Patricio, I wish I could have given you the Ionian. After Giorgio went to God, I had thought about bringing you, my blessed second, down to the shore, but Old Iota had worried. She thought that I was still too weak. “Your grieving arms versus the currents?” she scoffed.

She was right. I was weak. I could barely tug you from the nipple.

I cannot undo what has been done nor can I do what has never been done. The sea that you have never touched will wait for you, as you will wait for it, Patricio.

I sound like my father when I say such things. Perhaps I am the snake swallowing its tail now.

I was twenty-five years old when I was allowed the Third Hour service at the church in the Fortezza, but I was as ignorant as a girl of seventeen, the age when I was first confined.

There is no need to furrow your brow, Elesa. I am aware of your age, but you at seventeen are not ignorant. You can read and you can write. You are blessed, despite your recent circumstances. With your alphabet, you are feathered for flight. Yes, do smile. That thought is deserving of one.

I was ignorant, but I was not unchanged.

My body had burst the seams of my girlish dresses. Their hems were let down, darts and smocking details undone, and scraps of fabric and ribbon were added to lengthen the sleeves and loosen the necklines. These make-do alterations would have continued but for Kanella, who informed me that, also with my father’s consent, I would be receiving additions to my wardrobe. Though she did not say it, I understood that I was being dressed for God. Seamstresses came to the Villa Cassimati and measured me for three day dresses and a fourth with pale gray lace around its high neckline for the Holy Days and Pascha. I was also provided with a corset, six petticoats, and five chemises. A straw bonnet was also added to the order.

The first seamstress who came to the house sobbed upon seeing me. Kanella was as surprised as I was by the woman’s outburst. “Sióreta Cassimati looks like . . . looks like . . . a twin of her mother,” the seamstress managed to say between her gasps and gulps. I heard Kanella shushing her as the woman was being led toward the back door of the house. Kanella returned and found me in the courtyard lying under the fig tree, my body curled around its trunk like a maggot. I had never heard anyone, except for my brothers, speak a word about our mother. I do not even know, to this day, my mother’s given name.

Elesa, I can see it in your shoulders, as if someone has pulled them up by a rope. You want to interrupt me, as Old Iota had done, when I told her this story.

“Where was your mother’s family?” was what Old Iota had wanted to know. To all of her questions about the maternal side of my family, I had replied “Malta.” I knew it to be the name of an island where my mother was born and where her people remained. I did not know much more. I said “Malta” the way other people said “death.” Both meant a breach. Whenever Old Iota heard “Malta,” she made the sign of the cross three times, as if protecting herself from a curse.