Page 232 of La Dolce Vita

"Did you listen to it?"

"No. If we can find a record player, we can listen to it together. Tonight."

"I think I might know where one is." He took her hand, and they walked out of the kitchen. He led her to a back room. It was an office. There were crates of books and a desk with an old iron typewriter. "If there is a record player then it's in here."

"Go get my pink bag. The one I took on the plane. I'll look for the record player.”

Lorenzo left. Marietta moved a few boxes and books aside. She found something that looked like a suitcase. She lifted the clamps on it and to her delight it was indeed a speaker box. The record player still had a needle inside of it. She located the plug and inserted it in the electrical socket. There were several vinyls's in the room. All in Italian. Lorenzo returned with her bag and Marietta grinned.

"Found it. This is a good sign, Lo. Things are going to be okay."

"Here," he handed it to her. "What song did your mother sing? Blues?"

"Minnie said it's an old negro spiritual," Marietta said as she dug out the delicate record that was in bubble wrap. She hadn't forgotten the journal. She wasn't ready to read her mother's words. But she was more than ready to hear her voice.

"What's a negro spiritual?"

"Slave songs. When I was a kid, there was an old lady named Arelene that lived in our neighborhood. The only black woman in our hood and she was married to an Italian man. Chicago was pretty much segregated that way. Anyways, she would tell me about spirituals, gospel songs. There are some that were sung by the slaves. To express their pain, their joy, these songs were like lessons to give to the generations to come after them."

"Your mother wasn’t a slave."

Marietta lifted her head from her work of placing the disc on the album. She smiled. "I guess you could say she was kinda. A slave to her addiction."

"What are we slaves to?" Lorenzo asked. He leaned against the door frame and crossed his big arms over his broad chest.

"I dunno. I'm a slave to my insecurities. And you, you're a slave to your guilt."

"Ah," he said. “Guilt. I’m guilty!”

She smiled. "Okay. Enough of that. Now this is it. This one is called 'Motherless Child.'"

The music played first. Marietta stepped back as if her mother herself had entered the room the moment the songbird began to hum through a few bars. And then she sang for them. The most beautiful melodic voice Marietta had ever heard.Sometimes I feel like a motherless child... a long ways from home...She said she wished she could fly away. There was a bluesy clarity to her voice that reminded her of Billie Holiday and Mahalia Jackson. The song was so painfully rich with soul and emotion, that Marietta put both hands to her mouth. Lorenzo came behind her and hugged her. He wrapped his arms around her, and it was snug feeling. He rested his head on the top of hers as she listened to her mother sing beautifully. Words of prophecy flowed in the melody of her voice. Marietta, often, felt like a motherless child. And her husband had the same old hurt in his heart as well.

"How did we ever get so far alone?" She turned and hugged Lorenzo.

"I don't know, Marie. I don't know, but we have each other now."

She swayed in his arms long after the song ended. She feared exile. But what she feared more was the world without her soulmate. They would have the family she never knew she wanted. Raise as many kids as he needed to feel loved. And in returned she will have him and everything she needed to feel whole in this world.

***

Rosetta snuggled into sleep on her large fluffed pillow. And then she woke. It wasn't a noise or a voice that disturbed her nocturnal bliss. It was the hard point of a gun poking at the center of her forehead.

"Wake up,puttana!"

Her vision blurred for a moment. The shadow over her stood in a position that kept Rosetta from seeing the person’s face. But it didn’t matter. She recognized the voice.

"I said wake up!"

The gun came down hard on her head. The brunt force almost collapsed her consciousness into darkness. Pain slammed inside of her skull, and she gasped with shock. "Are you fucking crazy?"

"Up! Now!"

With her hand on the side of her head, she lifted up from the pillow. Catalina stepped back with a gun aimed at her. "You won't shoot me," she said and rubbed the soreness from her brow

"Oh? You don’t think so?"

Rosetta had never seen her cousin so angry. Half her face was covered by her hair. The other half showed madness and rage in her eyes. "Get up and get dressed. We're going for a ride."

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