An Italian Wife by Ann Hood Read Free Book Online

hospital slept, Josephine got out of bed and went into the long corridor. At the end, two nuns in white habits sat, sipping tea. The lights cast an odd and ugly green over everything, and the floors moved like the sea beneath it. Josephine had to hold on to the wall as she walked quietly down the hallway toward the nursery. She could see it, halfway between her and the nuns. Behind the long pane of glass, all the babies lay under heaters.
    Josephine wanted her baby.
    She felt the familiar tingle of her milk coming in, and she wanted to get her baby and bring her to her breast. She could not send this baby, her Valentina, away. That was clear to her. Let Vincenzo kill her. Let everyone whisper about this blond-haired girl. But Josephine was going to keep her. Maybe when she felt stronger—because now she was dizzy and her legs wobbled, but soon she would be strong, back to normal—maybe she would take Valentina and find Tommy. “Look,” she would tell him. “Our daughter.”
    â€œMrs. Rimaldi?” one of the nuns said, her head jerked upright so that her wimple looked like wings and Josephine half expected her to take flight, to swoop down the hallway and carry Josephine back to bed.
    â€œI just want to see her,” Josephine said.
    The two nuns looked at each other. The birdlike one stood. “That’s not possible.”
    Josephine tried again. “I feel my milk coming in. She can nurse now.”
    The birdlike one was moving toward her, not flying or soaring, but walking deliberately down the hall. “I’m afraid her parents have already come for her, Mrs. Rimaldi. They’ve taken her home with them. To Vermont.”
    Where was Vermont? Josephine wondered.
    Panic rose in her throat. “But she’s so little. She needs my milk.”
    Look , she wanted to say to Tommy, look at our daughter .
    The nun stood right in front of her. “I’m sorry,” she said.
    â€œIf I could just look in the nursery,” Josephine begged her, “to be sure she’s not there.”
    But the nun was shaking her head, and with a firm grip on Josephine’s arms, she was moving her back toward her room.
    â€œIf I could just look,” Josephine said, fighting the nun’s strong arms.
    The second nun appeared, and the two of them wrestled Josephine to the ugly green floor. The second one had a syringe in her hand, and while the bird held Josephine down, struggling, fighting, calling her daughter’s name, the second one plunged the needle into Josephine’s thigh. Her mouth filled with the taste of metal. The strange green lights above her head pulsated. She felt spit drooling from her mouth. She felt suddenly very hot.
    â€œCan you walk?” someone was asking her.
    She was pulled to her feet and dragged along the hallway. Was she moving across the ocean? Josephine wondered. Were they taking her back to the Old Country? Was her mother waiting for her there?
    â€œAlmost there,” someone said. “Keep your eyes open until we get you into bed again.”
    She had come so far on her own. It was taking forever to get back.
    â€œStay awake now, one more minute,” someone said firmly.
    Across the ocean was home. Across the ocean was war. They lifted her under her arms, up, up, until she was flying now. Then cold all around her. White and cold as ice.

War Stories

    A S SOON AS THE FIRST AMERICAN TROOPS ARRIVED in France, Chiara began to pray. She took the white rosary beads that all the little girls of the parish had received for their First Communion from their white satin pouch, kissed the fake silver crucifix that hung at one end, slipped the beads over her head, and prayed. Fingering each bead, silently reciting the Hail Marys, the Our Fathers, the Acts of Contrition, Chiara walked to school, her head bent so no one would see her lips move.
    But Elisabetta saw. Four years older, Elisabetta was the tallest Rimaldi girl, the smartest, the most