Chapter 32
Mira and Dante sat across from each other in her studio, the contents of the box spread on the table between them.
“How old do you think this is?” Dante asked. His voice was a low whisper so as not to wake Daniella, still sleeping against Mira in her wrap.
“What is it?”
“The names. These were written during the first war. Letters sent between Johann and Allegra Renda.”
Mira’s head jerked up. “My grandparents? The ones my mother never talks about?” She took the letters from him and slid one out. “My dearest A,” she began, then stopped. “This box must have belonged to them. I must bring these to my mother.”
Dante was already gathering the photos and byssus items and placing them back in the box. He kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll drive you,” he said. “It’ll be quicker.”
Mira waited outside her mother’s byssus studio until the pair of older women who’d been visiting left. She nodded to them on their way out the door, the little string of shells and bells jingling against the glass panes.
Zaneta had already turned her attention back to the threads she had soaking, and she only turned when Mira shut the door behind her.
Her face registered surprise. She didn’t often come by for unscheduled visits, especially in the middle of the day.
Her mother brightened as she took in her granddaughter’s sleeping form, always happy to see Daniella.
Then Zaneta’s eyes fell on the box Mira held down by her side, and she took a step backward, as if struck.
“Where did you get that?” She pointed. Her jaw fell, and she raised a hand to her mouth.
“I found it this morning. In the back of a sea cave.” Clearly, her mother recognized it. “You’ve seen it before.”
Her mother smoothed the front of her apron, trying to regain her composure. “My father made that,” she said. “We hid it before—” She broke off. “My mother wanted us to put it in the cave for safekeeping.”
“You knew it was there?” Mira asked. She pushed aside cards of thread and assorted jars on the worn table and put the box down. Her mother’s eyes never left it. She stepped forward and placed a hand on the carved lid.
“Yes. I helped put it there. We all went together. Mamma said just in case. Things were very uncertain with the war. My brothers had gone to fight, and I think they still thought there might be a way we could get out.” Mira stood silently, hardly daring to breathe.
She watched as tears ran down her mother’s cheeks.
Her mother never spoke of her parents or the war.
She’d always dismissed Mira’s questions with an impatient wave, saying it didn’t matter, couldn’t be helped.
Slowly, her mother’s hands found the clasp.
She was like a blind woman, exploring the box’s surface by touch, her fingers lingering on the carved etches as if she might read some hidden message from her father there.
She opened the rusty clasp, its leather strap faded with age and mold, and tipped back the lid.
Something in the air of the studio changed.
Mira saw a breeze ripple through the thin muslin curtains at the window and felt it across her neck, although it was midday and still as a stone outside in the bright sun.
She knew her mother had felt it, too. She’d shuddered as if a chill had passed through her.
Mira imagined ghosts unleashed around them both, swirling around the legs of the byssus loom, whispering through the bunches of tied herbs hung from the ceiling beams.
“I never imagined it had survived,” her mother said. “I assumed it had disappeared like everything else. I never even went back to look for it.”
“It was a good spot,” Mira said. “It was only by chance I was there and my light fell on it. If it hadn’t started raining . . .”
“Who else but you should have found this? It wasn’t chance,” her mother said.
Then she sat hard in the wooden chair by the table, the wedding photo in her hand.
How many years had it been, Mira wondered, since she’d seen a photo of her family?
All of them had been lost or destroyed in the war.
Mira’s father had told her that much, that although he’d tried to watch over it, the family home had been rifled through, sentimental objects tossed outside as kindling for bonfires.
He’d managed to right most of the rooms afterward, hoping they’d return, but most of what documented the Renda family’s existence had been destroyed.
“These are my parents.” Another shudder of her shoulders, and she glanced around the room again. Mira wondered if she hoped to see specters conjured by opening this door to the past.
Another photo. “And here. Avi, Lev, Marta, and Dahlia with them. This was before I was born.” Her mother clasped the photo to her chest, her eyes closed.
Mira had so seldom heard her mother mention her past. Although she knew the names of her aunts and uncles, Mira couldn’t remember the last time her mother had uttered them aloud.
“Mira,” she said finally. Her voice was a strangled croak. “I thought I would never see their faces again.” It was almost a thank-you.
“There’s more,” Mira offered. She sat herself, one hand cradling the curve of little Daniella’s body. “Letters between your mother and father from the war. I didn’t read them.”
“Her handwriting.” Her mother smoothed the envelopes with her hand.
“There are byssus things.”
“Yes,” her mother said, laying the letters aside for later. “Mamma wanted to preserve some. I had some things with me that day, too. In the bag she carried.” Her mother was far away now, her eyes staring at something Mira couldn’t see.
Mira picked up the little lyre-shaped loom and held it out to her mother. “I’ve never seen one like this,” she said. “It looks hand carved, like the box.”
Again, her mother’s hands went to her mouth. “My father made it,” she managed. “He was so good with a piece of wood.” A crooked smile at the memory. “I had one like it.”
“You did?” Mira was surprised. “I’ve never seen you use it. It would be so much easier for small bracelets and things.”
“It’s gone,” she replied. “I lost it in the ruins.”
Mira opened her mouth to ask a question, but her mother dug deeper into the box.
“Here’s some of the smaller weavings my mother did,” she said.
“Thread, dyes . . . here’s a picture. This is me as a baby.
” She actually chuckled. “Mamma’s wearing the apron she always wore for dyeing.
You can see the stains.” She showed it to Mira.
“It’s just like the one you have,” Mira said. “And mine.”
“I made them from memory.” She nodded.
“Do you know what this pouch is?” Mira pulled out a small drawstring purse made of byssus and carefully pried apart its opening.
Her mother took it from her and tipped its contents into her hand. “Locks of hair. And these slivers of something hard.” She examined them under the light. “They look like fish scales, but why they’d be worth saving like this, I don’t know.”
“They must have meant something special to your mother. There’s no note to explain.”
“She expected to return. She would’ve explained it herself.”
“There’s this at the bottom,” Mira said, carefully pulling out the leather-bound scroll. “I couldn’t read it.”
Zaneta’s brow furrowed as she unfurled the barest portion. “It’s Hebrew. And very old from the looks of it. I don’t recognize it.”
Daniella roused, squirming and blinking her eyes. Mira pulled her out of the wrap and snuggled her close. She would be hungry and soon expressing her opinion about that.
“Mira.” The spell, whatever it was, had been broken. Her mother left the scroll on the table and stood. “See to Daniella. The box has waited this long.”
The baby wailed in earnest, her little face reddening.
Mira loosened the laces of her black vest and lifted the white blouse she wore beneath it so that Dani could nurse.
As she latched on, Daniella butted Mira with her face and smacked at her with an open hand.
Waiting wasn’t one of her best skills, especially when a meal was past due.
Mira smiled down at her daughter as she felt the tingle of her milk letting down.
“Goodness, figlia, you act like you’ve never been fed before.
” Across the room, Zaneta peered out the window, although the expression on her face told Mira she wasn’t seeing the sky or the strawberry and olive trees in the yard.
As Daniella quieted and settled into her lunch, Mira seized the opening.
“Mamma,” she began. “Can you sit? Will you tell me about all this?”
Zaneta’s trance broke, and she wiped her eyes with the palms of her hands.
They were weathered, Mira noticed, etched with deep wrinkles and spotted with age.
She glanced down at her own hands cradling her daughter, and a memory rose.
Mira traced the familiar scars between her thumbs and forefingers on each hand.
Identical marks shaped like the number seven from when she’d gleefully held up a blue crab she’d caught at age six to show her mother.
No matter what she did, it had always been with an eye toward her mother.
Zaneta had been busy with other things, gathering seaweed in her basket, scolding Mira’s brothers, and she’d finally turned toward Mira to see her clutching the creature around its middle, holding it up like a prize.
Look at me! Here I am! See what I did. Wasn’t this good?
When the crab hooked its claws into the tender flesh near her thumbs, Mira’s smile had remained glued in place, even as her eyes filled and blood trickled down her arms. When her mother had turned away, she’d flung the crab back into its tide pool and watched it scuttle beneath a rock with a spray of sand.
The marks on her hands had faded into the odd-shaped scars she still bore decades later.
Lucky sevens, Carmina had called them, and Mira had never said otherwise.
To Mira’s surprise, Zaneta leaned over her, placed a hand on her shoulder, and stroked Daniella’s soft cheek with a finger.
“You’re good with her,” she said. “You always know what she needs.”
Mira laughed. “She tells me.”
Zaneta fixed her dark-brown eyes on Mira’s own. “You listen,” she said, a tremor in her voice. She turned back to the open box on the table. Mira smelled the salty damp it still carried from the cave.
“I know about the water women, the weavers,” Mira said. “We say their names in remembrance before the byssus harvest. But there’s a missing piece. I don’t know what came before me. I don’t know about you.”
“Why these questions?” asked her mother. “Because of this box?”
Mira shook her head. “It’s not the box.” She shifted Daniella to her other side. “It’s Daniella. I think I want to know where I come from so I know where I’m going. Because now I’m taking someone with me.”
Her mother seemed to consider this while her mouth worked and her hands twisted the pocket of her apron.
Finally, “You may not like what you discover. The past can be a treacherous place. Here lie dragons,” she mumbled.
When Mira looked at her quizzically, she added, “Old maps sometimes have that written on the edges. In places no explorers had been, it was like a ‘traveler beware’ beacon. There might be dragons or sea monsters, or you could even sail right off the edge of the world.”
“Or,” she offered, “there could be treasure or mermaids or byssus.”
Her mother sighed heavily. “Persistent as a barnacle.”
Mira handed Daniella to her mother to burp as she straightened up her blouse. She spread a blanket across the floor and scattered some wooden spools and spoons for Daniella to play with. The back door opened, and her father breezed in, a sack in his hands.
“Mira.” He beamed. “And little Daniella, too! Lucky, I brought some amaretti with me from the quay.” He unrolled the fresh cookies from the paper they’d been wrapped in and placed them on the table. “What’s this?”
“A box I found today in a sea cave,” Mira explained.
“It belonged to my mother,” Zaneta added. At that, Luccio ceased his business with the cookies and his hands stilled. Mira noticed the sharp glance he gave her mother. “I was about to tell Mira about her grandparents.”
“I’ll start the Moka pot,” he said, and the grateful smile her mother gave him made her appreciate her father’s presence.
He’d always been a sort of buoy for her mother, a bobbing, reliable lifeline that kept her from sinking.
He filled the pot with water and strong coffee, removed three plain white cups and saucers from the kitchen shelves, and added a plate for his sack of amaretti for good measure.
With her father here, the remarkable box Mira had found, and their granddaughter playing nearby on the floor, maybe some of the questions she’d had for so long would finally find answers.