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six of us.” Chettie saves me the trouble. “A handful.”
    “I need a maid,” Mrs. Ricci says ruefully. She is petite, with brown hair streaked with gray. She has soft brown eyes and a big smile, just like Chettie’s.
    “Let me help.” I put my lunch pail down in the corner and sit next to a little boy. “Here.” I fill a spoon with pastina and direct it toward his mouth.
    “Oreste hates to eat,” Chettie warns me.
    “Is that true?” I ask him. The way I say it makes him smile. “Please? For me? I’m your new friend Nella.”
    “Nay Nay?” he says.
    “You can call me Nay Nay.”
    “Hey, Ma, look, Oreste is eating.” Chettie points.
    “Well, it’s a Monday miracle. Thank you, Nella. And welcome to our house.” I can tell Mrs. Ricci means it. I feel like I’m part of the family already. I knew I’d love school, but I had no idea lunch would be fun too.
    When Assunta comes to pick me up, I try to tell her all about the school and my new friend Chettie, but she cuts me off when she’s heard enough. “When Alessandro comes, I want to live in a house on Dewey Street. I wouldn’t mind starting out in one half of a two-family home. There’s a red-brick one on the end of the street that’s pretty. It has green awnings and a shade tree.” She treats me to one of her rare smiles. “I could be happy there, I think.”
    The walk seems much shorter going home, and I realize that I’m not the only Castelluca with dreams of living in town. I hope Alessandro Pagano is a good provider, because Assunta will want Oriental rugs and teacups and copper pots and pans. I’ll bet she’ll make him buy striped awnings so the front porch has shade when the sun is hot.
    “Where do you go to Mass?” Chettie wants to know as we walk back to school from lunch. I’ve been helping her and her mom every day at lunch for a month now, and they are so grateful, they give me a hot meal, so I don’t have to carry a pail anymore. I much prefer Mrs.Ricci’s hot minestrone soup and fresh bread to a cold sandwich. Chettie and I sprinkle grated cheese on our soup and dunk the bread into the broth. On Fridays, Mrs. Ricci lets us have birch beer, a sort of root beer soda, with our lunch. “Aren’t you Catholic?”
    “Yes,” I tell her, blushing, because our family only makes it to church on Christmas and Easter. We can’t afford the trolley for the whole family, and besides, Sunday is a day of chores for us. “The cows don’t know it’s the Sabbath,” Papa says. “They still have to be milked.” How do I explain this to Chettie without making my family sound like a bunch of godless heathens? “We work on Sundays. Chores have to be done every day, rain or shine.”
    “But you have to go to church. You have to make the time.”
    “Why?”
    “Because if you don’t you’ll go to hell, and I’m not visiting you in hell.” Chettie laughs. It’s a wonder to me that we have become such fast friends. Chettie could be friends with anyone though; she’s funny and everyone likes her. And while she has a cute smile, she’s not a great beauty. But being funny is much better than being beautiful; I can see that already. “Why don’t you come to my church?”
    “The big one on the hill?” I ask her.
    “Our Lady of Mount Carmel. It’s brand-new. They hung the bells in the tower last year.”
    “It’s pretty,” I say, wishing I could go to church with Chettie, but I don’t have a dress coat and a felt hat to wear to such a fancy place. Maybe I could borrow Mama’s gloves!
    “We were Presbyterians for a year until they got the Catholic church built.”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah. For a long time, the bishop of Philadelphia wouldn’t build a Catholic church here because he didn’t like the Italians. He was Irish. So the Italians became Presbyterians because the Presbyterians were willing to build a church, and they did, on the other end of Garibaldi Avenue. When the bishop found out, he rushed to getMount Carmel built