Zanté

Ithaca

Santa Maura

Charles could have been naming the distant stars. These islands did not exist for me until that very moment, when he brought them into being with his breath.

Patricio, do you remember how the creatures and the objects of your first years of life came into being once I named them for you? Remember when a boat was not yet a “boat,” a bee was not yet a “bee,” a cup not a “cup” until I taught you their names? Remember how your eyes opened wide, as if I were the one who created the boat, the bee, the cup? That was how I must have looked at Charles back then. Your father’s language has given you other words and names now, but I gave you the first ones. Remember, Patricio, your tongue grew nimble mimicking the sound of my voice.

I was not a young woman when I met Charles Bush Hearn. I was an old maid. At twenty-five years old, the next roof over my head would have been a convent’s. I was being dressed not for God but for His Son.

Kanella did not tell me my fate. The two women who worked for her told it to each other, as they scrubbed the tile floors of the Villa Cassimati on their hands and knees.

I should have been at the Third Hour service that morning, but I awoke late to find roses in my bed. I got up to call for Kanella, but when I opened my bedroom door I heard the women’s laughter and then their words, both being traded without restraint as they must have thought that the house had no ears but their own. I did not recognize the story they were telling as my own, at first.

“The rich are heartless,” a voice, smooth as the tile floor, asserted.

“Well, you know what they say. The poorer you are, the bigger your heart!” a voice, coarse as the bristles of a scrub brush, declared.

Laughter.

“My heart is the size of a honeydew.”

“My husband’s heart is the size of a watermelon!”

Laughter.

“Her father’s heart is an olive pit.”

“A lemon pip!”

Laughter.

“They say there have been offers, but he does not want to pay her dowry.”

“You mean his cook does not want him to pay!”

Laughter.

“You know what they say about the cook?”

“She cooks best with her clothes off!”

Laughter.

“The cook has it all figured out.”

“The cook found the only Bridegroom who does not ask for a dowry!”

Laughter.

“Rich father. Poor daughter.”

“Heartless!”

I stood in the doorway waiting. I heard only the scraping of the bristles against the tiles. The sound of their labor, uninterrupted by mirth, told me how pitiful the last line of my story was to them.

I tried to recall what these two women looked like; how old they were; whether I had ever been told their names. I could recall nothing about them except that one was taller than the other. They were faceless to me. How was I not faceless to them?