in English.”
For some reason this amused Harry, who smiled from behind Ben, looked at his fine black shoes, fiddled with the hat in his hands, and said, “Going to school is good.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t pay me money,” Gina said, squinting at him in the sun. Her shoulders were covered with a shawl, but her teeth sparkled, particularly white against her dark skin, her vivid lips. “I need to work,” she said. “Make money, be independent.”
“Education is so important,” said Harry.
“So is paying your rent,” said Gina. “And buying gloves.”
“Let your mother and brother worry about that,” Harry said.
“That’s what I keep trying to tell her,” Verity said. “Come to school with me.” She was offputtingly skinny. She looked like a boy.
Ben just stood smiling. He paid attention to nothing but the Sicilian girl. “So what are you selling at the bazaar, Gina?”
“A little bit of this, a little bit of that.” She smiled back.
They moved to the side of the street to let rushing pedestrians pass and stood under an awning of a cigar shop. Verity eyed the two men curiously but suspiciously, especially Harry.
Foolish girl, Harry wanted to say to her, it’s not me you need to watch out for. Meanwhile Ben and Gina stood next to each other, chatting.
“Gina, we should go,” Verity said. “We promised the sisters we’d be back soon with the fruit.”
“Soon is so vague, Ver,” Gina returned.
“Yes, but we don’t have any fruit yet.”
Gina turned away from her friend. “How long are you gentlemen in town for?”
“For the afternoon,” said Ben. “We need to get a thousand signatures, but unfortunately we’re not having much luck. I’m afraid we’ll have to return to Boston soon if we don’t do better.”
“A thousand signatures is a lot,” Gina said. “How many do you have?”
“Six,” Ben replied.
“Eight if you two girls sign,” Harry said. “Oh, wait. You have to be over sixteen to sign.”
“I am over sixteen!” Verity exclaimed. “I’m eighteen.”
Ben cast Harry a look that said, you’re just pure evil, aren’t you? You had to go and bring up age.
“Though I can’t sign, Ben,” Gina said quickly, “perhaps I can help you? What do you say, Verity?”
“We said we’d be back.”
“Look what a lovely afternoon it is. We’re just out and about.”
“Gina …”
“It’s fine.”
“Let’s just go, G.”
“Well, you go ahead, then. I’ll stay and help.”
Harry and Ben exchanged stunned looks. It was rare indeed in the circles in which they were born and raised to have a young girl remain even on a public street alone with two men. By rare, Harry meant unheard of. And Verity was obviously torn. Though she was really too young to be entrusted with such a responsibility, she was nonetheless entrusted with looking after her young charge, and yet couldn’t budge her from the street.
Verity stayed. Harry watched her timidly trying by turns to rein in and to mimic Gina, telling her not to stand so close, watching her every move, trying to fling her own hair about, adjusting her tiny bun, fixing the bows on her dowdy blouse.
Gina had no imitators though. She turned out to be uncannily good at getting people to stop, much better than Ben and Harry. The green peasant skirt made her look untailored, yet fresh and young. She was tanned, looked happy, and walked up and down Essex Street, shouting at the passersby both in Italian and English. In three hours she collected seven hundred signatures. The boys and Verity collected eighty-four—combined.
“You clearly have skills we can’t ever hope to attain,” Ben said with an impressed glitter, as if he needed one more thing to impress him.
“Not at all,” Gina said graciously. “You could be successful. You just give them too much information.” She smiled. “It’s the education university. Shoppers don’t want to hear about swamps and mosquitoes and ships. Please sign the petition to bring exotic tropical fruit to Lawrence. That’s all you have to say. And next time you come, bring your bananas, Ben,” she added. “We’ll give away a banana with every signature.”
“I don’t think I can get four thousand bananas,” said Ben.
“Do you want the canal or not?”
What could Ben say?
“If you come next Saturday,” Gina said, “Verity and I will make a barrel of lemonade …”
“We will?” muttered Verity.
“Yes, and we will set up a little table, where on a hot August afternoon, for every signature, we’ll offer a free cup of lemonade. A banana would be good too. That’s almost a full lunch.”
The boys stood and gaped as she beamed with satisfied pleasure.
“But, Gina, we have no money to buy lemons and sugar,” whispered Verity.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get some,” Gina whispered back.
4
Four steaming August Saturdays blew by in a whirlwind, and by the end of the month, after trolley cars of bananas and barrels of lemonade, with four clipboards and some much-needed help from the humid weather, Ben had his 5,000 signatures and his heart in a mangled twist. He had already begun feebly insisting that what he needed was not 5,000 but 10,000, so he could keep on coming indefinitely to Lawrence. But on the last Saturday, Pippa, who usually didn’t venture out, was unfortunately one of the people into whose hands Ben thrust a glass of lemonade and a pen. She signed first, then she saw her cousin’s daughter, in a borrowed dress too short for her, her hair up only by the loosest of definitions, and her sleeves inexplicably three-quarter length, though no acceptable dresses were made with three-quarter sleeves anymore. Moreover, Pippa saw Gina as she really was—relaxed, laughing, the way no fifteen-year-old girl was supposed to act on the street with men many years her senior.
“I’m in trouble, you two,” Gina whispered, as Pippa’s plump, moist hand went around her forearm. “Goodbye!”
All of these conclusions about Gina’s impropriety in dress and demeanor Pippa revealed not only to Gina when they got home but to Mimoo and Salvo later that evening. She saved it, actually saved it, for when Salvo returned from the quarry.
“So this is how Verity has been looking after you?” Salvo bellowed.
