the docks with a letter for me to give a fisherman. Until this day, I don’t know if she knew him well or not, but she trusted him enough to send me to him.”
Apart from his mouth moving, his fingers drifting, and his heart beating in my ear, he was still, almost stiff. I wondered if he didn’t want to move because he was worried that he’d disturb the calm he started to spread inside of me. Like being sick and having the bed jolted after finding a comfortable spot.
“She kissed me, the way I kissed you, before she sent me away. She told me to remember that she’d done it. If I had any children, or someone I loved, to do the same to them. To always tell them that I loved them enough to do it. To bless them before they left for the day, and at night, before bed.”
He didn’t say anything for a while, and I removed my grip on his shirt to touch his chin. “What happened after you gave the fisherman the letter?”
“He took me aboard. I earned my passage by helping wherever I could. When we got to America, he gave me a hundred dollars and pointed me toward the Bronx. He told me he knew of some people named Assanti in that area. He said to find one and tell them that my mamma sent me. That was my introduction to America. I had a few English words, and those got me through until I learned more, but the hundred dollars didn’t last that long.”
“You were only ten?”
