Under the Rose. Flavia Alaya

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      The Cross-Cultural Memoir Series introduces original, significant memoirs from women whose compelling histories map the sources of our differences: generations, national boundaries, race, ethnicity, class, and sexual orientation. The series features stories of contemporary women’s lives, providing a record of social transformation, growth in consciousness, and the passionate commitment of individuals who make far-reaching change possible.

      THE CROSS-CULTURAL MEMOIR SERIES

       Under the Rose: A Confession

      Flavia Alaya

       Come Out the Wilderness: Memoir of a Black Woman Artist

      Estella Conwill Májozo

       A Lifetime of Labor

      Alice H. Cook

       Juggling: A Memoir of Work, Family, and Feminism

      Jane S. Gould

       Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian-American Memoir of Homelands

      Shirley Geok-lin Lim

       Fault Lines

      Meena Alexander

       The Seasons: Death and Transfiguration

      Jo Sinclair

       Lion Woman’s Legacy: An Armenian-American Memoir

      Arlene Voski Avakian

       I Dwell in Possibility

      Toni McNaron

      Published by The Feminist Press at The City University of New York

      365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016

       www.feministpress.org

      First edition, 1999

      Copyright © 1999 by Flavia Alaya

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced or used, stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior written permission from The Feminist Press at The City University of New York except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      Quotation on page viii by Angela Carter, from “In the Company of Wolves,” from The Bloody Chamber and Other Adult Tales. Copyright © 1979 by Angela Carter.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Alaya, Flavia

       Under the rose: a confession / Flavia Alaya — 1st ed.

       p. cm. — (The cross-cultural memoir series)

      ISBN 978-1-93693-236-8

      1. Alaya, Flavia. 2. English teachers — United States — Biography. 3. Housing policy — New York (State) — New York— Citizen participation. 4. Catholic Church — United States — Clergy Biography. 5. Women scholars — United States — Biography. 6. Italian American women Biography. 7. Browne, Henry J. I. Title. II. Series.

      PE64.A48 A3 1999

      282'.092 — dc21

      [B]

      99-35835

      CIP

      This publication is made possible, in part, by a grant from the Ford Foundation. The Feminist Press would also like to thank Joanne Markell and Genevieve Vaughan for their generosity in supporting this book.

      Text design and typesetting by Dayna Navaro

      Rose photographs © by Ann Alaia Woods

      05 04 03 02 01 00 99 5 4 3 2 1

      For Esta

      For Robert

      For both my fathers—

      may they forgive me

      sub ro·sa (sub rō’z

). In secret; privately; confidentially [Latin, “under the rose,” from the practice of hanging a rose over a meeting as a symbol of secrecy, from the legend that Cupid once gave Harpocrates, the god of silence, a rose to make him keep the secrets of Venus.]

       —American Heritage Dictionary

       Contents

Prologue

Acknowledgments

Part 1: Tosca

Part 2: La Gioconda

       Part 3: The Girl of the Golden West

       Part 4: La Traviata

       Part 5: Un Ballo in Maschera

       Part 6: Cavalleria Rusticana

       Epilogue

      Photographs appear on pages 215–218 and 393–396

      See! Sweet and sound she sleeps in granny’s bed,

       between the paws of the tender wolf.

      —Angela Carter, “The Company of Wolves”

       Prologue

      This book has had a long and layered history. My best enemies tried to discourage me from writing it. My best friends begged me to make it a novel. And in some sense I have, not just to please them, but because I could see no way to tell the story without all the color it came to me in as I wrote it. I did not understand why, unless we mistrust the very gorgeousness of truth, a true story need be any more dull or evasive or lame than a fictional one.

      This was a problem for readers who thought, and may still think, that the stylistic boundary between true and fictional narrative should be wide and well-policed. Maybe a distaste for my style went with a disdain for my morals, with the result that when a late-draft manuscript was circulated some time ago a certain distinguished editor remarked, in the same breath, that she liked neither style nor person, the one being “too ornate” and the other “not nice people.”

      I