“Look at her, all bones in a sack.” “She smells bad too.” And then someone would start saying the really terrible things. “Daughter of a whore.” “Putana!”

Once when she was young Mifalda had picked up a clod of dirt and thrown it at her tormentors. The nuns had beaten her for that. “You have your mother's bad blood,” they told her between blows. “You must always be on the watch for it. You must recognize your sufferings as a gift from Our Lord to teach you humility and bear them meekly.”

Madonna, those nuns could be hard!

Mifalda stood up and went to the window. Out in her garden she had an arbor where her boys grew the grapes Carmine used for making the family wine, and a tomato patch. Both were now buried under snow and ice. In this weather the wash would freeze if she tried to dry it outside, so she and Ana would have to hang it in the basement, where her sons had strung up a line for her.

She moved to the stove to stir the sauce—her mother-in-law's recipe. The eggplant parmigiana she'd made at five o'clock that morning was cooling in the pan. She'd cut it into squares and make it into sandwiches for the children's lunch when they came home from school at the noon break. In the laundry room, Ana was feeding a shirt into the wringer, folding it so the buttons wouldn't get caught and break. Everything in her world was in order. Everything was perfect.

I'm so lucky, she told herself. I don't deserve everything I have.

But if she didn't get away from the smell of wet wash and her mother-in-law's tomato sauce, she was going to start throwing things. She looked up at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was only a little after ten, and the children wouldn't be home for two hours. If she hurried … She grabbed a coat and ran for the door. Over her shoulder she called out to Ana, “I just remembered, I need something from the store.” Ana knew all she had to do was call Carmine and ask him to bring home whatever she wanted, but the woman gave her a grim little smile. Maybe she understood how it could get when you were trapped in your perfect house all day—day after day.

*   *   *