by Stacy Gregg
“It is a shame I must leave. I would love to stay and visit with you longer,” the Prior said, picking up his hat from the hallstand. “But I have a meeting of the contrada to attend …”
I pushed past him into the entrance hall.
“Nonna?” I called out. “Nonna!”
“Calm down. You’ll find your grandmother in the kitchen,” the Prior said. “Please tell her I will see her soon, Lola.” He tipped his hat to me. “It was good to make your acquaintance again.”
He shut the door behind him and I ran, my heart pounding.
“Nonna? Nonna! Are you OK?”
“I am fine, Piccolina.” My grandmother was sitting at the kitchen table.
“What was he here for?”
“Because I asked him to come, Piccolina,” Nonna said. “I wanted to talk to him.”
“About what?” I asked.
Nonna didn’t answer at first. Then she said, “There is still much about my past that you do not yet understand, Piccolina. I told you the first part of my story yesterday, and now my conversation with the Prior has awakened many memories. Please, come sit with me. I have much more to tell you …”
At school every morning the teachers would make us listen to the radio broadcast. The news stories were very exciting, telling us about how marvellously Italy was doing in the war. Our fearless soldiers were winning every battle. At the end of the broadcast we would stand up behind our desks and the teacher would ask us: “To whom victory?”
“To us! To us!” we would chorus, giving the fascist salute.
I didn’t know that it was all a lie, that the Italian army was losing horribly and thousands of men were dying. My father was in terrible danger, risking his life every day on the battle lines. II Duce, the man that my mama loved as a great leader, was not a good man. He was on the same side as Hitler and the Nazis, and his cruel fascists, the Blackshirts, were brutal to their own people in order to keep us under their control.
I heard whispers on the school playground about the things the Blackshirts would do to you if they decided you were a traitor.
“They make you drink castor oil,” Marco told me.
“Ewww! Why would they do that?”
“It makes your tummy sick so you poo in your pants and then they beat you with their sticks,” Marco insisted.
“You’re making it up!” I told him.
“It’s true,” Marco insisted. “Sometimes they beat you so hard you die.”
Marco was my best friend. We had shared a bond from the very first week at school when he found me crying in the playground because one of the big boys had stolen my lunch.
“Don’t let them see you cry,” he’d told me firmly as he gave me his handkerchief to dry my eyes. Then he’d sat down on the wall and shared his own bread and cheese with me, telling me jokes while I was eating so that I nearly choked because I was laughing so hard.
Marco had an outrageous sense of humour. That was why I didn’t believe him at first about the castor oil, even though it was true, because it sounded like the sort of thing he would make up. He wore too-big shorts that made his rail-thin legs look like two sticks and he had moon-pale skin, black eyes and jet-black hair that always fell over his face though he tried to slick it back. From the day he shared his lunch with me, we were inseparable, always talking and laughing and telling secrets to each other. But the biggest secret we shared was our friendship.
One day, not long after we’d met, I took Marco home after school to play at my house. My mama opened the door to us, took one look at Marco and her face went taut in a thin-lipped scowl. She did not open the door to let him in.
“Go home, boy,” she told Marco stiffly. “You can’t be here. Loretta has forgotten that she has family commitments.” She ushered me roughly inside and then slammed the door in his face.
“But, Mama,” I protested. “I wanted to play –”
“What were you doing bringing that boy home?” Her voice was full of anger like I had never heard it before. “You know he is a Porcupine! He cannot be allowed into our house!”
I burst into tears – remember, Piccolina, I was only six years old when this happened.
“But, Mama,” I blubbed. “Please! I want to play with him!”
“Loretta!” Mama was stony-faced. “His family are no good. They are nothing but miserable liars and stinking thieves.”
“Marco isn’t a liar.”
“Do not defend him!” Mama snapped. “The Porcupines have nothing but hatred for us. For hundreds of years they have been our enemies. You must not have anything more to do with him.”
“But he’s my best friend!” My sobs had become little hiccups.
“Loretta.” Mama shook her head. “Stop crying. I do this for the best. You will have many friends, boys and girls. But they will all be Wolf cubs just like you. And you will marry a Wolf too. This Marco, he is nothing. You must never talk to him again.”
Marco was not allowed in my house. Not only that, Mama said if he even dared to enter the district of the Via di Vallerozzi he would be beaten up by the local Wolf boys.
At school the next day, I tried to do what Mama told me. I would not look at Marco in the classroom. At lunchtime I hid in the branches of a big oak tree, but he climbed up and found me. He looked even paler than usual, his black eyes sunken, and I knew he’d been crying.
“My mama says I have to stay away from you,” I told him.
“Mine too,” he said.
We sat there in the tree for a while, then Marco said to me.
“I won’t tell them if you don’t.”
Both of us knew at that moment how serious the secret was that we were keeping. If our teachers or the other kids saw us together they might have told their parents or reported us to the contradas. We never spoke to each other in class or acknowledged each other in front of the other children. Instead we developed a secret sign language, drawing symbols in the air with our fingers to each other, communicating in code across the classroom.
If I traced out a circle and a V that meant we should meet beside the drinking fountain next to the library. A wiggle of the fingers and a clenched fist from Marco meant I should wait for him at lunchtime in the grove of trees beside the bicycle racks.
Even at these hidden meeting places it was impossible to really speak to each other without fear of getting caught. The only place we were really safe was what Marco referred to as “neutral territory” – an old abandoned villa, high in the hills to the southern side of the city.
We rode there on our horses – it was too far to go on foot. Marco was an excellent rider and I was certain he would become a fantino for the Porcupines one day. When we first met he had this little brown pony called Piccolo. Then later, when he was about nine, he was given Clara, a grey mare with dark dapples. She was a tricky horse with a hot nature, but Marco was a kind rider and he handled her gently so they suited each other.
We couldn’t ride together, of course. Usually I rode the paths alone, but sometimes Carlo would go with me. My brother was the only one who knew about Marco. He did not mind at all that my best friend was a Porcupine. Carlo did not care about the contradas, as I have said before. All he cared about was the horses.
Carlo was with me on the ride to the villa the day that I earnt my nickname.
By now my father had been gone for almost a year. The war was going very badly for Italy and despite the best efforts of II Duce to keep up the appearance that we were winning, there were murmurs of unrest. In the city everyone still greeted the Blackshirts with the customary salute, but behind closed doors people were anxious and afraid.
“They give people castor oil,” I said to Carlo, repeating what Marco had told me. “They stick a funnel in your mouth and make you drink it.”
I was riding Stella as always and Carlo was on Serafina. It was a sunny day and we were letting the horses walk freely, reins loose as we talked.
Carlo had been very quiet for the whole ride. When I told him abo
ut the castor oil, he looked really upset and then he said, “I have to tell you something. About what happened yesterday when Mama sent me to Signor Garo’s store to get bread.”
“You told us the store was closed,” I said.
“It wasn’t closed,” Carlo replied. “When I got to town there were Blackshirts everywhere, like there always are. They were marching about as if they owned the place and then I saw a large group of them armed with sticks. They went into Signor Garo’s store. Before I could get there I heard shrieks and shouting coming from inside and then suddenly there was this crash and broken glass flying everywhere. The next thing I knew Signor Garo was lying in the street covered in his own blood. They had thrown him through the plate-glass window!”
“But why Signor Garo?” I said. “Why hurt him, of all people?”
“He is a Jew,” my brother said. “And the Nazis hate the Jews so now we Italians hate them too.”
“Poor Signor Garo!”
Carlo looked pained. “I should have helped him, Loretta. After all he has done for us, and instead I just let him get beaten up right there in the street.” He wiped his eyes angrily. “I wanted to help him, but I did not dare. No one did. We just left him there, lying in his own blood while the Blackshirts took whatever they wanted from the store.”
I felt terrible for Signor Garo. He was a very kind man. With my father away fighting he had let Mama run up a huge bill, buying flour and other items on credit.
I was silent for a moment considering this. Then I asked, “What happened to him?”
“They took him away,” Carlo said. “Anyone who disagrees with the Blackshirts gets taken away. There is talk of torture, and beatings. No one who is taken by the Blackshirts comes back again.”
“Without him, we will starve.”
“We will be all right,” Carlo muttered. “I can hunt for meat. We have the garden. We’ll manage …”
As Carlo said this, we rounded the corner and there right in front of us was a checkpoint. Two army jeeps had been parked across the road, back to back with a narrow gap between them, just big enough for a car to drive through. This gap was barred by a wooden pole, creating a makeshift barrier balanced between the flatbeds of the jeeps. The three Blackshirts who had created this road block were laughing and smoking, playing cards on the bonnet of one of the vehicles.
“What’s this for?” I whispered to Carlo.
“They make the cars stop,” Carlo said. “They check them, supposedly looking for traitors and spies, but really they just steal whatever they want and then move the pole to let you pass.”
Looking back, the smart thing to do at that moment would have been to ride up to the Blackshirts and calmly allow them to inspect our bags and the horses. After all, we were Italians, not foreigners, and the only thing we had on us was a precious bar of chocolate, saved for many months, which I was planning to share with Marco when we reached the villa. But I didn’t want to give them my chocolate. Also, I was so scared by the stories Carlo had been telling me that at that moment, when I saw the men with their guns, I panicked. Perhaps they might get suspicious about what we were doing and what if they started to question us? If they discovered our hideaway and Marco was already there then they would tell the contrada and I wouldn’t be able to see him any more.
“We’re not stopping,” I whispered to Carlo.
“What are you talking about, Loretta?” Carlo hissed back. “Of course we’re stopping!”
“Shorten your reins,” I warned him through gritted teeth, “and get ready to go!”
“Loretta! No, you can’t be serious …” Carlo tried to argue with me but when he saw the look of resolve on my face he knew it was pointless.
“You’re crazy, you know that?” he muttered. Then, cursing my name under his breath, he kicked Serafina on. With a swift tap of my heels and a cluck of my tongue I urged Stella into a gallop too and fell into stride right behind Carlo.
Ahead of us, the soldiers, who had been absorbed in their card game, suddenly realised what was going on. We were galloping towards them and we clearly had no intention of pulling up our horses.
“Hey!” one of them cried. “No! Stop!”
He began to fumble around on his back for his rifle and I felt sick at the sight of him reaching for the gun, but it was too late to change my mind now. Ahead of me, Carlo was in full gallop.
One of the Blackshirts waggled his gun at Carlo, but the others obviously thought the whole situation was amusing. One of them stepped away from the jeeps and began to wave his hands up and down indicating for us to slow down. His face changed, however, when he saw that Carlo wasn’t stopping. Now he too reached for his rifle, shouting out to the third man, gesturing at him to move quickly.
I watched Serafina as she hesitated for a moment, but she was a good Palio horse and the shouting and commotion did not faze her. She saw the barricade, and her ears pricked forward as she recognised the checkpoint rail for what it was to her – a brightly painted showjump fence.
At just the right moment Carlo called out “Hup” and Serafina took one last stride and then lifted up in the air, taking the rail for all the world as if she were a grand prix jumper. She gave such an almighty stag leap that I saw Carlo clutch a handful of her mane to keep from sliding off, but he had the natural balance of a Palio rider and he quickly righted himself, driving her on.
Stella and I were only a few strides behind him, but in this brief time the Blackshirts had finally gathered their wits. They moved in unison to block our path, standing side-by-side in front of the checkpoint rail. Two of them had their guns pointed straight at me. On the other side of the blockade I could see my brother pull up Serafina and look back at me in despair. He was shaking his head at me as if to say, “give up”. There was no way I could jump the rail now.
Later on, Carlo and Marco would make a big fuss about my courage that day. But I swear it wasn’t bravery that drove me to do what I did. It was pure instinct. We were moving too fast to pull up, and besides, I trusted Stella. I knew she would not fail me. So when the men closed ranks in front of that rail I did not even think to stop. Instead, I trained my eyes on the jeep to the right of me and took a deep breath and rode on.
That’s right, I told Stella, closing my legs hard against her sides. We’re going over it.
I had jumped small things before that. A fallen log once or twice, and low fences in the fields near our house, but I had never jumped anything the size of a jeep! If you’d asked me to jump it again in cold blood I don’t think I could have done it, but the adrenaline was coursing through my veins and I could feel Stella gathering herself up, and I knew that she could make it.
The jeep was so wide that as we hung in mid-air I worried for a moment that she wouldn’t make the spread, but of course she cleared it easily. We landed neatly too, and then Stella surged forward once more, and by the time the Blackshirts had pulled themselves together, leapt into the jeep and started to drive after us, Carlo and I had already made our escape, heading off the main road and diverting along the narrow paths in the woods that led us to the villa where Marco was waiting for us.
Marco didn’t believe the story at first. He thought we were making it up – but then he saw the state our horses were in, sweating and blowing, and the way we kept checking anxiously out of the windows in case the Blackshirts had followed us, and then he knew it was true and he told me I was a hero.
“A hero?” Carlo was stunned. “We are lucky we didn’t get shot!”
He smiled at me. “My sister, Loretta Scavezzecolla!”
It means Daredevil.
And that is how I got my name.
I set my alarm before I went to bed that evening. Frannie had said come early to exercise the horses, so I figured four a.m. would be OK.
I woke up before it even rang, like I usually do. I didn’t want my bedroom light to disturb Nonna. She knew I was going to Frannie’s, and there was no need to wake her, so I went about finding my things in the dark, fu
mbling around and working by feel. I was pretty much used to getting dressed this way after sharing a room with Donna back home. She hated it if I woke her up when I was getting ready to go to the track. Donna never got up early. “I need beauty sleep,” she would groan.
She could sleep for a hundred years and it wouldn’t help.
After sharing a room with Donna all my life, putting up with her constant blibber blabber about whichever boy she was dating, I loved having my own room at last. Only I kind of missed having Johnny and Vincent around. My brothers argued a lot, mostly about dumb stuff, never about anything important. You could hear them when they were riding track, bickering their way around the course, galloping side-by-side so they could shout back and forth. Afterwards, they’d cool their horses off before taking them to the wash bay. Four workouts apiece and they’d be done, heading over to the bodega, both ordering the same thing from Sherry, the breakfast tortilla with extra bacon on the side.
“The same old routine, baby sis,” Vincent had told me on the phone when Nonna and I had called home. I could hear Johnny in the background shouting something and trying to grab the phone off him, and it was hearing them fighting that made me miss them.
Then Dad took the phone off both of them. He wanted to speak to Nonna first. I could hear her running through checklists with him.
“Get Johnny to breeze Ginge tomorrow then blow him out before the race this weekend,” she said. Then a pause as she listened to Dad and I saw her shake her head. “Uh-uh, he needs protein. You should add a scoop of Hanley Formula to his feed, Ray. That horse has to put on some fast muscle if he’s going to be ready to race in the fall …” Then, once all the horses had been dealt with, the phone got passed back again to me.
“Lola?”
“Hi, Dad.”
“You sound like you’re just down the road. Good reception, huh?”
“Clear as a bell.”
“How’s the old country?”