Read Online Worn Masks by Phyllis Carito - Free Book Online

a
hand that made large swooping strokes, unlike her mother’s own tiny and tight
handwriting. Once, she tried to read a letter, sounding out the funny words and
feeling like she was privy to a special world. Her mom had taken the letter
from her hand, read a few lines out loud and then refused to read the rest of
the letter. Mary Grace was intrigued by the sound of the words, they seemed
different then the Italian she heard every day at the house, even though she
still couldn’t understand them. “Who sent you the letter? What did they say?
Who is in the photograph they sent?” 
    “ Chiacchierone . Chatter box. Stata gitt !” Then her
mother had taken the letter and sat by the bedroom window quietly reading it
again. Had she been crying? Mary Grace tried to come in the room, but she
shooed her away. Mary Grace had spoiled it. Now she wouldn’t ever let her see
the letters again. Sometimes, when her mother was out Mary Grace had gone to
her top drawer, that was where they were then, and taken the letters out,
looked at the photographs, the odd long dresses the women had on, the dark eyes
and hair of the men. There was one of a little girl, with a large bow in her
hair, almost the size of the side of her head, and scrawled on the back Elena .
    Mary Grace dug through the boxes she had already packed, looking
for the Bible she had found in her mother’s dresser. In that small Bible with
worn pages she had seen that name. Two lists of names ran down, side by side on
the inside cover. One side was written with one pen, most of the ink was very
faded, and then with another pen and still legible was one more name on the
left side: Elena Giordano.
    Is this who Aunt Maggie was talking about? How did she know her?
And, why was Mary Grace’s name under both lists? The one on the left also
listed Teresa, and other siblings? The one on the right listed only her father
Luigi, Teresa, and herself. Why was Mary Grace’s name in both columns? Was her
mother trying to say that she believed Mary Grace was part of her mother’s
family as well as her father’s family?
    Mary Grace went back to the letters, sat with them spread across the table, the Italian letters, and
she real ized that there had been more than one writer.
    Most were written and signed by cugina Rosalie, and
sometimes within her letters was a child’s handwriting with a line or two signed from: sua sorella, Elena . She had never
noticed or realized there was another person talking in the letters. Also,
earlier, there were letters with a fancier and more precise lettering, only
three, and all around the year that Mary Grace had been born. She read the
signature, Cara mia con affetto, Mamma . There were so few words Mary
Grace could make out. This was so frustrating.
    She had to find someone to read them, and it
took her awhile to find a translator who could clearly fol low the dialect unique to the hill town of Pistoia, north of Florence.
    From the letters Mary Grace understood that
Elena was a much younger sister of her mother. This child, Elena, is
mentioned in early letters from cousin Rosa lie.
Her cousin also tells her in the last letters, about Elena getting married. In
the very last one, cugina Rosalie says Elena and her husband, Federico,
moved south from their beautiful Pistoia closer to Naples for him to work in
his family’s cameo export business.
    Cousin Rosalie also wrote letters consoling
Mary Grace’s mother, about the bambina , telling her it would get easier.
There it was—she rejected Mary Grace from the moment she was born—but why? She
married Mary Grace’s father against the will of her family, but then why would
she treat Aunt Maggie, who was denied love, and Uncle Paul, who lost his love in the war, why treat them so badly? Was it be cause of the courting letters, because she felt duped by his family, and
deserted by hers? Was there no heart left?
    Cugina Rosalie warned,
“You are morte, dead to your papa.” It seemed like Mary Grace’s