grew bigger and his mother older. The shine was gone from her hair that was red like no one else’s in the rione. When Piero grew too big for the basket she used it to carry washing.
Piero moved through the streets in far parts of the city by himself now, and took the things they needed. Sometimes he went to the edge of the city to watch the gypsies who could no longer steal him away under their skirts. He was a grown boy.
The mother prayed to keep Piero hers. She put blessed palm under his mattress and made promises to her saint. But the summer that Piero was big enough, he got himself a girl. The girl was of the rione, from the family that mended umbrellas, and she was small and soft like the bunnies Piero kept at Easter. The girl would take him into the alleys and lift up her skirts for him. Piero loved her smell.
The mother prayed to her saint. She explained that all she had ever had was Piero and her red hair. She asked the saint to make Piero like Anzio even though that was a terrible thing for a mother to ask. She asked for a sign but the saint was silent while Piero’s girl whispered in his ear. She pulled up her skirts. “We should marry,” she said.
“My mother . . . ,” Piero said.
“Your mother is a witch. She has that red hair,” the girl said.
Piero got angry. He pinched the soft flesh on the inside of the girl’s arm. “I am my mother’s son,” he told her.
“You are your father’s son,” the girl said. “Your hair is black. You belong in the rione. Your mother is from outside.”
“She only has me,” Piero said.
“She only wants you,” the girl told him. “She made the black rain so your father would leave and never come back.”
Piero stepped away.
“Your mother is a witch and you are under her spell.”
This is what the girl told Piero.
On Piero’s wedding day, the mother did not touch her son. She could see in his eyes that he did not want her to touch him. The mother embraced the bride and smiled at Piero. She put her hand slowly through her red hair and made Piero afraid.
When Piero came out of the house the morning after his wedding night, his mother was there. The empty basket was set upon her head.
“I am here to hang the sheet,” she said. “It’s my right as your mother. The rione is waiting to see the blood on the sheet.”
“There isn’t any blood,” Piero said.
“All virgins have blood,” she told him.
His mother reached out to touch him but he moved away. He didn’t want to be so near her. He remembered Anzio.
“Don’t worry,” Piero’s mother said to him.
Piero left her and walked to the coffee bar. He stood with the men who teased him about his wedding night. They sere-naded him with bawdy songs.
The women leaned out of the shadows, their arms folded across the windowsills. They were waiting to see the sheet, to see the blood.
They all watched when Piero’s mother came out of the house with the basket on her head. They watched as she hung out the bloodied sheet.
The men squinted their eyes in the morning sun. Piero’s mother moved along the clothesline. She held the clothespins in her mouth. The blood from the sheet dripped onto the paving stones.
“So much blood,” the women in the windows said. “We’ve never seen so much blood.”
The mother fastened the last clothespin to the edge of the sheet. The blood ran in little rivers between the blocks of stone. The mother turned and smiled at Piero and put her hand through her red hair.
FISH HEADS
The hostel was dreary. Jakarta felt polluted, crowded and dirty after the island paradise of Bali, where we had rented a room in a family compound and discovered fruits worthy of fairy tales: mangoes, mangosteens, jackfruit, papaya, and pale yellow pineapples cut into wedges. An enterprising young woman named Jenik had gotten herself a blender and access to electricity and, at a stand on the dirt road to Kuta Beach in 1968, smoothies came to town. Jenik also figured out pancakes and French toast and would make omelettes with dirty blue-gray mushrooms. Her eggs, your mushrooms. Magic! But for how long can you watch the sunset and dance with the Barong? We had left home for adventure, to tip over the edge of comfort and familiarity, and Bali was only the first stop. We didn’t have much of a plan, but we knew we were moving and had all the time in the world.
In Sydney we’d bought a series of tickets that would take us through Java and Sumatra to Singapore. We had bus tickets, ferry tickets, and chits that would get us lifts on trucks in Sumatra. We had small bags and bellies full of nasi goreng and chicken satay. We’d had a Christmas feast at a Chinese restaurant in Denpasar with turtle soup and a collection of roasted and lacquered birds that, if they had still had their feathers, would have flown away. We’d roasted goats on spits over wood fires on the beach and piglets in pits of charcoal. We were loving Indonesia. The dreary hostel and grimy city would be left behind as soon as we’d washed our clothes and changed some money.
The night before we were to leave Jakarta, a man came to the hostel dormitory. I don’t remember if we thought it was odd that he was there, or how the conversation started, but he made us an offer that we thought we couldn’t, and shouldn’t, refuse. He convinced us that the overland trek to Singapore was a terrible undertaking. Unreliable transport, he said. Impenetrable jungle. Mosquitoes. Nowhere even remotely decent to eat or sleep. And it would take weeks. And it was the rainy season. What were we thinking? There were six of us. We looked at each other. Of course, our new friend had the solution. A ship to Singapore. Ocean breezes, deck chairs, all meals included for the seven-day journey. I personally loved ships, loved being at sea, had sweet memories of crossing the Atlantic on the Italian line, coming to Australia on a freighter. Someone poked me. What would it cost? Important point. It sounded like a big-ticket item. We were backpackers, remember? someone said. One new friend said not to worry. He would make it happen for us. He’d take our existing tickets plus a few extra rupiah. A bargain, he said.
We parted with our tickets and rupiah and the next morning we were at the dock, along with, it seemed, a thousand others—despite the appearance that the ship had no accommodations for passengers. It was outfitted for cargo, clearly. Pandemonium reigned. We made a quick decision to follow the crowd. We were the only foreigners but we were used to that, so we climbed the gangplank and got on board. Families were claiming spots, laying down mats. Space was tight because of the cargo, which appeared to be garbage, piled up high in the bow. There was also no way we were changing our minds and getting back off. The crowd was only moving one way. We spread out our sleeping bags and sat down on the deck. I had a flashback to summers in Coney Island, with beach blankets laid end to end held down by shoes and radios. The ship pulled out. Our fellow passengers started getting sick almost immediately. I closed my eyes and leaned against my backpack. Believe it or not, I was hungry.
I took good food for granted. I grew up a first-generation Italian American. We weren’t big on ambience (I don’t think I saw a milk pitcher until I was of legal age) but we knew about food. Lamb at Easter, the rib chops as tiny as a baby’s fist, the lamb’s head, capozelle, split and roasted with parsley, garlic and parmigiano; minestrone soup with five kinds of fresh beans and gobs of pesto stirred in; veal shoulder
