That Summer in Sicily by Marlena de Blasi

sulk prevailed. A whole day’s worth of grievances accumulated, carried to the silk-draped table, passed about like soured milk. Simona had perhaps quarreled with the governess or the governess with the art professor and surely there were dramas among them less perceptible to me. Nevertheless they always seemed to be played out in the evening. I would sit there in my white dress, my braids coiled so tightly above my ears that my head ached, and think how very much the same the event of supper was here at the palace as it had been at home. Always having to worry if my father was angry or why, or if it was I who caused the anger. Worse was wondering if it was I who should be at work making his anger go away. Yet here among this vast polished cast, the game of mea culpa, tua culpa was played out with far more skulk. How I would long to be alone with The Tiny Mafalda in the narrow pallet of a bed that was ours. What price this thin white dress. This supper.”

    “I had a room in the children’s wing, two rooms really; the furnishings, the walls, everything was colored pale yellow and white. Even the floors were yellow and white, great marble squares laid in a pattern that made me dizzy. And a bathroom of my own with a tub big enough to swim in, or so it seemed, though I didn’t know the first thing about swimming. I didn’t know much about bathing, either. I’d never had a bath in a tub except when my mother would plunk The Tiny Mafalda and me in the washtub out in the garden on the days when the washing water wasn’t all that dirty. I missed The Tiny Mafalda.
    “There was an alcove behind my bed where Agata slept, and I would talk to her about my sister. Sometimes that helped, but mostly all that helped were the times when I’d run away. Or ride away, back home. I’m sure that Cosimo has told you about my escapes, since I believe they are his favorite memories of me. My escapes and my thievings. Of course, the two were connected. They were connected to hunger, just as I think most crimes are connected to hunger. One hunger or another.
    “Every time I sat down at table with the household, all I could think about was my sister. What was she eating for lunch? Was she eating at all? Did my father remember to leave money for her to do the shopping? I was tortured by my worries for her. Time and time again, I would wait until Agata and the rest of the household were napping and then creep out of the bedroom, step lightly down the stairs and across what seemed the immensity of the halls and the corridors and out one door or another, out one passageway or another. Free. Away into the damp, cool respite of the garden. Push open the great creaking gate and don’t look back. Now run. Faster. Some sack or bag fastened to me, something good for my sister. It felt fine to run, to sweat, to feel the sack slapping against my leg. Slower, then, when I’d reached the road. Hike the white road, cross the hills back home.
    “Not announcing my return as anything extraordinary, I would just pick up where I’d left off, look through the cupboard and in the baskets for whatever there was to cook and get to work. The Tiny Mafalda would be dancing ’round me, kissing me, reaching up to hold me about the waist and squeezing me with all her baby-girl’s strength, and I would start in weeping and then she would and then we’d both be laughing and crying and my father would walk in and, without so much as a word from him, or him hearing a word from me, I’d be hurled down onto the bed of his truck and, with Mafalda stamping one foot and then the other on the bottom step of the porch and screaming at him with all her might to let me stay, he’d drive, pell-mell, back across the hills. Back down the white road. Back to the palace.
    “After those episodes I knew that my father, having to punish someone, would be even less tolerant of my sister. I would learn that on those evenings he would sometimes eat whatever was there and not offer