Finding Angela
Sometimes people ask for help without even realizing they’ve done so. Other times help finds them whether they have asked or not, but there are times when it takes thunderous courage and strength for help to hear their call at all. For Magdalena, help found her after she vomited in its doorway.
The morning had started the same as it usually did, except something indescribable to Maggie left her feeling off. She awoke with the Italian, spring sun as it kissed her small, fishing village nestled in the cliffs and bluffs of Manarola.
Fishermen, including Maggie’s father, who had set out upon the bay’s rippling mirrors before sunrise, had already disappeared off the edge of the world. The sound of Machismo, the rooster, reminded Maggie that she must start her work for her stepmother, Castrenza.
Raising her underweight frame from her small cot, pushed into the back of the home’s cramped cellar, she slipped on layers of worn through shirts, topped with a cream colored fisherman’s sweater, and a gray skirt her father had gifted her a few years prior. It had almost been too big for her then, but the old garment hit just below her knees now. It was impossible to tell if Magdalena had simply sprouted like the tomatoes in the garden, or if moths had been devouring the gift inch by inch each year.
She wrinkled her freckled nose at the smell of drying fish and pork over her head. Sometimes, when the weather was nice enough, she would sleep outside if it meant not waking up to the smell of aging meat. With light feet and a steady grip, she scaled the latter connecting her world with the rest of the home’s inhabitants. Castrenza—or die Hexe, as Maggie malevolently, but accurately, referred to her as—had given the second and third bedrooms to her real children.
Castrenza was a beautiful widow that had trapped Maggie’s father in her deadly web. As much as Maggie pictured the woman with an elongated nose and hairy warts; crooked, yellow teeth, and sagging skin, she was without a doubt the most beautiful woman in the village. She had five children from her last marriage, three boys and two girls all older than Maggie, who at the age of thirteen was treated more like an adult than die Hexe’s eldest adult son.
It was no secret that Maggie was used and abused by her new family. Her father, Erich, who had been broken beyond repair after the death of Maggie’s mother, Ida, rarely spoke up about the abuse, which hurt more than any beating or insult that could be thrown Maggie’s way. Pushing the consuming thoughts aside, she quickly moved throughout the small cottage. Grabbing a broom here, sweeping there; cleaning the kitchen from yesterday’s meals only to start a breakfast of fish and vegetable soup.
After finishing her chores in the cottage, she quietly exited through the backdoor, racing toward the chicken coup. If her stomach was rumbling, then the chickens must be hungry, too.
She fed the chickens, goats, and their cow, Betty. She tended to the garden, making sure each tomato, zucchini, and basil leaf had survived any critters of the night. As she was bent over, observing the last of the basil, the rumbling she had felt in her stomach knotted into a ball so tight she was forced to crouch lower until she could hug her knees into her chest. The sudden pain rippled through her hips and upper thighs, making it hard to balance on the balls of her feet. Taking deep breaths, she tried to manage the pain when she heard Betty moan from over her shoulder. Betty’s beautiful, suede colored coat glistened in the morning sun as she seemed to be asking, “What’s wrong, Maggie?” And Maggie almost answered. The look of concern in Betty’s big, beautiful, doe-brown eyes was almost impossible to ignore, but. . . was she really so desperate that she needed comfort from a cow? Grinning at her own childishness, Maggie grimaced through the strange cramps as she slowly rose to her full height, an unassuming hundred and sixty centimeters.
As she managed to right herself, she could hear the shuffle of feet, wooden chairs, and whispered insults from the other side of the back door. Her stomach still churned and radiated pain, but if she fed die Schweine then she could lay down for a bit before having to go to the market. “Die Schweine,” Magdalena laughed to herself. The image of Castrenza and her babies oinking, snorting, and drooling over a rancid trough of old vegetables and meat eased her discomfort, if only for a moment.
She wiped the dirt from her hands on the sides of her skirt before appearing before die Hexe. Maggie didn’t need another reason for Castrenza to call her dirty. Die Hexe always called her that. From the moment Maggie had met the woman, Maggie was “a dirty flee, flung from the coat of her homeland, tainted by the blasphemous blood of her Jewish mother.” Maggie slapped the bitch that day. The witch had cursed her mother’s name; it was something she could never forgive. Everything happened so quickly, no one could stop it. The moment her hand stuck Castrenza’s fair cheek, Castrenza reached for a knife sitting on the kitchen table. Like a lightning strike, the blade sliced across Maggie’s right cheek, leaving a deep horizontal cut just under her eye.
*
“Magdalena!” Castrenza shrieked from her spot at the kitchen table.
“Yes,” Maggie sighed indifferently as she walked back into the stuffy kitchen. Castrenza eyed her through the rays of dusty sunlight from the window above the sink like a viper ready to strike. Her fierceness could nearly crack her porcelain mask.
“Enough with the attitude. We need breakfast,” she said, gesturing to her children sitting around her.
“The soup is ready, and there’s bread left from yesterday.”
“Yesterday? That won’t do!”
“There’s not enough flour to make another loaf.”
“Then you should have gone to the market to get more! Use your head! If you can.”
Trying her best to ignore the burning words of die Hexe, Maggie took six bowls off a built-in shelf above the steaming pot. With each spoonful she could practically hear chairs shifting and drool dripping in anticipation. She had learned to cook from her mother. It was food meant to be made with love for the people you loved. Maggie’s didn’t have that warm, jubilating affect her mother’s did, but die Schweine still found it mouthwatering. They had never known true love and couldn’t taste it. They were none the wiser.
The smell of perfectly seasoned vegetables swirled and swayed underneath Maggie’s nose. Normally, the delectable aroma would make her empty stomach growl and grumble like a dog teased by a bone—but, today, the knots and kinks that had left her feeling bloated and nauseous vehemently rejected the savory soup. Choosing to leave her small serving in the pot, she picked and nibbled at a slice of the day-old bread paired with a glass of milk, compliments of Betty.
Maggie quickly polished off her small breakfast, desperate to lay down. As she ate, the strange pain crawling through her hips and upper thighs left her feeling weak. Even her lower back began to feel as if it would give out under too much strain. Just as she was about to escape back to her cellar, Castrenza had one last request. “I want you to go into town now to get more flour before you forget again,” she sneered and her children chuckled in amusement.
*
Maggie’s boots clopped across the uneven cobblestone streets. Keeping her head down, she passed the modest stone church, the tailors, following the smell of fresh bread from the bakery. Her bread never smelled that good. But, after landing in front of the bakery, Maggie paused for a moment. In an instance of contemplation, she picked her tired gaze up from the street and toward the sea. From her vantage point, the ocean was seemingly endless, but Maggie knew that on the other side of that water sat another world, one she had only heard stories of. When she could, she liked to sit on the shoreline, staring out over the expanse of the sea if only to feel comforted by the idea that one day she may be able to begin again, somewhere far away from the people and places that reminded her of everything she had lost. As another cramp seized her lower stomach in a crushing grip, her mind was made, and Maggie passed by the bakery, lured by the sirens of her dreams.
The calm roll of Manarola’s seaside waves invited Maggie close to the water’s edge, but she stopped before her feet could slap wet sand. She listened to the sound of the water, seagulls, and the distant clamor coming from the docks a kilometer away. The sea salt air was fresh and seeped into Maggie through every pore making her feel as light as the sea breeze itself. Rooting her feet into the warm sand, Maggie became one with the seaside as she took her front row seat to the rest of the world.
Her knees hugged into her chest relieved some of the pressure she had been feeling and her warm, earthen blanket drew her senses away from the worsening cramps. Maggie had never felt like this before in her entire life, yet she couldn’t find it in herself to worry about what was possibly wrong with her. Instead, she let her mind wander from thoughts about the new world, to her father, and then the memories she had of her mother. For longer than what die Hexe would be approve, Maggie sat alone, enjoying the serenity of being alone; of being free to let her mind wander and her body relax. That is, until her mysterious pains increased tenfold.
The intensity of it all forced Maggie into a ball where she rocked and breathed through the pain. Now certain that something wasn’t right, she forced herself to stand, when something dark on the sand beneath her caught the corner of her eye. Her breath left her, and she felt her face pale as the world around her began to spin. Staring back at her was a patch of red.
Frozen in fear for only a moment, Maggie steeled her nerves as she hastily grabbed at her skirt. Surely the blood had been there when she had sat down; it couldn’t be from her. But her denial quickly flashed to panic as a patch of red had seeped through the back of her skirt.
Her breaths quick and shallow, Maggie hurriedly glanced from one end of her stretch of beach to the other and found no one. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to place her right hand between her legs. To this day, she prides herself on not fainting from the sight of her red coated fingers looking back at her and the smell of tin in the air.
Scared for her life, she did the only thing she knew had saved her in the past. She ran. Taking off the opposite way from the docks, Maggie sprinted toward nothing, or at least she thought she was running toward nothing. She ran and ran and ran until choked back sobs made it impossible to breath. A wave of nausea rolled through her, and she lost the small breakfast of bread and milk she had had that morning.
*
Angela flipped the flap of her tent entrance. The heavy fabric flopped in the wind as her eyes fell on a young girl retching into the sand between herself and the shoreline. The young girl, crushed in on herself, gagged, gurgled, and moaned as the splat of vomit spit sand in Angela’s ears.
Angela’s initial disgust and annoyance was squelched by the sound of a wet, snotty sob, muffled behind a curtain of the girl’s strawberry curls. Merda, Angela swore to herself. Some feeling told her that she could not leave the girl be.
Normally, she knew better than to mix with the locals. A gypsy, a traveler, whatever people wanted to call her, she knew that she wasn’t a welcomed guest.
With a sigh, Angela swiftly strode toward the fallen child and gently placed her calloused palm on her shoulder.
Magdalena, who hadn’t even realized she had fallen so close to someone’s tent, leapt with a yelp at the stranger’s touch. Angela was startled herself at the panic and fearful gaze that showed in the girl’s tearful, cornflower eyes.
“Great,” Angela thought, now she felt sorry for the young creature. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she said to Maggie who swallowed her panic and steeled her nerves.
Climbing to her feet, Maggie looked toward the ground, away from her vomit and Angela’s eyes.
“Do you want help?” Angela asked, and received no answer. After a breath of silence a sea bird sang, and Angela huffed. “Do you need help?” She rephrased bluntly.
Maggie crossed her arms, holding herself, before finally looking up at the older gypsy. “I—” she started, but found that she could barely grasp the words she needed to begin explaining herself. She looked at the dry blood on her fingers and shifted uncomfortably at the wetness that coated the inside of her thighs. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she finally admitted, turning around to show Angela the patch of blood that had bloomed through the back of her skirt.
Angela’s eyes softened for the first time. “How old are you, child?”
“Fourteen.”
“Have you been feeling sick?”
“I had stomach cramps all morning.”
“You’ve never had your time of the month before?”
“My time of the month?” Maggie parroted back.
“As a girl grows into a woman she gets her time of the month. It means you can have bambini,” Angela explained, or at least she thought she did.
“I’m pregnant?!” Maggie shrieked.
“Of course not, child,” Angela admonished. “It means you can get pregnant, but if you get your time of the month it means you’re not pregnant yet.”
Magdalena stayed silent for a moment, processing what she had just been told. What should I do now? Do I just walk around with blood coming from my . . . Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! This is disgusting! Magdalena thought.
Watching everything from confusion to understanding to disgust and confusion again roll across the girl’s face, Angela spoke again. “What is your name, child?” she asked.
“Magdalena, but most people just call me Maggie.”
“Angela. So, no one has ever taught you what to do when you bleed,” she said, matter-of-factly.
“No. I wouldn’t have thrown-up my breakfast if I’d known what to expect. I thought I was dying,” Maggie said.
Angela chuckled, “I could tell.” Maggie looked away in embarrassment, but nearly jumped out of her skin, for the hundredth time that day, when Angela placed a gentle hand again on her shoulder. “Calm down, I’m not going to kill you. If you’d like, you can take a step into my tent, and I can teach you what you need to know.”
Maggie eyed the tent with suspicion and then gave Angela another look-over.
“You don’t have to—” Angela began, but Maggie cut her off with a scoff.
“I don’t care that you’re a gypsy,” she stated with her head held high.
“I was going to say that I’m probably your only option.” Magdalena flushed at that. “That still doesn’t mean that most people tend to avoid me like the devil,” Angela answered honestly. Magdalena laughed at that. “What’s so funny about that?” Angela asked in disbelief.
“Trust me, I’ve met the devil. You’re not it.”
“And who’s your devil?”
“My stepmother, but I call her die Hexe,” Maggie said in a mockingly menacing voice and Angela couldn’t help but laugh back at that.
“Well, stop making me wait around,” Angela said, corralling Maggie through her tent opening.
Maggie felt an unfamiliar warmth spread through her chest as she hopped toward the shoreline. Angela reminded her of her mama. Not in looks. Angela didn’t have her mama’s red hair or statuesque figure. The kind woman was on the shorter side and had ordinary brown, frizzy locks that had been braided away from her matching brown eyes. She was also older than Maggie remembered her mother being, with crow’s feet and worry lines etching her forehead. She talked like her mama, though. They had the same spirit. Maggie had learned long ago that her trust was not to be given to just anyone, but something in Angela’s voice told her that Angela was safe.
Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, but now based out of Chicago, Katherine Egan received her undergraduate degree of fine arts in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago. Now, working in the Chicagoland area as a blog writer for NYC Nature, HOPE, a bookseller for Half Price Books, and writing tutor, Katherine spends her free time writing her own short stories and novels while improving her craft.