Free Daughter of Venice by Donna Jo Napoli

off his trousers. I go hot with embarrassment, but, even more, I’m amazed at the muscles of his back and bottom and thighs. And astonished that he is as brown under his clothes as on his neck and feet. Why, he must fish naked. The image of the lagoon littered with rocking fishing boats full of naked fisherboys leaves me speechless.
    He has already donned the old black hose from my brothers, which look ridiculous, actually, and he’s pulling on the shirt, when we hear the fisherman as he descends.
    I race back to my storeroom and peek out.
    Paolina picks up the boy’s old shirt and trousers.
    “What’s this?” asks the fisherman.
    “A trade,” says the boy.
    The fisherman looks from the boy to Paolina and back to the boy. The brown paper parcel is nowhere in sight. He turns up his hands. “Why?”
    “For fun,” says Paolina. She gives her most charming smile and the fisherman finally laughs with confusion. In a flash I see her as the Mother Superior to her flock of nuns. No one could fail to take her word for anything.
    The fisherman gets in the boat and they push off and paddle those long oars, almost as long as the oar of a gondola.
    It’s only when Paolina thrusts the boy’s fish-stinky clothes into my face with a triumphant laugh that I put my hands into my long hair and gasp in realization. “A
bareta!
He didn’t give me his
bareta
. Or shoes, either.”
    “Wear the old ones you stole from the charity pile,” says Paolina.
    “They’re in the satchel.”
    But the fishing boat is gone.

C HAPTER E IGHT
    BAREFOOT
    P aolina helps me braid my hair tight at the back. We work silently. There’s no one to hear us, even if we did talk; Giò Giò already came down and closed and secured the great gates to the Canal Grande. But somehow the dim light of this storeroom calls for quiet. The only sun is the thin strands that sneak in through the bars over the small, high window.
    Paolina tucks my braid inside the fisherboy’s shirt, which is so long on me, it comes down to midthigh. “Watch where you step,” she says, her voice strangely nasal because she’s holding her nose against the stink of these clothes. She smiles and leaves.
    I wish the fisherboy’s shirt gathered tight at the throat like my brothers’ shirts. Then at least I could be sure my hair wouldn’t work its way out as I walk along. But I’ll just have to hold my neck stiff.
    I climb over giant spools of wool thread and hide my nightdress in a corner. Then I go to the tall doors that open onto the alley side of our
palazzo,
turn the key in the hole, and slip out. There’s no way I can lock these doors from the outside, so I simply close them firmly.
    The stone under my feet is cool because this alley is in continual shade, with a
palazzo
on each side, both facing onto the Canal Grande. Only people coming to one or the other
palazzo
pass here. Luckily, the alley is empty. It’s so quiet, I can hear the hens cluck in the neighboring courtyard.
    I walk to the end of the alley and turn. If I were going to Mass, I’d continue on, and over the small bridge ahead. But now I go only halfway down this alley, and, with my heart pounding in my ears, I turn down a side alley I have never ever walked before. I go to the end of it, and stop. The way I’m panting, you’d think I’d been running. I feel almost dizzy.
    The wide street in front of me is raucous. I recognize it from the talk at our dining table: This is the Rio Terrà di Maddalena. It was a canal until a few years ago. Now it is among the most traveled passageways of Venice. It’s also one of the filthiest, for although the sweepers clean every night, merchants have been passing here since dawn. I gulp.
    We go barefoot indoors all the time. But I’ve never before been outside in bare feet. When I go to church or to a friend’s home, I wear my fancy shoes—the ones I hate. But at least those high soles keep me safe from the mucky street.
    Nothing protects my feet now.
    I remember the