Father Leone kneeled at her side so that he could look in her eyes. “What are you praying for, child?” he asked her gently.
“For my brother, Carmine, who is fighting in France, and for all the American boys there, and for the people dying of the Spanish Influenza, and for my sister Elisabetta to somehow go to college, and for my sister Giulia to be famous, and for my sister Isabella to not be retarded, and for gratitude that next year you will send me to the convent.”
“Those are a lot of prayers.”
She nodded solemnly, crossing her fingers behind her back because there were more things she was praying for and leaving them out was a lie of omission.
“Why don’t you come here after school on Fridays and help Sister Alma clean my house?”
“Me?” Chiara said.
The priest touched her forehead and said a blessing before closing the door.
But Chiara did not move for a long time. She stood on the priest’s doorstep, praying and letting this new blessing fill her: she was special after all.
IN ONE SHORT MONTH, Betsy’s life changed. Her mother had always claimed things came in threes. When someone in the neighborhood died, she would warn that two more deaths were coming. When good news arrived, she would watch for two more pieces of luck. Betsy wanted to be a scientist. She didn’t believe in superstitions like those that dominated her family and their neighborhood. But in fact, in one week, three things happened that changed Betsy’s life.
The first was that the Spanish Influenza ripped through town for a second time and killed her father. She found her father disgusting. He was fat. He ate like a pig, grunting and spilling. He ignored all of his children. And he treated her mother like a servant. When her new baby sister died at birth in February, he’d only shrugged, even though her mother cried and moaned for weeks. So when he got sick, she hardly even paid attention. Her littlest sisters, Belle, the one everyone said was “off” or “not right in the head,” and Julie, who was next in age to Betsy, got it the week before. She had not wanted them to die, and had run over a mile to the doctor’s to find out what to do for them. No sooner did they pull through, emerging pale and exhausted, than their father got sick. Before she even had time to think about it, he died. More surprised than sad, and never having seen a dead person up close, Betsy went in to stare at his body. She was surprised at how blue his skin was, how his tongue jutted from his mouth, how contorted his face looked.
“From coughing himself to death,” her mother explained. Her mother was dry-eyed too, even though out in the kitchen, all of the other kids were sobbing.
“It turned to pneumonia,” Betsy said, more interested in the clinical aspects of this than any personal ones.
She expected everything to go on the same as it always had, except without her father around, until her mother announced that he had left them no money and the older girls would have to drop out of school and go to work in the mill.
“Not me,” Betsy said. “I’m going to go to college.”
“College?” her mother said. “Are you crazy? We need to put food on the table.”
The very next day, Belle and Julie brought home papers for their mother to sign, agreeing to let them drop out of school. Belle had stayed back twice already anyway, and Julie liked boys more than studying.
“Where are yours?” her mother said.
Betsy shook her head. “I want to be a scientist. I need to finish high school.” She was fifteen years old, a sophomore. Already she’d been voted social committee chairman, won a spot on the JV cheerleading squad. She was a person going places.
“Tomorrow you bring the papers for me to sign.”
The next day, Betsy watched Belle and Julie get ready for their first days at the mill. They giggled and whispered as they got dressed, helping each other fix their hair and choose what to wear.
“We’ll tell you all about it,” Julie promised. “It won’t be so bad.”
“But you want to be famous,” Betsy reminded her.
Julie shrugged. “Maybe a handsome man will fall in love with me. Maybe even the owner of the entire mill.”
Belle took two cigarettes from the pack she kept hidden in the top dresser drawer. “I’d rather work than go to school anyway,” she said. “Dying was the best thing Papa ever did for me.”
Betsy wanted to tell her sister that she would graduate in a year. Then she could get a better job, as a secretary or a stenographer. But Belle was smearing red lipstick on her mouth, trying to look older and sexy.
“You’ll see,” she told Betsy, “it’s going to be fun working.”