From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home(63)

Nonna had told me not to go any earlier than 6:00 p.m. She explained that Donatella’s family rose early, 4:00 a.m. They herded their flock of sheep from the fields above town to the valley below where the animals grazed openly along the creek that ran to the sea. Then they tended and milked the sheep and took the milk to market. In the early afternoon, they transported the milk back to town for the afternoon and evening work of making cheese. Wednesdays they made fresh ricotta. Families in town placed their orders the day before and picked the cheese up, still warm, around 7:00 p.m., in time for the evening dinner. It was not Wednesday, so Nonna wasn’t sure if I would be able to find Donatella in her shop. They lived in the house above it. She told me to call out to her in the street if no one was there. As Old World charming as that sounded, the American in me found the idea a little pushy since Donatella and I had never met.

Nonna had also told me that before moving to Aliminusa, Donatella and her husband had sold their cheese at the market. Donatella had thought it wise to teach herself the art of cheese making because she had married into a family of herders. She thought it was stupid to waste the milk they didn’t sell or, worse yet, sell it cheaply to others who would turn it into cheese, making a bigger profit than they ever saw. The more I knew about Donatella, the more I wanted to meet this female cheesemonger and flavor visionary.

Zoela and Rosalia giggled in the corner as they took turns trying to sit on top of an old wine cask. I was happy to see Zoela smile effortlessly. I wanted to bundle up such moments. And I wanted to reward Rosalia with anything her heart desired because she was making my child smile. She also had Zoela speaking Italian, something with which I had had middling success since Saro’s death. I watched them for a minute waiting. Then I asked Rosalia if she knew where I might find the cheese maker.

Rosalia had become my pint-sized intel agent. In past summers, she had been my go-to person when I wasn’t sure about the time or location of minor happenings in town. She had reminded me when Mass got out. She had informed me when the bakery closed. She had told me which street to take if I wanted to take Zoela to see the last donkey in town. With her red-rimmed glasses and head of thick, dark hair, she reminded me of a kid version of a public radio host. Her raspy voice instantly made me a sucker for all things Rosalia.

“We can ring her bell. She may be upstairs,” she said to me in Sicilian. And before I could answer, she was out the door with Zoela in tow.

I stood alone inside Donatella’s cheese shop, and it hit out of nowhere. Suddenly I missed Saro anew. It happened like that in Aliminusa: I would be moving through the day, and his absence would come to me in the faces of the people I met. I would feel a sudden sense of loss so acute that it would momentarily destabilize me. Now his absence was in the sound of a kid taking our daughter to ring the bell of a woman I had never met because that was the way things happened there. The way they always had. The way Saro always believed was intuitive and superior to the American way. Very little happened in Sicily because of adroit planning; everything happened all’improvviso—on the spur of the moment. It was about being in the right place when an opportunity presented itself, and suddenly it seemed like the most obvious thing in world. Saro would have loved that Zoela was knocking at the door of someone she didn’t know. That within a matter of minutes, I would likely be asking that person to let us help her make cheese. That was the part of Sicily he had wanted me to love.

I thought about what he had always said of the island: “Li ricchi cchiù chi nn’hannu, cchiù nni vonnu—The more you have, the more you want.” I collapsed onto the wine cask to take the weight off my bones.

Rosalia returned with Donatella at her heels. I jumped down off the wine barrel just as our eyes met. She was a stout woman in her late thirties with red cheeks and a short bowl cut tapered at the neck. Flushed from the summer heat, she wore an apron that suggested she had likely been doing housework when Zoela and Rosalia had called to her.

I extended my hand. “I’m the daughter-in-law of Croce,” I said in Italian while I scanned her face for recognition. I found none. “My husband was Saro. We live in the US, in California.” I was giving out identifiers, letting her know I wasn’t a complete stranger.

“I know of you. Saro’s wife. I never met him, but I know your mother-in-law.” She wiped her hands on her apron before reaching out to shake mine. She was almost two generations younger than Nonna; her Italian was effortless even behind a Sicilian accent. She, like others her age and younger, had been taught Italian in school and grown up hearing it on television. Some members of the younger generations now had to be encouraged to learn and speak Sicilian because they considered it an inferior language. Teens sometimes made gentle fun of their grandparents, who spoke an even older dialect. This complex, beautiful oral language dies a little with each generation.

I shifted my feet and nodded. Of course. I was the only black American woman in perhaps a thirty-mile radius. Zoela and I needed no introduction.

“My condolences,” she offered. “It’s nice you came to visit. Za Croce must be happy.” “Za” is a familiar Sicilian title given to older women, like saying “Aunt Croce.” “How can I help you?”

“I want to buy some cheese or place an order. And I am also wondering which day you make cheese here in the shop.” Donatella raised an eyebrow. “My daughter, Zoela, has never seen it. I want her to know where the food she loves comes from.” Across the room, Zoela perked up at the mention of her name.