Books and other Distractions

This is the garden by the lake that I tend for six months. I look down on it from the deck above, from the house behind windows, waiting for the rains to stop.  In April, the sun begins to linger for days on end, pushing me out of the house and down to this plot of weeds.  Right in front is my winter patch, still growing, still producing through stormy weather. I have enjoyed harvesting baby Brussels sprouts and baby cabbages, bitter broccoli and cime di rape. 

Most of the time though, I read. Sometimes I start two, three books at a time.

I just finished Frank McCourt's 'Tis.  Yes, the title is 'Tis. Unusual and intriguing.  This is another memoir of his, more immediate and raw than Angela's Ashes.  This is all about his life after he landed in New York from Ireland, at the age of nineteen, working and living in many jobs and neighborhoods, ending up in the Army, learning new skills, earning the GI Bill that finally sent him to school and got him his teaching degree.  His teaching life is yet in another memoir. I couldn't put the book down. The man was a genius, a poet. His startling prose and fever pitched-breathless paragraphs remind me of the best of Irish writers, the best of English prose.

Do yourself a favor. Read this in English. You'll never be satisfied with anything else. 

How it all comes about: Unnamed Madonnas

The picture above is of my baby-brother Luigi, no longer a baby btw, one of the two brothers I left behind in Italy.  He grew up without me, since he was five.  On a visit to Italy in 2002, I got to know him. 

Luigi kept some letters that I had sent my mother, and wanted to show them to me.  That gesture, his warmth and generous spirit touched me immensely.  I knew nothing of his whole life, and yet he knew a lot about mine.

That interchange was my motivation to write this story about a woman and her child, and the war that made and broke lots of families.  No immigrant ever tells the full story; most of us are ashamed of many things, silent about our past.

While this story is not autobiographical, it has bits and pieces of real people's lives.  We create some; but we rely also on the raw stuff of our own experiences in many situations.

Luigi is an artist, and his images told me lots of other stories I had missed out on.  Sadly, he will probably never know how he has influenced my creativity.

I thought you'd want to know.

U.M Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

I called Steve's sister, Denise, at 2:00 in the morning, hoping she was up, getting herself ready for whatever Easter event she had arranged. Denise was never a church-goer, but when the boys were little she made sure they knew about Easter and Christmas, the two major events related to Christ’s life.  Funny, I thought, that’s the way we brought up Ryan too, semi-atheist, semi-Buddhist, half-christian.

“Are you still in Venice?” She asked, still covered up in sleepy wrinkles.

“Yes, and still no sign of Steve.”

“ How long has it been?”

“Over twenty-four hours. The police kept me for hours talking about all the people we met, the places we stopped at, every detail. I’m worried now.”
“ Is there anything I can do?”

“Yeah. Call Ryan for me. His cell phone is not working and they are on spring break and nobody is answering the dorm’s phone. Call him and wish him Happy Easter for me. Go ahead and tell him that we are extending the trip by a few days, not that he would even pay attention to our whereabouts.”

“ I called him. He’s gone camping.” 

“I have to find a way to get back home, or I’ll  lose my teaching job.” I told her.

“That’s the least of your problems. How about your credit card? Your money?”

“The hotel is paid till tomorrow, no, today. I need to get a replacement card for my other expenses.”

“ If  Steve isn’t back, call your card company for new cards. For heaven sake, Silvia, this is not the end of the world. These things happen all the time.”

 I knew that, and I kept telling myself  things were going to be fine.

After that call, I fell asleep, a deep sleep, lulled by the idea that family would come back together again, that Denise had managed to be the person least likely to be depended on, and here she was taking care of me.  I slept for hours, until the front desk called to tell me I had a visitor waiting for me.
Marianna was picking me up to spend Easter Day with her family. 

A vision in pink, Marianna was waiting at the hotel bar.  We drank our coffee and ate our cornetto before a decision was reached. She convinced me to check out of the hotel and wait for Steve at her place. 

"I'm not sure."

"The police will communicate with Sergio from now on, and he knows how to get us."

"We need to get back to our teaching job and..."
"In a few days all this will be behind you. Don't fret. What does Steve teach ?” She inquired.

“History and world religions, a subject  he studied after he returned from the Peace Corps in Morocco.”

“Morocco?”

“We still keep in touch with friends in Morocco. We were  meeting them in Rome. Steve had their letter in his money belt.”

“Sergio should know about this.” Marianna looked concerned.

“What difference does it make?” I said nervously, now into a new wave of conjectures, “Marianna, this is crazy. How can anyone in their right mind think a teacher like Steve would be suspected of anything.  We break our backs every year to educate a whole bunch of immigrant children, make them appreciate the history and the principles this country stands for.  Everything is  gone mad.”

“Right now, everybody is suspicious of everybody else. You can talk to Sergio, get  advice during Easter dinner.  Then, you can decide. I do wish you could spend some time in Lucania. You made this long trip, and you are missing the best part.”

“Thank you, Marianna.  Thank you.  I’m most grateful.”

The conversation with Denise returned to haunt me.

            “What do you mean, they suspect him ? It’s a joke, right?”

“Denise, this is scary! ”

“You are blowing this out of proportion.  What about these people in Italy?  How do you know they’re on the level.  Maybe they’re planning to blackmail him, ask for ransom.  Did you think about that?”

“No I called them.   I’m waiting for the embassy, according to the police.  I should be o.k to travel back as soon as this is settled. ”

“What happened to your  passport?”

“The police is holding on to it. Right now I am not even sure what’s going on. They are investigating us. They asked if we contacted anybody else.  Like the friends from  Morocco. You know the Sadish.”

“What the heck! ”

“The police is following up on everything and everybody, like the German couple we were with last time I was with Steve.”

“Germans?”

“A couple  on the tour.  I could be shipped out to  Guantanamo.”

“You are kidding? I say get back before Ryan starts to panic. ”

“Tell Ryan to call me from a land line, not his cell. But not yet.  I will tell you when and where in a couple of days. We might be traveling to my hometown and wait there for police and embassy information.   I’ll take an unpaid leave if I am stuck here. My mother left me a house here.  Maybe this is a sign.”

I wondered if I put Denise and Ryan  in jeopardy with my calls.

I wondered who was complicating my life, and who I could  trust from now on.

Mariann drove  to Chioggia, south of Venice, to an isolated villa that housed her nephew and his family, and his in-laws and guests from nearby towns.  I was one of fifteen-twenty guests. Everyone seemed to know my situation, and reassured me that I was in good hands with Sergio’s attention to my case. At six in the afternoon, we said goodbye to Marianna’s family, and drove down to Lucania. The ride down the Italian expressway from Venice to Lucania was fast and efficient.  Marianna drove at top speed the entire time, with few stops and few problems. She acted as though the speed and the distance did not bother her at all.

We arrived  late.  A couple met us at the door, under a star lit sky and a rising moon.

Unnamed Madonnas: Chapter Thirteen

 First letter: Easter 1950

“We were on a train for many days,” she wrote, in a beautiful handwriting. “We slept and ate on the train.  We saw mountains, open land unfolding for ever and ever, a cluster of houses here and there, then, out of nowhere, wild beasts rushing through the prairie, galloping faster than the train.  Nothing but land wherever the eyes stopped. I couldn’t  wait  to get to my destination, to go to Heaven.  Heaven is called Montana, close to God,  the clouds. wars."

Tina is very thin,   chestnut hair around dark eyes. I am tiny and with a frightened look. This was not a photograph I had ever seen.

The next letter is a month later.

            “I’m worried about little Silvia.  I’m so glad everything is behind us, the fights, the gossip.”

I savor each line, each connection.  Why she worried about me is not explained. I read carefully, and yet voraciously.

I  read and reread. I fall asleep. I wake in the middle of the night, turn the lamp by the bed, and I read some more.

Each letter is a stage of my life I do not recollect.

She talks about  the house, the animals, the planting, and then always about me.  “Silvia is getting along. I made the right decision.”

 I was reading with a fever pace, quickly, skipping lines, words I didn’t know, looking for something. I wanted to breathe in the life that was right next to me.  If a letter contained a certain incident I remembered, I read it again and again.

It was morning when I stopped reading.

How do we know?

We read others to see through their eyes.
We love people and try to see what they see.
We end up with filters, ours, theirs.
Filters full of funny fuzzy lint.
The lint makes pictures,  lines, shadows and light.
 Bubbles.
Our mind wants to make sense of that bubble, connect it to other bubbles. 
Our mind says every thing has to make sense somewhere,somehow, some.
We read what we write.
We examine the structure, the movement, the bubble it formed.
We filter  that bubble.
And for a while it makes sense.
It lets us sleep, forget, go somewhere else.
Then, doubts about the bubble.
Fuzzy pictures become even fuzzier.
We know nothing, we scream out.
We know shit-quoting my favorite young Canadian.
We know only hunger and pain intimately and well.
We know what's right in our sight of vision.
Everything else, a construct.
Everything else, an exercise.
Nah, I'm here, here, and I've a toothache.
A toothache doesn't lie.
A toothache trumps everything.
A toothache hides other pains.

Unnamed Madonnas-Chapter Twelve

I remember being surprised when I received a birthday card on my eighteenth birthday,
 the return address typed on a large envelope. The card just said Happy Birthday and it included a copy of Tina’s will, naming me the beneficiary of her insurance policy.  I did not know that she had died.

It was the first time that I didn’t throw the thing away.

  I was living in Hollywood, with a couple of friends, all of us looking for fame and fortune. On my birthday, we did the same thing as any other day. We stood on Sunset Blvd. and hoped to be picked up and driven to somebody’s party where the booze and the food would be free. We all had odd jobs, waitressing, working as cashiers at drive-ins, housecleaning. At night, we were starlets in the wings, dressed in our best, looking to be discovered. We were just a couple of days away from the big break.  After all, that’s what got us all here in this town, in the grimy Hollywood that looked and smelled worse than the barn I had left behind in a hurry.

 

The letter from the lawyer explained that Tina had died of stomach cancer, an illness that took a sudden turn, the note said.    A four-thousand dollar check was stashed between the birthday card, and some papers I needed to sign and return. The last time I saw her was the night in Willow-Creek when I took her money from the sugar bowl, the money that was going to pay for our trip back to Italy one of those days, and left for good. 

I was fourteen, and angry, and it turns out the same age she was when she became pregnant with me with an American soldier.

Unnamed Madonnas-Chapter Eleven

On Saturday morning, the police drove me to the station, and hours later, it dawned on me that the tone was wrong. People exchanged words with each other, not knowing that I understood them.  When I asked if I could return to the hotel since I had not had anything to eat, they told me that they were waiting for the American Embassy. 

   I called Marianna who came with her nephew, and once he introduced himself to the interrogators, they gave him a detailed explanation. Later, Sergio told me that the police were suspicious of everybody and everything, including me and Steve.  

“Technically, they detain you until your embassy clarifies your situation.  I took the liberty to explain that you are not a flight risk, and I’d vouch for you. That’s the reason they excused you tonight.”

"What? A flight risk? What are they talking about?"

"There might a crime involved, or espionage or anything. They are not showing all their suspicions, but they are suspicious."

 Marianna’s nephew assured me that he would stay on top of any development.

“Well, it’s settled,” Marianna added, “you are having Easter with us. I’ll pick you up in the morning. Besides, they won't be able to hide anything from me!" 

Marianna had been a reporter and this nephew of hers had been her source of information on many cases.  She didn’t explain how, but assured me that I was in good hands.

            Back at the hotel, I looked  at the package she had given me.  

The letters spanned the first few  years Tina and I spent in Montana. I counted them and marvelled at how much  of Tina’s life was in those pages. 

I studied the handwriting, the length of each one, trying to guess what she was revealing about those days.  I spread them on the floor, from one end to the other, my fifth year to my tenth year in front of me.

  The letters  stopped for a while, and resumed again from Florida.

I wanted to start there, at the time in Florida when my mother and I parted for good. 

When and why did she stop talking to Marianna?