“I certainly was happy to see your father come back from the war—no matter what condition he was in,” Mother said. “We hadn’t heard from him in months and were afraid he might be dead. But you know how your grandfather is. He likes to think big. It was always, ‘Mussolini here, Mussolini there.’ He thought that they were going to conquer the world. Instead, your father and so many others returned hiding, in the middle of the night, like thieves. But what else could they do, those poor men?”
That evening I couldn’t fall asleep. I remembered a group picture of soldiers in uniform, in which my father was smiling broadly, his face darkly tanned, and much slimmer than I had ever known him. I had heard that he had fought in Yugoslavia.
Was it there, I wonder, that he would decide to run back home? How would he make the long journey back? I see trainloads of people, pushing their way for a spot on the trains, sacks of belongings over their shoulders. Soldiers could get lost in the hordes of refugees fleeing the larger northern cities for the rural villages of the south. Where and how did he get a large peasant scarf and dress? He must have slept in many farmhouses and barns, for my mother told me that when my father showed up in the middle of the night at my grandparents’ house—to change clothes before showing himself to her—he was dressed like a woman, and covered from head to toe in lice.
I had finally fallen asleep, when suddenly I heard my mother’s scream. “Cateri, Luigi! Wake up! Your father is not breathing well!”
We ran into the bedroom. My father was unresponsive to our calls, but breathed heavily. The three of us shook him by the shoulders. We called and called, but he would not wake up. The bedroom was filled with the sound of his laborious breathing. He just kept gasping for air, as if his heart was trying to escape his chest. Soon, our Italian neighbours who had heard noises came up and called an ambulance.
Within a few minutes, ambulance attendants rushed in with an oxygen mask. First, they opened the window, then, they sent everyone out of the room and closed the door. My mother, moaning in fear, rocked herself on the edge of a kitchen chair, her arms crossed over the chest, as she listened to the groaning and the pumping of the attendants in the closed room.
A few minutes later, one came out to tell us that our father had died of a heart attack. Next, I saw the attendant inject my mother with a tranquilizer to keep her from screaming and crying.
The next week was a blur of people kissing and shaking hands.
“Only forty-two,” they all repeated. “He was so young … just when he could have enjoyed his family.”
Without any hesitation, my mother decided to spend whatever money they had saved for an expensive casket, a large flower arrangement, and a plane ticket to send my father’s body back to Mulirena.
The gathering of people who had waited patiently on the road became animated as they spotted a black vehicle across the ravine, emerging from Amato. My grandfather raised his hands in the air. “My son, my son is here.” And they all moved to meet the car.
The hearse moved slowly, turned at the bend, and came into full view, the ornate, Canadian oak casket secured on its roof, and a huge white dove, made of white chrysanthemums, perched on top, as if reaching for the sky. From there, they formed a procession. The band in front, playing a slow march, was followed by the casket, then the men and the women in black. As the cortege proceeded up the narrow streets toward the church, others joined in, until most of the villagers had come out to see the sad, triumphant return home of Giuseppe Anastasia.
Once the mourning period was over, the prospect of our returning to Italy was raised. My mother’s brother, Zio Pietro, wanted us to go back so that he could look after us. All our Montreal relatives were from my father’s side of the family.
“What is a woman alone going to do in a strange country?” my uncle wrote. After initial uncertainty, my mother made the decision all by herself. “No, we are staying here. At least here I have the job at the factory. We won’t have to depend on anyone else to look after us.”
I was a little disappointed, as I had secretly hoped to go back to Italy. Mother must have been terrified. But, for once, she didn’t let herself be bullied by her own fears, and I looked at her differently. With her sparse hair pinned tightly back against her tiny head, she still reminded me of a little sparrow, but one not to be taken for granted, ever vigilant and tenacious. I had to relent about school, though.
“How can she be so stubborn?” my aunts pressured my mother when I insisted on completing my first year of high school. With no money from life insurance and a loan to repay, the only money we had was my mother’s meagre salary from the factory. My teachers all came to my rescue and we reached a compromise. I would stay in school one more year to obtain the ninth grade leaving certificate, and then take a trade course—perhaps hairdressing, like my brother.
On my return to school after the funeral, Sister Mary Rose came to me one day when I seemed distant and absent-minded. “Don’t worry too much, Caterina. I know you’ll be fine.”
There were other compromises. I wore a black blouse under the navy tunic and I wasn’t permitted to wear lipstick or have my hair styled for a year. I was allowed to stay in the Sodality of Mary, but I had to give up the glee club and my singing role for good.
When Luigi resumed practicing “Summertime,” Mother snapped at him, “How can you play music after your father has just died?”
“I’m doing it for him. We have to stop crying and do what he couldn’t do,” he answered.
I hadn’t cried much throughout the ordeal, though the numbness really hurt. I felt especially sad for my mother and father who had had so little time together in spite of their love for one other and their struggle to be reunited. As for me, I wasn’t as much as worried as blanked out. I saw life ahead of me as a series of boxes that I knew held nothing to make me want to run and open them up. I tried to write about how I felt, but the words didn’t flow any easier than my tears. One evening, though, I played with a few words that I had jotted down, and formed my first poem in the shape of a tombstone:
November, month of the dead
leaves, soldiers, dreams,
thirst, emptiness, yearning
after the summer sun.
PART VI
OCTOBER 13-17, 1980
37. THANKSGIVING
MY LIFE IS ABOUT TO TAKE a new turn. I tiptoe into the bedroom to snuggle with Sean. Change, or the anticipation of any type of change, always makes me feel happy. I review the conversation I had with Sean the night before, to make sure it was real and not part of my jumbled dreams. His proposal could not have come at a better moment.
Marriage will finally lift me from that makeshift space in which I have been living. I had only kidded myself into believing that, somehow, our almost clandestine living arrangement would free me from the constraints of my rigid upbringing. Instead, it has weighted me down and I have yet to experience the carefree existence I had anticipated.
A fifteen-pound turkey, sitting in the sink, waits to be stuffed and roasted. I’ll be preparing everything from scratch, from the zucchini and apple soup to the sausage stuffing and the pumpkin pie.
Thanksgiving is not an Italian tradition. I’m the only one in my family who has mastered the art of roasting a succulent turkey. I’ve also learned that it’s all the side dishes, the trimmings and sauces, which accompany the bland meat that makes the meal special and festive.
Sean is still sound asleep and won’t budge for hours. I have the entire morning to myself before I put the turkey into the oven, the perfect time to collect my thoughts. Not only Lucia’s story, but part of my own since the landing has remained suspended in the blurred images and dreamlike memories of the past.
There are still too many circles floating around me, all bits of one life! How to make sense of it all in a linear form? There are still some huge gaps in Lucia’s story between our ocean crossing and now. I feel
certain that Angie will help me put the pieces together. In unravelling that story, I might even face up to mine. My early years in Montreal are tinged with a sadness that I’ve tried to keep under cover, but have subsequently tightened around me like a second skin. I now feel the urge to shed them once and for all by putting them down on paper. But will my writing be able to avoid the themes that the journalist deems too ethnic, too stereotypical?
“The bricklayer father, the submissive mother, the criminal son, the copious food, let us not propagate our own stereotypes,” the journalist had pronounced in one of his essays. I had written in response:
Dear Antoine,
Your last essay left me a little confused. How can one write about an Italian living in present-day Canada and skip over some of those subjects you claim are negative stereotypes, like our food? Are we not local, regional beings before claiming fellowship to the universal? Should we be selective about describing the characteristics that make us who we are?
Dear Rina,
Well said, but you may have misunderstood me. I’m by no means a proponent of assimilation, but by using the same tired clichés—Italians as buffoons, criminals, suffering mammas—we play into the hands of the mainstream media who are conditioned to expect the same thing from so called “ethnic” writers—their label, not mine. They thus can more easily dismiss works from the margins as superficial and inconsequential. The trick is to uphold our distinct colours, even our stink, while contributing to the universal fabric, without being bleached out by the whitening powder of assimilation. There’s a fine line between specificity and stereotyping that only a true artist can thread.
The more I think about the standards set by the journalist, the more cautious and insecure I become.
At Thanksgiving dinner, my brother beams with pleasure at both the news about Sean’s impending entry into the political arena and our plans on getting married, but the wedding plans receive the most attention. Mother seems guarded about the announcement. “You’re having a civil wedding?” she asks.
“No, in a church,” I say.
“Protestant?” she hazards.
“At Our Lady of the Consolata,” Sean says. “I’ll convert to Catholicism, if necessary.”
Then we discuss the reception and the guest list. I insist it should include only the closest relatives and a few friends. But even that means close to a hundred guests.
“Can’t we cut out the cousins?” Sean asks.
“How can you not invite first cousins? Some are like brothers and sisters,” Mother answers, as I had expected. “If we invite one, we have to invite them all.”
“We’ll help out with the expenses. We’ll leave the cousins out for the engagement party but you’ll have to include them for the wedding,” Luigi adds.
“Do we really need an engagement party?” I ask.
“Just a dinner at a restaurant with uncles and aunts, and J.P. of course,” my brother suggests. “I only have one sister getting married. I’ll pay for it.”
To my surprise Sean doesn’t object. “Sure,” he says, “But be sure to schedule it after the ball and before Christmas.”
“Mid-November,” my brother says. He will look after the details and he’ll also speak to the priest, whom he knows well, about what Sean needs to do to get married in a Catholic church. He already has a list of musician’s friends lined up for the wedding ceremony.
“Torta de cucuzza,” Luigi says, digging into the pumpkin pie and tapping the top of his head, and we all laugh. It is both a novelty and an oddity for my mother to eat pumpkin as a dessert, and cucuzza is a slang term in our dialect for a hard head.
Alfonso and Angie arrive as I’m getting ready to serve coffee. Before stepping in, Alfonso hands me a wad of money, and whispers, “Angie’s got enough spending money for the week. This is something for the rest of her expenses.”
“No, no,” I answer. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay. We’ll arrange everything at the end,” he says.
Alfonso doesn’t sit down for coffee, but shakes hands with mother and Luigi, and I introduce him to Sean.
“Complimenti,” he says to me after Mother mentions our impending marriage. He looks at Sean and adds, “Give my regards to Jean Pierre.”
“Sure,” Sean says.
“Will he be in town for the ball?” Alfonso asks.
“That’s correct,” Sean nods.
“We’ll see each other then,” Alfonso says and leaves.
Mother asks, “Alfonso and Sean know each other?”
“He knows J.P.,” I say.
“Alfonso knows how to make the right connections,” she replies.
I lead Angie into the den, afraid my mother might say something disparaging about her uncle.
Angie looks around the room. “You have a lot of freaking books in here. Have you read them all?”
“Not yet,” I answer. “Come and have dessert with us.” She reluctantly follows me back into the kitchen where she sits quietly, looking disgusted at the piece of pumpkin pie in front of her.
“Whom does she look like?” Mother says. “She doesn’t look at all like her mother’s family.”
I throw an irritated look at my mother for speaking about Angie in the third person, in front of her. Angie tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Angie looks like herself,” I say.
“Be good in school,” my mother now turns to Angie. “Your grandmother already has enough on her mind.” A pause and then Mother continues: “Your mother was like a daughter to me. It seems like yesterday she arrived with us.”
38. THE HAIR STRAIGHTENING LESSON
ON THE RADIO’S MORNING CALL-IN program, the topic is space exploration. “We should take care of our homeless before throwing money into exploring empty air,” a woman says in a thick North European accent.
The evening news carries earth-based photos of Saturn, released by Voyager 1. The space probe has been cruising toward Saturn since it swept by Jupiter twenty months earlier, startling scientists with one discovery after another. The photos show a subtle face of glowing yellow surrounded by bright rings. Both Jupiter and Saturn appear as multilayered globes. “We’re involved in a very exciting adventure. Everything’s new on Saturn,” the scientists insist gleefully.
I can’t wait to see what the photographs will reveal. Maybe it is all empty air, but I disagree with the last caller. Whatever the rings might contain, whatever the cost, they are certainly worth exploring. It seems like a logical progression that one day people will be travelling through space, just as the first settlers navigated across the oceans. Where would we all be, my family as well as the lady with the accent, if Christopher Columbus’ voyage had been deterred by costs?
Sean is in the kitchen, having his milk and cereal, reading the morning paper. He’s never at his best in the morning.
“Why did you sleep in the living room?” he asks.
“I wanted to read and write, and didn’t want to keep you awake.”
“What are you writing?”
“Old stuff,” I say.
“Still?”
On Thanksgiving evening, after the family had gone home and the kitchen was cleaned up, I had stayed up late trying to write a beginning paragraph to introduce my new project—a book of linked short stories about the early years in Montreal that would bridge the past to the present, but nothing pleased me. I had found the concept of different stories with a common theme in Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro really interesting. The Betrothed also has an unwieldy number of individual stories, but Lucia and Renzo’s love story ties them all into one. My love story about Lucia and Totu had fizzled out after their failed attempt at elopement, like the second-rate village firework display on the Feast of San Francesco.
What had seemed like such a promising writing project in the morning felt like a delusi
onal pipe dream late at night. Tired from the cooking and the banal conversations around the engagement, my imagination felt dry and I only managed to juggle papers from one pile to another.
The last time I wrote to the journalist was after one of his tirades against both the Canadian literary establishment and the Association of Italian Canadian Writers. He stated that there could not be a literature without a tradition. Canadian literature is still in its infancy and too provincial, he wrote, and as far as Italian Canadian writing went, he ended with the question: Is there yet an Italian Canadian literature in this country? I wrote:
Dear Antoine,
Doesn’t tradition need time to flourish? It’s like blaming a young man for his youth. Why not give local writers credit and encouragement for what they have achieved so far and acknowledge that we’re also influenced by our Canadian experiences and literature?
Rina
Dear Rina,
Forget about copying the Canadian literary model. They may have perfected the short story, but they can’t look beyond their kitchen windows. Canadian literature is about burnt toast. We have a richer European literary tradition to back us up: Foscoli, Leopardi, Pirandello, and the contemporaries, Svevo, Calvino, etc. Look them up and study them before writing your next line.
With my hidden identity it was easy to garner some audacity, and vent my pent-up frustration. I responded:
Dear Antoine,
Get off your Italian marble pedestal for once. You’re an intellectual snob!
Rina
To my surprise, he answered the week after:
Dear Rina,
My ultimate aim is to raise the quality of writing to reflect our tradition without falling into the traps imposed on us by the establishment and their containment strategy, which is multiculturalism. How many books can our basements hold? We get grants for publishing “minoritarian” literature but then no one reviews or buys our books. Our differences of opinion are not only philosophical but strategic as well.
The Women of Saturn Page 19