From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home(66)

“I have to get to Mass early today,” she declared, having just finished ironing the clothes she had mended earlier. “Yesterday the fans were off and my clothes were drenched.”

There had been an ongoing battle of late among parishioners about whether the new fans should be on or off during Mass. Some said the wind troubled their rheumatism, while others, like Nonna, were labeled “wind lovers.” Today she was armed with a plastic ice cream container lid to cool herself between the rosary before the start of Mass and singing at the end of it.

“After Mass, come to the church. I want you to meet the priest,” she said. “He’s very nice, and I told him about you. Bring Zoela.”

Later that afternoon, as Nonna was preparing to leave for Mass, Zoela was out roaming with Rosalia and Ginevra, the cheese maker’s daughter. I asked Nonna where she was. Nonna stuck her head out the window and called to Giacoma down the street. Giacoma, in turn, stuck her head out of the door and shouted back that she’d call Rosalia’s mother. Ten minutes later Zoela was back home.

I convinced her and Rosalia to come with me to church just as Mass was ending. I told Zoela to make sure that her hair was combed and she had on a clean shirt. We would be representing Nonna, and although her free-spirited gypsy look would be totally fine back home in the hipster confines of Silver Lake, in Sicily a granddaughter meeting the priest had a certain formality to it. I promised there would be gelato afterward for all her effort.

As the sun had just begun to settle below the mountain range on the other side of the valley that ran to the sea, we walked into the sacristy. Parishioners were beginning to rise from the pews and file out. We hung toward the back by the holy water font and two fans going at full blast. Nonna spotted us and bade us to come forward. A minute later, we were in the parish office and I was shaking hands with the African priest.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said.

“The pleasure is all mine,” he said. His Italian was tentative and spoken with a wonderful accent that I couldn’t place. When I shook his hand, I got a warm and open vibe. I felt a kind of unexpected pride in this man I was just meeting. Here was a fellow person of color. Here was a man acting as the spiritual leader of a town of people so culturally foreign to him. He was doing it in Italian, bridging language, geography, nationality, and race. I imagined that we both knew something about being both foreign and a non-Italian in Italy—he perhaps more than I, given his vocation, the intimacy it required. I wanted to secretly tell him that he was doing “God’s work” in more ways than one by simply being in Aliminusa. But we couldn’t cover all that ground so soon.

“It is wonderful to have you here,” I said. There was a line forming behind us. There were other parishioners who had special requests or needed to speak with him privately. But he didn’t rush us.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

I recognized the curiosity in his eyes. I had seen the same look when I had lived in Florence and bumped into newly arrived Senegalese immigrants. We were two people of African descent meeting across the diaspora, an event that forges an instant sense of community with another black person anywhere in the world.

“I come from California. Los Angeles,” I responded. His face broke open in a smile of wonderment, as if I had spoken of an alternate universe full of fantasy and whim. I wondered how many films he had seen with palm trees and bikini-clad lifeguards. “Where are you from?” I asked in return.

“Burundi,” he said. My geography was shameful. I couldn’t picture the country on a map of the continent. But I did conjure up a tableau of a family who surely missed him, people who were sharing their son with the Catholic Church.

Next to me, Nonna beamed. As a deeply devout woman, introducing me to the priest was a sign of respect for him. During our conversation, she had been going into her purse to retrieve a private offering. Now, with money in hand, she put her hands on Zoela to gently nudge her to say hello.

“This is my daughter,” I said. Zoela came forward and shook his hand. She said, “Ciao,” and looked at him in wide-eyed wonder, as if he were a black version of Don Matteo.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He smiled and took Zoela’s hand. “You are the American granddaughter.” He took a half step back and took her in. “May blessings be with you,” he said, putting his other palm on her shoulder.

Zoela smiled, slightly embarrassed by the attention. Then she looked back to Rosalia, who was waiting a few feet away near the confessional booth.

“How old are you? What grade are you going into?” he asked.

“I’m eight, and I’ll be in the third grade,” she said shyly in her best Italian.

“Do you like Sicily? It’s good to be with your grandmother, no?”

“Yes.” The one-word answer covered both questions. I could tell that she had lost interest in the priest. She was eager to link back up with Rosalia and meander through town until dinner.

Nonna handed the priest her donation. He smiled, nodding a thank-you.

An impatient line had formed behind us, a formation of women with their handbags at the ready, poised to ask for special prayers, request a confession, make a donation on behalf of themselves or some loved one. Nonna put her hand on my elbow, the universal Sicilian gesture communicating that it was time to go.

“I hope to see you again before I leave,” I said as Nonna and I peeled off from the standing-room crowd.