Chapter 27 #2
Byssus saved her. After the fourth and then the fifth miscarriage, Mira’s sorrow threatened to pull her under like an anchor.
Her limbs felt weighted with sand, and even simple conversations required too much effort.
She went robotically through the motions of each day—rinsing, dyeing, spinning, carding, weaving—but it was an empty exercise; she might as well have been moving pebbles uselessly from one box to the next.
Mira’s mind could only focus on its singular goal.
The world had shifted. Her vision became like the strips of photograph negatives she’d seen once in the post office, when a man, a foreign journalist visiting the island, had emptied an envelope and held them up to the light to examine the images.
She’d asked about them, and he’d handed her one.
Those curious images seemed to highlight everything that wasn’t, and that was exactly how the string of losses had shaped Mira’s perspective.
Each sunrise began a new day she wasn’t carrying a child; each meal she ate nourished an empty womb.
The peaks and valleys of hope and despair, telling and untelling rose and fell with such sudden drops, Mira remained braced for impact, jumpy, teeth on edge.
“This can’t go on.” Dante finally said it one morning as he watched Mira dully pick over a cheese pie at breakfast. “It’s time to stop trying.”
Mira’s head jerked up at him. “What are you saying?”
“I’m worried, cara. It can’t be good to keep doing this to yourself, your body. Not to mention what it’s doing to your heart.”
Mira dropped her fork, and it clattered on the plate. “Dante, we can’t just quit. What about our family?”
“You’re the one who always said we already are a family. I actually believe that. Don’t you?”
Tears leaked down her face, and Dante knelt beside her to take her hands in his. “We’ve already lost so much. I feel like I’m losing you, too, like it’s all sweeping you away. You’re living inside it, this cave of grief. Please, for us, come out.”
Dante’s dark eyes pooled with tears, and Mira’s face crumpled as her last shreds of hope dissolved.
She knew he was right, had known it for some time, but hadn’t been able to let go of the possibility.
Although she desperately wanted a child of their own, she knew that in letting go of this, she would also be letting go of her lineage, leaving no legacy to continue the craft.
“Can’t our life still be good? You’re enough for me, Mira.” She nodded, her words strangled on the stinging lump lodged in her throat. She was grateful for him. He was enough for her, too. He would have to be.
Together, they boxed the few items they had allowed themselves to collect for a nursery, and Dante climbed the attic stairs to place it in a corner where they wouldn’t run across it easily.
He drove them to the synagogue in Cagliari, where they prayed for gratitude and joy.
They placed five smooth stones on a single piece of granite they’d brought to the Jewish cemetery, a symbol of past remembrance and trust for what lay ahead.
Slowly, patiently, Dante coaxed her out of the clutches of grief with small, quiet advances.
He brought her bunches of wild laurel and bright-pink oleander he’d gathered on his way home from school to brighten up the kitchen.
He convinced her to venture out on walks along the shore on warm afternoons when the sun was sinking and the tide was out, Mira’s favorite time of day.
Sometimes, when Dante wasn’t teaching, they’d drive inland to explore the trails among the mysterious nuragic ruins or sit by waterfalls to talk and remember how to laugh.
Eventually, Mira reached out to Carmina and began spending time with her friend again.
Seeing Carmina with her young children still stung, but it was no longer a dagger to Mira’s heart.
A small measure of peace settled on her as Mira created a space for grief to live inside of her instead of her crawling up in its lap to take refuge.
Dante assured her they weren’t moving on—because they would never get over this part of their life—as much as they were moving forward.
Dante’s tenderness and gentle prodding gave Mira something else as well—a sense of worth and gratefulness for all she did have.
Seeing herself reflected back in his eyes instilled her with strength.
If he looked at her like that, Mira thought, maybe she was more capable than she believed, more able and strong and lovely.
Dante was her weight-bearing wall, and Mira’s heart nearly burst from her fierce love of him.
It was Dante who helped Mira see her byssus work in a new light.
One evening, Mira came home and laid aside several pieces of weaving she’d done that day.
Dante had set the table and poured the wine while she finished sautéing the onion and mushroom sauce for their simple pasta meal.
Mira looked up from the stove to see Dante standing by the window, admiring first one piece, then another, as he held them up to the fading light.
“What?” she asked. “What are you thinking?”
“What it means to create something,” he mused. “How you do this strange kind of alchemy, spinning gold into patterns so beautiful they take your breath.”
Mira cocked her head. “High praise. You’re sweet.” She poured the steaming sauce on their plates and walked them to the table.
“I think these are some of your most striking pieces, Mira. Better than your mother’s work.” At that, Dante ducked his head and glanced out the window, making a show of being sure his words hadn’t been overheard.
“You really think so?” She joined him at the window, examining the intricate scene she’d created with the golden threads lighter than a strand of hair.
It was a flock of sheep lying in an idyllic pasture, sleeping and grazing near a towering golden lion.
Each hair of his gilded mane was so lifelike it appeared to shift and move in the light.
He laid the cloth down and turned to her. “Byssus is your child, Mira. It’s your creative work, the deepest part of you that you tend and nurture and allow to grow. It’s your legacy that lives on.”
“Come eat,” was all she said, but Mira tossed the thought around and let it settle over the next few days as she sat at the loom.
She realized, in a sense, of course, Dante was right.
She gave her life to the byssus, her time, energy, talents.
When she sent a piece out into the world, she hoped it blessed someone and brought joy. Art like this endured.
Zaneta continued to needle Mira despite her trying to steer clear of the subject. One morning, while Mira worked at the loom, its bars and spindle clacking with its hypnotizing rhythm, a young woman knocked, seeking her mother’s blessing and a token of byssus for good fortune.
“Teresa, mia cara, come in and let me look at you.” Zaneta beamed as she held her arms out, exclaiming over the young woman’s round pregnant belly. Mira dropped her eyes, tried to concentrate on her fingers’ task.
“You must be near term. You’re blossoming. Come, come sit.” Zaneta gestured to a chair by the window and started combing through the top drawer of an olive-wood chest that stood in the corner.
“Here, I have just the thing.” Zaneta sat across from Teresa and gestured for the woman’s arm.
Mira stole furtive glances across the room as her mother rubbed the woman’s arm and tied a delicate braided bracelet of byssus around her wrist. “Receive this gift,” she said, “offered from the sea and from the Father above, that it might remind you that you’re protected and blessed. ”
Mira hummed along with the familiar chanting song her mother quietly sang.
She caught Teresa’s eye and smiled at her.
It dawned on her that for the first time, she didn’t have to fight the urge to rush from the room, putting distance between her emptiness and another woman’s obvious fertility.
The ugly vine of envy had unfurled itself from her heart and left it free to feel happiness for someone else.
Zaneta rose from her chair. “Let me get you some raspberry tea. I think I remember that’s good for pregnancy. I haven’t had the occasion to brew any for some time.”
Teresa glanced at Mira, who rolled her eyes at the thinly veiled comment. She shrugged and shook her head at Teresa. Mothers, her gesture said. What can you do?
After Teresa had gone, Mira adjusted the colors of threads on her oleander spindle while her mother cleaned up the saucers. “Why must you do that?” she asked.
The dishes clattered in the small pedestal sink as her mother washed and rinsed them. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do.” Mira laid the spindle on top of the weave. “Badger me like that about having a baby.”
Zaneta dried her hands and turned to face her. “I wasn’t badgering you, Mira. You’re so sensitive. Maybe hinting a bit.”
“I got the hint a long time ago, Mamma. You need to stop.”
“You’ve been married several years now.”
“And?”
“What exactly are you waiting for? Is it just to spite me?”
Mira threw her hands in the air. “Oy vey! Yes, Mamma. That’s it exactly.
Dante and I have deliberately gotten pregnant over and over and then ripped our hearts out with each miscarriage solely to have the satisfaction of spiting you.
” Tears sprang to her eyes, and she hastily wiped them away.
Her mother’s mouth fell open, and she continued.
“Oh, you didn’t know? Why would you? Did you ever notice that I was quiet or sad? That I managed to be absent when expecting women came to the door? Did you ever ask or just imply I wasn’t trying, wasn’t doing enough?”
“You should’ve said.” Her mother pressed her lips together. “To let me go on like that was cruel.”
“Of course, that’s my fault, too.” She laughed, the sound bitter and brittle.
She shook her head then. If she’d learned anything, it was that her mother’s responses were at least predictable.
“Just stop,” she said, holding up her hands.
“I’m asking you to stop. If we don’t have children, it wasn’t meant to be.
It’s not my choice, though, so enough with the blame.
I guess I can’t expect you to understand. You’ve never felt this kind of pain.”
Her mother’s hand gripped the towel she still held, and her eyes darkened like a storm rolling in. She stood erect, but Mira thought she saw the faintest quiver in her mother’s chin. She’d never seen her mother show a weakness before, certainly not actual tears.
“You know so much?” she spat. “You have no idea what I’ve carried.
All I’ve sacrificed to keep our tradition and line alive, and of course—of course—the only daughter I’m given in a pit of ruin would be its undoing.
Will I never stop being punished?” Zaneta put a hand to her throat as if her voice had betrayed her.
She threw the towel to the ground and stalked out, leaving the door to slam behind her.
Mira’s arms were tired of hefting her imaginary shield to deflect Zaneta’s arrows.
She’d become adept at fending them off. Dante had given her a new way of seeing herself, making her shield stronger.
Yet every once in a while, like now, an arrow met its mark.
Zaneta thought of her as a punishment? She’d come from a pit of ruin?
She trembled with the effort it took not to howl like an animal releasing its pain.
In the terrible silence that Zaneta had left in her wake, it struck her that—still—the blame lay at her own feet.
Still, her mother had never said she was sorry.