SAMPLE CHAPTER, CHAPTER 1 The FIRST GLIMPSE of the Mediterranean was always turquoise. "A turquoise bracelet, studded with diamonds," my sister Janet said. I had two sisters. Janet, my angry fifteen year old sister, and Rachael, who was meek and thirteen. Janet like to clasp her hands in front of her and say things poetically, like about Mediterranean being a bracelet. That afternoon the bracelet was framed between the dingy apartment buildings that line the railroad tracks behind the city of Genoa, Italy. Genoa was the place you changed trains in on the way to Santa Margherita. Santa Margherita was where the summer vacation really began. The smells were right. Gardenai, ferrous oxide from the rusted train tracks, and a hint of urine. Not ammonia-rich, real, stinking, French-style urine, but the subtle Italian variety: a faint apology for the need to relieve oneself in a corner by the ivy-covered wall next to the fountain at the end of the platform. If we had been rich we would have taken a horse and carriage all the way from the station to the Pensione Piea in Paraggi. We took the blue diesel bus instead. Mom sat in one unoccupied seat. The girls and I straddled the luggage. Dad stood staring out the back window. He was still in one of his Moods because Mom had almost made us miss our connection in Milano. She did that every year. She always needed to get something important she had forgotten to pack for the vacation. So she would rush out of the station and cross the road to the shops opposite to get what she needed. Every year Dad said the same thing, "If the train leaves before you get back we'll just go without you!" We children would sit, hearts pounding, praying for Mom. "Dear Jesus, please get Mom back in time. And if she's late please speak to Dad's heart so he won't leave hear at the station." God answered our prayers. Mom would make it back, but God would not go so far as to make Dad forgive her for making us all nervous wrecks and for risking spoiling "the few precious days of vacation I need so badly!" Dad said. Dad knew his rights. He had a highly developed sense of personal grievance. He believed that Mom was in a conspiracy to destroy his life and give him ulcers. He even blamed her for his toothaches. He believed she was in league with bus conductors and train engineers the world over to see how close she could come to making all of us miss our travel connections. And how she could prove to Dad that the Lord was more on her side than his, since the buses and the trains were always just late enough so that we made them in spite of her having taken a long bath or gone shopping when he Told her there was no time and she had to hurry or we'd miss the train-bus-boat, whatever. There was no time according to the schedule. But for Mom schedules were irrelevant because angels from heaven always made the buses, trains, or boats late so we could catch them. We knew this was a miracle and the Mom was more spiritual than Dad because the buses and trains that were urualy late in Switzerland--that clockwork state run by chronographic fascists--yet when Mom needed a little more time to, for instance, finish shaving her legs, even Swiss trains did not run on time! So we never doubted the existence of God, and Dad never got to see Mom miss a train and get taught the lesson she so richly deserved to learn. You can't fight God. When we got off the bus in Paraggi I ran on ahead to the Pensione Biea. Dad called after me, "You can't choose your own room. You have to wait until we get there." Rachael and I were probably going to get the Outside Room again. You had to leave the main part of the pensione to get to the Outside Room. It was a room that had been added on and had its own staircase and entrance. It also had no water pressure in the shower, and no toilet. The room was higher than the water tank, so when you turned on the shower tap it made a sucking noise, then spit at you. For some reason the bidet worked though, so we had clean bottoms and feet. Also I could run water in the bidet after I peed in it at night. Once I thought of doing the other thing, what we called "Big" rather than "Little." ("Little was to pee so you can guess what "Big" was.) But I knew it would not go down the bidet drain and I'd be punished. Because we were a family of born-again, Bible-believing, fundamentalist Reformed Christians who Stood on the Word, we had euphemistic names for eveything embarrassing. My mom would whisper to my sisters that she could not swim that day because she was "Off the Roof." Mom had a whole parallel universe of phrases that turned almost everything imaginable into either a moral lesson or de-fanged its passion and left it--sex for instance, or ovaries or wombs, whatever--as harmless as a faded Victorian lavender-scented postcard. "Greetings from Montreux!" "I'm Off the Roof today," "She has a Female Problem," "Did you go both Big and Little?" "Is your Little Thing sore?" "You should wash under the little protective flap of skin God created to keep your Little Thing clean." When my "Little Thing" was "naughty," it would stand up. It was part of "God's beautiful gift that you must save to unwrap at Christmas--Marriage," as Mom would say. But this was 1962. My "Little Thing" wasn't connected to my brain yet, and would go up and down for no particular reason. I was ten years old. When Bible-believing fundamentalist Reformed Protestants go on vacation in Roman Catholic Italy, surrounded by unbelievers, they must witness to the truth. When everyone else in the Pension Biea was being served their antipasto at the evening meal, we had our heads bowed while Mother prayed we really "bore witness to the light that was in us." She would pray as long as the pensione as she did at home. I would stare at three slices of tuna fish, three slices of salami, four olives, and a large round of mortadella while Mom prayed. I tried not to look up to see if Jennifer Bazlinton, the ten-year-old English girl at the next table, was watching us, though I knew she was. I was mortified. I tried not to think of how different we were, even though I knew we had to be since we had been "called out from among the raging heathen to be a light to the nations." I counted the pieces of green pistachio nut in my mortadella. There were five. I counted the pieces of black peppercorn in my three slices of salami; there were two in one, three in another, and only half a piece in the last one. "Dear Heavenly Father, we just come before Thee to thank Thee for providing the funds for our vacation" --the oil from my olives was draining off them, beginning to puddle--"...and we come into Thy wonderful presence to worship and thank Thee for this day." There was a nice Roman Catholic Italian family who were at the corner table I had seen them say grace and they just crossed themselve with their eyes open. Their dad said something over the food, one sentence. They didn't seem embarrassed. But our prayers needed to be long so that we might not hide our lamp under a bushel, so that we wouldn't get to heaven and find that we had been ashamed of the Lord and that because of this He would say we had denied Him before men and so He would deny us before the Father. "We just praise and glorify Thy Holy Name, Lord, and we just ask that You will make our weaknesses perfect in Your strength." The dark green oil from the marinated olives was beginning to stain the mortadella slice at the edge. The worst thing that could happen was about to happen. SO I began to pray too. In my heart I said, "Please, oh please, don't let Lucrezia come to our table and ask if we want wine with dinner while Mom is praying!" Lucrezia was the owner's daughter. When she cleaned her rooms with her mother they both wore blue housecoats over their day clothes. At night she was the pensione's waitress. She wore a white apron over her black pleated skirt. Her starched apron strings hung down to the hemline behind. Lucrezia wore her silver crucifix outside of her white blouse when she served us our dinner. It made her look very Roman Catholic. Lucrezia was standing at our table. "Vino? Rosso--? Bianco---?" she said. "Please, Lord!" I prayed.
Mom kept right on praying. "Vino?" Couldn't she see we were praying? Would Mom interrup the prayer and look up? "We thank Thee for this food and we pray for those who live and work in this pensione that they might come to know Thee as their personal Savior...." "Vino?" Mom opened her eyes, looked up sorrowfully, blinked as her eyes adjusted to the light, then smiled ruefully at Lucrezia. Poor girl, she didn't know the Lord. In fact, here we were praying, and she didn't even wait until we were done. Probably she didn't even notice. I guess she thought we were staring at our food while Mom talked to herself with her eyes shut. We had pity for Lucrezia and all the unsaved Italians. Roman Catholics thought they knew the Lord, but they worshiped Mary, not Jesus; they did not trust Him as their personal Savior but tried to merit salvation by works. I knew they were lost, but, just the same, I wished we didn't have to pray in front of them. "Vino?" Lucrezia was starting to wonder what was going on. She tried English. "Wine? Red....White....Yes?" She smiled. Mom smiled too. Mom's smile was full of compassion. "No, Lucrezia, no, we won't be having any Alcohol to drink." "No wine." "No, thank you, we're Christians, just some water please." "Acqua minerale?" "No, just natural water....acqua naturale." It was Lucrezia's turn to look sorrowful and to smile wistfully. Mom took her smile to be an epression of long to know the Truth. I knew Lucrezia just felt sorry for people who drank tepid tap water at dinner when a hundred and fifty lira would buy a bottle of Chianti or Orvieto. When Lucrezia walked away, we bowed our heads to finish our interrupted prayer. "And, Lord, we pray for dear little Lucrezia. We pray that You will give one of us an opportunity to share Your love with her and an opportunity to witness to her. In Jesus' precious name we pray. Amen." A fly was struggling on its back in the oil on my plate. Its feet kicked, it had smeared the pattern of its wings onto the glaze of the thick white dinner plate. Jennifer was staring at our table. Then she said something to her mother and giggled.
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