From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home(83)

“I see that now.” It suddenly struck him as a fact as clear as the Sicilian July day.

Then he turned to me, and, perhaps for the first time in the hour we had been together, he saw me—a black American woman seated at the table among the faces of people she neither resembled nor defended but whom she seemed to understand.

“How the hell did you get here?” he asked.

I gave him the only answer that would explain it all: “I was married to a Sicilian man. I’m now his widow.”

He lingered for a moment, as if trying to process the sequence of life events I had laid out that had brought us to this moment. Then he offered his condolences. Ten minutes later I got him to agree not to pursue the insurance claim issue any further.

“Tell them your car was hit while it was parked. No one’s fault. Pay the fine, and enjoy the rest of your vacation,” I said.

“It’s a beautiful place,” he said referring to the rolling fields that led to the valley below. “Too bad about all this. I can’t say that I will be coming back. These people don’t make it easy.” I wanted to educate him about the fact that he was on an island that has been conquered and ruled by many outsiders throughout history. That the Sicilian instinct isn’t always to make it easier for an outsider.

I watched him drive away, up the winding road past the blackberry brambles, taking the series of curves that would lead to the country house he was renting. I was ready to go back home. The whole thing had been rather exhausting.

When I got home, Nonna made us afternoon coffee, and she shrugged her shoulders as I recounted the story of Calogero and the Englishman. Her purse was on the table. She was going to Mass soon. The priest from Burundi was back, and she wanted to get to the church to get a spot near the fans.

Calogero’s wife had stopped me as I was returning home and had given me a bag of dried garbanzo beans from the spring harvest in gratitude for my help. Nonna and I decided to clean them while we waited for the coffee to rise to the top of the caffettiera. The beans still had remnants of earth and bits of straw on them. Nonna rinsed them to remove the unwanted parts; I stood ready with the colander and a floral dish rag to dry them. We worked in silence, the smell of brewing coffee permeating the kitchen. I had a feeling that something was on her mind. After I dried the last colanderful of beans and put them into a shallow bowl to dry further in the sun, the coffee was finally ready. That was when she finally spoke up.

“Did you side with Calogero?” She poured a thimbleful of espresso for herself, a full demitasse for me. “Because others come and go, but we are here together.”

It took me a moment to register the full spectrum of what was being said—both a statement and an invitation, a moment as quintessentially Sicilian as the earth on which we stood. Nonna saw this as us versus them. At the same time, she was testing my allegiance and sense of belonging to this place, this community. Behind it all, she was asking if I was a part of her us.

The answer had been unequivocal for me.

“Yes, I did,” I assured her. “You won’t have any problems. Calogero will probably bring you lentils and garbanzo beans all year.”

She laughed and wiped down the sink and countertop, wiping away dust or problems no one could see but her. I hoped she was also wiping away any doubt about how I felt about her and the place she called home. Soon afterward she dressed in her formal widow blacks, sprayed her hair in case the wind picked up, and left for Mass.

While Nonna was at church, I peeled Zoela away from her iPad and told her a boiling cauldron was waiting for us. It was time to make the sauce. We closed the front door and followed the scent of burning wood and velvety plum tomatoes.

When we stepped into the cellar, we found all the members of the Lupo family in full swing. One duo supervised the washing, another duo added onion and coarse sea salt from the flats of Trapani. There was a milling station where boiled tomatoes were put through metal sieves to separate the pulp from the seeds and skin. It was there that the tomatoes were reduced to a puree. The smell of smoke that permeated the town was almost ethereal up close. In a second room, the oldest member of the Lupo family, Pina, stirred a second cauldron exclusively for the puree. She used a wooden spoon the length of her body, toe to breast. Her job was to constantly stir the sauce in a gentle motion so as not to let it stick to the bottom. Nearby, the oldest men scooped out small pots of the sauce and took them to the bottling station. Then Maria Pia filled each bottle, capping it with a bottle cap. Lastly, there was an area of the cellar where hundred-year-old straw cesti, large baskets, rested on the floor. They were the kind once carried by mules. Full bottles were put into the baskets and wrapped in blankets to cool.

Zoela and I looked at the ancient, efficient, precisely timed and rhythmic operation with no idea where to jump in. For a moment, I accepted that our role might be to stand and watch at the periphery, outsiders looking in. I worried that all my buildup to Zoela about making the sauce had been a letdown. I knew she would be bored in about five minutes if all she could do was stand around a hot cellar and watch other people work. But then she spoke.

“Posso aiutare?—Can I help?” The room lit up in surprise and enthusiasm for the little voice asking to join in.

“Certo—Of course” was the response that came back in unison. “Get her an apron,” someone urged.

“Voglio mescolare—I want to stir.” Zoela was pointing to the first cauldron over a bright orange-and-red wood flame. The wooden spoon was taller than she was. “I can do that.”