You Were There Before My Eyes
Maria Riva
For all immigrants and those left behind
You were there, before my eyes,
but I had deserted even my own self.
I could not find myself, much less find you.
—St. Augustine
1
The morning her mother died, Giovanna gave up on God. The protective loving Shepherd had become a fraud. No more kneeling on cold stone, begging Him for impossible things. He never listened! Even the Madonna, so beautiful with her deep blue cloak and carmine mouth, was, after all, only a plaster lady, painted compassion, pretending Divinity.
Tall for her age, spindly thin yet exuding a skeletal strength, at the age of eight Giovanna now looked at life with disenchanted eyes, their brown velvet softness already coarsened by too much reality seen too soon.
The widows of the village, come to prepare her mother for burial, assigned her the task of “the washing of the feet.” Carefully, Giovanna poured wine onto the white linen napkin, its lace border instantly stained red as it soaked up the dark liquid. Gently, she began washing between her mother’s rigid toes, as the wine dripped catching it in a special basin encircled by a crown of porcelain thorns.
Like blood, the child thought. Giovanna bent to her serious task, Cold … Mamma was always cold, even when she was half-well … icy when the Demons possessed her … once when the village priest tied Mamma to their strongest chair … how she screamed and kicked—but he was a big man, the knots he tied held her for three whole days …
Giovanna remembered those days, especially the smell of them, as it had been her duty to wash down her mother’s legs whenever she relieved herself. Funny, washing Mamma … always washing Mamma.
The attending widows respectfully drew back into the shadows, murmuring amongst themselves the platitudes required for such tragic occasions. “What a blessing! … A divine blessing! … At last, the Angel of Death has released this poor tormented creature from the Devil’s possession!”
Giovanna watched the midwife place tall candles on either side of her mother’s still face. Their light flickered across the inert form on the long wooden table. Hardly moving, Giovanna stood, tensed, waiting. Not that she expected to actually see anything materialize, but the nuns had taught her of the special wonder of all beings having a soul that must rise, leave what was newly dead, and although she knew this particular soul would not, could not, desert her mother—still, she felt compelled to wait out its required time to do so.
“Look! The child is standing vigil!” the widows whispered, impressed. Giovanna heard them as faint background to her concentration. Hugging herself, her eyes fixed on her mother’s body, she tensed, ready to catch her soul, push it back, protect it from the flames of Hell she was so certain would be waiting to consume it.
“Giovanna! Go!” Her father, scrubbed newly clean, the smell of lye and brilliantine mingled with the scent of warmed beeswax. “Go, I said go!”
But Papa won’t know what to do if it appears! A soul can’t be easy to see! Her eyes pleaded. Maybe Papa won’t even try! But she went, did as she was told, obeyed his order.
As an only child, she had a room all to herself, an envied treasure that set her apart from her schoolmates. Tonight, it seemed especially forlorn. Not lighting her bedside candle, she climbed onto the small trestle bed. Fully clothed, thin arms crossed upon her chest, she lay like her mother below and cried. Throughout her life, Giovanna would grieve in this way, without moving, without sound, in silent sorrow.
By seventeen she had a spinster’s body; flat-chested, angular, soft flesh absent from too much work and not enough meals. In her somber wool, her shrouded frame all bone and sinew, she resembled a young crow. Even her eyes were birdlike, dark, intense, focused beyond her immediate visual range as though searching far horizons. Too tall to be considered a true “romantic,” Giovanna thought her carriage “regal” and liked it; her small breasts quite sufficient, different enough from those of her amply bosomed friends to give her the distinction of difference she courted. Being motherless had added to her distinctiveness. The nuns especially were forever praying over her, sometimes even marking her copybooks with a better grade than she knew she deserved. There had been moments over the years when she missed her mother, not from any special attachment or feeling of love—for the memory of madness was ever sharp. Of actual mothering? Vague, defused by time. An aloneness had been a part of Giovanna, long before her mother’s death. A sorrowing childhood begets emotional voids that remain to haunt. But as most assumed a young daughter’s lingering grief to be the obvious reason for Giovanna’s unusual remoteness, she let them. At an early age she had found people liked to believe they alone knew things no one had actually ever given them the right to know. Sharing feelings, confiding one’s inner emotions, the way other girls did, blushing and giggling, whispering in hushed tones with many furtive glances, irritated her. Giovanna’s longings were her own, as unattainable as were miracles. It was the summer of 1913, and her life was about to begin.
Perched within its alpine range, the village of Cirié smoldered in the intense summer heat. Behind faded shutters, women loosened their stays, lay in homespun shifts, hoping for rest. In the piazza, men in shirtsleeves and broad suspenders, the brims of their black hats pulled low, drank cellar-cooled wine in the mottled shade of the taverna’s vine-covered canopy. Up in the orchards, peasants left their tall ladders to seek refuge beneath the laden trees. Women shifted shawl slings from their backs to suckle their babes cradled within, while their men ate, slept—waiting for the cooling of late afternoon.