When We Were Strangers by Pamela Schoenewaldt

water, a vast smoothed satin skirt, its distant hem tucked under a dome of sky? Space to walk without twisting past bodies, cots, heaped baggage and the flap of dank clothing. The quiet was delicious, with only the distant engine’s gentle rumble, a waltz seeping up from the ballroom and close by, the soft paddle of waves against the ship. I felt—yes, joy despite the storm, despite loneliness and losing Opi and fears of America. As waves ruffled the moon path, I opened my mouth as I did as a child years ago on the meadows. Wind ran through me and my heart buoyed up.
    “There’s nothing like it, is there?” asked a quiet voice behind me. I jumped, hot with embarrassment and gripping the billowing folds of my skirt. The sailor jumped nimbly over a coiled rope. “I remember my first moonlit night at sea. Every sailor does.”
    “Thank you for opening the grate, sir.”
    “My name is Gustavo Parodi. And yours, signorina?”
    “Irma Vitale. Of Opi, in Abruzzo, in the mountains. It’s very small.”
    He nodded. “But beautiful, I’m sure. Do you miss it?”
    “Not here,” I said, astonished at my words. “But in steerage, yes. And you?”
    “I left Genoa years ago.”
    “Do you miss it?”
    “I have nobody there. They all died of cholera in the same week and I went to sea as a cabin boy.” Gustavo leaned against the rail. Even at home, I had never spoken easily to men, not even Carlo. A sharp, curling wind nearly spun me backward. I gripped the rail, careful to avoid his hand. Remember Filomena. I looked out at the waves that buoyed the great ship like a feather.
    “What are you thinking?” his voice asked, filled with wind.
    “That—there are no birds here.”
    “No, they don’t live so far out.” So we lived beyond birds, like the time of Noah’s flood. Gustavo pulled two cloth-wrapped packages from his shirt. “Here is your cheese and some dried figs. They’re very good.” In Opi no decent girl shared food with a man not her family or engaged to her, but at sea, here beyond birds, I took three figs, thrilled with their tough sweetness, warm from his shirt. I gave him the stitched square and he tucked it carefully where the cheese and figs had been.
    “Thank you.” His eyes washed over me, glimmering in the pale light. My neck burned. He has a wife, maybe wives. Even in Opi we had heard of sailors’ ways.
    “So you never go home?” I managed.
    “I’m a sailor now. Storms or doldrums, I can’t leave the sea.”
    “I thought I couldn’t leave Opi.” He nodded, courteously saying nothing. Dark waves rippled the sparkling moon path. “But I had no work,” I said finally.
    “Ah.” In the way he looked steadily out to the waves, I saw that he knew there were other reasons for my leaving. But how to speak of the altar cloth and my father’s hands that night? Gustavo nodded toward steerage. “A lot of them would be home now if they could, never mind all the gold in America.”
    A sudden splash turned our eyes to the sea, where a fish as large as a man leaped free of the waves, arched up and dove—then another fish and another following the first in leaping loops. Gustavo pointed beyond the last splash. “Look there,” he said. “And—now.” As if he’d drawn them from the deep, the fish arched up again, then two more together. “Dolphins,” he explained. “Good omens for fair seas. The captain says we’ll make New York in eight days.” Eight more days in steerage under the grate that might not open again. “Look how we’re sailing, straight and true.” Gustavo pointed at the foamy white behind us.
    “It looks like a trail plowed in the snow,” I said.
    He laughed. “It’s so long since I’ve seen snow on land.” Leaning on the rail, he spoke of a winter spent with an uncle in the Alps. “I suppose mountains are like the sea,” he mused. “They get in your blood. My uncle wouldn’t leave, even when an avalanche took his family.”
    “I know.” I spoke of Opi’s