Toward evening when everyone had gone, Vanni went looking in the chest for a clean shirt, one of his old ones. With his hands he touched something hard—the cardboard box that held Maredda’s dainty shoes.

“Women’s things! …” he muttered, his face darkening, and he flung the box far into a corner.

“No, no,” protested gna’ Nunzia running to pick it up. “If, let’s just say, another … your bride, is the same size? Wouldn’t it be a shame to spend more money? And besides,” she added, blowing delicately on one of the bows that had bent slightly, “they’re brand new!”

Vanni closed the chest, nodding his head in a sign of approval.

Grandmother Lidda

Grandmother Lidda

Nonna Lidda

God, it seemed, wanted to test Grandmother Lidda with all the misfortunes he had sent her. She was a widow and poor; her daughter-in-law had died, and her son had nothing but La Mèrica in his head. Out of all this sadness only Nenè was left to her. Her daughter-in-law, God rest her soul, was barely able to nurse him, so that the evening Grandmother Lidda had to take him home with her was truly frightening. No one had thought about milk in all the sad confusion, and she got him through the night with a nipple soaked in water, her heart breaking the whole time at the sound of that little creature crying from hunger.

Then, after just a short time, her son had run off to La Mèrica.

“I’m leaving him with you,” he said. “Raise my son like you raised me.”