Chapter 6

SIX

SEPTEMBER 1943

Emilia walked further into the kitchen and sat at the table. Corinna offered her the basket with bread, but she shook her head. She didn't feel like having anything. Her heart raced so fast that her arms tingled with fear.

Signora Jorelini sat beside her. "You knew…before you left, you knew what was happening to Jews like your father, didn't you?"

Emilia nodded, thinking of the customers who'd stopped coming to her father's shop, and the way Annalisa had insisted they needed to leave Italy very soon.

"It became worse while you were away," Signora Jorelini continued. "There were laws about Jewish people. They'd been around for years, although nobody paid mind to them here, so they didn't affect your father much while you and your sisters were still home. But then they started enforcing these laws, even in small towns like ours, even here. Jews are no longer allowed to own businesses. So your father had to sell his shop, which meant he had to sell your house as well."

"He sold the house?" Emilia said, incredulous. "No! He would never have done that."

"He had no choice," Signora Jorelini said. "It's the law. And they are good people, the De Lucas. They made an arrangement. They bought the business and the house for a few lire, and plan to sell it back to your family after all this madness is over. Lots of people are complying with the law that way for now. Your family will own the business again one day. Just not today. But hopefully soon."

Emilia stared at her. "But he loved his shop," she said. "Sewing, making clothes and things for people's homes…" She shook her head. Her poor father, to first lose his daughters and then lose his work. Her chest ached, as she thought about how much he probably had wanted his daughters with him when all this was unfolding. To warn them, to protect them, to soften the blow of learning all about this. But he'd had no way to reach them. They had intentionally not told him where they were.

"He must have been so sad," she added softly, dropping her chin.

Signora Jorelini stroked Emilia's hand. "I think he was. But nobody thought it would come to this. And most people, many of his customers, they wouldn't turn their backs on him. Only the scared people. The cowards."

Emilia remembered the lion cartoons. "Papa always wanted me to be brave," she murmured.

"He was a good man, and he was brave, and he wanted his girls to be brave, too," Signora Jorelini agreed.

"Can I go there?" Emilia asked. "Will they let me inside? To see the house, to even get some of our things?—"

Signora Jorelini shook her head. "It's not a good idea. Let's not stir things up?—"

"But it's my house?—"

"But it's not. Not now," Signora Jorelini said.

Corinna reached out and touched her hand. "Maybe another time," she said. "We'll let you know. There'll come a better time when we can ask, okay?"

Emilia looked at both women, one and then the other. What kind of answers were they giving her? What did any of this mean—stir things up, a better time to ask? She pressed her lips together, thinking again that it was too much for her to be going through this on her own, with no family, no older sisters, to help her figure out what to do. "I have to find my sisters," she told them. "I can't wait for my letters to reach them. I have to go back to Parissi Island. If you tell me the train to take, I can get there on my own."

Signora Jorelini shook her head. "My darling, you can't. It's too dangerous. Italy is at war with Germany now. The Nazis have overtaken Rome, and they are heading this way. The only thing we can do is hope the Allied forces reach us before the Nazis arrive. It is not safe to travel. You must stay put."

"But Corinna traveled. She came back from Rome."

"But you're a child. And the daughter of a Jew."

She sighed, and Corinna continued. "Emilia, there are rumors that Nazis will start rounding up Jews and sending them to Poland. As they've done in other countries."

"But I'm not Jewish. I'm only half Jewish."

Signora Jorelini was quiet. She didn't seem to think that that little fact would keep Emilia safe. Exempt from the worst of what the Nazis were capable of.

"So…what will I do while I wait for my sisters?" Emilia asked.

"You will stay with us," Corinna said. "And we will all wait together."

"You mean just go to school and try to be normal?"

Again the women exchanged looks. "You can't go back to school," Signora Jorelini said. said. "Jews are not allowed in school anymore."

"I have to go to school," Emilia said. "I have to see my friends. I have to get my assignments. Papa never let us miss school."

"I know," Corinna said. "Again, it's just temporary. And it will be okay. I will teach you for now, until things go back to the way they were. It will be just like having a private tutor. That will be fine, right? Your papa would approve, I know."

Emilia looked from one woman to the other again. She'd barely heard what Corinna said. She wasn't allowed to go to school? How could that be?

"It's a lot of change, terrible change, piccolina ," Signora Jorelini said. "But I promised your father before he died that I would watch out for you and your sisters when you came back, and I will. This is not the way any of us want it to be. Neighbors against neighbors, towns torn apart. But we will stick together for now, the three of us. Okay?"

Emilia felt her breath catch in her chest. This wasn't okay. She couldn't help but think how different everything would be if her sisters were with her. Annalisa would have a plan, she'd get the three of them out of this town, where so much had changed, and they'd find their way to America. But instead, Emilia was bearing the brunt of all these changes on her own. And her sisters…they were likely still at the castle, enjoying themselves, totally unaware of what she was going through. They had betrayed her, sacrificed her, she thought, her anger rising. They'd always been closer to one another, those two, and she'd been the outsider, the baby. They had sent her back here by herself maybe even knowing what might be happening. They had sent her back here so they didn't have to leave Parissi Island.

She got up and went to leave the kitchen. "Emilia, wait," Signora Jorelini said. She rose and opened a cabinet, then reached inside and pulled out a small stack of scrap paper bound by a string. "I found these when I was packing up your things for you from your house," she said. "I wanted to give them to you myself." She handed her the stack. "It's from your papa."

"Thank you," Emilia murmured and went upstairs to Corinna's room, where she'd slept last night. She wondered where she'd sleep tonight now that Corinna was home. She knew she should be grateful. What would happen to her if Signora Jorelini weren't here? She'd have no bed at all, no house, no food. Neighbors against neighbors , Signora Jorelini had said. People who used to care about her and her sisters now wanted nothing to do with her. They hadn't even come to Papa's funeral. How had things gone so wrong? How could people's feelings change like that? For no good reason. She hadn't changed, her father hadn't changed. But the person he'd been all his life—and who she was, as his daughter—now meant something very different.

She wished she could go back in time. She wished she and her sisters had never left. She wished the last five weeks had just been a dream.

Sitting on the bed, her legs crossed in front of her, she untied the string on the paper scraps Signora Jorelini had given her. They all held drawings her father had made, pictures of a night sky with crescent moons and white stars. Along the side of each moon he'd written, "Go forth."

His message was for her eyes only. She supposed he'd drawn this when he knew he'd soon be gone. She knew he'd want to remind her about a story he used to tell her. A story, he said, that he'd learned from his childhood, a Jewish story with a strange Hebrew title, Lech L'cha . It was about a man named Abraham who was called upon to leave his home. His reward, her father had said, would be all the future generations of his family. His descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.

She sighed and, pushing the scraps away, she went to the window to look outside. This was her town, her beautiful town, the place where she'd never had any fear at all. Down below were all the places she'd loved, the places that she'd grown up around, the places that felt like hers. To her left a block away was the food market and the stationery store with the notebooks Annalisa loved to buy for her studies, and the pretty colored pencils Papa would buy them on the first day of school, and the movie magazines Giulia could afford by saving the coins Papa gave her for helping out at the store. And further down was Signora Jorelini's restaurant, and the library where Annalisa spent many of her afternoons, and the theater where they sometimes saw children's shows on Saturdays. And the school where they'd all gone, the school she could no longer attend.

To the right, she could see the archway and stone stairs that led up to her street, where their home had been, with Papa's shop on the ground floor, next to the pasticceria where she and her friends liked to get pastries and sweet treats. Her home, and all the places that surrounded her home and felt like home, too. She thought of those words, Go forth , that her father had written and illustrated. What could he have been thinking? Where did he want her to go? Did he mean to go here, the Jorelini house? To leave home and come here, as he'd done when he was dying? Or was there more to it, the story and the words? What more could he have meant?

In the days that followed, Signora Jorelini went about settling Emilia into the house. While she wanted to be in her own home, she knew she wasn't old enough to live there alone, so she was glad that at least she'd be close by. She had to keep an eye on all that was happening at her father's shop. Corinna and Signora Jorelini moved an extra mattress into Corinna's room, so Corinna and Emilia could share the bedroom. They seemed to have sensed that Emilia would be more comfortable that way, as she'd grown up sharing a bedroom with her sisters.

Emilia was grateful to have these two strong women taking care of her. But at the same time, their generosity made her anxious. It was such a stark contrast to the mood in town, the forces that had driven her father out of his house and forbidden her to attend school. What shoe would fall next? How much more would Signora Jorelini have to do for her—and would there ever be a time when she simply wasn't allowed to help Emilia? If her sisters continued to be delayed, what new rules would appear here in town? What would be required of her or taken from her in the days or weeks to come? Where would she rest her head next?

Sometimes in bed, Emilia would listen to Corinna sleep. Her breath was steady and rhythmic, almost melodic, and for those few moments before she finally drifted off, Emilia felt peaceful. If she tried hard, she could almost believe she was back in her own bed, with her sisters nearby and her papa across the hall getting a good night's sleep so he could be up at dawn to start his sewing.

One night Emilia heard her father desperately shouting, Emilia! La mia bambina! She tore out of bed and ran down an unfamiliar hallway trying to find him. When she couldn't locate him in any room, she found a doorway and, still in her nightdress, she ran out into the dark courtyard. "Papa!" she cried, as his voice became weaker and more distant. She could see his tortured face in her mind, his glassy, sunken eyes and thin, pale lips, and the deep lines around his jaw. She could picture him moving, his stooped shoulders, his labored walk, his limp.

"Papa!" she cried again. "Papa!" And suddenly she was awake, in her bed in Corinna's bedroom, hearing the sound of her own screams. When she realized that she'd screamed aloud, she was embarrassed. Only babies cried out in their sleep. She turned toward the wall, pressing her knees to her chin, hoping no one had heard her. A moment later, though, Corinna was at her bedside. Emilia felt her sit down next to her, and then she felt Corinna's fingertips stroking her shoulder. She felt her body relax, but her mind kept racing: How could things have changed so terribly for her papa? How could this new family have taken her papa's shop? Emilia knew that this was one thing her father wanted to give them, the one thing he said would secure their future.

"This will be the place that will always be yours, the place to come back to," he'd said to her one night last spring as she went into his workroom to kiss him goodnight. "You know that, don't you?"

"Of course," she'd said back then, confused by the question. She wondered now if he'd sensed what was happening. If he suspected that one day, she'd have to fight for her home. "Why are you asking me that?" she'd said.

"Because my girls are full of dreams and ambitions. Annalisa wants to make discoveries, Giulia wants to be in the movies. How about you, my little one? Have you decided yet?"

"I want only to be here," she'd said. "At home with my family."

"You are like me," he'd told her. "So don't you worry. You will have this place. This will be your ground, your home, your rock. Remember what I once told you, about placing rocks on a gravestone? Rocks are forever. Your home is forever. Even if you have to leave for a time, you must never forget to return. I will leave this house for you. You will never be lost while it's in our family."

Corinna went back to her bed and soon was asleep, breathing steadily. But Emilia stayed awake, thinking about her dream and the conversation she'd just remembered. It was her responsibility to keep her papa's shop and the whole house safe for them, she realized. To never lose it, even if they had to leave for America. She wondered again about the couple she had seen through the window. Were they eating dinner in the kitchen where Papa used to call them, serving up the delicious foods that neighbors routinely dropped off, eager to help the motherless family? Had they already begun to make changes? Discarded their books, their dishes, their furniture? Or were they using everything Papa and Mama—the mother she had never known—had chosen so lovingly for their daughters?

She had to watch over the house. She had to make sure everything stayed the same. Her sisters would expect that of her. She would watch the couple who lived there now. She would watch what they took out of the shop and what they brought in. She would keep track of their comings and goings, the work brought in, the customers they had and the ones they lost. She would count all the stones in the patio, all the panes in the windows, all the scratches in the door to make sure they didn't harm even a tiny portion. She would keep the shop safe, as Papa would have wanted.

She thought of the Abraham story, and the reward of a future full of new generations. And of the way their family's future now rested on her shoulders. She had to leave it for now, as her papa had somehow predicted. But it was still theirs. She would watch over it, so she could one day reclaim it for sure. For her family and their future.