I turned five, my mother carried me every morning across the street to the convent in back of the Church of the Addolorata, where the nuns ran their elementary school. At the door, she handed me over to a nun, who carried me into the classroom and put me in my seat, right in the front row.
At first, the nuns were scary in their long black habits, but I got used to them. They smelled of incense and flowers. In the afternoon, they carried me around the convent. I was passed from one nun’s arms to another’s. They carried me into the church, bending one knee and telling me to cross myself as they passed the altar with the tall crucifix; to the vestry, where baby Jesus, a beautiful doll, slept in a basket covered in lace; and out to the garden, where the palm trees were so high that, no matter how far back I tilted my head, I couldn’t see the tops, and the sparrows flew in circles and sang.
I loved those little birds that always sounded so happy. They woke me up every morning with their singing.
Sister Teresina, the youngest and my favorite, even carried me into the huge kitchen, where they had the biggest pots and pans I’d ever seen. Sister Prisca, the oldest, stirred the minestrone in a blackened iron pot with a giant wooden spoon.
But sometimes, while they carried me, some of the nuns started holding me tighter and tighter against their chests, kissed my head, and whispered, “Pietà, pietà!” That scared me. I felt I was suffocating. Out of fear, I’d start weeping. Thinking they were comforting me, the nuns held me even tighter and rocked me like a baby—which I hated.
Every Sunday, my mother carried me into the church. My father never went with us. Before Mass started, she knelt with me in her arms in front of the Addolorata and lit a candle. I couldn’t stand to look at the Addolorata’s face, which was the same as my mother’s, so beautiful but so sad. I kissed my mother, trying to make her smile, but she never smiled in church. I wrapped my arm around her neck, bent my head down, pressing my forehead against her shoulder, and kept my eyes shut. But though I couldn’t see anything, I was painfully aware of the gaze of the whole congregation.
The nuns did their best to instill in me a sense of guilt and shame, and to teach me to embrace my own destiny of suffering.
“Offer your suffering to the Lord!” they always said to me. I couldn’t understand. What would the Lord possibly want to do with my suffering? One day, when Sister Angelica started her “Offer your suffering” routine, I rebelled.
“But I want to be happy!”
She started stroking me and kissing me.
“Oh, my poor darling, how could you be happy? Pietà! You can never be happy!”
I got furious. “I can so be happy!” I yelled, hitting the nun’s chest with my small fists as I struggled to free myself from her ominous embrace.
But how could I expect to be happy when I didn’t know what awaited me? How much longer could I be carried? What would happen to me when I grew up? What would my destiny be?
In Riposto, every girl learned at an early age that “a woman’s destiny” was to get married and have children. Unless, of course, she was too ugly to find a man who would marry her. Then, she could become a nun or, horror of horrors, end up a zitella, an old maid.
At an early age, I learned that getting married and having children was not my destiny. The message came across quite clear, though never loud; it came in hushed tones and sighs. Since I was not like other girls, I couldn’t grow up to be like other women.
The other girls, who came to our house to play with me once in a while, didn’t bother using hushed tones. They played with my dolls, dressing and undressing them. They unbuttoned their own shirts and held the dolls’ heads against their pink nipples, like they had seen nursing women do. I tried to do the same.
“No,” one of the older girls objected. “My mother says you shouldn’t play with dolls. You should give us your dolls because we need to practice. You’re never going to get married and have children. You’re crippled, ciunca.”
The others chimed in. How could I argue against them?
If I were ugly, I could at least become a nun or an old maid. I didn’t understand why the other girls thought being a nun or an old maid was so horrible. The nuns seemed content enough to teach us children, do their chores, and pray. I didn’t think the nuns were ugly, at least not all of them. They all spoke of Christ as their husband. I didn’t understand how that could be. But I figured, even if I were ugly, Christ wouldn’t want me as a wife. He already had all those nuns. He didn’t need another wife—especially not a crippled one.
The only old maid I knew, a distant cousin of my mother’s, seemed rather nice and not at all ugly. But whenever she came over, it was to ask for money.
“Why doesn’t she have any money?” I asked my mother.
“Because she has no husband” was always the answer.
If I couldn’t have a husband and children, like other women, what could I do? I couldn’t go around asking relatives for money, since I couldn’t walk. I didn’t know any women who worked outside of their homes. I had heard some women cleaned rich people’s houses. I knew I’d never be able to do that. My mother, who was an expert with needle and thread, told me women could earn money as seamstresses. She tried to teach me to sew, but I hated it. I pricked my finger with the needle and got blood on the cloth.
When I was in third grade, a young woman came to work as a teacher at the convent. I was surprised because I thought only nuns could be teachers. She had long hair, which she wore in a ponytail. I fell in love with her and decided I would not let my mother cut my hair anymore, and I would be a teacher. My heart was broken when she didn’t come back the next year. I heard the nuns say she had gotten married. So I let my mother cut my hair short again, and I called myself stupid for thinking I could be a teacher when I couldn’t walk.
In school I was a model student, the nuns’ pride and joy. The other children resented me. “My mother says the nuns give you good grades because you’re a cripple,” they sneered. Or: “My mother says you study because you can’t do anything else.”
My progress in school seemed to make my father happy. Other girls’ fathers didn’t care how their daughters did in school. With their sons, it was a different story. Was my father glad I could use my brain, since my body was no good?
I was constantly trying to figure out what my father had in mind for me. He seemed to be making plans. But what were they?
My father had been taking me to doctors and hospitals since I was quite small. We had been to Catania, Messina, Rome, and Bologna. Rome and Bologna were far. It took many hours for the train to get there, crossing the straight on a ferry and going through many dark tunnels.
In Rome, my parents and I stayed with cousins who lived there. A few times, my father carried me to the Trevi Fountain so I could throw in a coin. I liked being in Rome, though I was always nervous knowing that, without a doubt, I would be taken to a doctor.
Doctors scared me, because they always hurt me. One doctor in Messina gave me shock treatments to regenerate the nerves in my spine. The shocks went through my body like a thousand snakes on fire, burning and biting me inside, making me shake all over and pee on the treatment table. I was already big enough to feel embarrassed about peeing. After we got home, for weeks my mother squeezed aloe leaves on the blisters that formed on my back.
In
