language of women, and wiped them away.
“Maybe it’s from your folks back home?”
She leaned forward to peek at the envelope as she handed it to Anna, who smiled as she took it and saw the name on the upper left corner: Maria Gallini. She opened it quickly and the older lady held her breath as Anna read to herself.
Dearest Anna,
It has been hard here. Your father and my Pietro joined the army four years ago. We have not heard from them. There is a strange sickness, some call it the Spanish flu, and some call it the Hun’s Curse. Please tell Antonio that his grandfather Pasquale caught the sickness. He passed away very quickly. I am not well either. Father Infante is helping me with this.
Go with God, my child.
Another’s handwriting was below.
Maria passed away shortly after this was written.
Pray for us all.
Giuseppe Infante
“Bad news, dear?”
“Si, Signora. Antonio’s mother and grandfather have passed.”
“Oh no! Not after all what’s happened to ye both. I’ll fix something special for when he comes home tonight.”
“Thank you, Signora.”
“Eh, do ye have the sewing ready yet?”
“Si, Signora.”
The Armistice arrived and none too soon. America started drafting eighteen-year-olds less than two months before the war ended, and by then Antonio had come of age. Military service would have moved up his citizenship, but it would have left Anna alone. As it was, though, the foundry was considered an essential industry, and so he managed to avoid the war from which his grandfather had done so much to protect him.
They had moved nearer to his work after Mrs. Flaherty died from the flu that was now raging throughout their adopted country. So far he and Anna had been lucky. Maybe the fumes from the furnaces kept the devils away.
“It is our curse, Antonio.”
His head lay against her chest, his left hand holding hers. Their fourth miscarriage. The loss seared his soul far more than any foundry furnace. Always the bitter taste when you had been so near.
The Roaring Twenties had brought them the hope of minor prosperity. Anna’s scrimping and seamstress work had added enough pennies to their little bit of savings that they had done what their American-born friends had advised them to do: They opened a savings account at the local bank.
Then October 1929 arrived and their meager nest egg vanished when the bank failed.
Now, for the fourth time, she lay on the hard bed in the hospital charity ward run by an order of nuns. The sisters were thorough but compassion was a scarce commodity and she heard them whispering about God’s punishment for living in sin.
“Antonio, I spoke with the priest. He is willing to do the Wedding Mass for us. Please, do this for me.”
His heart had toughened from the hard times and endless workdays. Fortunately, the foundry had stayed open during the years of the Great Depression, and he had risen to senior foundryman. His identification, stamped into each of the tools he made, was Number 3. He was one of the lucky ones because he had a job—though the work was killing him, slowly sucking the very air out of his lungs.
He wanted to pound the walls; he wanted to shout at her, even while she lay there under time-yellowed hospital sheets. His mind screamed as he shook his head. How could his wife still believe in the goodness of God? What kind of God would take children—four angels—from a father and mother?
He buried his face in Anna’s chest. He could not let her see the tears.
Then he felt the touch of her calloused hands on the roughness of his furnace-burnt face and his bitterness dissolved. He could refuse her nothing.
“Si, if it is your wish, cara mia.”
Once more the drums of war resonated across Europe
A voice on the radio announced the news from the Old World that Hitler had annexed the Sudetenland. Austria fell to the charismatic beast without a shot. Soon the world would learn the meaning of the word Blitzkrieg.
She could hardly believe it, but she felt it again, that familiar stirring. She went to the free clinic run by Dr. Agnelli.
“Yes, Anna, you are right, but you are thirty-nine years old. We must watch you very carefully.”
She nodded, dressed, and walked out of the clinic.
A newsboy in knickers shouted, “Peace in our time, Chamberlain says. Peace in our time!”
“Big breaths, Signora Galen. Steady, steady. Nurse, low forceps. Ah, good, the baby’s verted.”
He spoke the magic doctor words to the nurse. The baby had shifted position inside the womb. It would enter the world headfirst.
“Anna, I need one big breath and push—PUSH!”
He didn’t need the forceps. The baby’s head was presenting, now the left shoulder, then the right shoulder. He eased the newborn from the womb and the nurse quickly clamped the umbilical cord in two places and cut it.
This one didn’t need to be whacked on the bottom to breathe. The red-faced baby boy let out a tremendous howl, and the nurse and doctor laughed.
“Anna, you have a beautiful big baby boy, and from the sound of him he’s going to be quite a talker. Nurse, call the father in to the side room.”
Antonio had heard the cry, not in his ears, but in his mind and heart.
He knew!
He had beaten the nurse to the door, and she was startled to see him already standing there waiting.
“Come in, Mr. Galen. Dr. Agnelli is with your wife ... and your new son!”
When he was let in to the birthing room, he stood for a moment looking at his wife lying there, weary.
“Antonio, we will call him Roberto, after my father, and Antonio, after you. Here is your son. Roberto Antonio Galen.”
With his fire-scarred hands he held the son he had always wanted. He whispered gently to the new life in his hands.
“You will be strong and smart, figlio mio, and I will teach you to be tough against the world.”
Their eyes met and forever bonded.
...
Now fifteen, Berto Galen had come to understand he could realize his dreams only through his own hard work. His father had instilled in him the need to drive himself to be the best, and consequently he had made only one friend in high school—and even that one purely by chance.
The
