From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home(84)
“You must stand back. Or the smoke, onion, and steam will hurt your face. You have to stand back and stir.”
Zoela took the spoon with a kind of glee that seemed unique to the moment when a child is invited by adults to participate for the first time in something previously unknown to her. She looked to me for approval. Despite the obvious risk of fire, smoke, and scalding liquids, there was no way I would have denied her the moment.
I hung back as everyone worked in silent ritual. Zoela’s nine-year-old hands were doing something her grandmother had done, her father had likely done. It was collaborative, practical, healing in the sense of the continuity it provided. This went on for a while, and then Marianna broke the silence.
“Tutte le cose in questa salsa vengono da qui—Everything in this sauce comes from here.” She put an emphasis on here and then pointed to the open window just beyond the cauldron, to the fields in the distance framed in a picture window of stone. “Tutto viene da questo terrano—Everything comes from this land.”
Zoela looked up and out. I followed her gaze. The valley was visible, the mountain range some twenty miles in the distance. The hills were streaked in crimson, the color of summer tomato harvest.
“It is our little piece of earth,” Maria Pia continued, moving closer to Zoela. She stood behind Zoela and put her hand on top of Zoela’s to help her stir. The work was hard and fatiguing. I had been ready to help, but Marianna had sensed it, too. Zoela was relieved for the assistance but not at all ready to relinquish her post.
She stood stoic, her nine-year-old body as determined and committed as that of any other person in the room to making the sauce. My heart swelled. I admired this soul. She was the kind of child I imagined might become a woman who was not afraid to face life’s heat and fire and still stir the pot. Who could appreciate the earth on which we stood. Who knew that she, wherever she might go, was a part of our shared terra. It was embedded into the meaning of her name, Zoela—a piece of earth.
We stayed another hour. I bottled, I stirred, I salted tomatoes, I learned to open the heart of the fruit the ancient way, plunging my thumb into the center where the stem once stood, getting access to the core. Zoela and I left smelling of smoky eucalyptus wood, basil, onion, and sea salt. It was in our hair, in our clothes, it had seeped into our skin. I was reminded of the way Saro had smelled when he had returned to that tiny apartment in Florence each night after working at Acqua al 2. It was a beguiling, living smell that I didn’t want to leave me.
I went to bed that night tired but with the vision of plum tomatoes dancing in my head. The child, the daughter of the chef, stirring the pot. How I wished that Saro had been there to see it. Yet somehow I felt he had. I felt it the same way I had felt that he would be waiting for me the morning we said good-bye.
SAGE AND SAINTS
I woke on my forty-fourth birthday thinking of fennel and Saro’s poetry. It was the last morning I would have alone with Nonna that summer, before my parents arrived by lunchtime. A few days later, Zoela and I would head to Rome, then back to Los Angeles. I heard the unmistakable sound of the water tank being filled above the rafters in the bedroom. Water arrived in town once a week from the mountains, and residents were allowed to fill their household tanks for the week ahead. The flow of water echoed through the stone walls and bounced off the marble floors. It was loud, thunderous enough to wake me. Zoela was still asleep.
The smell of household cleanser rose from downstairs. I heard Nonna moving chairs. It was likely that she was vigorously mopping the floors. Cleaning was her meditation, her tradition on our final days. My parents would be arriving in a few hours, and we would surely have a steady stream of visitors. Her cleaning time might be my final chance to talk with her quietly, just the two of us, face-to-face.
I readied myself, tying back my hair and slipping on a pajama cover. We would likely be interrupted by some passersby—the residents of Via Gramsci on their way to get bread, bringing fresh vegetables from the fields, hanging laundry out to dry, vendors selling their goods. They would poke their heads into the kitchen door with local news or gossip or to share whatever ailed them. So I wanted to be presentable, but I wasn’t ready to dress fully. And after three summers, Nonna knew that when I sat at her table in my pajamas I was in no rush.
When I hit the final step of the landing that led into the modest living room, I was careful not to slip on her wet floor.
“Stai attenta!—Be careful!” she said. “I heard you above. The coffee is already on. Sit down.”
I did as I was told. She checked the flame under the caffettiera, handed me my usual demitasse cup, and passed the sugar right behind it. It was a smooth, effortless action, simple kitchen table choreography we had done countless times before. I settled in.
“Mamma.” I ventured to call her that, it felt natural in the moment. “You know how I feel about good-byes.” I suppose I felt emboldened by the first light of day, my thoughts of Saro, my birthday, the impending guests, and the unspoken awareness that another summer was not promised to us.
“You don’t have to tell me, since yesterday my heart is heavy. And for the next few days I won’t be well,” she said, lowering the flame on the stove-top espresso maker. She took a seat.
She went on to ask me about my plans for the day. I told her I’d be going to the cemetery one last time. She reminded me to weigh my luggage and to travel only with what was necessary. She told me we still had six bottles of tomato sauce to wrap and put into the suitcase. We continued with that small talk for about ten minutes.