After that, her sister-in-law no longer brought her to the eleven o’clock mass, and she no longer took her out walking along Niviera Street, where he would follow slowly behind them at a distance.

“Bobò, you’ll keep an eye on the women doing the laundry in the courtyard.”

“The farm manager is supposed to come; Bobò will wait for him.”

They still called her Bobò. Time had passed, but the nickname they’d given her back in Licata lingered, like a brief, warm caress. Michelina, her niece, used to call her Auntie Bobò, but now that she was older she just called her Auntie. And Angela, when she did have to refer to her, simply said “my sister-in-law,” or if she was addressing the servant, said “the Miss,” or “your sister” if she was speaking to her husband.

The childish nickname annoyed everyone. One time Angela said: “It’s ridiculous that you still go by Bobò.”

And yet no one could quite manage to call her Liboria. It was habit.

In time, she, too, had grown ashamed of being known as Bobò. But the nickname had stuck, much in the same way that her youthful appearance refused to die. It was true. Her hair was too soft and long and her breasts too full, although she tried to hide them (out of modesty) in dark, stiff corsets buttoned tightly.

Concetto had moved to the town where she now lived. He was a pharmacist. He’d asked her brother for her hand in marriage, but he had refused without even consulting her.

She only found out about it afterward. A servant who had been fired told her.

“Open your eyes, Miss! You’ll be sleeping alone forever while donna Michelina is enjoying your dowry!”

And yet what could be done? Do I say, I want to get married?

A rush of blood flooded her whole face at the impudent, immodest thought. How could she say it like that to her brother and sister-in-law?

So she said nothing. And Concetto would pass every evening in the alley, and Angela would close the windows that faced it. Concetto would go to mass at eight o’clock, walking along the main street of Santo Stefano, and Angela went at five, no longer permitting her sister-in-law to go out at all. Concetto wrote three times, and Angela confiscated the three letters, full of humble, ardent words, tearing them to shreds. The battle between Angela and Concetto was silent and fierce.

One evening her brother, after having listened to his wife, who couldn’t tolerate the surveillance any more, ripped into Bobò: he told her that women are all alike, that all they have to do is see a man (any good-for-nothing!) and they lose every bit of self-restraint. Thinking he was doing her a favor, he said brutal, awful things. Bobò listened, almost without breathing, her throat shut tight; she had the feeling of being stripped naked in front of everyone, in front of her brother, who despised her, in front of Michelina, who was smiling….