From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home(74)
I had watched my grandmother’s struggle to reclaim the land and legally contest Dusty at a distance as I went off to study in Italy, then get my first apartment in New York City, and later move to Los Angeles. The injustice incensed me. Still, I loved the scent of pine, and the winding red clay roads were in my blood. I literally knew their taste in my mouth. That land was a place as real and alive to me as my skin. Even if I never wanted to be dependent on it as my ancestors had, I loved it in the way you love a place you know in your soul and in your heart you can’t let go.
* * *
Once we arrived at the notary’s office, I knew my role was nothing more than to play the American wife who barely understood a word of Italian. I would sit back and let the legal transfer unfold. And I would step in if, and only if, an old-fashioned show of Sicilian emotion or pathos was needed to get the job done. Because amid everything else that I had learned, I knew Sicilians would move mountains where the pain of grief, death, and loss was concerned. They felt it was their cultural duty. It was what made them Sicilian and not Italian.
The interior of the office struck me as the work of a cinema production designer. It was a cross between a Harry Potter–like reading library, with floor-to-ceiling volumes of bound files embossed in gold, and the private home of some local aristocrat who favored plush tapestries and floor-length silk floral drapery complete with an ornate valance. When we walked into the salon-like conference room, I was invited to sit at a large, antique lacquered table with ball-and-claw legs. A crystal pitcher of water was put before me along with a tumbler on a hand-crocheted lace coaster. The presence of water suggested that we would be there for a while. Then the notary, a suntanned man in his fifties with a George Clooney head of hair, a nautical blue polo, and leather Gucci driving shoes, laid before me a large folio, bigger than 11 by 14. The paper was lined, full of meticulous fine print. It looked to contain the registry of landownership, heredity lines, titles listing parcels of places I recognized, some I didn’t. Then he asked to see my passport and Saro’s. As I passed them to him, he offered his condolences.
Minutes later, I saw Saro’s name in fresh ink on what I presumed to be the Gullo family document of ancestry or heredity. The legal terms were in a cursive that looked as though it were from the eighteenth century. My eyes landed on Saro’s birthday, his national identity number, his birthplace, our address in L.A. Below that, I saw my name and farther down Zoela’s name, more dates, locations, the coordinates of dual citizenry and language.
On the page, Saro’s existence had been reduced to the key places and major events that were the broad outline of the life he had lived: birth, residences, marriage, child, death. As I looked at the words on the page, then back up at the notary, I began to cry. The notary passed me a tissue with tobacco-stained fingers, and I signed my name.
When we emerged back onto the streets of Termini Imerese, in the midst of rush-hour chaos, I was hit with a rush of Vespa fumes, sea salt, eucalyptus, and oleander. I squinted my eyes in the midday sun, temporarily blinded. I now owned land in Sicily.
I didn’t have a copy of what had transpired or a receipt of the transactions. Franca was handling it all, including the two remaining trips there to conclude the land transfer. My part was done. I didn’t worry; I trusted Franca completely. In Sicily, so much happened this way. I was instead grappling with living at the edge of my wildest imaginings of what life could still offer.
When we returned from the notary, Nonna was making caponata. The smell of onion sautéing with a faint aroma of mint was as familiar as that of salted water for pasta. The dish was sweet and savory, quintessentially Sicilian. Just one mouthful told the island’s entire sensuous story: sun, wind, earth, Moorish, and European, it was fantasy brined in reality. Fragrant and textured, caponata has the color of darkness and the taste of paradise.
“How did it go?” she asked me, putting down her wooden spoon.
“Well, I think well. Franca handled it all. She knows all the details.”
“Good.” Nonna returned to cooking.
I watched her put the ingredients together. Eggplant, olives, celery, carrots, tomato sauce. Alone, each is an everyday item, not particularly rich in value. Together, they are a wealth of flavor.
“Nonna, are you sure I can’t help pay the legal fees? I know it was expensive to do this.”
“If you can’t afford a gift, then you don’t give a gift,” she said. She put a lid on the pot to punctuate her point and let the flavors of the caponata meld.
As I watched for a moment longer, Nonna seemed as rooted and grounded as any ancient olive tree on the island. I realized that I was standing in the shade of her tree, whose taproot was anchored in the Old World understanding that in order for me to go forward, I’d need a place where I could look back. In giving me the house, she would hold that place for me, for her granddaughter, draw us closer, keep food on the table. Her gift was her way of allowing me to stand in her shade until I was able to walk out into the sun.
Later, there in Nonna’s kitchen, the warmth of the waning but persistent sun came through the lace curtains that separated her home from the outside world. Even inside, I felt the touch of wind cut gently by sparrows dancing low in the street. I now had a place in Sicily to call my own, a place to return to next summer and beyond.
Part Four
THIRD SUMMER