A butterfly? Josephine thought of the dusty wings of butterflies, blue spotted with black, or the sunset orange of a Monarch. If you touched their wings, they couldn’t fly anymore, that dust the magic that lifted them up. This cheap thing looked nothing like a butterfly.
Josephine was wondering if she had conveyed any of this to the nurse, or if it was all in her head, when the nurse leaned forward and put the ridiculous barrette in Josephine’s own white hair.
“You look so pretty!” she said, grinning like the idiot that she was. “Here,” she said, wheeling Josephine over to the mirror that hung on the door. “See for yourself.”
Josephine squinted at the image in the mirror. But all she saw was a very old woman, hunchbacked and wizened, with thin white hair with an ugly thing jutting from the top of her head.
“You can keep it,” the nurse said. “I have a million of them.”
Now the girl was calling to her. “Mrs. Rimaldi? You know what today is, don’t you? Remember, I told you yesterday?”
Every day when a nurse came in she said, “Good morning, Mrs. Rimaldi. It’s Monday, the second of June.” Or whatever day and month it was. Some nurses would quiz her later. “What day is it today, Mrs. Rimaldi?” As if it mattered whether it was June or February, Monday or Thursday.
The girl was looking at her so expectantly that Josephine tried to please her. “Monday?” she said.
The girl laughed. “Well, no, it’s Saturday. But it’s your birthday today.”
Josephine thought about this. Her birthday. She was born on September 24, 1874, in Conca Campania, Italy, a village high up in the mountains. The villagers liked to say they lived close to God. To Josephine, that seemed to be true, even now. The village was a maze of white stone houses, cobblestone streets, fields and hills. In the center sat the church, and perched on its steeple, watching over the village and its people, was the Virgin Mary. She wore long blue robes. Her hair was a tumble of black ringlets. In her arms she held her son, the baby Jesus. And all of this was outlined in twenty-four-karat gold. That gold shimmered in the bright sunlight and glowed at night. Her halo, a large round disc above her head, was also gold. From afar, Josephine could look up and see that golden image and feel safe under its watchful eyes.
In the village, she ran barefoot. She herded the sheep for the nuns and helped the women bake the Communion wafers. She ate figs fresh from trees, and juicy grapes right off the vines. One of the things she never got used to in America was the way the fruit tasted. It didn’t have the sunshine in it, the way it did in the Old Country. She never got used to wearing shoes, either. Wiggling her toes now, she realized she only had on socks. Maybe she could get this girl to take them off and then she could run barefoot through the grass.
The nurse’s face was very close to Josephine’s, so close that Josephine smelled the bad American coffee on her breath.
“You’re one hundred years old today, Mrs. Rimaldi. And your entire family is coming to give you a party.”
Josephine laughed. What foolishness was this girl giving her today?
“Do you want to wear your butterfly barrette?” the girl was saying.
Josephine struggled to tell her things: about the magic dust on butterflies’ wings, and how she wanted to take off her socks and run in the grass, and that she had hidden the barrette so that she never had to wear it again.
“I can’t find it,” the girl was muttering.
Josephine wondered if anyone had ever told Carmine the truth about Anna Zito; if Valentina had ever wondered about her; if Tommy Petrocelli had died. She wanted to run barefoot in the grass. Was it safe to go outside? Josephine tried to ask. Or were people still dying of the Spanish Influenza? All the words strangled in her throat.
“You all right?” the nurse said, hurrying to her side. She clamped a blood-pressure cuff on Josephine, placed her own fingers on Josephine’s wrist to feel the weak flutter there, like butterfly wings.
Josephine’s heart slowed and she grew calmer. Her eyes met the girl’s and she managed to ask, “Tommy Petrocelli? He come see?” She shook her head and tried again. “He see me today?”
Frowning at the blood-pressure machine, the nurse said absently, “Not today, Mrs. Rimaldi.”
“Ah,” Josephine said, unable to hide her disappointment.
“But everyone else is here,” the nurse said, bringing her worried face close to Josephine’s.
Something strange was going on in Josephine’s chest. She’d had these feelings before. Pushing out her first baby. Falling in love with the ice man. Handing Valentina to the nun. The feeling was something like love and something like grief. But how to explain this to the silly nurse who was staring at her with such concentration.
“I’m going to take you to the sunroom, Mrs. Rimaldi,” she said. “That’s where everybody is waiting for you.” She was talking loud, like she always did, but Josephine was having trouble hearing her. “Remember?” the girl said. “Today is your birthday.”
“September 24,” Josephine said.
“Yes!” the nurse said. “Good for you!”