Free When We Were Strangers by Pamela Schoenewaldt Page A

to the market in Piazza Montesanto where I bought tea, cheese, dried apples, potatoes, carrots, onions, nuts and salami at good prices, surely less than Matteo’s. There would be bread on board at least and even if food on the Servia was scant, two or even three lean weeks were nothing compared to a hunger winter at home. Besides, I’d be doing no work, so there was no need to eat like a laborer. In the lodging house I stored the provisions, tested my new scissors and tried not to think of Opi.
    For dinner they gave us cabbage stew, bread, melon and wine. Two men from Puglia played accordions while couples danced. Others played cards, drank or argued about America. Children played around the tables, their languages laced together with laughter and shouts. I sat with a circle of single women listening to songs of home. As the city grew dark behind us, many cried, their tears glittering in candlelight. A man from Calabria tugged at my arm, wanting to dance, his body damp with sweat.
    “I’m married,” I said, pushing him off. “I’m meeting my husband in Cleveland.” How easy to be a liar far from home. I slipped back to my cot and sewed myself to sleep.
    Repairs for the Servia dragged on . Yet we must not go wandering, the matrons warned, for boarding could begin any time. African heat closed Naples in a breathless oven. Fights sparked easily, for many had counted their coins so tightly that extra days threatened hunger at sea. Yet at night, when street vendors sold cheap wine, many bought freely. Children played and couples found dark corners that hid faces but not muffled heaves.
    By day, with hundreds of travelers suffering the pressing heat, any sliver of shade went to the strongest. Grumbles and curses ran down the long tables where we took our meals. “What repairs? There’s not a thing wrong with that ship,” a fisherman from Bacoli announced. “The captain made a deal with the lodging house. Besides, he has our ticket money. He could pull out one night and leave us stranded.”
    “I saw the wood they brought on for repairs,” a carpenter said. “Second-rate pine. Could be we never reach America.”
    “Shut up,” snapped a day laborer. “I talked to the steward. He says she’s stout enough. And at least we’re not back home working like donkeys in other men’s fields.”
    On the third day I found a tree-shaded scrap of wall and climbed it “like a mountain goat,” Teresa said. Perched there before dawn, I watched fishermen row over the glassy bay, their voices floating to shore. A man jumped in the water and swam, not as our boys paddled like dogs in mountain lakes, but churning his arms overhead like a water wheel. Astonishing, but were all these new wonders washing Opi from my mind? Gripping the wall, I closed my eyes to piece out Zia’s high brow, thin lips and wrinkles nesting her eyes.
    Suddenly, shrill whistles blew and Gabriella came running, shouting, “Come down, Irma! We’re going to America!”
    The lodging house roared like a winter storm, the air thick with straw and wool fluff. We threw wet and dry clothes into sacks, rolled mattresses and shook the guard awake to get our baggage. Women changed shamelessly in daylight, pulling on traveling clothes. “Roll up your sleeves! Show your numbers,” the matrons ordered. “Hold on to your children.”
    Outside the lodging house, we stood sweating as clerks checked our numbers against lists. They yanked a coughing woman out of line. “It was my sister’s number,” she cried. “What’s the harm in that?”
    “The harm is defrauding the company. You could get prison for it,” a clerk snapped, herding her into a roped-off knot of old, lame and sickly travelers who had tried to sneak on the Servia . As the woman’s husband protested, begging for the ticket money back at least, the clerk stood stone-faced. “You knew the rules,” he said calmly.
    “It’s better this way,” Teresa comforted a wailing woman torn loose from an old