Sunday morning still meant all of San Donato gathered at the top of the mountain in their small church. On a bright and dry August morning like today, everyone was typically cheerful and walked up the hill talking and laughing with friends. Today, it might as well have been rainy and cold. Everyone’s heads were turned down, their hands in the pockets or clasped together, and their mouths shut with only the occasional whispered greeting shared.
The Pellegrinis walked closely together, eyes heavy from the lack of sleep. Lucia glanced over at Carlotta, her best friend, but it was almost as if they were strangers. Both girls’ hands were gripped by their mothers and they were too scared to make any noise or walk together as normal.
In the church, everyone found their usual seats. The Pellegrinis sat in their row in the middle of the church. Carlotta’s family sat behind them. Usually, Lucia would turn around and talk to Carlotta with Clarice. The three girls, with Carlotta between the two sisters in age, were always close to one another. Today, though, Lucia stared straight ahead, silently counting the pieces in the stained glass windows. She thought someday she might be able to count every piece in all the windows, but she always lost count.
Despite the simplicity of the church’s outdoor structure, the intricate details across the floors, pews, and altar mimicked the churches are larger, richer cities. But the stained-glass windows on all of the walls were the beauty of the church. San Donato had saved money and waited years for these windows to arrive from Rome. The whole town helped to install them and admired them for days and weeks and still did years later.
She particularly loved the one of Mary holding baby Jesus. She thought Mary was beautiful in her bright blue dress and her dark hair in curls around her face. Despite the lack of a smile, Lucia could feel a kindness and warmth coming from Mary’s face. Maybe it was the sunlight shining in.
As the church filled up, it was noticeable how few people were here since all the boys were now gone. The typical cramped feel was gone, too. Everyone seemed to have the elbow room they had wished for every Sunday prior. But now, they all silently wished that the church was filled so much people would be standing along the walls. Lucia had never seen the church so empty - it seemed unfamiliar as if she hadn’t come to this church every Sunday her entire life.
Mass started without any of its usual music. Father [name] solemnly walked in and an even more silent hush fell over the room that had already been a muted scene. He began service as if he was just trying to get through all of its parts. Even his homily was short, dull, and seemingly hopeless. Usually, a man of many words, today Father [name] ended his message quickly and avoided eye contact with his congregation, who in return sat staring at their laps. They knew anything he tried to say wouldn’t fix what had happened, and as much as he often gave helpful insights, he seemed at a loss of what could help today.
Lucia stared at her shoes, passed down by all three of her sisters, hoping mass would end quickly. She tried to drown out the sniffling of the people around her. Many of them, including Nella, she assumed hadn’t stopped crying in two days. She thought that they must run out of tears soon, and hoped that they would. Lucia hated crying, and she hated seeing other people cry. She hadn’t cried yet throughout the war and she thought that she never would. As sad and scary as it was, Lucia just never felt tears building up. She understood why everyone was crying, she just wished they didn’t have to be.
Mass finally ended, but there was no relief as the line to go outside hardly moved. Once the Pellegrinis made it closer to the door, they saw that people were crying and hugging Father [name], who didn’t rush any of them away. He was trying his best to offer words of encouragement and prayer. His words seemed to console each family at least a small amount, enough to stand on their own again and begin the trek back down into town. The Pellegrinis shook Father [name]’s hand and he gave an extra pat on the back of Nella, who had hardly let go of Donatela all night and day. Lucia and Clarice usually had a playful moment with Father [name], but today they only smiled weakly and silently. He returned their smiles, but Lucia saw in his eyes a deep sadness that wasn’t usually there. She glanced quickly and then turned with her head down, following Ma’s skirt down the church steps.
Back at home, despite the warmness of the afternoon, no one sat outside. Lucia looked out the window and saw a quiet, sleepy town. It was as if everyone was away. If not for the open windows trying to let any slight breeze inside, a passerby would’ve thought the town was abandoned.
Ma and the girls got dinner ready in silence and they all ate as if they were strangers. They spent the rest of the day quiet. No one seemed to know what to do with themselves.
The sun wouldn’t set fast enough. The late August sky stayed blue longer than Lucia remembered it usually did. The sunset slowly broke through but only inched up past the mountaintop. The shadows, though, quickly overpowered the house. The corners and the edges grew dark before Ma lit a candle.
Finally, night overtook San Donato as it always did. The absence of any comfort felt stronger than ever before. Would nighttime ever feel safe again? Lucia wished it would but from the edge of her bed with a light blanket over her legs, the night was a monster she’d never beat.
* * *
The next morning, Lucia woke up to the typical noise Ma always made in the kitchen. She always wondered if Ma purposefully made extra noise in the morning to wake up the girls. The sunlight had woken Lucia up today, but Ma’s noise always told her it was time to get out of bed.
The girls sheepishly followed one another downstairs, not quite ready for another day. They met their typically energetic and whirl-winded mother.
“It’s Monday, ragazzi,” Ma said without slowing down or looking up. They all knew she meant that it was laundry day. Lucia didn’t realize just how quickly life would go back to normal. But she was secretly glad for the distraction that the busy and heavy world would bring. Still, the four girls sighed as they did every Monday, pretending to be surprised that they had to do laundry yet again. Despite the world falling apart, laundry would still be there and pile up even on the very last day on Earth, Ma always said. None of the girls had enough clothes to afford them a skipped week of laundry anyway. So, the girls began gathering every single piece of fabric they could find around the house. Ma made espresso for herself and Papa while the girls did so. Papa read the book he had been reading before the army came through - it had sat on the mantle for the past few days, untouched. But this morning, Papa had gone back to flipping through the pages. He even hummed a bit as he read. His humming matched the rhythm of the noise Ma was making, like a song they were writing together.
Lucia loved the usual noise that had been missing from the past few days. It felt good to take the sheets off the bed and pile up all the towels and dresses. Lucia’s hands were busy and that was always when Lucia felt at her best. Despite everything that was happening around her, Lucia felt that today was almost normal, as if inside their little house, they were completely safe. Of course, Lucia knew that was not true, especially since German soldiers were just inside these walls only a few days ago. But, she decided to force her fears down and let the brightness of the warm August morning take over instead.
“Donatela, Lucia, fill up the tub, please,” Ma said as she folded and organized all the dirty clothes and linens the girls had collected. Lucia always thought it was quite odd that Ma would fold everything after they spend a week in a basket and would spend the coming afternoon in soapy water and then on the clothesline. Ma said it made laundry day faster; Lucy thought nothing could make laundry day fast enough.
Donatela grabbed the tub from under the kitchen sink. They had just gotten running water in the kitchen before the water had started, but in August, it often wasn’t useful. Due to the yearly droughts that kept any rain from falling onto San Donato, the town often shut off the water beside an hour or two a day to save it. Ma had half filled the tub yesterday and covered it until today. Donatela and Lucia hoped the sink would give them enough water to fill it the rest of the way. If it didn’t they’d make do, Ma always said, though Lucia knew Ma missed the winter days when water seemed endless.
Today, they got enough water for laundry, though their dirty dishes tonight would have to wait to be cleaned with the water they’d get tomorrow. Lucia was secretly glad to have a night off from drying dishes; laundry brought something good after all.
Donatela and Lucia pushed the tub toward the front of the room, reaching the rectangle of sun that the open window created on the floor. Ma poured a few drops of the liquid soap she had made in, careful to count how many drops she let fall and stopped pouring at five. They had to make this soap last for as long as possible; there was no telling when the next shipping of ingredients would make it to San Donato.
Ma and the girls made a line as they did every laundry day, passing the clothes, scrubbing them, wringing them out, and hanging them up to dry. Nella unfolded each article of clothing before Ma would socks them in the tub and scrub the dirt out. Donatela would wring them out, careful to not let too much water fall on the floor. Lucia and Clarice would then neatly hang them up on the clothesline outside the window. Lucy liked her job because she could enjoy the sun and breeze as well as watch the daily lives of her neighbors. Many of them were also doing their own laundry and the littlest kids, the ones too young to be of help to their mothers, were squealing and running up and down the street. Their noise gave entertainment to everyone working. Though Lucia preferred music, how limited that might be, the noise of children playing outside was almost just as enjoyable because it made the day not so monotonous.
Lucia continued to hand Clarice, who was just slightly taller, the clothespin as Clarice shook the clothes out and lined them up as close as possible along the clotheslines. Lucia enjoyed watching the clothes start blowing in the wind and the August heat drying them so quickly. She preferred watching the wet clothes freeze in the winter, but in the heat, they could get fully dry before they were finished washing the rest of the clothes. So, about halfway through their pile, Lucia started taking down the dry clothes. The hot summer days made it easier to do laundry, though Lucia would rather let Ma stretch up to get the clothes off the lines the next morning.
Even with the heat helping, laundry day took ages. As the Pellegrinis’ endless pile slowly started to look smaller, all of San Donato’s open windows and balconies were filled with their own clothes. To a stranger, it must look like flags waving in the breeze, mostly dark clothes but with lots of faded flower and fruit patterns mixed in, too. The clotheslines made the houses look pretty, as if they were purposeful decorations. Especially now that the war took away flowers and ribbons, the clothes address color back to San Donato.
“Clarice, Lucia, you can go play.” Ma stood, stretched her legs and back and wiped her hands dry. Lucia tossed the remaining clothespins in the basket and pushed the shirts hanging up apart to create a path back inside. Neither she nor Clarice bothered to put on their tattered and slightly too tight shoes. They rushed outside and ran over to Carlotta’s house at the end of their street. Lucy was glad to get out of the house. Even with the normal feeling of the day, Nella was still quite glum and it was creeping into the day.
She knocked on Carlotta’s door softly. Her mother was sick and had been for a while. The girls tried their best not to intrude. Carlotta was seemingly waiting for their knock and had opened the door as Lucia’s hand was still on it. She was also barefoot and slipped out, following Clarice and Lucia to the piazza. Usually, they’d go play in the fields towards the bottom of the hill, but since recent events, all of the kids’ Pas had ordered them to stay close. Still, they all managed to play their usual games on the cobblestone paths and around the cafes’ tables and chairs.
They started playing quietly at first, but eventually they couldn’t help themselves from returning to their usual level of noise. In the fields, the noise was spread out, but in the piazza, their laughter and shouts bounced off the stone and echoed through the streets. No adults came out to yell at them, and instead, a few sat in the piazza and others opened their windows to let the comforting noise in. If they could pretend like the day was normal, maybe it would start to feel less empty. Maybe the young men being gone wouldn’t be so noticeable. Except it was.
All the young girls and women, many of whom were dating or newly married to the young men now gone, were all sitting on their steps, unwilling to go back to the piazza where they had said goodbye. Some of them sat together but none of them spoke. An unnatural quiet fell across the Italian girls who usually were never at a loss for something to say. They just sat watching the kids play or listening to them if their houses didn’t look into the piazza. Lucia could tell that they’d all rather be anywhere else, but still they looked quite pretty as the afternoon sun angled itself on their faces and the breeze twirled their hair and linen dresses. Even in her darkest times, an Italian girl could never fail to look pretty.
Everyone let the afternoon take over. The day’s work was done. At least in a small town, you could often let the weather tell you to stop working. In a slow mountaintop village, the world didn’t turn as quickly and time often seemed to stand still if you let it. San Donato seemed to silently agree that today could be a day to sit and let time pass as slowly as they wanted to. Nothing was waiting on the town’s people anyway. The children played and the adults leaned on walls, steps, and each other. Day after day would come. They knew the trails of this weekend were only the beginning. So, they all rested during this warm August afternoon for those winter days that were surely coming would test their limits.
* * *
As the month of August continued, lacking again the weeklong feast of the town’s saint, the entire village tried its best to let the quietness and dullness not overpower them too much. Sometimes, Lucia would listen to the town’s softness and worry she was hearing more planes in the distance. As peaceful as the quiet could be, it usually meant something would come crashing in to break it. The whole town hoped and prayed all day and night for all of August that nothing would happen.
But Lucia thought as each day passed eventually that the next day was only a step closer to the next air raid or another interruption the war would almost certainly bring. She was scared to go to sleep in fear of waking up to screaming planes. She was uneasy when she’d see cars at the bottom of the hill, worried they could be German soldiers coming back for more men. She grew tired of counting their rations everyday to make sure they wouldn’t run out of anything.
The dullness of daily life combined with the heat of August and shakiness of the world outside of town left a heaviness over everyone that they just couldn’t shake. Each day grew long and each night seemed helplessly endless. The circular motion of every week dragged on as summer turned into autumn. The sunlight still lasted just as long as the end of summer, but the cooler nights seeped in through the open windows. The blankets were thinner than last year and didn’t block out the unsettling midnight silence anymore.
As September rolled in and led into October the lengthening nights shrouded the town, tightening their nights into an unbearable knot in their stomachs. Each night that an air raid didn’t occur just made the next one closer to happening. The nights slowly turned sleepless with some of them even having been spent in the living room instead of beds. The night didn’t move any faster downstairs, but at least any interruptions wouldn’t jolt them out of the protectiveness of their blankets. At least they’d have a head start to the woods if they needed it.
But these sleepless nights led to exhausting days, particularly now that it was harvest season. The physical labor everyone endured in the fields required extra sleep that they could no longer find.
Especially since most young men were gone, this year’s harvest meant the entire town had to step in to fill their spots. The girls helped Papa in the field as much as small hands could. The men who were left worked in the fields every day and into the night. The women and young girls helped when they could, after their own chores and housework was done. When they began reaching the end of the season, when the sun started setting sooner, all available hands, small and large, young and old, strong and weak, were needed in the fields. They raced against nature’s clock to harvest all they could before the first frost ruined what was left in the ground.
Lucia liked working in the fields with Papa. She and Clarice thought it was a game as they pulled up the [food] from their roots and gathered them in the aprons that were a bit too big for them. Ma had given them her old aprons that have been patched several times over. They worked perfectly as makeshift sacks to carry the [food] over to Papa’s wheelbarrow. The girls worked as fast as they could, piling as much food as they cold in the barrow. Papa added to the pile much quicker than the two of them combined, but he never forgot to tell Lucia and Clarice how grateful he was for their help.
With four girls, Papa usually hired a neighbor’s boy to help during harvest. This year, however, Papa had no choice but to have the girls help him. Ma stood her ground against Donatela and Nella working in the fields. She said that it would be improper and insulting for young woman to go down there. Plus, she still needed their help in the garden and with all the housework that didn’t wait for the harvest to be over. She finally agreed, after many nights of arguing, to let Lucia and Clarice to go with Papa. He convinced Ma it’d be more fun than work for them. Although, their small bodies could only do so much, Papa knew any help at all would be necessary this year.
So, with promises that they’d keep their straw hats on at all times and they’d be careful not to tear their dresses, Lucia and Clarice followed Papa down to the fields every morning. They walked and worked through the morning dew and then the sun-dried dirt and straw-like grass until lunchtime. They sat on the ground under the same tree every time with Papa to eat the lunch that Ma sent with Nella each afternoon. Ma would’ve preferred the girls come back home to eat but they needed to eat quickly to save time. Sandwiches in the field would have to do. Lucy actually enjoyed it. Eating while sitting on the ground was fun. If Ma saw them, she would certainly yell at them and make them come home. Lucia was careful not to get grass stains on her dress so as not to reveal their lunchtime habits. While Ma was not there, Lucia enjoyed the casual and seemingly wild way to eat.
As simple as lunch was during the harvest, Ma still sent a little wine for Papa. All the men had red wine with their sandwiches. They drank it as if they were drinking water, and Lucy quickly realized, in place of water. As she chugged her own water, she couldn’t imagine how red wine was refreshing on such a hot day. “I made it with my own hands,” Papa would say when she asked. “Of course, it will be refreshing. My hard work is in there.” Lucia didn’t believe him but gladly kept the water to herself and Clarice.
The harvest season wrapped in, just in time to avoid the first frost. There were no celebrations though. Typically, they’d follow the harvest with a fancy supper with their neighbors and spend the weekend relaxing and letting the laundry pile up. This year, though, everyone just continued with their daily work and ate dinner alone. Everyone knew they were lucky to get the food they did, and they all knew a hard winter was coming with no promise of things getting any better after it. No one felt like celebrating.
Papa got enough food, he thought, to last the winter. The basement wasn’t full like it had been for other years, but they certainly could manage.
“We won’t starve, Luigi,” Ma said, looking at the crates and barrels still empty. “We’ll make do.”
Papa only murmured in response to her. The girls already knew they’d have to eat less and not complain as they did.
“At least we have the wine, Loreta,” Papa said as he turned and pushed through the girls who were huddles at the basement door. Ma only shot him a half-worked, half-amused glance. She shrugged to the girls but didn’t dispute his response. Lucy looked at the wine bottles and barrels neatly stacked against the back wall of the basement. There seemed to be more wine than food. She’s never seen the pile even dwindle down. She’d better start liking red wine.
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