Episode 180: Kid (Cille)

Cille adored Florence. The university life, the culture, the history, her job, her boyfriend, their little apartment up the back steps of Dona Sofia’s home. She was going to marry a Florentine, Raffaele, although they would pretend it was for finances and not for love, and then someday she would have an accidental pregnancy and they would both be shocked but they’d fall in love with their daughter and be happy.

They’d buy a little villa in Giogoli, she’d quit her job at the caffe on the Piazza Santo Spirito, and they would have a beautiful life together.

Walking home from the Piazza, she always carried her keys with the ring in her hand, each key spearing out between her fingertips.

Yes, it had been a long time since the mostro di Firenze, the monster of Florence, committed his last murders. Yes, she avoided cars and olive groves and little side lanes with Raffaele and made it clear that the only place they were intimate was their little apartment with the doors locked.

Yes, she knew the mostro used a gun and that a fistful of keys, however jagged, was not going to stand up in battle against the gun.

She was okay with that. As long as she didn’t go down without a fight. As long as she didn’t go down knowing it could have been avoided.

She was not helpless to the whims of men, like her mother had been. She was strong, a new breed of woman, someone who could look any man in the face and be unafraid.

Yes.

She didn’t expect it to be a woman who accosted her. Standing up to women wasn’t in her mantra. There was no guidebook for this.

“Hello?” the woman asked. She was filthy, in a grungy, maybe a prostitute, way. She was carrying a toddler who didn’t look as filthy but was still dirty.

Cille gripped her keys. “Yes?”

She needed to invent telepathy so that Raffaele could come save her right now.

No.

She was not that kind of girl. She would save herself.

“Do you know where the orphanage is here?” the woman asked.

Orphanage? She had no clue. “The Innocenti?” she suggested. Commissioned in 1419, it was one of the oldest architectural pieces of the Italian Renaissance. Cille loved it, filled as it was with old things and bits of history.

The woman shook her head. Cille wondered if Raffaele would kill her for offering the woman a shower and a meal. Not literally kill her, but be outraged that she welcomed a stranger into their home.

Besides, nobody ever said the mostro was a boy.

“No,” the woman said, “the place where you drop babies off. My boyfriend. He left us, and my family would never allow her. We weren’t married. I want her to have a home. A family someday.”

“The Carabinieri?” Cille suggested, one of the branches of police in Italy. “They might take her.” She stood taller. Hadn’t this woman ever thought about the rights of women in the world? “Don’t let your family take her from you.”

The girl started to cry, and the woman held her into the air between them. “Please,” she begged. “I can’t keep her. I have no job, no money, no house. I have nothing for her.”

It wasn’t as though Cille had the means of taking care of a toddler either. Or any desire to do so.

She looked at the child, who held her arms out crying for Cille to hold her.

Cille didn’t want children, but her mother did.

“My mother,” she offered, “she’s Danish. She might take her.”

The girl screamed louder, kicking to get away from her mother and towards Cille. What was the matter with her? Did her mother abuse her? Had she kidnapped her?

“What about you?” the woman asked.

“Me?” No. Cille was not a woman who was going to have children and be burdened by the societal expectations on her sex. Gender. She was a strong, resilient, independent woman, who did not need children to be fulfilled. “I’m just a student. I…” she looked at the screaming child. She couldn’t leave her with someone she didn’t want to be with, who clearly didn’t want her. “You have to sign something,” she insisted. “I don’t want to get in trouble. There are rules.”

The girl yelled again. She managed somehow to yell in two different pitches at once. The woman passed her to Cille, and she stopped screaming.

“Please,” she said. “Your mom can help?”

The girl cuddled against Cille. She smelled like cinnamon and grease and dirt and sweat.

Cille scrawled her name and phone number on the back of a Euro. It was the only paper she had. “This is my information, if you change your mind,” she said. She snapped a picture of the strange woman. “I’ll make sure she has a home.”

What the hell was she doing?

No. She was merely moving a child to its adoptive mother. Her mother. This little girl would make her mother so happy to have, and give her something to focus on besides that infernal estate and how worried she was about Niels being off in big, scary America.

“Thank you!” the woman said. She hugged Cille, which would likely result in Cille contracting scabies, and walked off down the hillside, a little off-kilter.

“Lolly?” the girl asked.

“Fuck,” Cille breathed.

Why didn’t she have any backbone? She was going to end up in prison for kidnapping, at this rate.

“What is lolly?” she asked the girl.

“Fuck!” the girl said. “Eat lolly!”

Oh, she must mean one of those colorful fruit candies on a stick. Cille had never cared for those. She preferred the sort of sweetness that caressed one’s mouth, rather than assaulting it.

“Cille,” she told the girl, hand on her own chest. “I am Cille. What is your name?”

“Jina!”

Almost Giana. Cille smiled…the one name she would never give a child, and here was one who came with the name preattached.

She started to walk down the moped-lined street towards their apartment.

“Hello, Jina,” she said. “I don’t have lolly. I can get you one, after something else.”

“Play?” Gina suggested.

No, not right now. “We have to wait for my mom to kill me,” she explained, half to herself. Tonight, we’ll buy you some clothes and a toy, okay? Tomorrow, we’ll take a plane to see someone very special.”

“And lolly!” Jina insisted. Undeterrable, which meant her mom would enjoy the girl’s spirit.

“And bread,” Cille promised. “With merenda, do you know that?”

Jina shook her head.

“It’s delicious, I promise,” Cille shifted the girl on her hip bone and climbed the steps up from the via to her door. “Come on, I live just over here.”

She unlocked the door.

From inside the kitchen, Raffaele stepped into the front room. His eyes widened when he saw Jina. “Cille?”

“Yes,” she said. She couldn’t believe it either.

He crossed the room, drying his fingers on a little towel as he walked, and kissed her. “How was your day? Who is this?”

“This,” Cille didn’t know where to start. “Is a headache named Jina. She likes lollies.” Still kissing Raffaele, she shifted Jina on her hip. “My day was fine until it wasn’t. How was yours?”

Jina pushed Raffaele away.

“It was good,” he said, a smile creasing the corners of his eyes. “Busy. What sort of headache?” he looked at Jina with a bigger smile. “A hungry headache?”

“I want a lolly!” Jina growled.

Damn the lollies. “I tried telling her we don’t have them,” Cille explained, “but…I need to buy tickets to fly home. Do you want to come?”

Raffaele reached into Cille’s denim jacket pocket and pulled out, of all the unbelievable things…a lolly. “What’s this?” he asked.

How could it be? She gazed at it in shock. There were no lollies in her pockets when she left work.

“Lolly!” Jina called, and she grabbed it and ripped the paper wrapping off before she inserted it into her mouth.

“To see your mom?” Raffaele asked. His surprise was probably deserved, given that she’d made him stay with a friend during her mom’s previous visit. “Sure…” he decided, wary. “Is she going to kill me?” He nodded towards Jina.

Ah. So much potential for pranking her mom…

Such a terrible idea, unfortunately. “No. I haven’t seen her anyway. She’s very polite, even if she hates you.” She watched Jina wipe a profluent nose with the back of her hand, smearing mucous all over her cheek. “Besides,” she said with satisfaction, “the toddler is for her.”

“I’ll pack our bags?” Raffaele offered.

She loved him. Not that she would ever admit it, in those words. That wasn’t what strong women said.

“I should give her to my brother,” she mused. “He adores kids.”

That earned her a laugh, full-toothed and happy. “I almost thought she was his and he was visiting us by surprise.”

She shrugged. “His are a little older.” Niels Poulsen. Everyone’s favorite God of Rock, except people who knew him and realized he was arrogant and egotistical and way too prolific. He had two kids, plus four he’d adopted, plus his wife was pregnant. It was insane.

Niels’s kids were all varying degrees of cute. So was Jina, if Cille let herself think of it.

“I thought you didn’t want kids,” Raffaele teased her.

He knew her so well.

It was lucky for her, that she’d trained herself not to blush years ago. Strong women had no need for blushing.

She sat at the table, and a second later an entire plate of delicious cacio e pepe slid in front of her, guided by Rafaelle’s hand.

“Bucatini!” she exclaimed. “I love you.” He sat in front of his own plate and lifted Jina onto his right knee. She took a big bite of the pasta.

“That doesn’t mean they aren’t cute,” Cille aceded.

“I love you,” Rafaelle agreed. He kissed her, squishing Jina a little between them.

“Love you!” Jina said. She looked back and forth between them, happy.

“We love you too,” Cille promised her, before she realized what she’d said. Then she used a napkin to wipe the panic right off her own face.

“So this lady just came up to me on Via dei Serragli and begged me to take her.”

“And you took her?” Rafaelle guessed, mocking. “What if she has rabies?”

That was such a Niels joke, except that he would have fit a few swear words in there.

“What if the mom changes her mind and I get accused of international kidnapping of a minor?” she asked under her breath. The municipal police were just at the end of their block, waiting.

Maybe they could take Jina to play in the Giardino di Boboli and forget to bring her when they left. No, that had a pond, she could drown.

Cille was a terrible mother already. She wasn’t a mother; Jina was going to live with her mom.

“Cille,” Rafaelle said. He had his big smile, where his mouth looked bigger than his jaw bone. “Someone randomly gives you a baby, having just met you, and you have a lollipop in your pocket? I think you were either set up, or she won’t know how to find you.”

“Set up?” Why would someone set her up to take a kid? Was she being framed for kidnapping?

The municipal police were just up the via…

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “It seems odd.”

“It is odd. That’s why I’m giving her to my mom, because she has the money to deal with legal issues if they come up and she’s always wanted more kids.”

“That’s a good idea,” Rafaelle agreed. Neither of them worried aloud about how they would get a child through customs. They could improvise. It was still possible to move between countries without a passport.

“This ucky!” Jina yelled. She held one of the pieces of sauteed chicken. “I don’t like it.” She dropped it back onto Rafaelle’s plate.

“Someone doesn’t like your cooking,” Cille teased him.

He shook his head and made fish-face at Jina. “It’s good,” he insisted. He cut a small piece and made engine noises that made her laugh long enough to get some in her mouth.

“It’s ucky!” she yelled again. “More!”

Watching Rafaelle with her, it was easy to imagine having their own kids. Together, just them. Not that she wanted kids…

“Okay,” she said softly. “Maybe someday.”

“What was that?” he asked, eyes on Jina.

She used the napkin again, this time to cover her face.

He laughed. “Let me get tickets before you attack,” he said. He cleared the dishes.

She loved that he cleared dishes. She spent all evening waitressing at the cafe and it was good to come home and not have to.

“How do we fly?” he asked. “Does she have a passport?”

“See? This was a bad idea,” she stood and leaned over his shoulder, watching as he scrolled through airline and ticketing options. They decided on a midmorning flight the following day, and she called her boss to take the day off.

After, she found Rafaelle at the table and kissed his head. “I got scared,” she explained. “The people who get ahold of children…the mom was going to just give her to anyone she found. I couldn’t let that be just anyone.”

He leaned up and joined their lips briefly. “I’m not mad, Cille. She will be loved by someone, yes?”

“You want her,” Cille accused.

“No, I didn’t say that,” he laughed. “But you do.”

She did, but she did not see a way to fit Jina into their lives and budget in a permanent way. “Good,” she said, stepping back. “Neither do I.”

He stood. “I’ll get her a blanket and a pillow.”

“I’ll do the dishes,” she offered, nervous.

They’d just had a conversation about having kids, without having a conversation about having kids.

She had no idea what they’d decided.

“We need to buy things,” she told him. “I should call my mom. Baby things, I don’t even know what they need.”

“I’ll find a list,” he said. “I’m sure we can use most of our own things.”

“I’ll get the diapers,” she offered. “And a pizza in case she’s hungry later?”

There was that antique place over on Via Romana, maybe there would be a crib or something.

“A pizza?” Rafaelle asked.

Couldn’t toddlers eat pizza?

“Yeah?”

“Is that healthy?” he asked. Fuck if she knew.

“We should measure her for the diaper,” he suggested.

She got out the measuring strip from the sewing kit she totally didn’t own, and looked around for Jina. “Where is she? She was just here!”

She couldn’t even keep track of the girl. This was why Cilles didn’t have kids.

“Here she is!” Rafaelle pulled her from under the kitchen sink and placed her on his shoulders so her head nearly touched the apartment ceiling. “Do you want me to come? Or…”

“Yes, we can all go,” she said.

That ought to keep her from panicking until the middle of the night, at least.

<- Episode 179 | Episode 181 ->