Stolen

“Aiutami! Aiutami! Non può respirare! La mia amica non può respirare!”

Tonio’s panicked voice raised the alarm, as Gina thrashed on the ground, gasping for air, her hands clutched around her throat and her eyes bulging. Tonio waved his arms and started to cry, screaming for help, that his friend couldn't breathe, while Gina’s face grew blue. In no time at all, a small crowd of tourists had gathered around, babbling frantically in more languages than Carissa could understand. She thought she heard English, maybe some French, but the rest were unfamiliar and impossible to discern in the moment. Gina continued to writhe on the ground, while Tonio turned up the waterworks, eliciting pity and comfort from a large Australian woman carrying a gaudy purple purse, creating the diversion the rest of them needed.

They slipped through like shadows, unnoticed by the crowd utterly absorbed with the chaos Gina and Tonio had made. Hands flit in and out of pockets and purses, deft fingers skillfully and silently appropriated the valuables of the unsuspecting tourists. Carissa moved the fastest, weaving her way through the crowd without so much as a pause. As she went, watches and rings and baubles and wallets found their way into her pockets, their owners none the wiser as to their fate. After a few moments, she signaled to the others; it was time to go before they raised the suspicions of the turisti. They would clutch their own children close, their purses and wallets closer, and that was when they’d notice some of those purses and wallets were missing. Carissa waved to Tonio, mouthed andiamo, but as she made eye contact his eyes widened in alarm, and as he raised his arm to point, a strong arm fell heavily on her shoulder.

“Polizia! Polizia!”

Arlo’s belated warning cry came as Carissa turned to face the man that belonged to the hand clamped firmly on her arm. His dark brown eyes were cold and unsympathetic, nestled in the middle of his heavy face like pieces of glass peering out from the folds of his wrinkled skin. As she stood, frozen, the hand that was unencumbered by her shoulder cracked across her face, knocking her to the ground. For a second, Carissa couldn’t move, couldn’t think. He had hit her hard. The tourists, slow on the uptake, were outraged at this violent treatment and began shaking fists and jabbering away at the poliziotto, leaving Gina and Tonio on the ground. Gina popped off the ground and stole away with Tonio into the shadows with the rest, Tonio with a purple purse bouncing off his side as he ran. Carissa twisted away from the poliziotto as he was swarmed by the angry tourists.

By the time Carissa was close to home, it was completely dark. She had taken the long way back, winding her way over bridges and through the maze of canals on a route that took her twice as long, in order to make sure no bored poliziotto was following her. The heat of the day still sat on the city, and as she walked, sweat soaked through her thick, dark hair and dripped onto the ground. Her cheekbone throbbed, radiating pain throughout the entire left side of her face. It was definitely going to bruise, probably end up a black eye. She touched her cheek gingerly and winced, cursing the poliziotto and his mother as fresh bursts of pain shot into her skull. She paused for a moment, leaning on the dark red brick of an old bridge, waiting for the pain to subside and for the bright spots in her eyes to disappear before continuing. She trudged alongside the canals, trying to keep under the streetlights and out of trouble as much as possible. As she passed, she nodded to passerby that she recognized and watched and waved to the occasional gondoliere drifting along in the romantic twilight. Couples walked along the water that sparkled with the light of the stars and the reflections of the lights of the city, draped over each other, whispering sweet nothings that were snatched away by the breeze as it blew playfully about. The restaurants were teeming with people, laughter, and light, carefree customers on holiday in the romantically ancient city. Carissa passed through the gilded streets of the street, hurrying through the fading light on the familiar path to home.

As she got closer, she passed fewer and fewer people and the streets became dustier and dirtier, littered with food wrappers and drug needles. Darkness grew as the street lamps and warm house lights disappeared into the night behind her. A stray dog picked through the trash, his mangy black fur sticking up in tufts and spotted with oozing red sores. As Carissa passed, he bared his teeth and growled halfheartedly, but ultimately let her pass in peace before returning to the cast-offs that lay in the gutter. Finally, she turned the corner and was greeted by the familiar sight of the abandoned bridge, with the water from the canal lapping lazily at the edge of the street, a soft glow dimly visible from behind the tattered fabric that hung from its side.

As she approached the hanging tarp that constituted the entryway, Arlo came running out from under the bridge, tears streaming down his sweetly round face and his big, brown eyes red from crying. “Mi dispiace, mi dispiace, Carissa! Mi dispiace…” he broke off sobbing, incomprehensible in his hysterics. Carissa leaned down to comfort him, reassuring him in between his cries. He kept crying, so she picked him up and carried him back towards the bridge. The rest peered out from behind the tarp, watching as Carissa made her way under the bridge and into their makeshift home. Gina was waiting inside with cold water and the rest of the bread that they had optimistically saved for Carissa after dinner. “Grazie a Dio, ho pensato che tu non ritornerei!” she rejoiced in Carissa’s return, as she immediately set to work tending to her face, ignoring her audible winces. Arlo had started to hiccup, snot and tears still pouring down his face. Carissa passed him to Alessia, and he sat sniveling in her lap as she stroked his hair repeatedly, singing an old lullaby and his eyes started to droop as his cries became farther and farther apart until finally he was asleep in the arms of his sister. Tonio sat on the ground in front of Gina and Carissa, a somber expression knitting his brows together that aged his young face by twenty years. They were unusually quiet. There was normally a general buzz and humdrum of activity and conversation, but tonight that energy was gone, sapped by the heat and the events of the day. They sat in silence, with only the sound of the canal water and distant yelling to break up the uncomfortable quiet that had settled upon them.

••••

Carissa tried not to think about her parents if she could help it, but it was days like today that tempted her to allow them to creep back into her mind, or at least what she could remember of them. She couldn’t remember their faces anymore, or the way their hands looked when they wrapped around hers, holding her safe between the two of them. She did remember what her mother smelled like, tomatoes and basil and tortellini. Her mother always brought the smell of the restaurant home with her, which Carissa loved. She remembered the way her father’s voice would boom across the hallway when he got home from work, demanding to see his precious daughter immediately, adesso, picking her up and swinging her about as she giggled and insincerely protested. She also remembered the grey color of their bodies under the harsh medical lighting. She remembered the nurse’s look of pity and the apologies that she muttered. She couldn’t remember her parents’ faces though.

It was worse for Alessia and Arlo, she had decided. Their parents were still alive; they had just cast Alessia and her little brother out of the house because they ran out of money and compassion for them, their own bambini. Sometimes the group would see them in the rougher parts of the city, smoking on street corners as they pretended not to recognize two of the unkempt children to pass them by from time to time. Alessia pretended not to recognize them either; little Arlo didn’t have to pretend.

Gina had run away from home after her mother died. Her stepfather offered a reward for her safe return when she first ran off, but Gina was too smart and too careful to get caught. She said once that her stepfather was a cazzo, which made Carissa raise an eyebrow and Alessia gasp and belatedly cover Arlo’s ears, which immediately piqued his interest in the word. Gina hadn’t seen her stepfather since she ran away, but Carissa knew sometimes when Gina couldn’t sleep at night it was because she was thinking of him.

Tonio refused to talk about anything before the bridge, even after all this time. He barely spoke at all, and no one pressed him to. Sometimes he cried out incoherently in his sleep, but beyond that he was a mystery to them. Carissa supposed that his background didn’t matter, it was none of their business. They all ended up in the same place, doing the same thing.

After Gina was as satisfied as she was going to be with the state of Carissa’s face, Carissa began to count the earnings from the day. It didn’t take her as long as it should have. There wasn’t enough. There never was enough. They were getting less and less, despite the increase in their numbers and the honing of their skill. It was manageable for the summer, but before long the nights would get cooler, and sooner fewer and fewer tourists would come, and eventually the winter would set in. They would not survive if they didn’t have enough money for warm clothes. Carissa’s brow furrowed in worry, consumed by apprehension, not paying attention to the uncomfortable glances Tonio and Gina exchanged over the sleeping forms of Arlo and Alessia.

Tonio finally broke the silence.

“Il generale ha visitato oggi.”

Carissa looked up sharply, dropping the coins in her hand onto the floor. Tonio refused to meet her gaze, staring instead at the moss growing between the cracks in the ancient stone underneath his feet. Il generale was a widely known pimp, un pappone, who made his rounds recruiting from groups like Carissa’s, orphans and runaways and cast-offs, all just trying to survive, most turning to petty crime to get by. A visit from him, today of all days, was not a good thing. Il generale was dangerous. The girls that went with him were never the same. They were seen again, here and there, but with bruises covering their pale skin and surrounding their lifeless eyes, all of the vibrancy and vivaciousness stolen from them. A lot of them wound up dead. The ones that lived died too; their bodies just kept going through the motions for years after their spirits fled. When they weren’t working or delivering money to their families, he kept them trapped in his house on the outskirts of the city, a dwelling famous for its huge red doors and dragon-shaped handles, earning it the name le porte dell’inferno. The Gates of Hell.

“Lui sa.”

Gina said flatly, resolutely studying the little waves on the surface of the canal, barely visible by the flickering lights from a nearby apartment. He knows. He knows that they were hungry, like everyone else, they were desperate, and that they have been for some time. He knows that their probability of surviving the upcoming winter dwindled with every day that passed. It doesn’t matter, Carissa thought to herself. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe it meant nothing. But as she looked at Alessia and Gina, girls she had grown to love, her pounding heart betrayed her fears. Il generale wanted them, he wanted them to beat and break and sell. He looked at them and saw profit, i soldi, and nothing more, and their poverty had captured his attention.

••••

After a sleepless night, Carissa rose with the sun as it peeped out shyly from behind a hodgepodge collection of ancient and modern buildings that stood around the canal, similar only in their dilapidation. She braided her hair back from her face, looser than normal so as not to aggravate the pulsing of her cheekbone. She listened to the soft breaths of her friends, her family, her responsibilities, their youth restored in sleep, lines of stress and worry erased by the generous oblivion of unconsciousness. She looked at their thin, sunken cheeks and the sharp lines of their elbows and knees, knowing that beneath their threadbare clothing, their ribs protruded in a similar manner. She turned back to face the sun, chin resting on her knees as she watched its rays grow stronger and illuminate more fully the dirty water of the backchannel of the canal, the bridge, the buildings, her family. For better or worse, her home. Carissa closed her eyes and willed the moment to stretch into a thousand, to become a little eternity for her to escape into, if only for an instant.

Later that day, Carissa told the others that she was going to meet with some of the more compassionate vendors to see what kind of bargains could be struck, to stretch every penny as far as humanly possible.

Carissa set out from the bridge, her eye discolored and cheek split slightly open, but throbbing less than the night before. She passed all of the shops without slowing once, ignoring the occasional greetings from the friendlier locals as she hurried by with her head down. It took her most of the morning, but eventually she reached her destination.

Taking a deep breath, she took hold of one of the dragons and let it fall against the red door, cringing at the thud that it made. After a silent pause, she released a second thud. No response. Carissa waited, hope rising in her as she realized maybe she didn’t have to go through with this after all, she could leave knowing she had done everything she could. Elated, Carissa started to turn to fly swiftly away down the stairs and back home, when the door swung open to reveal a short, bald fat man waving cigarette smoke from his face. In the background, music was playing and low, indistinct voices hummed from out-of-sight rooms, punctuated by occasional screams and crying. She guessed the doors were quite sturdy, as they had held back all of the noise and convinced her the place was silent, perhaps even abandoned. Carissa coughed as the man looked her slowly up and down, his gaze lingering somewhat on her bruised face, but not betraying any flicker of surprise or sympathy. If anything, he seemed irritated. Behind him, Carissa picked out two figures in the dim light of the room, crouching on the ground with their hungry brown eyes fixed unfathomably on her. She looked away, uneasy, as he finished his perusal of her body. Finally, he cracked a nauseating grimace that she supposed was meant to be a smile and pulled Carissa close, his hand sitting uncomfortably low on her waist, as his raspy voice whispered in her ear:

“Benvenuti a casa.”

Welcome home.