Linda Cardillo - Across The Table: Across The Table Dancing On Sunday Afternoons

I HEARD THE SCREEN DOOR slam shut against the wooden doorjamb and the crunch of Als work boots on the conch-shell fragments that surrounded our cottage a quarter mile from the Chaguaramas airfield on Trinidad. It was 5:00 a.m. The tanagers that nested in trees beyond the field where we enlisted mens wives hung our laundry had just begun their morning song.

I rolled away from the empty hollow on the bed where Al had been sleeping only fifteen minutes before. The sheets were damp with his sweat. Nothing stayed dry in that climate.

I figured I might as well get up, too, put on a pot of coffee, start cooking before the temperature climbed. Thanksgiving Day and it was already seventy-five degrees outside. It would rise to one hundred and twenty degrees in the shade before the day was over. Al had hung a thermometer for me outside the bedroom window so Id know as soon as I opened my eyes how hot it was. Im not sure why it mattered so much, but it helped. Gave me a little piece of knowledge that let me feel some control over my life. Hah!

I wrapped myself in the navy blue embroidered kimono Al brought me last year when he was on furlough at Christmas and managed to get back to Boston for ten days. It seemed like a ridiculously impractical gift at the time, the middle of winter in the Northeast. I was wearing flannel nightgowns and wool socks to bed, for Gods sake.

But then hed asked me to marry him. Al Dante and I had been keeping company since we were in high school. He was a year ahead of me, one of my brother Carmines friends.

The ring was in the pocket of the gown.

Whats this? I asked when I felt something hard and lumpy against my heart. Id just put the kimono on over my powder-blue sweater set in my parents living room.

I slipped my hand into the pocket and retrieved a velvet box.

Open it, Rose. He was sitting on the edge of his chair. He had his uniform on, the petty-officer stripe hed earned a couple of months before neatly displayed on his arm below the Seabees construction insignia. He looked sharp, my Al did.

I held my breath as I lifted the hinged top of the small box. Inside was a diamond sitting high on four silver prongs. I let out a quiet gasp and my eyes filled upfor all the nights Id lain awake, wondering how he was doing so far away, building an air base as the world descended into war. Trinidad. Al told me the U.S. Navy had leased territory there from the British because of its strategic location in the Caribbean, a base for planes that escorted convoys and patrolled the sea lanes. I had to go to the library to look up where it was.

My nose started to run. I was a mess. Tears streaming down my cheeks, me sniffling. Who knew this was what love does to you.

Will you marry me, Rose?

We didnt have much time. But I wasnt going to let him go back to Trinidad for God knew how long before we could walk down the aisle at St. Leonards. Neither of us wanted to wait. We talked to my folks that very night. They were wary about the rush.

Mama got me alone in the kitchen for a few minutes.

Rosa, be honest with me. Are you gonna have a baby? Is that why you gotta go to the priest so fast?

No, Mama, no! I swear on Nonnas grave that Im as pure as the snow thats falling outside. Its justI cant bear for him to go away again. The navy will let me go with him if were married.

Hes gonna take you away to that island! Your papa will not agree to that, Rosa. You belong here, with the family. Its too far. Too strange. Another country.

Mama, you left your parents to go with Papa to another country when you got married. America was a lot farther from Italia than Trinidad is from Boston. Please, Mama. Understand. I love him. Ive waited already, worrying about whether hed come back alive. I dont want to wait any longer. Talk to Papa. Give us your blessing!

Mama put her hands on her hips and looked at me, measured me. She was from the old country, but shed been in Boston a long timethirty years.