The Girls of Piazza D'Amore (4 page)

In the evenings, Father took it upon himself to give reading lessons to an illiterate young peasant who lived in an alley near our house. By the end of the summer, the eighteen-year-old could write his name and read from my second-grade reader.

My mother's two cousins, who worked in Rome as tailors, were also in the village for the summer, and in the evenings we would all gather at their place. The men played
briscola,
and the women played
scopa
with the children. After the card games, Father took to reading from a book about the true-life story of the bandit Giuliano, who hid in the mountains with a woman until he was betrayed by one of his men and gunned down by a lawman. Father assigned roles from the story to himself and my cousins. He played Giuliano, whom everyone admired for his daring and generosity toward the poor peasants who helped him dodge the law.

During the day, Father spent most of his free time walking with his friends and discussing politics, though he was not as passionate about the topic as some of the others. He was in a very delicate position. My mother's family had always been Christian Democrats, while his father opposed the party.

The only time I remember my parents arguing was when Mother found out that Father had lent money to his best friend. Father insisted that friendship was more valuable than money. Mother agreed about the friendship, but this friend was not trustworthy. He never worked, was rumoured to cheat on his wife, and had taken advantage of Father's generosity before.

“What upsets me is that you believe everything your friends tell you,” she argued.

“And you worry about a few lire when I'll soon be working in America,” he replied. “America” was any country on the far side of the ocean.

“I don't like counting my money until I have it in my hands.”

Father kicked a chair against a wall. “You women are always right,” he said, and he went out to meet his friends at the bar. Unlike my short strong-boned aunts, my mother was tall and thin, with a delicate face, but her frail appearance was deceptive. When she put her foot down to me and my brother, and sometimes even to my father, no pleading could change her mind.

Before that outbreak, I had never known my father to get easily upset, but a few days later, he was livid when a clerk at the post office told him he was too busy to serve him. Father lodged a written complaint against the clerk. Then later he started a petition to have my third-grade teacher removed from Mulirena for incompetence. I had told him repeatedly that we used to spend the day in her class chasing flies. Both times, Mother told him that he was wasting his time, but Father said he did it out of principle, that people in Milan would never put up with the inefficiency of public workers as they did in Calabria.

“
Why can't we make any progress here, like in the North?” he said.

“Your father doesn't really want to leave,” Mother told us after one of his outbursts. “He'd be happier if we all moved to Milan.”

When Father left in September, Mother kept telling everyone that, for her, the main advantage of Father going to Canada was that the family would be able to live together in one place.

Before leaving, without telling my mother, he bought my brother a bicycle.

To me he made a promise. One day, in the piazza, he sat me in Don Cesare's car and said, “When you turn twenty-one in America, I'll get you a car. You'll learn how to drive like one of the
americane
in the movies. You can be whatever you want to be there…
a teacher… a lawyer… a doctor.”

“I want to be a teacher,” I said.

When I was not in school or at the seamstress's shop, I spent my free time in church. Every time I went to confession, Don Raffaele would urge me, “Pray that you become a saint.” Maybe Don Raffaele said this to everyone he confessed, but he singled me out enough times to make me feel he was grooming me for sainthood. Even before I could read, I belonged to the Catholic Action Movement. One could belong to this group from childhood to adulthood; each age group was identified by a different name, from the
Piccolissime
to
Donne
. Boys and girls met separately once a week with a group leader who read stories about saintly people who dedicated their lives to the service of others. Every month we received a magazine from Rome that taught us about the Catholic missions in Africa, South America, and many other parts of the world. There were rules and regulations, and each year we were given different
parole d'ordine,
words to live by. The one I remember best was
saper sorridere sempre
– know how to smile always. The selfless saintly life was what we were taught to aim for, so each night I prayed, “God, help me become a saint.”

I didn't imagine myself as just any old saint, one who simply prayed, went around blessing people, and performing miracles, but rather the type who earned her halo through acts of charity and heroism. We children used to exchange holy pictures of saints who were our heroes. Saint Maria Goretti was one of my favourites. She was a young girl who let herself be beaten to death rather than succumb to a rapist. Naturally, she was the patron saint of chastity. One picture of her was worth two or three ordinary ones. It was the same for Saint John Bosco, who was everyone's favourite. The patron saint of children, he helped wayward kids find their way. In pictures, he is depicted with children staring at him adoringly, like a teen idol.

While I was still in kindergarten, and still a
Piccolissima,
Don Raffaele chose me to recite a poem in church on the occasion of the Pope's birthday. Mother read it out loud until I learned it perfectly. At the altar, standing on a chair in front of the microphone, I saw the sea of faces looking up at me, and I panicked. My mind went blank. The priest came up next to me, and whispered the first line, “
Noi siam le piccolissime del nostro buon Gesù
.” I recited the rest. Afterwards I ran to my mother and hid my face in her lap, ashamed that I had forgotten my lines. But that didn't deter Don Raffaele from putting me on stage again.

On a Sunday early fall afternoon, just before the start of school, the priest came to speak to us at one of our meetings. He gave us the happy news that a big celebration was planned for the Feast of the Rosary. The village's masons had built a new house for the priest and a grotto with a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes outside the church. Under his house, adjacent to the church, would be a theatre, so he could show films all year long. As part of the celebration, a play of the story of Saint Bernadette would be put on to inaugurate both the grotto and the theatre. We spoke with excitement of the plans. He announced that I would be Saint Bernadette. Rosalba, our leader, would play the part of Bernadette's mother.

I walked home with a copy of the play and the feeling that I had been singled out as special. Mother and my neighbours were just as excited as I was. The only thing I was unhappy about was that my father wouldn't see me in the play.

Aurora, who lived in an alley not far from my house, was asked to play the Madonna. She had been chosen because of her long blond hair and gray-blue eyes. Some of the older church ladies snickered when they heard she was playing the part. “Couldn't they have found someone better than the
zingarella
?” they asked.

Aurora's mother, Paola, was a statuesque, fair-haired woman, and was known as a
giruventula
, a busybody, because she went from house to house chattering with people, saying anything that came to her mind. Paola and her husband Micu had met in Cassino after the war. When he brought her to the village, she was already his wife, married in a civil ceremony. Some people doubted they had married at all. They speculated that he had found her in the street and she had just hung on to him for lack of a better life. Why would a good-looking woman like that settle for a taciturn and almost illiterate peasant, if not because she was spoiled goods and needed a roof over her head?

Paola's reputation as a harebrained outsider was sealed when she named her first-born daughter Aurora, instead of Giuseppa, after her father-in-law – an affront to both her husband's family and village traditions. Paola refused to give the delicate bundle of light a name derived from a man's name. She chose Aurora instead, just because she liked its meaning – dawn.

Lucia and Tina made fun of Aurora for having accepted the part. “Isn't she a little too old to be in a play?” Lucia chortled one day at the seamstress's shop.

Aurora shrugged, turning cold toward her two friends. Alfonso had spread rumours that Aurora had flirted with Totu, but Lucia hadn't paid any attention to it, since her brother had tried in various ways before to find fault with both Totu and Aurora
.

We rehearsed for weeks, learning the life story of Bernadette Soubirous, a French shepherdess who had lived a hundred years before our time. The girls in the shop had fun dressing me up. With my square face in a flowered scarf, a long skirt, and a red apron, I looked like a real peasant. They twirled me around and laughed at how I looked like a little woman. Aurora had the seamstress, Giovanna, order white satin fabric for her long dress and a wide blue sash.

Don Raffaele told us about Bernadette leading a poor and simple life; yet the Blessed Virgin chose to appear to her in a grotto, in a golden-coloured cloud, and revealed many important things to her. For a period of six months, Bernadette had eighteen apparitions. People were skeptical and persecuted Bernadette and her family. “I do not promise you happiness in this world, but in the next,” the Lady said during one of her apparitions.

As Our Lady, Aurora didn't have very many lines. Most of my lines were with the mother, who tried to convince Bernadette to disavow what she had seen, for fear that others would think her crazy. But Bernadette persisted in believing in the visions. She didn't want to forget what the Lady told her, so on one occasion she brought a pencil and paper to write down her words. The Lady told her, “What I have to say does not have to be written down. Open your heart to the message of love.”

In one of the most important scenes, the ninth apparition, the Lady asked Bernadette to dig a hole in the ground, to drink the water and bathe in it. I had to pretend to dig, and then I splashed water from a pot on my face. As I acted this part out, I closed my eyes and imagined the stream – a rivulet of clear running water hidden in the underbrush − where my mother and I used to stop on our way to the mountain looking for wood. We drank by cupping water into our hands.
On the water's edge, in spring, I'd find tiny sweet-smelling violets, and, on hot summer days, we would cool our feet in the brook. In Lourdes, the priest said, the watering hole turned into a spring with healing powers, attracting millions of pilgrims.

I had no problem memorizing my lines but I did have to be repeatedly told to raise my voice. Some of the church ladies would sit in the last row of the theatre and call out for me to speak clearly and loudly.

We had been rehearsing together for three weeks when, one day, Aurora didn't show up. Don Raffaele explained that the ladies had decided it would be more effective to have a real statue of Our Lady on stage, and to have one of the women stand behind it and recite the lines. I felt sorry for Aurora, who was very upset when I saw her at the seamstress's shop. She still had to pay for the fabric for the white dress, which was only half finished.

“This village is full of jealous vipers,” she said, tears welling in her eyes.

A few days later, Aurora was rushed to the hospital in Catanzaro, where she stayed for a week. Rumours flew about why she had to stay for so long.

“I hope it's not because of the play or the dress,” Giovanna said. “I didn't charge for my time cutting it and basting it, but I had to charge her for the fabric.”

“Aurora has had other things on her mind besides the play,” one of the church ladies replied. “Good thing we thought of the statue. Imagine having someone like her play the part of the Virgin Mary.”

The ladies then decided that, during the first apparitions, the statue would remain covered by a veil. When it came time for the final scene, the people in the play knelt in front of the covered statue.

I spoke in a clear voice: “What is your name?”

“I am the Immaculate Conception,” the statue replied gravely. The veil dropped and a light shone on the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. Everyone gasped.

For the ending, Don Raffaele told everyone that Bernadette had entered a monastery, where she lived in humility and prayer till her death. “The saint of Lourdes was the saint of penance and the saint of prayer. She is a shining model for all girls. She was a modest and simple peasant who, through faith, achieved the highest level that is granted to anyone. She became a saint.”

Backstage, one of the church ladies planted a wet kiss on my cheek. “
Bravissima, Caterinuccia.
I had goose bumps when the veil came down.” From then on, until I left for Canada, whenever I walked by, people would say, “Here comes Saint Bernadette.” Had I stayed in Mulirena, that would have been my nickname for the rest of my life.

Whether it was the result of my father's petition, or because there was a surplus of teachers, or simply because it was meant to be, when school started in October, my fourth-grade class was surprised by the appearance of a new male teacher, Signor Gavano from Piemonte. He was a gentle man who came all the way from near the French border to teach in our out-of-the-way village, the name of which was not even on the map of Calabria. A surplus of teachers had been a problem in Italy for ages, so this was not unusual. He left his wife and family behind and boarded at the home of Don Cesare, one of the few homes in the village with running water and a regular bathroom.