From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home(65)
Standing in a cheese shop far away from home, I realized that life was recooking me and it would change me, as surely as the milk curdling in the cauldron stirred by my daughter would become something else. I just didn’t yet know what my something was. I only knew that another summer in the Mediterranean, making cheese in a mountain town in Sicily, was but one of the ways I might get there. I knew that spending time with Nonna was part of it, too. Whether I openly acknowledged it or not, she was the heart of the reason I had come back.
THE PRIEST
Each day in Sicily, when it was time to clear the table of what remained of the pasta, artisanal cheese, fresh bread, and home-cured olives, Nonna had one objective: to change the television channel from Zoela’s favorite program, Don Matteo, to her own favorite show, Tempesta d’Amore, a German-produced soap opera dubbed in Italian. When it came to soap operas, Nonna liked a good healthy dose of love, family betrayal, out-of-wedlock pregnancy, an occasional kidnapping, and, of course, young lovers unsure of whether or not to consummate their relationship before marriage. Throw in lies, opulent villas, and sweeping aerial shots of European coastlines, and she was set.
Zoela, however, liked one show and one show only: Don Matteo, a moralistic telenovela whose protagonist is a crime-solving priest with piercing blue eyes contrasting with his black robe. In every episode, the priest, Don Matteo, whips a cell phone out of what Zoela called his “dress” whenever an important plot development transpires. The show is an Italian hybrid of The Mentalist and old-school Columbo. In particular, the scenes in the confessional booth riveted Zoela. She especially loved the scenes when Don Matteo went undercover and changed into jeans and a polo.
“He looks like he could be Justin Bieber’s father,” Zoela said, looking at the TV one day as we were finishing lunch.
Nonna looked up from the sink, where she had gathered the lunch dishes, and then toward the screen. She clucked her tongue behind her teeth and said, “Only in the north do priests go around like that.”
She had no love for Zoela’s show, and I could see she was ready to change the channel to catch her soap opera just as Don Matteo was coming to a conclusion.
“Zoela, why don’t we let Nonna watch her show and you can watch a movie on the iPad upstairs?” I said in English. I had become the intergenerational programming intermediary.
“But, Mommy, I want to know how it ends.”
“Yes, I know. But Nonna just made us lunch, and she likes to watch her show as she cleans the kitchen. I can tell you how it ends . . .” I had seen many such shows and read enough scripts to know their predictable conclusions.
“No, don’t tell me!” she said, horrified that I might give away the plot. “I want to watch it.”
“Today you can’t, sweetheart. Maybe tomorrow you can finish the episode across the street at Emanuela’s house while Nonna washes dishes. But today, watch a movie upstairs.”
Emanuela was Nonna’s widowed first cousin who lived across the street. She was recovering from a recent hip surgery and would welcome the company. Zoela seemed nonplussed about the idea. She pushed her chair back, handed her plate to me with just a touch of side-eye, and then went upstairs.
“What happened? Why is she going upstairs?” Nonna asked me in Sicilian.
“Because she wants to watch a movie,” I lied.
Nonna shrugged, turned off the running water in the sink, dried her hands, and reached for the TV remote. She turned to Tempesta d’Amore just as the opening credits were finishing.
I helped her clean up, momentarily stepping out in the midday sun to shake out the tablecloth in the middle of the street, away from the front door, so that ants wouldn’t be attracted to the crumbs and make a trail into the house.
When I came back inside to fold the tablecloth and put it away, Nonna lowered the TV volume during a commercial break. She had other things to tell me.
“C’è un prete di colore,” she began. There was an interim priest “of color” in town.
She had my full attention. Except for the immigrant men who passed through twice a year selling items like those found in the 99 Cent store at home, I had never heard of a person of color in Aliminusa, let alone a priest.
Nonna wasn’t sure exactly where he was from, but, based on her description, “africano,” I suspected he was likely a young priest from a developing nation sent to town as part of his seminary requirements. Suddenly I looked forward to meeting him. The whole idea of the parishioners of Aliminusa being led by an African priest, even for a few weeks, was the kind of cross-cultural moment I couldn’t pass up.
Nonna had mentioned him before, when we had spoken around the time of Saro’s one-year memorial. He had spent a week in town at Easter. Now he was back for the summer season while the resident priest, Padre Francesco, was away doing a sabbatical in the north for some months. The new priest had been met enthusiastically. That he was “of good heart” was the consensus. However, his Italian was not good. He had mixed up his words after a Mass for the dead and offered the bereaved heartfelt congratulations instead of condolences.
“Now we need a wedding so he can offer his condolences,” Nonna quipped. She loved a good joke. But her laughter quickly subsided. She was onto a serious matter: the new portable fans that had appeared in church.
Unlike some churches in Italy, during the summer months the small church in Aliminusa was not cooled by marble walls and vaulted ceilings. It was narrow with stone walls and no windows. In the summer, afternoon Mass was like a sauna. During the winter, Mass was the best ticket in town, as few people had central heat. But at the moment, winter was a long way off, and we were in the dog days of summer.