From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home(61)

I smiled and put my arms around her for an American-style hug. We were in the middle of our second annual arrival ritual. The widows and wives of Via Gramsci had surrounded the car once again, their usual chorus of salutations and physical evaluations in full swing: “Zoela is taller.” “Your hair is longer.” “You look tired.” “You look nourished.” “You need to rest.”

The first greetings were always an evaluation of how we looked. It was the Sicilian way. “Nourished” was shorthand for well fed. It was true that I had gained back some weight since the previous summer. And Zoela was now chest high. She had breast buds. I was happy they didn’t mention that.

Within an hour, we were seated at the table, ready for our first meal together in a year. Nonna ladled ditalini con le lenticchie, tiny tube-shaped pasta with lentils, into a shallow pasta bowl. There was cheese infused with large, jet black peppercorns. They reminded me of mini black-eyed peas in a sea of pecorino. I’d always enjoyed that variety of sheep cheese, its outer ring so salty, it made my palate spark to life. It had all the characteristics of Sicily, strong but inviting. Nonna had sliced it into wedges that rivaled a small filet of beef.

It was as if no time had passed. My seat was where it usually was. Nonna positioned herself nearest to the stove so she could serve without standing. Zoela plopped down to my left. One bite and my heart eased, my stress lowered. Los Angeles began to fall away as if it literally existed in another time and place.

“Mangia—Eat,” Nonna said to Zoela, who, after twenty-six hours of travel, was more tired than hungry.

I put my spoon to the bowl once again, consuming fortune, fate, and grief. All of it. Then I grabbed a roughly sliced piece of bread from the pile that lay on the table.

“How are you?” I asked, aware that Nonna would be inspecting me for signs that being in her home, eating her food, was in fact restoring me, putting me back together.

“I’m as God wants. No more, no less,” she said, shrugging in her shoulders and simultaneously reaching for the stack of napkins that lay just beneath a statue of the Virgin Mary.

Over the past year, I had received reports on who had become ill in town, who had been born. I had gotten a blow-by-blow of the contentious local election in which Nonna had refused to vote because two cousins were up against each other for the same post. I knew of her high blood pressure and diabetes. I knew she had nerve pain in her shoulder. I knew my nieces were studious and Franca and Cosimo were toiling in precarious work that left little for any of life’s excesses, let alone luxuries. And just days before I arrived, Nonna and I had talked about the raging wildfires that were engulfing parts of the island.

I turned to Zoela, who had eaten only a few bites and was about to get up from the table to go sit in the small living room to watch Italian soap operas, her favorite pastime when there was nothing else to do. Before I could ask her to, Nonna intervened.

“Mangia, Zoela, amore. Mangia, perche ti devi fare grande.—Eat, Zoela, my love. Eat because you need to grow,” Nonna implored. She wanted the pleasure of seeing her grandchild eating vigorously at her table. She put another filet of cheese on Zoela’s plate.

“Zoela, Nonna is happy that we have returned,” I said to her in Italian in the hope that the three of us could have a shared conversation. In our common language.

“I know, I heard you,” she responded in English. Then she got up and walked to the adjacent living room.

“Well, do you want to tell her something about how you feel about being here?” I pressed.

“Sure.” She plopped herself onto the couch and began to take off her shoes, never taking her eyes off the TV. Eight years old was the new eighteen.

“Okay, why don’t you come back here and say it to her personally? Or give her another hug.” I switched back to English suddenly and in a tone that I failed to make sound easy breezy.

Nonna sensed that something was amiss.

“Picciridda mia. I know how happy she is. I can see it in her face and how she liked the lunch.” The way Nonna said “picciridda mia—my littlest one” in Sicilian as an emphasis of affection made me suddenly have to hold back a torrent of tears. Grief was still like that. The tenderness brought it all forward. We were a trio of different ages and languages trying to make it work. The little things meant a lot.

Zoela came back into the kitchen all smiles and kissed Nonna on the cheek. Then she pivoted on one foot and trounced out again.

“Barefoot like a gypsy,” Nonna said, smiling, an affectionate reference to Zoela. “Let her be.”

When Zoela got to the other room, she turned and called back to me in English, “Mommy . . . how come there are no pictures of you and Babbo getting married on Nonna’s wall?”

It was the last thing I had expected, but she was eight and seeing her world differently with each passing day. And it was the first time I realized I’d eventually have to answer the question. But not yet.

As Nonna had begun to clear the table, I responded carefully, “There are no pictures of our wedding hanging, but there are many other pictures of us in the house.” And she didn’t press me anymore.

She wasn’t old enough for me to tell her the details of the ways in which families can hold back on accepting whom their children love. I didn’t want to create any division between her and her grandparents. A full answer would require context first. And to provide a context would require breaking down the long-ago past.