When Mother prayed we really “bore witness to the light that was in us.” She would pray as long in the pensione as she did at home. I would stare at three slices of tuna fish, three slices of salami, four olives, and a large round of mortadella while Mom prayed. I tried not to look up to see if Jennifer Bazlinton, the ten-year-old English girl at the next table, was watching us, though I knew she was. I was mortified. I tried not to think of how different we were, even though I knew we had to be since we had been “called out from among the raging heathen to be a light unto the nations.” I counted the pieces of green pistachio nut in my mortadella. There were five. I counted the pieces of the black peppercorn in my three slices of salami; there were two in one, three in another, and only half a piece in the last one.

“Dear Heavenly Father, we just come before Thee to thank Thee for providing the funds for our vacation”—the oil from my olives was draining off them, beginning to puddle—“ . . . and we come into Thy wonderful presence to worship and thank Thee for this day.”

There was a nice Roman Catholic Italian family who were at the corner table. I had seen them say grace and they just crossed themselves with their eyes open. Their dad said something over the food, one sentence. They didn’t seem embarrassed. But our prayers needed to be long so that we might not hide our lamp under a bushel, so that we wouldn’t get to heaven and find that we had been ashamed of the Lord and that because of this He would say we had denied Him before men so He would deny us before the Father.

“We just praise and glorify Thy Holy Name, Lord, and we just ask that You will make our weaknesses perfect in Your strength.”

The dark green oil from the marinated olives was beginning to stain the mortadella slice at the edge. The worst thing that could happen was about to happen. So I began to pray too.

In my heart I said, “Please, oh please, don’t let Lucrezia come to our table to ask if we want wine with dinner while Mom is praying!”

Lucrezia was the owner’s daughter. When she cleaned the rooms with her mother they both wore blue housecoats over their day clothes. At night she was the pensione’s waitress. She wore a white apron over her black pleated skirt. Her starched apron strings hung down to the hemline behind. Lucrezia wore her silver crucifix outside of her white blouse when she served us our dinner. It made her look very Roman Catholic.

Lucrezia was standing at our table. “Vino? Rosso—? Bianco—?she said.

“Please, Lord!” I prayed.

Mom kept right on praying.

“Vino?”