“Why?” he asked her.
Trying not to show her embarrassment, Josephine looked away from him and said, “You’re a man of God, you don’t need to worry about these mundane things, Father. But when my milk comes in, it’s painful to not release it.”
“Ah!” Father Leone said. “But you have such a long walk. In pain.”
“That’s all right, Father.”
Once again, Father Leone lifted Josephine’s chin. “Do you believe that I am a child of God?” he asked her.
Confused, thinking perhaps his accent had led her to misunderstand, she said, “Are you a child of God? Why, of course.”
“Then it would be perfectly appropriate for you to nourish me, wouldn’t it?”
Josephine searched his eyes but saw nothing there but compassion.
Father Leone nodded at her. “This will be an offering to God, Josephine,” he said brusquely. “Offer me your milk.”
Glancing around the empty church, Josephine wondered what to do.
“God is waiting, Josephine,” he said, impatient.
Quickly, she unbuttoned her dress. The priest, without ceremony or lust, bent his head and gently put her sore nipple into his mouth. The pain made her groan and she worried he would misunderstand. But Father Leone seemed to take no notice of it, or her. He just greedily sucked her milk, first from one breast, then the other. Sucking hard, using his hand to gently pump it.
When he lifted his head, his lips were shiny with her milk. Josephine hurriedly buttoned her dress, and Father Leone raised his hand, making a dramatic sign of the cross in the air between them, his deep voice intoning, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” He pressed his thumb against her forehead. “You have given God a gift, and in turn, he blesses you.”
Josephine swallowed hard. She believed she’d had a holy experience. While she had given her milk to God through Father Leone, something deep within her had stirred. She was damp everywhere, under her arms, between her breasts, even between her legs.
“Go home, Josephine,” Father Leone said, “and be a wife to your husband. God orders you to do this.”
PERHAPS, JOSEPHINE THOUGHT as she made her way to the witch’s house, it was possible to do her duty as a wife and to stop having babies. Ever since that day last week in the church, Josephine had felt closer to God. The priest was indeed a holy man. At church on Sunday, she had gazed up at him as he stood delivering God’s words, and that same something had stirred in her.
With Bella in a sling swaying in front of her, Josephine walked all the way to the strega’s house through the woods so no one would see her. One thing everyone knew that the witch could do was to stop a pregnancy before the baby got too big. This was a sin, but women regularly came to the witch for that. Josephine didn’t want anyone to think that was what she was doing.
Barefoot, she walked through the quiet woods. Except for her daughter sleeping against her, Josephine could have been back in the Old Country, walking to the stream. The moss was soft and squishy beneath her feet, and she spotted mushrooms that would be good cooked in red sauce. Josephine couldn’t remember when she had last felt so peaceful. At home, there was always a baby needing to be nursed or fed or changed or washed; there was always a meal to cook, clothes to clean; there was Vincenzo, already wanting her, even though Bella was just ten weeks old. She could tell the way his puffy eyes lingered on her breasts as she nursed Bella and Chiara, then Elisabetta.
Her breasts were so sore and swollen, covered in fat blue veins, that Josephine could not understand how they brought desire to him. But they did. He had never once even touched them, or seen them, until Carmine was born and she was nursing him. But Vincenzo ogled them anytime she had them out, which was most of the day. Sometimes Josephine wondered if other women’s husbands touched them. Or if every man did what Vincenzo did. She was too embarrassed to ask, but there were times when something in her longed for Vincenzo, fat Vincenzo, to caress her, to kiss her mouth, to touch her thighs.