Three Lives

Three Lives

Maria drew dark lines underneath her lashes and on the tops of her lids. She began to smooth her skirt and her hair when Marco banged on the door of the bathroom and yelled that her turn was up. Between the family of ten, there was only one bathroom and three bedrooms. Maria’s older brothers had to share the living room, and the baby was in a crib next to her parents’ bed.

She walked into the kitchen and her mother rolled her eyes at Maria when she saw the way she was done up, and Maria gave a piercing stare in return. She knew that looks were important, and that hers would win her a successful husband someday. Her hope was that she would not have to bear one child after the other the way her mother did in an effort to get the large family award. Maria had no interest in school, or reading, for she knew that these would get her nowhere. Her mother had been educated and had worked in a post office until recently, when a new law was passed. Maria thought that it was irresponsible of her mother to have a job, anyway. She should be tending to the family, not worrying about her career. Women were restricted from so many jobs, the most reliable (and natural) plan was that of becoming a housewife. Maria had never considered doing otherwise.

Woman, made to ripen a child within her body for three-quarters of the year, made to nourish this child, with a secretion of her organism, for longer than a year, endowed with qualities that make her able to raise and educate the child at least through adolescence, nevertheless receives, in our civilization, the same education as if her functions were equal to man’s (Ferdinando Loffredo, Pickering-Iazzi, 30).

Maria was sitting up straight at her desk in the classroom. Her teacher was boasting of his position in the Party. He called on Marco to have him speak of his loyalty to Il Duce. Marco said the same phrases that he heard spoken by his father every day in favor of Il Duce. Maria looked out the window. She was not listening to her brother, but daydreaming. She pictured herself the wife of an accomplice of Mussolini, and knew that nothing would make her more proud. A successful future in the party would therefore be inevitable for her children.