Our Roots Are Deep with Passion

by Lee Gutkind

  But with his rage, his cigarettes, his bizarrely American name, his frustrated architectural dreams, my uncle had been forced into strange compromises. One of the few “real” buildings he designed was my Grandpa Mortola’s restaurant on Franklin Street, in the New York market district. The one that failed in 1950.

  Rosemary

  Rosemary for remembrance, says Ophelia. But though I studied Hamlet in high school, I didn’t “get” the reference since I didn’t actually know what rosemary was and how it can grow wild in fields, or be cultivated in hedges and gardens. And there were songs we sang in the sixties, when we were young and hopeful—“parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme”—but what did those refrains mean? Until I became a serious cook such lines were nearly as opaque to me as Ophelia’s ravings, even though I knew they referred to herbs, meaning (to a young New Yorker) dried leaves people used in the kitchen.

  But in early September 1970, my husband, Elliot, and I went with our three small children—two daughters and a son, like my dream family in Brooklyn, along with an au pair—to vacation for two weeks in a “villa” in Portofino. The six of us had spent the summer in London, where Elliot and I were sometimes really, sometimes just ostensibly doing research at the British Library. Californians that we’d become, we needed a break from city gray, an interval of pure, mindless sun and sea, and somehow, remarkably enough, we’d managed to find a place that was not only available but affordable on our overstretched academic salaries, besides being large enough for what was, as the French put it, a famille nombreuse.

  Our villa was really a large apartment on the hillside above the town, exactly two hundred steps up from the piazza that was even then basically a parking lot. (Perhaps all those steps up kept the rent down a bit.) But though it was inexpensive, the apartment had cool marble floors, tall shuttered windows, a fine view over rooftops all the way to the glitter of the harbor where the sleek yachts rode at anchor, and a large terrace partly shaded by the vast leaves of a grape arbor like the one in Uncle Frank’s garden. Almost every day Elliot and I took the children to the beach in the nearby town of Santa Margherita di Ligure, where they swam and clamored for tosti—ordinary melted cheese sandwiches made somehow glamorous by Italian vendors. Later, in the market we would buy basilico so I could try my hand at pesto, about which I had only then learned, and when we came back to Portofino we sometimes strolled through the piazza, licking versions of that sublime sundae the paciugo.

  One evening, perhaps after a meal of linguine with pesto, the three children—six, eight, and ten—guarded by eighteen-year-old Kathleen, clambered down to the village on their own, to get paciugi. Roger, the eldest, was charged with ordering “Quattro paciugi per favore” since culture-shocked, California-bred Kathleen absolutely refused even to attempt Italian, and the little girls were too young and shy. But he came back in tears, reporting that in a minute of confusion and self-consciousness he’d blurted out “Quattro paciugi s’il vous plaît.”

  The terrace of that Portofino apartment was lined with flowerpots and with tubs of rosemary, perhaps the first “real” (as opposed to dried) rosemary I’d ever seen. These were trimmed and watered by Elissa, our landlord’s daughter, a young blonde woman who also cleaned house for us several days a week. I could barely communicate with her in my broken Italian, so, since, like many Ligurians, she had some French, I usually spoke to her in my not quite so broken French, and perhaps that linguistic mix—one in any case part of my immigrant heritage—was mirrored in what my ten-year-old son feared was an unforgivable solecism.

  Often, in the late afternoon, Elissa would appear on the terrace with garden shears, gesturing toward the tubs of rosemary and saying politely in our two languages, “Rosmarino? Rosmarin?” Watching her clip the fragrant branches and bear them away for some kitchen project, I too learned to clip branches of rosmarino and cook with the bittersweet dark green needles, chopped fine and so strongly perfumed that yes, Ophelia was right, they offer a medicine for memory.

  But it’s sad that my memories of an Italy I never really knew are so partial, so incomplete, slanting and glinting from the stems of rosemary, the leaves of basil and oregano, then devolving into the tarragon that comforted my mother in her old age.

  Before leaving for Europe, we had of course struggled to persuade my mother that she should join us on our trip, and of course, as always, she refused to stir from the apartment in which she had imprisoned herself, though she wrote us regularly, encouraging our travels. She forgot to tell us, however, that the internationally famous resort of Portofino was just across the wooded peninsula from Ruta, the Ligurian town from which her husband’s family had emigrated to Nice in the nineteenth century and one of the places she and my father had visited on their European trip in 1960, when they sold the farm in Nice. So the whole time we were in Portofino, eating pasta all’ pesto and inhaling the enlivening fragrance of rosmarino, we didn’t know that the Via Mortola, with its herbs and bays, was just on the other side of the hill.

  SANDRA M. GILBERT has published seven books of poems, most recently Belongings, a number of books of criticism and anthologies, and a memoir, Wrongful Death. Her latest book is Death’s Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve.

  St. Sebastian in Boston

  . . . . . . . . . . . .

  RANDY-MICHAEL TESTA

  Prologue: Boston, 2005

  The Catholic Church is in Flames. Everybody here knows this. AM talk-radio sportscasters regularly refer to Bernard Cardinal Law, now in exile in Rome, as Bernie the Pimp. Survivors of clergy abuse stand in front of Holy Cross Cathedral each Sunday howling their unrelieved torment to Heaven, while the Archdiocesan newspaper assures churchgoers during flu season they will not become sick at communion by drinking wine from the chalice.

  No Boston Catholic I know has a good word to say about the Pope, either the one who just died or the one just elected. Dead or alive, the question for each is the same: What would it take for you to know what you know?

  Conversely, the Fire has caused many other men to know what they know and to tell their story: of Italian American upbringings, of Catholic priests and nuns.

  Of martyrdom and death without resurrection.

  Part One: The Answer

  St. Sebastian’s mortally wounded body is the object of intense scrutiny by a six-year-old Italian American Catholic schoolboy at St. Sebastian’s in Akron, Ohio. The boy sneaks into the church when nobody else is around, counting and recounting the bloody arrows, staring at the places where they pierce Sebastian’s side, chest, and arms. He follows the maroon trickles down Sebastian’s limbs, from the arrow tips that seem to slice right through him all the way down to Sebastian’s crotch, the streams of blood converging there, why he is not sure.

  At six, the boy is unsure what to make of the maroon feeling that stirs him whenever he follows the streams. He loves Sebastian as much as the nuns tell him he is to love Jesus.

  No.

  That is a lie.

  He loves Sebastian more.

  The child sees St. Sebastian’s contorted face, pierced more strongly by each newly shot arrow, until this moment, the moment caught by the sculptor.

  And when he is a man, he sees St. Sebastian’s body as a gnarl of twisted agony and the look on his face of bliss, horror, and unutterable pain, his head cocked back, the arched body high at the small of the back and suspended for just the briefest second in the air.

  Like a man about to come.

  The child stands at the back of the church, searching St. Sebastian’s features, as does the man, each searching for clues to his own eventual martyrdom. A nun is playing the organ in the back choir loft, practicing for Mass. The man and boy remember other music, music in a record store where, under the NOW PLAYING sign is an album cover with St. Sebastian’s picture on the front. The boy walks up to the sales clerk at the front counter and asks, “Is that St. Sebastian singing?” and the clerk, smiling, replies, “Well, yes, as a matter of fact, it is. Sebastian’s men are afra
id to follow the Roman Emperor’s orders to kill Sebastian. And if they don’t do it, they’ll be killed too. So Sebastian is trying to save his men’s lives by telling them, ‘The one who wounds me the deepest loves me the most.’ ”

  In the orange brick vestibule of St. Sebastian Catholic Church, next to the white marble baptismal font encircled by red velvet cord to keep eighth grade boys from slurping holy water out of it on a dare, the enormous statue of St. Sebastian at the precise moment of his martyrdom halts the chatter of even the noisiest classes upon entrance to the church.

  For first graders like me, St. Sebastian’s death poses three questions, questions lacking the smug certitude of Baltimore Catechism answers posed during Religion class, or by Italian relatives at pasta dinners served in Pyrex cookware, by aunts with fleshy arms at noon each Sunday after Mass.

  Who made us?

  God made us.

  Why did God make us?

  God made us to know Him, love Him, and serve Him.

  What is faith?

  Faith is the virtue by which—

  My own catechism goes like this:

  Which of the seven arrows killed Saint Sebastian?

  The one that went right through his heart.

  Which arrow hurt the most?

  The one shot by his best friend.

  How will I be martyred for my faith?

  The answer to this question will come soon, the words for it, decades later.

  Every Friday afternoon during Lent, seven hundred students at St. Sebastian Catholic School enter the enormous church and sit down by age and by grade—in row after row of brown oak pews monitored by ancient nuns—for Mass, Stations of the Cross, and the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

  We are the children of the American Dream, in this parish, overwhelmingly Italian American—our parents deciding to speak to us in English not Italian, to straighten our hair, grounding us in Catholicism, to make sure, above all things, that we do not stand out. My mother calls me in from playing outside in a blow-up swimming pool during the summertime, explaining as she dries me off that my olive skin “will get so dark the neighbors will think you’re a Spic.”

  We first graders, from three different classes of some fifty plus kids each, get to sit up front, eighth graders at the back of the church, everybody else in between, flanked by rows and rows of twinkling votive candles in red glass cups along the sides of the church, arranged on wrought iron stands painted with cheap paint to look like brass.

  The nuns don’t really care if you sit with your own class during Mass or not because if you talk out loud, any one of them might smack you on the back of the head, or call out your name in a hoarse whisper.

  I am in Sister Gonzaga’s class and sit with Donny Sienna from Sister Dominick’s first grade class. As legions of schoolgirls in gray plaid skirts and blue wool vests and boys in gray pants and blue oxford shirts troop up to the communion rail, I watch them and whisper to Donny Sienna. “If you could pick how they were going to martyr you,” I ask, “what would you pick?”

  “Well I dunno—” Donny begins in a whisper. “Sister Dominick said being martyred was the best way to die because if you die for your faith you go straight to heaven.” He’s stalling. “So how would you go?” I press. “If the Romans said, ‘Okay, you can either be tortured by having your hands and feet cut off and then being stabbed, or you can be stoned with great big rocks thrown at you by a crowd of mean pagans, or you can have your eyes poked out and then be fed blind to the lions or be tied to a tree and shot with arrows like St. Sebastian,’ what would you pick?”

  Along the side church walls, near the Stations of the Cross, is a gallery of life-sized saint statues. As first graders we know them all by heart. Ten feet from where Donny Sienna and I now sit whispering stands St. Lucy, holding her eyeballs in a dish. Donny looks over at her. “How would you wanna be martyred?” he asks.

  Soon we will both find out.

  We are copying pictures of the Blessed Mother from holy cards Sister Gonzaga has distributed, redrawing them on paper with colored pencils.

  This is art class. Mary wears blue and white robes and she is looking up to God. Her hands are pressed together and she is stepping on the head of a big snake, who manages to coil himself around a globe of the world. I draw the Blessed Mother with green and yellow crayons and I draw her in army boots not barefoot like on the holy card. I don’t especially like the Blessed Mother, why I can’t really say. Since my favorite television show at the time is My Favorite Martian with Ray Walston and Bill Bixby, I draw two antennae coming out of her bowed head.

  Sister Gonzaga roams up and down the aisles, her long black robes and wooden rosary beads lapping up against the blond wooden desks like waves against piers. She smells like baby powder and wool. While we are drawing, the kids in my class keep one eye on Sister Gonzaga and one eye on the clock, knowing that as long as she keeps moving, they are fine.

  She stops suddenly. Everyone looks up with a jolt from their drawings. The backwash of rosary beads splashes across a kid’s desk, whose they can’t tell right away.

  The crucifix lands in the middle of my picture of Mary. I look at the little crucified Jesus on Sister Gonzaga’s long black crucifix. Then I look up.

  “And just what do you think you’re doing, may I ask?”

  I jerk violently, stammering, “I, I was—I thought …” trying to spit out some kind of lie—an explanation, a confession, whatever Sister Gonzaga wants. It’s no good.

  “Answer me.”

  “I thought if Mary had—”

  “You thought—what? That this picture of our Blessed Mother is funny? That sacrilege is a joke?”

  Then comes the ultimate weapon. She takes out her bow.

  “Children, what did I ask you to do today? Can someone please tell me what the assignment was?” She points to Rhonda Lawrence. Rhonda Lawrence stands up and says on cue, “You said we should use our colored pencils to copy the picture of Our Blessed Mother exactly the way she appears on our holy cards, Sister Gonzaga.” Rhonda Lawrence sits down, smoothing her plaid kilt and giving me a sidelong glance.

  “Did the rest of you hear me say this, children?”

  “Yes, Sister Gonzaga!” they intone.

  “So explain this to me, please.” A pause. Silence. “EXPLAIN IT!”

  “Yes, Sister—no, I didn’t mean to … Sister—”

  “No, Sister? You’re going to make your First Communion next year!”

  “Yes, Sister—”

  Yes, Sister. Anything, Sister. I’m sorry, Sister.

  Sister Gonzaga walks to her desk and the desk drawer opens with a scream-like, high-pitched scraping sound. She removes a wooden metal-edged ruler. It’s new, and Sister Gonzaga taps it on her palm rapidly several times. There is the flat echoless sound of metal on soft, veiny old lady flesh. She walks over to my desk.

  “Stand in the aisle,” she says, now possessed. I jump. Beyond terror, thinking if I just do what she asks that maybe this will be over with soon.

  “As penance, I want you to offer up three Hail Marys to Our Blessed Mother. Hold out your hands.”

  I look at her face and say the words but I am not praying. I am too frightened. It flashes into my head how much I hate the Blessed Mother.

  “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thywombjesus—”

  “Turn your palms over. I SAID TURN THEM OVER! Put them together. The rest of you: PAY ATTENTION TO THIS!” Sister Gonzaga bellows.

  “Holymarymotherofgodprayforussinnersnowandatthehourofourdeath-amenhailmaryfullofgracethelordiswiththee—”

  She takes aim, then swings as hard as she can. I squeeze my eyes shut. The force of the ruler across my hands knocks me slightly forward, into Sister Gonzaga. The noise of the ruler slams down the main hall of the school. Kids at the drinking fountain stop slurping and look up. This is Italian American Catholic education in the early 1960s.

  Terror.
>
  That at any moment, you will suffer, die, and be buried. For nothing at all.

  My father’s father was gunned down by the Mafia when he stepped outside early one Sunday morning to grab the Sunday paper off the front stoop of his house in Buffalo. A rising Mafia star, a bootlegger during Prohibition, he didn’t know what hit him. Years later, when my father and I watch Godfather II together he is overwhelmed during the scenes with young Al Pacino and says when the movie’s over, “There’s more truth in that movie than you’ll ever know.”

  After my grandfather is gunned down, my father is taken to live with his mother under the roof of her parents and large family on the West Side of Cleveland. They are raised for a time as brother and sister. To make sure no one comes after my father.

  This of course is never discussed. But it is the story at the heart of the story. My father’s greatest terror is that one of his five sons will stick out, be next. Shot through by life before we even get a chance.

  So we are in store-bought special shoes with metal braces on their outsides because three of the five of us sons have flat feet, and we are enrolled in Catholic School, my father willing to pay a tuition that will nearly break him, we find out, years and years later.

  So here I now stand in front of my entire class. Slow, painful, humiliating death—sticking out for everybody. A crippling spectacle, seamy, unspeakable pleasure for the adults into whose care we are entrusted.

  My eyes sting. I squeeze them shut and my hands curl slightly inward at the fingertips when they’re struck. Over and over again I am sliced by the piercing gold edge of the ruler—

  “—Blessed art thou among women—”

  —the piercing gold edge of the ruler—

  “and blessed is the fruit of thy womb—”