'But there'll be a governor. And other high officials. And young men with prospects. I will help you choose.'
'You will certainly not help me choose.'
'It's as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one.'
'As if you'd know.'
'I know better than you, having done it badly once. The rush of hot blood into the heart is the darkest magic, and it must be tamed. You must not let it happen until you have chosen a man worthy of your love. I will help you choose.'
No point in arguing. Alessandra had long since learned that fighting with Mother accomplished nothing, whereas ignoring her worked very well.
Except for this. A colony. It was definitely time to look up Grandmother. She lived in Polignano a Mare, the next city of any size up the Adriatic coast, that's all that she knew of her. And Mother's mother would not be named Toscano. Alessandra would have to do some serious research.
A week later, Mother was still going back and forth about whether they should sleep through the voyage or not, while Alessandra was discovering that there's a lot of information that they won't let children get at. Snooping in the house, she found her own birth certificate, but that wasn't helpful, it only listed her own parents. She needed Mother's certificate, and that was not findable in the apartment.
The government people barely acknowledged she existed and when they heard her errand sent her away. It was only when she finally thought of the Catholic Church that she made any headway. They hadn't actually attended Mass since Alessandra was little, but at the parish, the priest on duty helped her search back to find her own baptism. They had a record of baby Alessandra Toscano's godparents as well as her parents, and Alessandra figured that either the godparents were her grandparents, or they would know who her grandparents were.
At school she searched the net and found that Leopoldo and Isabella Santangelo lived in Polignano a Mare, which was a good sign, since that was the town where Grandmother lived.
Instead of going home, she used her student pass and hopped the train to Polignano and then spent forty-five minutes walking around the town searching for the address. To her disgust, it ended up being on a stub of a street just off Via Antonio Ardito, a trashy-looking apartment building backing on the train tracks. There was no buzzer. Alessandra trudged up to the fourth floor and knocked.
'You want to knock something, knock your own head!' shouted a woman from inside.
'Are you Isabella Santangelo?'
'I'm the Holy Virgin and I'm busy answering prayers. Go away!'
Alessandra's first thought was: So Mother lied about being a child of the fairies. She's really Jesus' younger sister.
But she decided that flippancy wasn't a good approach today. She was already going to be in trouble for leaving Monopoli without permission, and she needed to find out from the Holy Virgin here whether or not she was her grandmother.
'I'm so sorry to trouble you, but I'm the daughter of Dorabella Toscano and I —»
The woman must have been standing right at the door, waiting, because it flew open before Alessandra could finish her sentence.
'Dorabella Toscano is a dead woman! How can a dead woman have daughters!'
'My mother isn't dead,' said Alessandra, stunned. 'You were signed as my godmother on the parish register.'
'That was the worst mistake of my life. She marries this pig boy, this bike messenger, when she's barely fifteen, and why? Because her belly's getting fat with you, that's why! She thinks a wedding makes it all clean and pure! And then her idiot husband gets himself killed. I told her, this proves there is a God! Now go to hell!'
The door slammed in Alessandra's face.
She had come so far. Her grandmother couldn't really mean to send her away like this. They hadn't even had time to do more than glance at each other.
'But I'm your granddaughter,' said Alessandra.
'How can I have a granddaughter when I have no daughter? You tell your mother that before she sends her little quasi-bastard begging at my door, she'd better come to me herself with some serious apologizing.'
'She's going away to a colony,' said Alessandra.
The door was yanked open again. 'She's even more insane than ever,' said Grandmother. 'Come in. Sit down. Tell me what stupid thing she's done.'
The apartment was absolutely neat. Everything in it was unbelievably cheap, the lowest possible quality, but there was a lot of it — ceramics, tiny framed art pieces — and everything had been dusted and polished. The sofa and chairs were so piled with quilts and throws and twee little embroidered pillows that there was nowhere to sit. Grandmother Isabella moved nothing, and finally Alessandra sat on top of one of the pillow piles.
Feeling suddenly quite disloyal and childish herself, telling on Mother like a schoolyard tattletale, Alessandra now tried to softpedal the outrage. 'She has her reasons, I know it, and I think she truly believes she's doing it for me —»
'What what what is she doing for you that you don't want her to do! I don't have all day!'
The woman who embroidered all of these pillows has all day every day. But Alessandra kept her sassy remark to herself. 'She has signed us up for a colony ship, and they accepted us.'
'A colony ship? There aren't any colonies. All those places are countries of their own now. Not that Italy ever did have any real colonies, not since the Roman Empire. Lost their balls after that, the men did. Italian men have been worthless ever since. Your grandfather, God keep him buried, was worthless enough, never stood up for himself, let everybody push him around, but at least he worked hard and provided for me until my ungrateful daughter spat in my face and married that bike boy. Not like that worthless father of yours, never made a dime.'
'Well, not since he died, anyway,' said Alessandra, feeling more than a little outraged.
'I'm talking about when he was alive! He only worked the fewest hours he could get by with. I think he was on drugs. You were probably a cocaine baby.'
'I don't think so.'
'How would you know anything?' said Grandmother. 'You couldn't even talk then!'
Alessandra sat and waited.
'Well? Tell me.'
'I did but you wouldn't believe me.'
'What was it you said?'
'A colony ship. A starship to one of the formic planets, to farm and explore.'
'Won't the formics complain?'
'There aren't any more formics, Grandmother. They were all killed.'
'A nasty piece of business but it needed doing. If that Ender Wiggin boy is available, I've got a list of other people that need some good serious destruction. What do you want, anyway?'
'I don't want to go into space. With Mother. But I'm still a minor. If you would sign as my guardian, I could get emancipated and stay home. It's in the law.'
'As your guardian?'
'Yes. To supervise me and provide for me. I'd live here.'
'Get out.'
'What?'
'Stand up and get out. You think this is a hotel? Where exactly do you think you'd sleep? On the floor, where I'd trip on you in the night and break my hip? There's no room for you here. I should have known you'd be making demands. Out!'
There was no room for argument. In moments Alessandra found herself charging down the stairs, furious and humiliated. This woman was even crazier than Mother.
I have nowhere to go, thought Alessandra. Surely the law doesn't allow my mother to force me to go into space, does it? I'm not a baby, I'm not a child, I'm fourteen, I can read and write and make rational choices.
When the train got back to Monopoli, Alessandra did not go directly home. She had to think up a good lie
