The Black Madonna by Louisa Ermelino Page B

.”
    â€œA docile girl won’t leave just like that for America with a strange man. And Americans don’t like docile women.”
    â€œHow do you know what American men like?”
    â€œTommaso. Tommaso knows everything about America.”
    â€œGuinetta? Our Maria . . . What about our Maria?”
    â€œPig. Your own daughter to your sister’s son? Are you crazy? Pig,” Zia Guinetta said again and she didn’t speak to him that whole day.
    Now when Zio Carmelo walked through the town, when he sat at the coffee bar in the piazza until noon, he looked carefully at his compatriots, remembering their sisters and daughters and granddaughters, conjuring up their faces, their figures. One of them, he thought, would be the right girl for Amadeo.
    He said nothing to anyone until the day he crossed paths with Giacomo Caparetti and remembered that he had a beautiful daughter. She had been hidden in the house since her brother’s funeral, but the year was almost up. Magdalena Caparetti had smooth white skin, Zio Carmelo remembered, and strange wonderful eyes, bright, as though a lamp were held behind them.
    â€œMagdalena Caparetti,” Zio Carmelo told his wife that night, wiping up the oil on his plate with a crust of bread.
    â€œAh . . . a beautiful girl,” Zia Guinetta said. “Those eyes . . . but she’s very young.”
    â€œSo? He needs a young wife. The one he had was his age and look what happened, she dies, just like that.” Zio Carmelo snapped his fingers.
    Zia Guinetta shook her head “I don’t know . . . the blood . . . her mother.”
    â€œHer mother?”
    â€œ
Uffa,
don’t you remember nothing? Marietta Caparetti . . . that goat of a friar from Naples?”
    â€œ
Porco Dio,
I remember.” Zio Carmelo smacked his forehead with his hand. “So what happened to her?”
    Zia Guinetta shrugged. “Who knows? She’s gone.”
    â€œAnd the daughter, like the mother? What do you say?”
    Zia Guinetta shrugged again. And then she smiled. “Spirit is a good thing in a woman,” Zia Guinetta said. She put her hand against the front of Zio Carmelo’s pants and whispered in his ear. He remembered how she would take him into the countryside late at night and the things they would do, things that he could never say to anyone, that the men in the café would not believe could be done, except in the pictures on the back of the playing cards that Rienzo Portare had brought back from Rome. There had not been blood on Zia Guinetta’s wedding sheets.
    â€œTalk to the father tomorrow,” Zia Guinetta said.
    â€œAnd Amadeo? What if he doesn’t want a wife?”
    â€œIt’s not important what he wants. He needs a wife. He needs a mother for his son. Why not a girl from here? He’ll be grateful to us forever.”
    Zio Carmelo nodded. “He needs us now,” he said. “My poor nephew, my sister Filomena’s only son, God rest her soul.” Zia Guinetta patted her husband’s shoulder. Things would work out. There were ways.
    M y nephew is coming from America,” Zio Carmelo announced in the café. He passed the telegram around and each man looked at it as though he could read and made a face to show he was impressed.
    â€œA wealthy man, my nephew, my sister Filomena’s only son, God give her peace. A businessman . . . He has a big business, very big. Every year it gets bigger.” Zio Carmelo ordered an anisette with a coffee bean and sat down at one of the tables near the door. “When my nephew comes, there’ll be a big feast, a real celebration. Everyone’s invited.”
    This announcement sparked some interest and a few men clapped their hands together. “Bravo, Carmelo,” they said.
    â€œFireworks,” Zio Carmelo said. “Streamers everywhere . . . the band from Matera. Giovanni,” he called out to the bar owner. “A drink for my