Chapter 24
Mira accompanied Zaneta to the lagoon in the spring, a pouch belted to her waist. She dove alongside her mother, flanking her like a dolphin calf, watching and learning as she pointed and signed underwater, indicating which shells were healthy, which needed more time to produce.
Mira watched her mother’s scalpel nick the ends of the keratin threads floating from the Pinna nobilis, and she tucked them safely in her pouch to carry home.
The shells of the creatures were ugly, really.
Rough and covered in algae, small corals, and opportunist barnacles, the mollusks attached themselves to rocks and rested, unassumingly, in small colonies.
Filter feeders, their only interaction with other sea life was playing host to a small species of marine shrimp that acted as a sentinel for danger, causing the bivalve to clamp shut—or clam up, as it were—for protection.
Inside was a different story. Inside the shell grew a coat of luxurious mother-of-pearl.
Their homely nature was a good thing, her mother said. “If you saw a field of bright green emeralds lying on the seabed, you’d pluck them up until they were all gone. The sea silk hides here in raw form in the seagrass where the turtles swim, the soul of the sea right under your nose.”
Once the threads had been harvested, they worked night and day for almost a month, rinsing and cleaning it, washing it with a mixture of eight different seaweeds to purify it.
Someone had to watch it like a baby, lest its fiber crumble, tending it every three hours and then bathing it in lemon juice and a tannic juice made from cedar.
They hung it in bundles to dry in the shade and the wind until it became elastic and ready for dyeing.
After memorizing all the necessary plants and how to extract dye from them, Mira had to demonstrate her skill.
Her mother might present her with a linen cloth or wool and ask her to make it a particular shade of purple or brown.
Her eyes had to know the difference between violet, magenta, plum, and archil; whether to use blackberry, safflower, nettle, alder, or lichen; and how much of each.
Mira had learned some chemistry at school, but her lessons at home taught her how mixtures, compounds, and reactions truly worked together.
Only once the dyeing process was finished and the byssus had been carded and spun on a spindle made of oleander could they use it to weave or embroider.
It was years before Mira could even touch the byssus for this purpose.
When the day’s work was done, or if her mother was out at the market or busy in the yard, Mira sometimes sat alone in the small workshop where the loom and all the tools were stored.
She grew to love the smell of the various dyes in their containers, the way some burned her nose with their acid and tannin and some smelled almost sweet.
As she had when she was a baby, she studied the loom and its great arms. She imagined it as a sleeping bird when it was still, the upper crossbeam and bottom like stretched skeletal wings, the threads strung between the two its sinews.
Her mother described it to Mira like this: “The upper beam is the beam of heaven, and the bottom represents earth. In between”—she ran her hand across the warp and weft of the weave in process—“is the world of creation, where beauty is made.”
Mira longed to make beauty like that. She yearned for her clumsy fingers, stained with dye, to create something lovely that others would weep for when they received it.
Every week, someone came to the workshop seeking such favor, and Mira worked silently in the background, rinsing or dyeing or cleaning, while her mother met with the visitor.
Sometimes it was a young woman, murmuring about a fiancé, an approaching wedding.
Sometimes it was a weathered old nonna, come to ask about a christening gown or perhaps a few stitches along a bonnet’s trim for a granddaughter’s arrival.
Mira wished she had something special to ask for, some occasion dear enough for her mother to lean in close and place a hand on her head or shoulder and offer kind words of counsel or congratulations.
She marveled as the young women, some not much older than herself, smiled and hugged her mother through their tears as they received her gifts, lovingly and perfectly stitched handkerchiefs, braided bracelets and garters, or baby clothes with embroidered edges of byssus.
In those moments, her mother became someone foreign, so different from the woman Mira lived with that had she bumped into that version of her on the street, Mira doubted she would even know her.
She wondered how many separate people it was possible for one woman to be.
Were there other parts of her mother it had never dawned on her to wonder about?
Always, the visitors offered payment, and always, her mother refused.
“Byssus is the soul of the sea. Would you sell the arc of a rainbow? The wind across the cliffs?” When they had no answer, she’d spread her hands.
So obvious. It was settled. No payment. All the harvesting, tending, rinsing, dyeing, spinning, and weaving was a sacrificial labor of love and service. It was its own reward.
“Ah,” the nonnas would say, understanding. “La madre. Like being a mother.” If Mira happened to be nearby, they’d wink at her, certain she must feast on the fruits of such love. How full she must be, how lucky.
When Mira graduated from school, she secured a part-time job near the port at Books by the Sea, a tiny bookshop owned by Carmina’s family.
She was elated to have a job of her own, where she earned actual lire instead of giving away all her hard work.
Mira already imagined what she might buy: chocolate, a silver clip for her long hair.
Her heart was full. Although the pocket money would be appreciated, mostly she craved a change of scenery.
Not that her familiar town port was especially exotic, but it wasn’t the same four walls she’d stared at her whole life.
Two of her friends from school had gone on to university.
It was the early ’60s, and most girls in the area, if they didn’t get married straight off, settled for secretarial posts or, if they left their families and moved inland, selling perfume or clothing in bigger stores.
There was no chance of Mira going abroad or even to Roma or Firenze.
There was no money for that on her father’s laborer salary, even if she’d been given the option.
Mira’s course had been charted from her birth and even earlier, and she didn’t question it—why should she?
It was a fine path. As her mother said, it was who she was.
Mira was happy to settle for a few days a week at the quiet, tidy bookstore, tucked between the bakery and the fish market along what passed for a boardwalk.
Signora Petrolus soon grew to appreciate the help, and on slow days, she sometimes left the shop entirely in Mira’s care while she ran errands or chatted with friends over limoncello or espresso.
On a quiet afternoon in early March, Mira stood on a short ladder in the back of the store, cleaning the tops of the sturdy wooden shelves.
It would be several weeks before the byssus harvest began.
The brass bell clanked against the shop’s door, and she didn’t even turn. Carmina had promised to bring her some leftovers from the bakery. “What is it today, amaretti or torrone?”
A man’s low voice startled her with an answer. “I didn’t know you bartered cookies for books.” Mira jumped and turned on the ladder. “I can go next door if you tell me which you prefer,” he teased.
Mira put a finger to her lips and considered. “Definitely amaretti.” She stepped down and walked the few steps to the front of the shop. The man removed his hat, and Mira took in his sandy hair and dancing blue eyes. His cheeks were red from the wind, and he blew on his hands.
“Looking for something in particular?” she asked.
“Just dashed in to get out of the wind for a minute,” he said, gesturing to the door. “Starting to rain out there.” He paused, and Mira grew strangely warm as he glanced around the shop, his eyes landing on her. He stuck out a hand. “Dante Barone.”
“Mira Mazza.” The hand he offered was cool and soft, definitely not a laborer or angler.
“Perdonami, but you’ve got—” He reached a tentative hand toward Mira’s hair and plucked off a tuft of dust.
She laughed and smoothed her unruly curls. “Thank you. Where are you from, Signor Barone?”
“Call me Dante. Sicily, originally, but I’m thinking of taking a teaching position at the school here. Math.”
Mira wrinkled her nose. “I always struggled with numbers.”
“I’m sure you’ve got plenty of other talents.” His teeth were straight and even beneath his trim mustache and scruff of beard. “So, is this what you do here on the island? Sell books?”
Mira opened her mouth reflexively and almost told him how she worked with the byssus and was in the line of water women, but she stopped herself, imagining how that might sound.
She might as well say she was a traveling magician or some sort of fortune teller.
A twinge of guilt stirred in her chest as her thoughts betrayed her lineage.