Page 97 of The Singing Trees
Nonna turned off the sink and wiped her hands. “Forget about it. This was all a long time ago now.”
“I don’t know if I can stay here. You don’t know Thomas’s father. If they realize I’ve been keeping a baby from them, it could be bad.”
“Where would you go?” Nonna asked. “No one is taking my great-granddaughter away. Don’t worry about it. She might not even have seen you.”
“We stared at each other!” Annalisa screamed, wondering why Emma had looked so bothered by their encounter. She sipped a relaxing breath. “Sorry.”
“Thomas might be curious, but that’s it,” Nonna said. “I’m sorry to tell you, but it sounds to me like he’s moved on.”
Annalisa couldn’t even bear to hear his name. “Or he might be curious enough to come find me. Anyone who looks at Celia will see the resemblance, especially him. I can’t live here any longer. I can’t raise his daughter forty minutes away from him.”
Nonna began to dry the utensils with her dish towel. “It’s time you pull it together and quit thinking about him. Whether Emma saw you or not, it doesn’t matter. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you’re still hoping Thomas will come walking through the door. Mybambina, he’s gone.” She lowered her voice. “It’s time you let him go.”
“I’m not holding on to him,” Annalisa insisted, reaching for a mixing bowl and trying not to have a full breakdown. “I don’t want him to walk in the door. I hate him. I gave him everything, and he cheated on me. He lied and told me he loved me. And he put a baby inside of me that I’m not fit to mother.”
With those words, Annalisa marched out of the kitchen.
“Basta!”Nonna yelled. “You can’t keep running away!”
“I’m not running away!” she yelled back into the kitchen. Annalisa didn’t care that she might wake the baby.
Annalisa stomped into her room and started throwing things. How dared Nonna say she still wasn’t over Thomas? It was none of Nonna’s business.
Chapter 35
HOMESCHOOL
Some women become mothers on the day they find out they’re pregnant. Some become mothers on the day they give birth. For Annalisa, she didn’t fully become a mother until midway through August, six months after Celia was born.
The summer dragged her along as if a rope were tied to her bound wrists, and those beautiful days of July and August meant nothing to her but more hours of failing. She felt like an impostor, a woman wearing the wrong clothes, the wrong jewelry, living the wrong life—an art forger copying someone else’s work.
Though nothing had yet come of her encounter with Emma, a day didn’t go by when she wasn’t worried that Thomas would appear to take Celia away. Then again, maybe that would be better. Annalisa certainly wasn’t up for the challenge.
As usual, Nonna was right. Annalisa was still heartbroken. Despite the taste of pure love she’d felt when Celia tasted her first bite of ice cream, with every day, the child looked more like her father, and Annalisa couldn’t be in the same room as Celia without thinking of him. How could her love for him have been so wrong?
Wallowing in this heady malaise, she still wasn’t eating, and she questioned her faith and purpose. She was trying; it wasn’t that. She hadn’t given up, but the puzzle pieces weren’t fitting together. The truesmile she’d felt for a moment at Harry’s was a distant memory now, a flavor she couldn’t even taste in her mind anymore. That idea she’d had of painting Celia tasting her ice cream...she hadn’t even pulled her art supplies from the closet.
By mid-August, she wondered if she’d ever be able to move on. Not that she was interested in dating again. She was just trying to figure out if she’d ever be able to smile again. Or would she keep darkening Nonna’s house with her depression?
The answer would come on a Sunday morning.
Nonna had taken Celia to church, a place Annalisa hadn’t gone in a month. She didn’t like the feeling of being stared at by people who knew everything about her. If the Mills succeeded in one thing, especially within the Italian community, it was gossip. Annalisa couldn’t handle having her mistakes twist and turn through the ears of the congregation. She didn’t like the attempts by men wooing her after mass either.
While her grandmother and daughter went to church, Annalisa lay in bed drifting in and out of sleep. Even when she was awake, she felt better in bed, far away from all the misery around her. She heard Nonna and Celia enter the house, so it must have been close to noon. Within a few minutes, the entire family would be over for brunch, and if she didn’t get out of bed, Nino or one of the other family members would run into her room and drag her out, calling herragazza pigra. Lazy girl. Could there have been a worse insult?
A few minutes later, she could hear more voices. They were collecting. Her time was running out. Pressing herself up, Annalisa dressed and stumbled down the hall. She said hello to everyone without offering eye contact and then turned to find Nonna on the floor in the living room, sitting with Celia. Aunt Julia was telling Annalisa about a popular boy at church who was single again, but Annalisa wasn’t paying attention. She saw only one thing.
Celia had sat up for the first time with a grin as wondrous as the stars.
Even years later, Annalisa would say she’d never seen a sight more beautiful, and it was in that moment that Annalisa fell in love with her daughter. It was then that she truly became a mother, and her face stretched in a way she’d never known, save perhaps her times with her mother and with Thomas.
Nonna looked up from her position on the floor. “She just sat up.”
“I can see that.” She’d almost stayed in bed and missed a milestone. Enough was enough, Annalisa said to herself, rushing to her daughter, falling to her knees, and opening up her arms. It was a silly comparison, but she felt like she’d been seeing black and white her whole life and then woke up today to see color.
“You’re such a big girl now.” She pulled Celia in, and the infant collapsed into her lap, giggling.
Annalisa’s smile stretched wider, and something told her she wouldn’t forget this feeling now; she wouldn’t lose the sensation. The transformation felt everlasting, not a brief taste but a movement into a new world. “I love you, Celia. So much.”
