PART ONE
ONE
Giovanna Costa gripped her father’s arm as he escorted her down the aisle. Nearly everyone from the tiny southern fishing village was in the church of the pescatori, Santa Maria di Porto Salvo. People smiled at her, some whispered. Giovanna wondered what they were whispering and guessed it was nothing she hadn’t heard before. Comments like, “Finalmente, it’s about time!” and “What took them so long?”
Nunzio glowed at the base of the altar. He was tall, taller than Giovanna even, and with the sun blazing through the windows making his deep red hair a bright gold, he resembled a lit taper. Even from this distance she could feel his warmth and see beyond his eyes. His gaze lifted her up and sent them both spinning into their own little world, which was where they existed most of the time.
The village of Scilla was their pezzo di cielo caduto in terra—piece of heaven fallen to earth. They lived in the Chianalea, the oldest part of town, which housed the fishermen. Cobblestone alleys led to their stone houses, perched on the water. The crystal-clear azure sea lapped at their front doors, and their boats were docked at their doorsteps. Their backdoors and terraces led onto the narrow streets and alleys that wound up the mountain.
Scilla was situated on three levels, divided into three parts. The town jutted into the sea. At its point was the ruin of a castle that had been conquered and inhabited by countless invaders and clergy since it was built in A.D. 500. On one side of the castle was the Chianalea. On the other, the half-moon-shaped Marina Grande. There the houses were set in from the sea, and the sandy beach served to dry the fishermen’s nets. Above the Chianalea was San Giorgio, the newer part of the city, where the town square and city hall overlooked the splendor of the Calabrian coast and Sicily’s Aeolian Islands. And beyond San Giorgio were terraced lemon groves and farms that reached to the top of the mountains.
It was here that Giovanna and Nunzio grew like the vines on the village Indian fig trees, intertwined in such a way that it was impossible to know where one branch started and where the other ended. Giovanna did not know life without Nunzio. Her father and his mother were brother and sister. Their houses were two doors apart, and they were born two months apart. Although her earliest memories all had Nunzio at her side, it wasn’t until she was six years old that she realized that life did not exist without him. Nunzio was hoisting baskets of smelts onto the dock from her uncle’s fishing boat. As Nunzio turned to say hello, he slipped, sending the fish flying. Giovanna laughed. Giovanna had a throaty, hearty laugh even at that age. Instead of getting angry, Nunzio did it over and over again until Giovanna laughed so hard she had to gulp for air.
When Giovanna and Nunzio weren’t doing chores, they were in the water. They would swim out to one of the many rocks that dotted Scilla’s coastline and use it as home base to explore the sea around them. The clear water showcased a kaleidoscope of color, created by hundreds of species of fish and coral. Over the years they had developed the ability to hold their breath for long stretches and dive underwater to explore the reefs and wrecks.
Early on, Giovanna’s father and aunt had assured each other it was a childhood crush. There was a road to Scilla now; the people of Scilla were not obliged to marry cousins. With each day, though, it became more apparent that Giovanna and Nunzio were a matter of destiny, not circumstance. If someone commented, Giovanna’s father and aunt stoically repeated what their father said on the subject of marriages within the family: “It makes the blood stronger.”
When Giovanna reached puberty at fourteen, they were no longer allowed to spend hours alone together. Because they were cousins and neighbors, they saw each other many times a day, but their unchaperoned adventures came to an end.
As Giovanna made her way down the aisle, she glimpsed the faces witnessing her journey to the altar. Each face held a story about her life with Nunzio. There was Paolo Caruso, who had saved her leg. Early one spring, she and Nunzio had climbed the narrow steps out of the Chianalea, raced through the plateau of San Giorgio, and picked their way through the lemon groves and then headed to the farms to trade fish for goat cheese and milk. Giovanna fell over a stone wall, cutting her long, thin leg to the bone. Paolo was the first to hear Nunzio’s cries and carried Giovanna home on his back. Nunzio trotted alongside, bravely singing Giovanna’s favorite songs while holding his shirt around her leg to stop the bleeding.
Giovanna smiled at her older cousin Pasquale. Many times, this still formidable man had served as their protector. As children on the beach, Giovanna and Nunzio would search among the water-polished stones and fragments of terra-cotta for the ancient Greek and Roman coins that frequently washed ashore, particularly after a storm. They would use these thousand-year-old coins, with bits and pieces of heroic images still visible, for a pitching game played in the narrow alleys of the Chianalea. Once, older boys had cheated them out of their prize coins during a game. All burly Pasquale had done was knock on the culprits’ doors, and the treasure was quickly returned to its rightful owners.
Zia Antoinette’s cracked face brightened when Giovanna passed. Zia Antoinette had been the first of many to catch Nunzio and Giovanna kissing. She’d whacked Nunzio so hard with her broom that Nunzio would later joke that kissing Giovanna made his head spin and culo hurt.
Giovanna passed the row holding Nunzio’s sister, Fortunata, her pregnant belly, and six children. The older boys, Orazio and Raffaele, were already fishermen. They stood tall next to their lean, muscular father, Giuseppe Arena. Fortunata’s youngest boy, Antonio, waved to Giovanna from the pew.
Giovanna was also conscious of who was missing. In her mind she placed her brother, Lorenzo, who lived in America, and Nunzio’s father, who had succumbed to cholera a decade ago, at the end of the aisle with her mother, Concetta, and Nunzio’s mother, Zia Marianna.
Tears streamed down Concetta’s and Marianna’s faces and over their delicate features. Giovanna always thought the sisters-in-law looked like matching porcelain dolls: one with dark chestnut hair like her own, the other with red hair like Nunzio’s. They were close, and even now they did not separate to sit on opposite sides of the aisle, as was customary for in-laws, but stood together holding hands.
Nunzio and Giovanna had grown up listening to their mothers talk and gossip while they wove linens and embroidered late into the night. They marveled at how quickly their mothers turned the simple string into strong and beautiful cloths. When Giovanna and Nunzio were twelve, they heard Concetta and Marianna planning to sew together two tablecloths they had made to create one large enough to cover the Christmas dinner table. On the night before their mothers were to stitch the two cloths together, Giovanna and Nunzio each took the string from their mothers’ sewing baskets, and out of sight in the moonlight reflected by the sea, they pulled the string slowly through their mouths. When Concetta and Marianna knotted the stitches that wove the two halves together, they did not know they were accomplices in Nunzio and Giovanna’s first act of commitment. And only the week before the wedding, Concetta still did not know why Giovanna was so insistent that the stained and tattered Christmas tablecloth be part of her trousseau.
Nunzio took Giovanna’s hand after she had kissed her father and he’d shuffled into the pew beside his wife and sister. The couple’s eyes locked. Nunzio said he saw the sea in Giovanna’s eyes. He often told her that when he was out fishing he imagined himself sailing on her gaze, and that like the sea, the color of her eyes changed before a storm. Nunzio could tell from the color of the water what the day’s catch would be, and he could tell from the color of Giovanna’s eyes whether she was tranquil or had dark undertows. For her part, Giovanna felt that Nunzio’s eyes were windows. When life held her captive, she could escape through those windows. She could see farther and more clearly through Nunzio’s eyes.
Unlocking their gaze, they turned toward the priest and faced the altar of Santa Maria di Porto Salvo. The church was humble on the outside, simple stone and stucco. But inside, the frescoes that covered every wall turned the village church into a cathedral of dramatic proportions for the fishermen. Scilla’s history surrounded the parishioners and was interrupted only by windows onto its subject; and if the light was right, the view outside became one with the paintings. The tale of the creation of the frescoes had become part of village lore. It was a story built on stories:
One hundred years ago, an itinerant painter wandered into Scilla looking for work. The church had just been built, and the whitewashed walls mocked the parishioners with their poverty. The fishermen invited the painter to a town meeting in the church, where young and old regaled the painter with tales of Scilla. As they spoke, he sketched their faces and gestures in charcoal on paper they normally used to wrap the fish.
The oldest person in the village, Nunzio’s great-great-grandfather Giacomo, told the oldest tale. “Scilla,” he began with great flourish, “was the town Scyllae from Greek myth.” He made it known to the painter that they were all good Christians, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something to the legend—otherwise, there was no explanation for why the waters between Scilla and Sicily were so treacherous.
The painter apologized. “Signore, I am an illiterate man who only knows the stories of the Bible.”
Giacomo smiled. He had hoped the artist did not know of Scylla. He relished the opportunity to recount the chilling legend and to watch his friends’ and family’s faces as they reacted to different parts of the story.
Giacomo eased back into his chair and moved a candle closer to his face. When he described in detail the beautiful nymph Scylla, who was loved by the god Glaucus, he studied the men’s expressions. Giacomo knew they would miss the next part about Glaucus asking Circe for a love potion because their minds had not yet finished caressing Scylla’s lithe and silken body. When he told of Circe’s jealous rage, as she herself was in love with Glaucus, Giacomo saw the disapproval of the women. They sucked in their cheeks and shook their heads at such selfish emotion. The children’s eyes widened when he told of how Circe had turned Scylla into a hideous creature with twelve feet and six heads. “Scylla was cursed to remain on a solitary rock and devour sailors as they attempted to navigate the Straits of Messina,” Giacomo recounted dramatically. The children hugged their legs and drew them into their chests.
“Ever since,” Giacomo directed his closing comments to the painter, “should a sailor survive Scylla’s wrath, he would soon encounter the deadly whirlpool Cariddi, which lay in wait across the strait on the Sicilian side. This is why we say, ‘Tra una pietra ed un posto duro’—‘Between a rock and a hard place.’” Giacomo punctuated the ending by lifting his wine glass to Scylla and Cariddi. The artist captured the gesture perfectly, immortalizing Nunzio’s great-great-grandfather Giacomo as Saint Paul.
Another villager had been waiting for her moment. She had listened attentively to her father’s stories of ancient Scyllae, and when he died at sea she had become the unofficial town historian. Rocking her sleeping child in her lap, she began with great drama: “The blood of one hundred nations courses through our veins.” She pointed into the night as if the painter could see the view beyond her hand. “There,” she announced, “Sicilia. You can practically touch it. Every king and warrior believed they had to control Scyllae to control Sicilia. Scyllae was conquered so many times that the villagers lost track of who ruled the town—and were often reminded by the tip of a sword.”
After many more stories, most of which were true, the oldest fisherman, Agostino Bellantoni, cleared his throat to gain the floor. His feet shuffled beneath him, and he hung his head humbly. “Signore Artista”—his voice was at first tentative but gained conviction as he continued—“we enjoy these old stories. But Scilla is what it has always been, a village of simple fishermen and goat herders. This may not be exciting to an artist, but Scilla is for us the sea, Scilla is the cliffs, the trees of lemons, and now, our church.”
The most beautiful painting was behind the altar. Giovanna had studied it a thousand times, but today she felt herself standing in the boat with the disciples hauling in nets full of fish. The disciples looked at her with the familiar faces of the Costa, Pontillo, and Arena families of Scilla. Saint Paul, holding high a crucifix, gave her a warm smile from underneath his intense expression. Gazing from the boat, she saw Scilla’s mythical cliffs, and beyond the cliffs was heaven.
Giovanna was a devout Catholic. Nunzio occasionally accompanied her to church, but she knew Nunzio treated his faith merely like an important tradition. She had decided his scientific mind wouldn’t allow him devotion, but she forgave him because she loved the way his mind worked. She marveled at how he would use numbers to solve problems and how he could look at a building, a boat, or anything in three dimensions and know intuitively how it was built.
Nunzio was fixing fishing boats by the time he was eight. When he was twelve he was improving on them. From May through August, the fishermen of Scilla caught the best pescespada—swordfish—in the entire world. They had built a special boat and developed a unique system for spearing the elusive giants. A pole jutted fifteen feet into the air from the center of the boat. A man acting as lookout balanced at the top of this pole, his feet perched on two small blocks. Beneath him, four standing men rowed the boat, and a sixth man stood at the prow, spear and rope at the ready to launch into the speeding pescespada.
When Vittorio Macri’s boat was not moving quickly enough, it was Nunzio who figured out that the boat’s balance was off because of a misplaced center pole. And when he was only a teenager, Nunzio worked with the forger to create a better spearhead, which locked into the fish when the rope was pulled back.
Nunzio enjoyed his elevated position in the village. He was proud that his father’s friends came to him for assistance; it only made him love Scilla more. It was decided that Nunzio had a gift and should become an engineer. It meant leaving and going north to study. Felipe, the sometime village schoolmaster, warned him that he would be treated badly. He said they would call Nunzio a peasant and laugh at his clothes and dialect. But the prospect of losing status, of being mocked, all paled next to the thought of leaving Giovanna. In the end, Giovanna made the decision easy. She said that she would not marry him unless he went to school and came back an engineer.
It took Nunzio more than five years to finish his studies. Being from the Mezzogiorno, he was forced to work for less pay than his fellow students in his apprenticeship, and the professors often held Nunzio’s work to a higher standard, forcing him to repeat lessons. While these injustices kept him away from Scilla longer than planned, Nunzio reminded himself that it was a miracle he was studying at all. He would not spend his life, as every man of his family had before him, taking fish from the sea. Giovanna cursed their decision; life was intolerable without him. But her chest swelled with pride when someone asked if she had heard from “Maestro” Nunzio, a title reserved for respected professionals.
To make the time pass while Nunzio was away, Giovanna worked day and night. In the early mornings she cleaned her family’s narrow three-story house, starting from the top floor, with its terrace that overlooked both sea and village, and moving on to the second floor, which opened to the alley behind the house, and ending with the bottom floor, which faced the sea and the family’s fishing boat. After cleaning, she would go to her parents’ fish store to ready it for the day’s catch. She would return to the store in the afternoon after the midday meal to sell fish to the people of the Marina Grande and San Giorgio. When this routine left her with too much time in the evenings, she started trailing Signora Scalici, the town’s midwife.
Giovanna had long been the person to whom villagers in the Chianalea brought sick animals. When Giovanna held a hurt animal, it would calm down, and if she couldn’t help the animal, she would hold it until it died to ease the creature’s passing. She was equally as nurturing with plants. On the family’s terrace, a garden flourished in pots, and this became Giovanna’s laboratory. She devised poultices for drawing out infections and healing wounds using a variety of herbs.
So when people saw Giovanna with the midwife, they acted like they had known all along that one day Giovanna would deliver the babies of the village. While it was a natural progression, some of the women were not happy at first. They thought Giovanna had airs. They disapproved of how she took charge in the fish store and had no problem scolding men about the quality or price of their fish. And the women were puzzled and suspicious of her decision to allow Nunzio to go north without marrying her.
As each year went by, more and more of Giovanna’s time was spent helping Signora Scalici deliver Scilla’s next generation. After their initial mistrust, the mothers liked having Giovanna around. Signora Scalici was kind, but all business. Giovanna could help take the minds of birthing mothers elsewhere when the pain was unbearable and focus them when the time was right.
Early in her training, she had helped deliver her childhood friend Francesca Marasculo’s third baby. It had been a fast delivery. The women had cleaned up and left. Giovanna was to forever remain haunted by the screams of Francesca’s husband echoing off the stone houses as he ran through the Chianalea calling for help. He had woken up in a pool of Francesca’s blood, as she lay hemorrhaging and unconscious beside him. By the time the midwives reached her, Francesca was dead, her two young children clinging to her limp hands.
Francesca’s death became a scar that knit itself on Giovanna’s soul. From that time forward, after birthing a baby, Giovanna spent the night with the mother, cooking, cleaning, and keeping a watchful eye. For that, too, she had earned the respect and trust of the women of the village.
The wedding guests had returned to their pews following communion. The church was silent. Nunzio and Giovanna knelt before the altar. The priest nodded, and Nunzio squeezed Giovanna’s hand as they got up. Giovanna’s mind stopped wandering. The joyful weight of the moment nearly made her fall.
“Do you, Nunzio Pontillo, take Giovanna Costa to be your wife?” Nunzio was at sea as he looked into Giovanna’s blue eyes and said yes from their depths.
“Do you, Giovanna Costa, take Nunzio Pontillo to be your husband?” Giovanna felt complete when she said, “Yes.” Life was as it should be and how it was meant to be.
Sì. Finalmente.
TWO
Nunzio and Giovanna were born not long after the unification of Italy. As a child, Nunzio would climb on his uncle’s donkey, with a stick for a bayonet, and pretend he was Italian revolution general Giuseppe Garibaldi, riding into town to exile the foreign rulers. Giovanna would cheer and wave a red cloth. When their elders said the word “Risorgimento!” Giovanna and Nunzio could hear the defiance, hope, and passion in every syllable. Now, years later, it was different. It was as if the adults were saying an ex-lover’s name. There was still an attraction in their voices, but you could hear the betrayal.
One of the changes since unification was that sometimes Giovanna and Nunzio went to school. School was the rented room of a teacher sent from the north. The professore never lasted long, but when there was a professore in town, Giovanna’s and Nunzio’s parents insisted that they go. The town was supposed to build a school with money from the north, but the school was never built, and the money disappeared. Despite fleeing teachers and nonexistent classrooms, somehow Giovanna and Nunzio learned to read and write, and this alone distinguished them from most of the other children. But the majority of their education came from proverbs, legends, and conversation they overheard in the town square—the chiazza.
The chiazza was Scilla’s heartbeat. It was on the third level in Scilla and overlooked the castle, the neighborhood of the Chianalea, and the beach. Its western end jutted out over the sea. Adjacent to the square were rows of pino marino trees and flowering bushes; in June the air was scented with honeysuckle. In good weather, which was nearly every day, people would gather there in the evenings, and on Sundays. Children were scooted away to play so that the adults could have a glass of wine and gossip. Giovanna and Nunzio had a spot under a bougainvillea bush where they could listen undetected while they shelled and sucked on pistachios.
They loved when the talk turned from the village to the news of the world. Town gossip was boring. Generally it was a topic the men all agreed upon, and it made for uneventful conversation. “The fish are running good,” and they would all nod and grumble in agreement, “Sì, the fish are running good.” But when the subject was the politics of Italy, that was an entirely different matter. Arguments and curses flew fast and furious, fists were raised in dramatic thrusts, and unlikely alliances were both made and broken.
When Giovanna and Nunzio heard that a northern newspaper had made its way into town, it didn’t matter how many chores they had, they would make sure they were under the bougainvillea bush with an extra stash of pistachios and a flask of wine. On these nights, Vittorio, one of the few contadini in the village who could read, would scrub his hands and muscular forearms with lemons to rid them of the fish smell and put on his best shirt. He would stride to the chiazza and sit in the prime spot that had been reserved for him. Within minutes, scores of men would gather around Vittorio with the women on the perimeter pretending to be absorbed in their sewing.
Vittorio would read aloud from what was usually a Roman newspaper, although sometimes a paper made it all the way from Milano. Their local newspaper was published in Reggio and written in their dialect, but it didn’t have the same incendiary content of the northern papers. The northern papers were written in Italian, which was only vaguely similar to the dialect spoken in Scilla. Also, the paper was invariably three months old, and along the way pages had been torn out to blow a nose or to wrap the day’s catch. So Vittorio would struggle to read what was left of the words that most closely resembled his own language.
“And then, the pig says”—Vittorio was prone to commentary—“our Italia must be protected by an Italian army. Our good men from l’alta Italia are serving, and so must the lazy dogs of the south whose families whine that they can’t leave their farms.”
“That stupid son of a whore!” Luigi DiFranco, a goat herder, shouted, jumping on his chair. It wobbled on the uneven cobblestones beneath. “If my son goes in their goddamn army, who will take care of the goats and make the cheese to pay their taxes!!??”
Every man shouted at once.
“Who will fix the nets?”
“Dogs! They are pigs! Sporcaccioni!”
“How come they tax my mule but not their rich friends’ cows? I’m not stupid!”
“Will their sons plow my land?”
The men were so loud that Vittorio’s brother lit a firecracker to stun them into silence.
Cesare, one of the oldest men in the village, was the first to speak. “Who is this Italia and why does she need an army? Is she a Roman queen?”
After a moment there was laughter, but Vittorio was getting impatient; he wanted to continue reading. “Cesare, do you know nothing? Italia is the country we live in. The north, the south, Sicilia, we are all this country of Italia.”
“Cesare’s right!” The firecracker had done little to change Luigi’s mood. “Who is this Italia? I’m Calabrese. I can’t afford to be an Italian. They taxed my goat, they taxed my mule, and now they want to take my son. Italian my ass!”
“It’s the price we pay for a united Italy. Do you want to be conquered every time the winds blow?” Vittorio felt he had to defend unification.
“No, but I want to eat!” shouted Luigi.
“I hear the northerners aren’t running to join their army,” another man shouted. “A ship captain in Naples told me the northerners are leaving in droves for South America.”
It was like another firework had exploded. Voices overlapped. Hands and arms were not enough for gesticulation. They jumped up and down and acted out emotions. Someone fell off a wobbly chair. From afar, the group looked like it was engaged in a bizarre ritual dance.
“Leave their homes? When do they come back?”
“If there are no northerners in the north, let’s move!”
“Have you ever seen a Piemontese row a boat?”
The men talked until Luigi’s one-eyed demented rooster crowed midnight, and Giovanna and Nunzio stayed under the bougainvillea bush until their mothers pulled them out by their ears. Giovanna couldn’t remember if that was the first time she heard talk of people going to other lands, but from that moment on it was a constant topic.
It was unthinkable to leave your home. It was a concept, like Italy, that was too difficult to fathom. Didn’t her papa teach them that while the rulers always changed, the Calabresi remained? If no war or event in Italy’s history had forced them from their home, how could unification?
Lorenzo, Giovanna’s older brother, played with the little bit of food on his plate. The air was thick at the dining table. Concetta knew her son well. She knew he was trying to say something, and she was doing her best to stop him from saying it. Every time he started to speak or even sigh, she picked up a plate or shifted in her chair to break his concentration. Domenico peered at his son expectantly from under his eyebrows, afraid to meet his gaze.
In the past three years, Giovanna had watched her proud brother move from anger to frustration to defeat. There was a slump in his once-square shoulders, and his lean body now just looked skinny. Giovanna felt that she and her brother had aged. It wasn’t simply because he was a man of twenty-two and she a woman of twenty, but because life had become more and more difficult with each year.
When they had buried the last of the dead from the cholera epidemic, including Nunzio’s father, they thought that the worst times were over. But cholera turned out to be an overture to a tragic opera where events spiraled out of control and the audience was left trying to keep track of the villains.
The other villains were not as dramatic or forthright as cholera; they were more insidious and masked. Since the government started taxing goats, the mountain peasants had to reduce their herds. Soon there wasn’t enough milk and cheese to trade, and they had to reduce the herds further. For a while they ate a lot of goat meat. Now there was no milk, no cheese, and no goats. Then they taxed the mules, so farmers had to plow the lands themselves. One year the crops would be eaten by parasites, and the next they would die of drought. When there wasn’t enough food from the farms and people were forced to grow what they could in their yards, they taxed the gardens. Only the padroni, the large landowners, who were mainly foreigners or northerners, had farms and animals anymore. The goat herders and the farmers were reduced to serfdom on the manors of the padroni.
When the people rebelled with sticks, the northern police mowed them down with guns. The only option for many men was to become a brigand. First the sons and then sometimes the fathers left for the mountains to make their living robbing rich landowners and travelers who traversed the region’s few roads. In the dead of night, the men would scramble down cliff paths to leave money or food with their families, never staying more than minutes. When they stopped coming in the dead of night, their families knew that the police had killed them.
Lorenzo planned on marrying Pasqualina, Vittorio’s daughter, but he was waiting for things to get better. Pasqualina got tired of waiting. When Luigi DiFranco’s son, who was living in America, wrote Pasqualina’s family with a proposal of marriage and the money for passage, she accepted. After Pasqualina left, Lorenzo considered brigantaggio, but he knew that he would not be a good brigand. He came from a family with property; the best brigands were of pure peasant stock. It was their way to rise up in the world, to gain respect, and to reap the justice that the law failed to give them. And it was their fate for their severed heads to be displayed as an example for other justice seekers.
Lorenzo wanted his turn at life—to become a man like his father, with a house and a business. The Mezzogiorno had turned him into a contadino without power or a future.
“I’m going to America.” There. He said it.
Concetta sucked in air and began to clear the dishes as if a word had not been spoken.
Lorenzo looked at his father. “I’ll send money. I can’t help you here.”
His father walked out the door in silence and sat on the dock. Lorenzo rose to hug his mother, who sobbed at his touch. She didn’t want her son to see her this way, so she waved him out of the house. He heard Giovanna comforting his mother as he walked to his father and sat down beside him. Domenico didn’t look up and continued staring into the water that reflected his weather-beaten but still handsome face. In a soft voice and with tears etching his skin, Domenico said,
“Dami centu lire
E mi ni vaiu a l’America
Maladitu l’America
E chi la spiminata”
Give me a hundred lire
And I’m off to America
Goddamn America
And the man who thought it up
Domenico pulled at the ropes holding the trunk to test their tightness. Lorenzo checked his pocket many times for the address of Luigi DiFranco. It had been arranged that he would first go to Luigi’s home until he found his own place to sleep in New York. The piece of paper seemed so fragile. What if he lost it? He had already memorized the address, Mulberry Street, 141, but he did not trust his memory. He copied it again and put it in his shoe. The immigrants who returned described a city of black smoke and soot. He had waking nightmares of wandering around trying to see obscured numbers and not being able to ask directions.
Domenico put his hand on Lorenzo’s shoulder and said, “Andiamo.” Concetta and Giovanna were inside the house. Having said their goodbyes, Concetta did not want to see her son walk off. She was in her rocking chair, the one where she had nursed Lorenzo, winding her rosary through her knotted fingers. Giovanna sat beside her, resting her hand on her mother’s leg. When Concetta heard the mule’s hooves scrape on the cobblestones, she rocked faster and faster until Giovanna had to grab the arms of the chair to keep it from falling over. As the frantic rocking stopped, her mother let escape a wail from deep inside her chest that Giovanna knew was echoing off the cliffs of Scilla.
THREE
Maria Perrino groaned. Her mother absentmindedly patted her head and continued her diatribe. “L’America’s worse than a cheap whore, a mala femmina, who lures away our men.”
Giovanna and Signora Scalici tuned her out as they prepared the room for the birth. Giovanna had heard Maria’s mother give this speech before. Maria’s father was one of the first to go to America. Initially, he had sent the family a letter with money each month; now it was once a year at best. After Lorenzo emigrated, the Costas’ fish store had become one of the primary places for women who had already lost their husbands and sons to America to come and commiserate with one another. In their minds, the Statue of Liberty was not lifting her lamp, but her skirts. She was l’America’s Scylla, a beauty beckoning from a rock in the water. And she was going to devour them.
Not getting a reaction, Maria’s mother asked Giovanna a question. “Have you heard from Maestro Nunzio in Rome?”
Giovanna nodded. “Last week,” she said, and continued scrubbing her hands while Signora Scalici tended to the young woman. Giovanna no longer apprenticed; she delivered the firstborns and Signora Scalici delivered the children of women she had already helped birth. Today was different. Signora Scalici had asked her to come knowing it was going to be a difficult delivery.
“And what of Lorenzo? Has he married that girl he met in New York?” The mother interrogated Giovanna while she dried her hands.
“Next month they’ll marry.”
“Lorenzo Costa marrying a girl from Puglia.” The woman clucked her tongue. “L’America is diluting Calabrese blood.”
Giovanna wished the Signora would shut up and pay more attention to her laboring daughter.
“The head’s to heaven,” whispered Signora Scalici to Giovanna. “I’ve tried to turn the baby for weeks. We’ll have to deliver it breech.”
The mother fluttered around the room commanding her daughter, “You need to push more. Be strong.”
“Signora,” directed Signora Scalici, “we need more belladonna. Can you get it?”
“Sì, sì, of course.” Maria’s mother swept out on her mission, heading to the farmacia. The request for belladonna would be the pharmacist’s cue to keep the meddling mother occupied and out of the way for as long as possible.
The young woman calmed when her mother left. “Maria,” Signora Scalici spoke directly in her ear, “we must do this together. Lean on Giovanna and follow her directions.”
Giovanna braced her body against Maria’s back and held her beneath the arms. At the next contraction, Giovanna instructed, “A long push, make it long and slow.” Maria’s sweat-drenched hair was matted, and the veins in her neck and face looked as though they might break through her skin.
After a long hour of pushing, the baby’s culo emerged as Signora Scalici looped the cord around her finger to protect it from tangling. With Giovanna applying pressure to Maria’s lower pelvis, Signora Scalici reached in and unfolded the baby’s legs, drawing them out.
“Ah, as I thought, Maria, you have a girl.” Turning to Giovanna, she said, “We must quickly birth the head.”
Maria was exhausted. “Can’t we let her rest through the next contraction?” muttered Giovanna. Giovanna was still young and occasionally her empathy got the best of her.
“Clear the nose and mouth when you see them,” instructed Signora Scalici, ignoring Giovanna’s question. “Forza, Maria. We will soon see your child’s head.” Signora Scalici draped the baby’s body over her forearm and reached into Maria, putting her fingers into the baby’s mouth. The fingers of her other hand cradled the back of the baby’s neck.
“Push, Maria,” gently coaxed Giovanna. Maria no longer looked human; it was as if all the blood had drained from her face, into her eyes. The strain of pushing had broken all the blood vessels.
Signora Scalici lifted the lower half of the baby’s body upward. Maria pushed, the midwife pulled, and the nose and eyes emerged. Giovanna quickly wiped them.
“This is it, Maria, but a slow push this time.” Giovanna realized the cruelty of her words. This baby was only centimeters from being born, and the mother had to take it slow. But Maria listened, and in one slow, long push, the rest of her little girl’s head emerged.
“Brava, Maria!” exhorted Signora Scalici. Maria fell back on the pillows, panting and moaning.
Giovanna cleared the baby’s passages and laid her on her mother’s chest. All three women felt such relief that laughter accompanied their tears.
“Maria, they say that with a girl born backwards, the birth is the easiest part. She will be strong and stubborn. Look at Giovanna! When I delivered her, I was first introduced to her culo!”
They were soon quiet. Giovanna looked at Maria cradling her daughter. The baby was black and blue, Maria was covered in blood, and yet they looked beautiful. A peace descended in the room as the baby suckled for the first time. Giovanna’s thoughts turned to Nunzio. With his return imminent, she could not attend a birth without thinking of their children. Her faith in the future was strengthened as she imagined cradling Nunzio’s child. They would finally be inextricably bound and live forever in their generations.
Through scores of births, Giovanna would imagine birthing her own children, so when nearly a year had passed since marrying Nunzio and she had not become pregnant, Giovanna’s disappointment became all-consuming.
Nunzio and Giovanna sat on the edge of the cliff above the village and looked out at the moon-drenched sea. It was a night so clear and bright that it was timeless. This moment, too, was timeless. They were married adults in their late twenties, but two decades before, they had often sat in the exact same spot talking of their future while they devoured fresh cheese and bread that they had traded fish for. There was no longer cheese and bread, but they still dreamt.
While Nunzio wove fantastic plans that included wealth and status, Giovanna prayed that her self-diagnosis was wrong. She hadn’t menstruated in three months; she believed that this wasn’t because she was pregnant but because she was starving.
“You know, Giovanna, one day we will sit here and I will call you Doctor,” declared Nunzio.
This comment was so outrageous that it interrupted Giovanna’s thoughts, and she laughed.
“No, Giovanna, I mean it. When things change, I will work in the north for a few years while you go to school. We will come back to Scilla as a doctor and an engineer with our five little children.”
She almost laughed again, but she saw that Nunzio’s eyes had hardened, which meant he was serious, so she kept quiet. She loved planning the future with Nunzio, but this dream was impossible. She would be happy if their plans simply included no separations, food, and children.
“Giovanna, you will make the most wonderful doctor. When I was in school, I read about women who had done many things, and I even met a woman doctor. That’s when I thought my Giovanna could be a dottore. Why not?”
It was impossible for Giovanna to say anything, so she simply gazed at the sky. Were life not currently a contest for survival, it would have been unthinkable to hear a husband encouraging his wife to become a doctor. But in times of turmoil, tradition became a detail.
After their wedding, Nunzio was forced to travel to find work. He spent time in Reggio helping to build ships and went as far as Naples to oversee the construction of a dock. At first Nunzio and Giovanna considered moving to a city with more work, but it soon became clear that there wasn’t any city in the south with enough work to keep Nunzio employed more than a few days a month. In the north there were public works projects, but after five years in Rome he knew that, engineer or not, in the north he was still considered a southern peasant.
Within a few months there wasn’t even work in other cities. Nunzio would fish, but there was little to trade for the fish, and no one had the money to buy it in the store. To make matters worse, the sea’s bounty had diminished, and often they would return with barely a basket of fish to sell. Occasionally, the glantuomini—the gentry—walked into the fish store. Their felt hats set them apart from the villagers wearing worn wool caps. Giovanna cringed when they entered. Even though there would soon be coins in the coffers, she hated the manner in which she had to greet them, “Vosia, sa benadica”—“bless me, your honor.” She refused to kiss their hands as the others did. The gentry were in full control of the local government and the police. They made the laws, enforced the laws, and exempted themselves from them. Giovanna often heard the men in town end a story with, “Chi ha denaro ed amicizia va nel culo della giustizia”—“he who has money and friends fucks justice in the ass.”
Giovanna and Nunzio’s families survived on fish and the food and sundries that were given to Giovanna in exchange for delivering babies. But it was the money sent by Lorenzo from l’America that allowed them to keep their house and pay the taxes.
Giovanna knew they were better off than most. A year ago, she started to notice curious dents in the walls of houses she visited. The mystery was solved when she entered a home to check on a mother who had delivered a few days before and saw her scraping plaster from the wall and adding it to the little bit of flour on the table.
To keep them nourished, mothers breast-fed their children long after they would normally have been weaned. Giovanna watched as hungry people unconsciously stared at the breasts of nursing mothers, who would tug at their shawls to cover their chests as they walked quickly past.
“Giovanna, are you listening to me?” Nunzio took her chin in his hands and turned her face toward his own.
“Sì, sì, scusa, Nunzio, but before anything else, I want to have our children.”
Nunzio turned, dejected. “I know,” he whispered. This blow of reality changed his mood. They sat in silence for a long time. They could hear the water lapping up against the boats, could see the sea sparkle and smell the lemons in the air. They were being forced from the piece of heaven that their families had inhabited for generations.
“Giovanna, Scilla will always be our home and our children will marry here. I promise you this. Before we go to the north for your studies, I must get money to feed us and make things good again.”
Giovanna shivered. She knew where this conversation was going. The stars started to blur. The village where they traded food was totally empty. Immigration had started at the mountaintop and trickled down to the water. The fishermen were the last to go. Sometimes, Giovanna felt Scilla was hemorrhaging and would envision the town as her doomed friend, Francesca Marasculo. The blood had drained from the top to the bottom, and only a few were left behind clinging onto the dying village.
“It’s the twentieth century now, Giovanna. Things will change. They are changing all over the world; it is just coming more slowly to Scilla.”
Giovanna didn’t utter a sound.
“And engineers, the world needs engineers. I’ll come back to Scilla and build us a port.” Nunzio was using his big public voice.
At the words “come back,” a wail escaped from Giovanna. She pulled her knees to her chest and began to rock.
“Giovanna, I am sorry.” Tears streamed down Nunzio’s face. He tried to compose himself and reached into his pocket. “Look at this.” He pulled out a tattered piece of paper. It was an advertisement in English. “Lorenzo sent it.”
Giovanna’s eyes flashed anger at the betrayal. She knew Lorenzo thought he was helping, but how could he have done this?
Nunzio held the paper before her. He had learned some English in school, and he read it slowly to Giovanna.
CROTON RESERVOIR DAILY WAGE:
Common laborer, white $1.30–$1.50
Common laborer, colored $1.25–$1.40
Common laborer, Italian $1.15–$1.25
“Giovanna, more than a dollar a day! That’s a wealth of lire! Lorenzo said he would help me. I’ll be back in no time with all the money we need.”
“Lorenzo also said he would be back.”
“Lorenzo’s wife is in l’America. Mine is here.” Nunzio kissed her.
They cried together for so long they were saturated in each other’s sorrow. When they could cry no longer, they tangled their long legs together and made love, adding sweat to their tears.
Giovanna prayed that Nunzio would leave her with a child. In the month before Nunzio left, Giovanna ate more than her share and uncharacteristically took all that was offered, hoping to make herself healthy enough to conceive. She focused all her energies on this project, which was a diversion from the constant pain and foreboding she was living with.
The preparations for Nunzio’s departure were similar to those for Lorenzo, except she was now the one packing the trunk instead of her mother. Giovanna made it a mechanical task. She gathered, sorted, and wrapped items as if she were leading a demonstration on how to pack for the New World. She especially wanted to be sure he had dried fruits and nuts. For years they had heard stories about the horrible passage to l’America. The immigrants considered it the penance they had to pay for leaving their villages. But penance or not, Giovanna was determined that Nunzio would not eat vermin-infested food.
The only time her emotions revealed themselves was when she was baking mustasole, the hard cookies that would keep for a year or more. She shaped three of the cookies: a swordfish for Scilla, one that resembled a pretzel but was really a G and an Nintertwined, and a crucifix. Wrapping the special cookies separately in fabric torn from her wedding dress, she buried them in the bottom of the trunk.
With every item that Giovanna packed, Nunzio assured her this was a brief chapter in their lives. He would soon return to Scilla with the money they needed to move north and have Giovanna start her studies. Giovanna never laughed at his plan again, but she felt like she was playing along with a child’s fantasy. All she wished for was that Nunzio would return to her and the child she hoped she was carrying. She wondered why Nunzio’s dream had to be bigger than her own and reminded herself that was how it had always been. He was the idealist and she the pragmatist. Yet, like everything in their lives, there were contradictions. He was the idealist with little faith, and she was the pragmatist who believed in miracles. Nunzio dreamt and Giovanna prayed.
Giovanna insisted on going with Nunzio and her father to Naples. On the night before they were to leave, they both had trouble sleeping. Nunzio awoke at one point to find Giovanna carefully unraveling the Christmas tablecloth and winding the yarn into a ball. He did not question her and instead helped her undo the stitches. When the last of the string was wound on the ball, he simply took her hand and led her back to bed. They found it difficult to speak to each other and spent what little time they had in an entangled embrace.
It took them a day to walk to Reggio. They avoided the roads, knowing they might be stopped and forced to pay a tax, or jumped by brigands who would assume that if they were traveling on a road they were wealthy. Instead, they took to the hills, and when they did encounter brigands in the mountains, they were given a hot meal and advice for safely navigating the streets of Naples. Sitting by the fire, a man with many slashes on his face, some scarred and others fresh, warned, “If the ship is not ready, go back into the mountains. The port is filled with thieves and hucksters.”
From Reggio they took a boat to Naples. Emotionally and physically drained, they slept for most of the trip. Giovanna had never been to Naples, or to any city so large, and she was at once repulsed and awed. The smells and voices assaulted her, and the buildings made her jaw gape. With the brigands’ words ringing in their ears, they avoided the peddlers selling “Americani clothes,” the “dentists” who offered to extract troublesome teeth before the voyage, the “monks” who sold blessings for safe passage, and the cures for trachoma, the dreaded eye disease that would prevent an immigrant access to l’America.
Giovanna was relieved that the Spartan Prince was leaving the next day. She couldn’t imagine being able to act so strong for much longer. Nunzio bought a ticket for steerage and was examined by the ship’s doctor. The shipping companies did not want to run the risk of transporting back a rejected immigrant at their expense. After Nunzio passed the physical, they coached him. The shipping agent asked in Neapolitan dialect, “Do you have a job in America?”
“Yes,” answered Nunzio, thinking of Lorenzo’s promise to find him a job.
“No, the answer is no,” reprimanded the agent. “If you say yes, you will be rejected. A yes means that you are contracted labor, and that’s illegal.”
“No, I have no job,” Nunzio repeated.
They slept in a pensione near the port and woke to the sounds of a ship’s departure—the vendors’ cries, the clopping of heavy hooves hauling luggage, and men shouting orders. Nearing the ship, they also heard the wails and sobs of the many women who had come to bid their husbands and sons good-bye. Peddlers circled in and out of embracing families in a last-ditch effort to sell their wares. They knew their prey was vulnerable, and a distraught mother might pull out her last coin for a blessing or extra food.
Domenico cut the awkward silence between Giovanna and Nunzio with the first of many reminders to kiss Lorenzo’s children and to tell his son to write more often. Domenico seemed desperate to lessen their pain by ignoring it and pretending all was well.
“Carry your luggage? I’ll bring it right on the ship.” A young boy pestered them.
Nunzio ignored the child and knelt on the dock. He reached his cupped hand into the water and poured it on the back of his neck, letting it spill into his shirt. The Italian waters made their way down his back and started to evaporate. When he stood, Domenico reached up to fix Nunzio’s collar and took him by the shoulders, turning his son-in-law’s face toward his own. “Our blood is your blood. No country can separate you from your family.” At the gangplank, Domenico told him, “Go, go, I expect you to be a big man in America. Don’t forget you are a maestro.”
Giovanna reached in her bag and handed Nunzio the ball of yarn from the tablecloth. All she said to him was, “I’ll be here.”
Nunzio gripped her so hard that she forever had a scar where his nail had dug into her neck. She called the scar “Nunzio’s good-bye.” Domenico separated them. Nunzio walked up the gangplank and went to the ship’s rail above where Giovanna stood. He held one end of the string and threw the ball down to her.
The noise around them became deafening; people shouted, horns blew, and donkeys brayed in a whirl of motion. In the midst of this chaos, Giovanna and Nunzio stood perfectly still, staring into each other’s eyes, each holding tight to the string. Another horn blew shriller than the rest. Smoke billowed around them as lines were untied and the ship’s motor roared. Giovanna and Nunzio did not move, only the string began to unwind when the Spartan Prince slowly pulled out of port. The string stretched between them, becoming longer and longer as the ship became smaller. When the ball was at last unwound, the string left Giovanna’s and Nunzio’s hands at the same moment and drifted into the sea.
Cedar Grove, New Jersey, 1963
Everyone remembers that day. I just remember it a little differently. I was in the first grade, seated alphabetically, staring at the bulletin board. The second grade teacher walked into the room and whispered into my teacher’s ear. My teacher, who was old and very upright, slumped back onto her desk and covered her gaping mouth. It took a few minutes, but in a shaky voice, she told us to put our heads on our desks because the president had been shot. From our lowered viewpoint, we could catch glimpses of Mrs. Robinson pacing and whimpering. The principal’s voice came over the loudspeaker. It didn’t boom like usual. “Children, President Kennedy was shot and he has died. School is dismissed so that you can all go home and mourn with your families.” We didn’t quite get it. Mrs. Robinson had to tell us to leave.
My best friend, Thea, and I ran home to tell our mothers. As we ran into the circle at the dead end, there was a big black car, a funeral parlor car, in our driveway. I remember asking Thea if she thought they brought the dead president to my house. My mother was sitting with a strange man. I ignored him to announce the president’s death to my mother. Instead, she told me that my great-grandmother had died. She said my Big Nanny died at the same moment as the president. I spent the remainder of the day trying to figure out if my great-grandmother’s death and the president’s death were connected.
My mother and grandmother took me to the wake. I overheard them say, “It will be fine; she barely knew her.” They didn’t realize how well I remembered brushing my Big Nanny’s long gray hair, how holding her enormous silky hands always made me feel safe, and how I had memorized her face as she said words to me in Italian that I didn’t understand.
I studied my great-grandmother, her coffin, and the red roses that spelled M-O-T-H-E-R from the kneeler in front of the casket. She looked like a fairy princess with a rosary knotted in her fist. Her dress sparkled. It was blue, the same color as her eyes, the blue that they painted heaven in church. I absentmindedly played with the sequins on her gown and wondered about heaven. Did you eat in heaven? If so, would Big Nanny make the president gravy and meatballs? My musings were interrupted when my grandmother swatted my shoulder. “Get away from here now.”
As always, my grandfather came to my rescue and drew me onto his lap.
“She didn’t have to hit me, Nonno.”
“She’s upset, Anna. Everybody love your Big Nanny, but most of all your nanny.”
I watched Nanny take something from her vinyl purse. She unwrapped a small religious medal, kissed it, and placed it under the pillow that held Big Nanny’s head. For the first time ever, I saw my grandmother cry.
A month later I sat at my alphabetically arranged school desk. Mrs. Robinson handed out the new Weekly Reader. The president’s picture was on the cover and the headline was HERO. I taped the card from the funeral parlor to my Weekly Reader. At the top of the card was the Blessed Virgin Mary with outstretched arms. Underneath Mary’s robes of heavenly blue was printed, GIOVANNA COSTA SIENA 1873–1963.