"Now," Mrs. Gerbati said, heading for the attic steps. "We see."
What Mrs. Gerbati wanted to see, it seemed, was whether the clothes she had taken out of the trunk would fit Sal. She bypassed the sitting room and led them directly into the kitchen. Then she sent Jake to his room with the armload and ordered him to try everything on. After he'd disappeared into his room, she went to the sink and began to fill a basin with a mixture of water from a kettle on the stove and water from the tap above the sink. Rosa hurried to the table to carry over the breakfast dishes—twice as many dishes for the four of them as the nine members of the Serutti-Jarusalis household would ever own, let alone use in one meal. It hurt her to think of her hungry family. If only she could send them a bit of the Gerbatis' food and a few shovelfuls of coal.
Soon Sal appeared at the door separating his room from the kitchen. He had on a wool cap and an oversized heavy wool overcoat. His face was hardly visible behind the coat's thick collar.
"Now, take off, let's see," Mrs. Gerbati ordered.
Sal took off the cap and unbuttoned the overcoat and put them down on a kitchen chair.
Rosa gasped. The boy was dressed finer than a mill owner's son in a wool suit with a white shirt underneath. The pants and sleeves of the suit were too long for him, but Mrs. Gerbati had already hurried over to kneel beside him and start to turn up the cuffs on the trousers. "I fix, I fix," she said. "Then perfect, yes?"
"Che stai facendo?" The cry from the opposite doorway made the children jump in fright. They hadn't even seen the little man until he shouted, a shout that sounded to Rosa less like an angry person than an animal in pain.
His wife turned and began to make soothing noises in Italian that even Rosa couldn't understand. Sal just stood there in his magnificent clothes, his eyes wide. Mrs. Gerbati stuck out her hand, so Rosa ran over to pull her to her feet. The old woman nodded her thanks and then went to the door and gently pushed her husband back into the front room, shutting the door behind her. Rosa and Sal were left staring at each other, unable to figure out what was being said on the other side of the wall except to know that it was one between a wounded man and a woman trying desperately to soothe him.
"What have we done?" Rosa said. "What have we done?"
"We ain't done nothing," Sal said. "It was her done it. I didn't ask for nothing. It was her fault."
"She did it for us, don't you see?"
After what seemed like an eternity, the door opened and Mrs. Gerbati returned. "Better to take off," she indicated the clothes. "Not so good. We buy new clothes for you tomorrow, yes?" Without another word, she returned to the sink and finished washing the last of the dishes, handing each dish to Rosa, who polished and repolished every piece.
New Clothes and New Problems
It had been a glum morning. After his outburst, Mr. Gerbati returned to his chair in the sitting room and buried himself in his paper. But even worse in Rosa's mind was the change in Mrs. Gerbati. All the warmth had slipped away. She put away the clean dishes without talking or smiling—just a nod and a murmured grazie for Rosa's help. Then she went to sit in the front room herself, taking up some kind of sewing job. Through the open door, Rosa could see her glance up from time to time, sending a worried look in her husband's direction.
Sal reappeared, looking thin and drab in his own clothes, and plunked himself down at the kitchen table. Rosa sat across from him, fiddling with the fringe of the tablecloth that hung onto her lap. What had happened? She wanted to talk to Sal, but with the door to the sitting room wide open, she was afraid to speak aloud. She cleared her throat. He ignored her, seeming to study his chapped hands and grimy, broken fingernails.
"I think I'll go up to my room," she said finally. There was no answer, so she pushed back her chair and stood up. He didn't raise his head. "So," she said. "I guess I'll just go."
"Fine," he said. "Go."
"Okay. I'm going."
"Hell's bells," he said in a voice too low to be heard in the next room. "Just get out of here, will you?"
Rosa bit her lip. She slipped from the kitchen into the hall to avoid passing through the sitting room, where the Gerbatis sat in grim silence.
She climbed the stairs and went into the room Mrs. Gerbati had fixed for her and shut the door. There was a lot of furniture for one person: a wide bed, a bureau with drawers, a washstand with a large white basin and tall pitcher, and a little rocker decorated with an embroidered cushion. There was a lace-curtained window that looked out onto the quiet street with its snow-covered yards and bushes and bare branches. It was a room all to herself, with no bedwetting little boys, and a bed that did not have to be shared with anyone. It should have been wonderful, but she had never felt so lonely in her life. Oh, Mamma, why did you send me away? She lay face down on the quilt and cried until the pillow was soaked.
"Rosa?" Mrs. Gerbati was tapping on the door.
Rosa sat up. "Yes?"
"Please to come in?"
Rosa wiped her face on the back of her hand. "Yes, yes, of course."
Mrs. Gerbati entered the room by degrees. First just her head, then her shoulders, and then finally she pushed the door open enough to get her whole body into the room.
"You cry, povera bambina. Please, no cry, no cry." She came over to the bed and stroked Rosa's hair and then her cheek, as though to wipe away her tears, ignoring the ones streaking her own face.
Rosa snuffled. "I'll be all right. I just miss my mamma."
"Si, si. Is very hard to leave your mamma far away. Mr. Gerbati and me, we be Papa and Mamma now, okay?"
What could Rosa say? That the last thing Mr. Gerbati seemed to want was to be their papa?