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of Saint Bernadette would be put on to inaugurate both the grotto and the theatre. We spoke with excitement of the plans. He announced that I would be Saint Bernadette. Rosalba, our leader, would play the part of Bernadette’s mother.
    I walked home with a copy of the play and the feeling that I had been singled out as special. Mother and my neighbours were just as excited as I was. The only thing I was unhappy about was that my father wouldn’t see me in the play.
    Aurora, who lived in an alley not far from my house, was asked to play the Madonna. She had been chosen because of her long blond hair and gray-blue eyes. Some of the older church ladies snickered when they heard she was playing the part. “Couldn’t they have found someone better than the zingarella ?” they asked.
    Aurora’s mother, Paola, was a statuesque, fair-haired woman, and was known as a giruventula , a busybody, because she went from house to house chattering with people, saying anything that came to her mind. Paola and her husband Micu had met in Cassino after the war. When he brought her to the village, she was already his wife, married in a civil ceremony. Some people doubted they had married at all. They speculated that he had found her in the street and she had just hung on to him for lack of a better life. Why would a good-looking woman like that settle for a taciturn and almost illiterate peasant, if not because she was spoiled goods and needed a roof over her head?
    Paola’s reputation as a harebrained outsider was sealed when she named her first-born daughter Aurora, instead of Giuseppa, after her father-in-law – an affront to both her husband’s family and village traditions. Paola refused to give the delicate bundle of light a name derived from a man’s name. She chose Aurora instead, just because she liked its meaning – dawn.
    Lucia and Tina made fun of Aurora for having accepted the part. “Isn’t she a little too old to be in a play?” Lucia chortled one day at the seamstress’s shop.
    Aurora shrugged, turning cold toward her two friends. Alfonso had spread rumours that Aurora had flirted with Totu, but Lucia hadn’t paid any attention to it, since her brother had tried in various ways before to find fault with both Totu and Aurora .
    We rehearsed for weeks, learning the life story of Bernadette Soubirous, a French shepherdess who had lived a hundred years before our time. The girls in the shop had fun dressing me up. With my square face in a flowered scarf, a long skirt, and a red apron, I looked like a real peasant. They twirled me around and laughed at how I looked like a little woman. Aurora had the seamstress, Giovanna, order white satin fabric for her long dress and a wide blue sash.
    Don Raffaele told us about Bernadette leading a poor and simple life; yet the Blessed Virgin chose to appear to her in a grotto, in a golden-coloured cloud, and revealed many important things to her. For a period of six months, Bernadette had eighteen apparitions. People were skeptical and persecuted Bernadette and her family. “I do not promise you happiness in this world, but in the next,” the Lady said during one of her apparitions.
    As Our Lady, Aurora didn’t have very many lines. Most of my lines were with the mother, who tried to convince Bernadette to disavow what she had seen, for fear that others would think her crazy. But Bernadette persisted in believing in the visions. She didn’t want to forget what the Lady told her, so on one occasion she brought a pencil and paper to write down her words. The Lady told her, “What I have to say does not have to be written down. Open your heart to the message of love.”
    In one of the most important scenes, the ninth apparition, the Lady asked Bernadette to dig a hole in the ground, to drink the water and bathe in it. I had to pretend to dig, and then I splashed water from a pot on my face. As I acted this part out,