by Tembi Locke
Still, that land was theirs. And it was enough to farm and rear four children, sending one—my grandmother—to college and on to earn her master’s degree. By the time she was married and raising my mom in a nearby town, the land was being worked less. Meanwhile, the local timber industry prospered, often by claiming eminent domain on black-owned properties. Later, the vacation spot of Lake Livingston went from a glimmer in some developer’s eye to a destination spot for Houstonians. The development stoked the interest of local speculators, who systematically swindled land away from absent owners.
In a storied tradition as American as apple pie and cronyism, a local white landowner “Dusty” Collington and his family had successfully misappropriated the land of many black farmers by manipulating records at the county clerk’s office. He had preyed on the absent generation of Nigton’s descendants, those who had moved to other parts of the country during the Great Migration, those who had aspired to greater opportunity.
Between 1960 and 1980, while my grandmother had been a county away, Dusty had asserted that family members had sold him the land for a price. He even had “records” to prove it, a forged deed of sale signed with an X. The X was meant to substantiate his claim of illiteracy on the part of the seller. He claimed that my great-grandmother had signed with the X—proof that she was herself illiterate and had sold the nearly 150 acres to him. I don’t know which galled my grandmother more, the fact that Collington said her mother was illiterate (even though her signature was on other documents in the county clerk’s office) or the fact that he was suggesting that she had sold off the family land without mentioning it to her daughter. By the time my grandmother died at ninety-seven, the year before Barack Obama would become president and the year Saro was too sick to travel to her funeral, the family land had dwindled down to less than a hundred acres despite only a tiny percentage of the original acreage having ever actually been sold.
I had watched my grandmother’s struggle to reclaim the land and legally contest Dusty at a distance as I went off to study in Italy, then get my first apartment in New York City, and later move to Los Angeles. The injustice incensed me. Still, I loved the scent of pine, and the winding red clay roads were in my blood. I literally knew their taste in my mouth. That land was a place as real and alive to me as my skin. Even if I never wanted to be dependent on it as my ancestors had, I loved it in the way you love a place you know in your soul and in your heart you can’t let go.
* * *
Once we arrived at the notary’s office, I knew my role was nothing more than to play the American wife who barely understood a word of Italian. I would sit back and let the legal transfer unfold. And I would step in if, and only if, an old-fashioned show of Sicilian emotion or pathos was needed to get the job done. Because amid everything else that I had learned, I knew Sicilians would move mountains where the pain of grief, death, and loss was concerned. They felt it was their cultural duty. It was what made them Sicilian and not Italian.
The interior of the office struck me as the work of a cinema production designer. It was a cross between a Harry Potter–like reading library, with floor-to-ceiling volumes of bound files embossed in gold, and the private home of some local aristocrat who favored plush tapestries and floor-length silk floral drapery complete with an ornate valance. When we walked into the salon-like conference room, I was invited to sit at a large, antique lacquered table with ball-and-claw legs. A crystal pitcher of water was put before me along with a tumbler on a hand-crocheted lace coaster. The presence of water suggested that we would be there for a while. Then the notary, a suntanned man in his fifties with a George Clooney head of hair, a nautical blue polo, and leather Gucci driving shoes, laid before me a large folio, bigger than 11 by 14. The paper was lined, full of meticulous fine print. It looked to contain the registry of landownership, heredity lines, titles listing parcels of places I recognized, some I didn’t. Then he asked to see my passport and Saro’s. As I passed them to him, he offered his condolences.
Minutes later, I saw Saro’s name in fresh ink on what I presumed to be the Gullo family document of ancestry or heredity. The legal terms were in a cursive that looked as though it were from the eighteenth century. My eyes landed on Saro’s birthday, his national identity number, his birthplace, our address in L.A. Below that, I saw my name and farther down Zoela’s name, more dates, locations, the coordinates of dual citizenry and language.
On the page, Saro’s existence had been reduced to the key places and major events that were the broad outline of the life he had lived: birth, residences, marriage, child, death. As I looked at the words on the page, then back up at the notary, I began to cry. The notary passed me a tissue with tobacco-stained fingers, and I signed my name.
When we emerged back onto the streets of Termini Imerese, in the midst of rush-hour chaos, I was hit with a rush of Vespa fumes, sea salt, eucalyptus, and oleander. I squinted my eyes in the midday sun, temporarily blinded. I now owned land in Sicily.
I didn’t have a copy of what had transpired or a receipt of the transactions. Franca was handling it all, including the two remaining trips there to conclude the land transfer. My part was done. I didn’t worry; I trusted Franca completely. In Sicily, so much happened this way. I was instead grappling with living at the edge of my wildest imaginings of what life could still offer.
When we returned from the notary, Nonna was making caponata. The smell of onion sautéing with a faint aroma of mint was as familiar as that of salted water for pasta. The dish was sweet and savory, quintessentially Sicilian. Just one mouthful told the island’s entire sensuous story: sun, wind, earth, Moorish, and European, it was fantasy brined in reality. Fragrant and textured, caponata has the color of darkness and the taste of paradise.
“How did it go?” she asked me, putting down her wooden spoon.
“Well, I think well. Franca handled it all. She knows all the details.”
“Good.” Nonna returned to cooking.
I watched her put the ingredients together. Eggplant, olives, celery, carrots, tomato sauce. Alone, each is an everyday item, not particularly rich in value. Together, they are a wealth of flavor.
“Nonna, are you sure I can’t help pay the legal fees? I know it was expensive to do this.”
“If you can’t afford a gift, then you don’t give a gift,” she said. She put a lid on the pot to punctuate her point and let the flavors of the caponata meld.
As I watched for a moment longer, Nonna seemed as rooted and grounded as any ancient olive tree on the island. I realized that I was standing in the shade of her tree, whose taproot was anchored in the Old World understanding that in order for me to go forward, I’d need a place where I could look back. In giving me the house, she would hold that place for me, for her granddaughter, draw us closer, keep food on the table. Her gift was her way of allowing me to stand in her shade until I was able to walk out into the sun.
Later, there in Nonna’s kitchen, the warmth of the waning but persistent sun came through the lace curtains that separated her home from the outside world. Even inside, I felt the touch of wind cut gently by sparrows dancing low in the street. I now had a place in Sicily to call my own, a place to return to next summer and beyond.
Part Four
THIRD SUMMER
Nun c’è megghiu sarsa di la fami.
Hunger is the best sauce.
—Sicilian proverb
WILD FENNEL
I awoke the first morning of my third summer in Saro’s family home hot and jet-lagged but in the pleasant stupor of a long-forgotten memory—my first trip to the island, when Saro and I had stumbled into a rural trattoria on the northern coast. This memory could have been revived only in Sicily, where the sights, sounds, and smells served as conduits to parts of Saro, events and details that I couldn’t seem to access in Los Angeles. Life after loss was confounding in that way: memories lapsed and then resurrected themselves unexpectedly, almost magically. But that morning, as I lay in the soft morning ligh
t in a semi–dream state conjuring up a bygone memory of fennel, I grabbed hold of the magic and held on.
“Let’s stop here,” he had said after we had spent the better part of the day exploring the secondary roads and towns around Hotel Baia del Capitano.
We pulled into a gravel parking lot off the two-lane road parallel to the autostrada.
“It looks closed.” I was a little grumpy, a little hungry, a lot unsure about where I found myself.
“It’s not closed,” he responded.
“How do you know?” I challenged.
“Because it’s 3:00 p.m. And look behind the building. The owners live here.” He pointed to a side building with a laundry line and geraniums in terra-cotta pots flanking the front door. Apparently, those were all the visual clues I should have needed to puzzle out that a chef was inside and the place was not closed.
Moments later, we pushed the door open and found an empty restaurant of ten or so four-top tables. It was simply decorated with a small hand-painted vase on each table, yellow walls the color of the frescoed suns in sacristies all over Tuscany. The guitar riffs of Pino Daniele came from the kitchen. The owner/chef stepped out. He was short and stout, with a face that looked like so many of the faces dotting all the isles of the Mediterranean.
“Salve,” Saro said, greeting him before he could greet us. “Siamo appena arrivati dall’America, possiamo mangiare qualcosa?—We’ve just arrived from America, could we have something to eat?”
It was spring, and the owner/chef explained that he was waiting for swordfish to be brought in by the local fishmonger in anticipation of the dinner service later that day. “We’re not open yet, but since you’ve come from America, I’ll make you pasta. Sedetevi—Sit down.” He pulled back the wooden chairs, turned over two glasses, and reached toward the bar behind him for a liter of Ferrarelle mineral water.
“Di dove siete?—Where are you from?” He pried the top off with an opener from his back pocket.
“Los Angeles.”
“Well, then, how about a plate of wild fennel? I have some growing in back.”
“That’s all we need,” Saro said.
Two plates were placed in front of us. I saw greens, wilted briefly, sautéed in olive oil with a little onion, salted, and then braised in a tomato sauce. The plate was dusted with a shaving of ricotta salata.
“This is Sicilian nature on a plate,” Saro said as he turned his fork, whirling spaghetti into perfect barrel-shaped clusters ready to heave into his mouth. “This dish is spring. Wild fennel makes us know we are alive, no matter what is happening.”
That morning I wanted nothing more than to know that it was possible for me to feel alive, fully alive again. The half living of life after loss was shifting. I wanted to be reminded of the bounty of life. I ached with desire, the possibility exhilarated me.
In the quiet of that morning, I wanted to reach across to Saro and feel the curve of his back. His skin was a thing of shameless softness, a rich sensuality. I wanted to inch closer, near his inhaling and exhaling. I wanted to raise the back of his shirt and reach closer to kiss my favorite landing spot, the skin between his shoulder blades. His back was a constellation of moles. I wanted to dive into Orion’s belt.
I imagined he’d then awaken.
“It’s too early,” his voice would say, gravelly sweet. I poured rich details into the fantasy: a vendor outside our window selling swordfish, just caught, steaks by the kilo; the light of late morning penetrating the shutters of our stark marble room. In my fantasy, the space was cool, but I wouldn’t be fooled. I was imagining us in Sicily in July.
“We have to get up,” I’d say, thinking of breakfast and its ritual of brioche, cappuccino, and inky newspapers. “Saro, you know I hate an empty pastry case.”
“You have to ask the guy to save you one, no?” Saro always believed in befriending the guy at the local coffee bar.
I lay there in bed a little longer, summoning my deepest desires. I imagined his body rolling toward me. How he had smelled of salt and earth, with a hint of cardamom. Thoughts of breakfast receded into the pale stucco walls. “How do you do that?” I wanted to ask him.
“Do what?” he’d say.
“Make me think of dinner before I have had the day’s first coffee?”
“Amore, you would think of dinner with or without me. I just make your dinner better.”
I’d laugh and he’d kiss me. Making love in Sicily had been full of ecstasy. I would demand seconds. Instead, I pulled myself back to reality.
* * *
When morning broke, it was time to rise and start my third year of Sicilian July mornings as Saro’s widow. But my mind was still thinking of the dream. I was more aware than ever that I hadn’t had sex in nearly three years. On my annual visit to the gynecologist, she had joked that my lady parts might atrophy. The conversation had disturbed me so much that I had looked up the definition of “celibate” while still in the parking lot. Celibacy was for nuns, grandmothers, and women in a coma. Sure, I knew women my age who had lived through periods of celibacy. But they had been coming off a bad relationship or trying to heal a sexual addiction. Honestly, I felt like a forty-year-old virgin with twenty years’ experience. One of my married girlfriends had suggested masturbation. I told her that that was like telling someone who wanted a five-course meal to grab a can of Spam out of the bottom of her earthquake kit. Sure, it would do in a pinch as a bridge to get you out of disaster, but it is no substitute for a well-balanced meal. After that visit to the doctor, I had started doing Kegels in the car pool lane and while I stood at the stove in case I ever wanted to take my lady parts for a spin again.
Maybe Saro appearing in a dream was his way of reminding me about a part of myself with which I had lost touch since his death. Maybe he was inviting me to be open to the possibility again.
As I lay in Nonna’s house, Zoela asleep next to me, I knew I had spent a good deal of the last year of my life in the process of continually making peace with loss, taking wobbly steps forward. In two years, my disorientation had eased, but the sadness was still there. And although I felt a little more stable in the world, more comfortable navigating the changes that come with loss, my life still felt misshapen in many of the unfamiliar places. The waves of grief still came; I just had a better sense of how to ride them out. It was the reimagining and rebuilding that didn’t come easy. Before, the grief had been like being caught in the undertow. Now I felt I had fought my way to the top of the water. I could see the sky, but I had neither the energy nor the inclination to swim in a new direction. I was just learning to breathe again.
I know that people rebuild their lives all the time after divorce, job loss, death, illness. We are destined to have to remake our lives at least once or twice in a lifetime. I had come to accept that reconfiguring the pieces of my life, as both a solo parent of a still grieving child and a forty-something actress was something that would take time. And time was what Sicily gave me. So I lifted my feet from the bed and put them onto the marble floor.
The day stretched out ahead of me like an open field. I emptied my bags while Zoela slept the sleep of a child between time zones, languages, and worlds. Then I went downstairs to share a first espresso with Nonna.
I took her in for the first time since arriving the day before. She was doing well, was more joyous. Her smile met me like a familiar friend. She put a basket of fruit on the table, poured sugar directly into the moka caffettiera just as I set the demitasse cups on the table.
Before we could speak, Emanuela poked her head through the lace curtains that hung in the open doorway.
“Mi’ nora è tornata—My daughter-in-law has returned,” Nonna said, releasing a guttural laugh that could be heard two houses away. The word daughter-in-law in Sicilian is nora or nura, which, to me, is similar to the Italian word onore, meaning “honor.” It gave me an indescribable sense of warmth to be referred to as something that might in some way honor her.
She and Emanuela g
ossiped for a minute about the statue of the Madonna at the entrance to town. From what I could gather, it needed to be cleaned and adorned with fresh flowers. They felt that leaving the Madonna with the faded plastic ones left over from winter would be a sign of disrespect.
“But eat breakfast first. I’m going to get bread. How many loaves should I get you?”
“Two, the long ones.” Nonna gave her two euros from the stash under the vase of carnations sitting beside a picture of Saro and his dad. With that, Emanuela pivoted and was out the door nearly as quickly as she had entered.
Nonna and I went over the particulars of our lives since we had last sat down together: her blood pressure, my garden in L.A., work. We still talked on the phone weekly, but rehashing the news in person made it fresh and new again. I entreated her to report any new gossip, regale me with stories of local politics, tell me who was ill or shut in. It made her feel good to tell me about her world and listen to bits of mine. We both wanted to assure the other that we were fine. Pulling ourselves forward.
“That movie I filmed in Atlanta will come out in the fall.” I knew she would never see Dumb and Dumber To or any of the other work I had done that year. She certainly had no idea who Jim Carrey was.
She listened intently. To her, my work as an actress was magical, as if I pulled each job like a rabbit out of a hat. The unemployment level in Sicily was so high that the idea that I was working—even if she couldn’t quite understand what I did other than to describe it to strangers as “she works in the environment of film”—gave her satisfaction.