Part 3 In America

(This picture was taken in anticipation of our voyage to America. I'm the little girl, six years old. Next to me is my father, Mingu, Domenico, my mother, Dolora', Addolorata, and my big brother Tony, Antonio.  My little brother Luigi was not born yet.)

I was four when I met Zio Tiudo, Uncle Ted, for the first time. He was a skinny man, with a bad leg,  back from India where he spent many years as a prisoner of war. I was still sleeping in my crib, and he insisted I was too old to sleep there. He spent time painting, and telling stories of his captivity.

Mamma said he became corrupted by all those years in a foreign land, in a foreign climate. The year was 1946, and when I started pre-school at the convent where Mamma and Zia Adelina had attended at my age, he walked me there and talked to the sisters at length. They had him talk to our class too. He was funny,warm, handsome,engaging.

He and my Aunt Adelina left for America in 1947..

We were all supposed to go together. But, we couldn't obtain the proper visas. Uncle and Aunt traveled to Argentina first, and later emigrated to the United States.  At that time, the quota for Italian immigrants was much smaller than for other immigrants from Northern Europe.

Our  house went from being very crowded, people sleeping everywhere, to suddenly eerily empty. My mother cried from the moment we left the house, and through the next day after the departure. I remember Tony saluting the train goodbye by standing at attention,  just as a soldier would.

Packages from America, big pillowcases full of clothes, shoes, food began to arrive as soon as my relatives reached California, about eighteen months later. Cans of strange sausages, salty and gelatinous were stuck in the middle of the pillowcases.  Not exactly to our taste; but meat nevertheless. Mother sported a new coat that year, which fit her perfectly after alterations.

We began to wear American made clothes, and people talked to us as though we were already Americani.  My dad, though, refused to wear anything the American relatives sent us. “Why do they bother sending this stuff when we are scheduled to join them? Maybe they have changed their minds. Maybe they want to shut us up.”

He was counting the days when they would send for us, not send their discards.

For years, Mother had been trading her sisters' trousseau linens for food or farm supplies. Finally, they were being replaced by the good fortune and generosity that made her sister arrive in America. When I began to write and was put in charge of responding to letters, I would add my own commentaries. Zia, I would say, it’s so good to know you are finding such abundance. It must feel as though you are in Paradise after the scarcity you left behind. Mother would hear the letters and question my round-about ways. “Tell her we need to leave now. Don’t beat around the bushes. Tell her that we sacrificed for her. She can't be selfish!”

Mother was always looking for ways to improve our lot. She had taken me to  line ups at the American War Camps to receive shots of quinine to prevent malaria; a line up to get vitamin pills

or cans of DDT.

Dad grumbled, not trusting any medicine given out freely.

Once, she dragged me screaming and fussing to a louse-treatment line up, making sure my hair was deloused whether I liked it or not. A most- foul smell lingered around us for days. At nursery school, the nuns separated those of us with funny smells and made us stand in the back, away from everybody else.

One of my earliest memory was being held between Zia Adelina’s knees, squeezed so I wouldn’t escape, as she killed the lice and pulled the zits out of my hair with vigor and tenacity, one at a time, a task that tired us both. The pain and indignation, and the fear of being consumed by lice, made me cry the entire time.

Lice and other infestations were rampant during the war years. Many children died of malnutrition or parasitic infections.

I had intestinal problems as a child, pin worms, tape worms, and assorted stomach and digestive problems shared by many children in my town. Again, medications and treatments could be had at the American posts. We all depended on these make-shift generous medicinal dispensaries. If there was something that would make me and my brother get an advantage in life, Mother took us to that line-up.

Mother had enormous faith that her brother and sister would eventually find a way for all of us to join them in America. Every year, she started a novena on this pursuit, a novena that might go on longer than most, months on end, necessitating many prayers, additional visitations to the patron saint appropriate for such a miracle, and a special diet too. On this particular one, since it was such a big miracle, one that might take years to bring about, she gave up meat entirely. Giving up any food was difficult when one has so little to eat. But, giving up meat when one has meat just once or twice a week, and not enough to feel full and contented, but just enough to resuscitate the meat loving glands in your appetite apparatus, that was a major sacrifice. For this one, she prayed to Saint Christopher, not too well known in our parts.

She had given me the task to find the appropriate saint. Not San Rocco; he had the entire town praying to him; not the Madonna delle Grazie, way too many people occupied those pews every morning. She wanted an important figure, one with power and persuasion, one who would get an immediate audience with God Himself.

I found Saint Christopher, patron saints of travelers. Great! She had never heard of him, but trusted my reading and researching abilities. We were going to be great travelers if Saint Christopher took us as clients. How do we do the novenas for this saint? I made up the rest, since no book in the archdiocese specified this stage. “A saint for travelers,” I told her, “needs plenty of songs to help pass the time.”

“Songs?” She inquired, incredulously. The songs we sang in Church were hymns intermixed with recitations.

“Yeah. Songs like O Sole Mio, Mamma, Santa Lucia. As a matter of fact, there is probably a town dedicated to him; we should visit the town, attend the Feast in his name, and get on his good side. Don’t we attend special feast days and give our thanks to special saints?”

“You are right!” She said.

I expected Father to object. What is this? He might say. Where does she get these ideas? We don’t send her to school to come up with these money spending thoughts. We have no business traveling somewhere just to pray.

But he didn’t. And he would have gone along with the idea until something else happened. He got a job, the first Thank-God job that kept him out of the house for months at a time. He became a guard for the Agrarian Reform Movement, a land redistribution program that occurred after the war, splitting up big land holdings and allowing people to homestead/purchase in time/mortgage in labor kind of program. Farm residences were being built on five acres of land each. Some places were kilometers apart. Father’s job was to travel to each one, unexpectedly, spend the night with the shepherds or whoever camped there, and try to keep a presence in the field.

When Zia Adelina wrote that roses had thorns, her code phrase for things are complicated and painful, Mother knew in her heart that only a miracle could precipitate the right action. She didn't know what was troubling her sister; but whatever it was, Mother was going to pray for it to dissipate.

The promise that was America stood on an altar in our house, right next to the Madonna Delle Grazie, Mother’s patroness, and the added Saint Christopher.  America was the same as heaven. When I argued with her that we needed to learn English to have a chance at surviving in America, she dismissed my worries. "What? How did my sister manage? She didn't speak English?"

"Mamma, that's one reason she might be having trouble. They speak English, not Italian."

Mother thought that people all over the world were the same, speaking basically the same, with just a few variations, as in the dialect she heard from people who visited the town on Saint Rocco's Feast Day.  Dialects are not different languages, but different inflections, even different expressions.  She thought everyone in the world spoke a form of Italian. Didn't the Romans occupy the known world? 

We took official sets of pictures,  and got ready to go at a moment's notice. The town continued to buzz with news of our imminent fortune.

My family never emigrated.

Uncle returned to Italy eight years later, in 1955, after Uncle Giuseppe died and the property was divided. My big brother Tony had left for work in Milano, Mother had a new toddler to care for. By now, all our hopes had dried up. America was no longer our destination.,

I was the only one who emigrated for America in 1959. My experience was not an easy one. But, I completed my studies, obtained a teaching job, and got married.

My mother, and my younger brother Luigi, visited me, each for an extended amount of time when I lived in Los Angeles. They saw first hand how we lived, how we too struggled to attain the dream.

Their lives had been enriched because Americans were generous. The Marshall plan had helped Italy recover from the war in many ways. The Land Reform allowed many people the opportunity to work the land and own it after a while. Houses were built, loans were made, opportunities handed out generously. Father’s job provided steady cash income that helped me continue with my studies past the fifth grade.

My parents always looked to the future, when times would get easier, when their children would break the cycle of poverty. Whatever strength they had, they poured it into making sure each of us had opportunities and education.

My journey is coming to an end. I will never feel totally at home anywhere. Italy is my first home. Italy is a mother’s hug, and a father’s praise. But Italy feels foreign now. Through sheer willpower, I make my home where I find myself.

I think of all who emigrated, who left what and whom they loved, what they knew. We can return; but we have changed in a fundamental way. We are saddened by the change; saddened that we lost our connections to our past. Nothing is the same. We are the outsiders now, the Americani. We take comfort in the fact that our children will not have to feel this loss.

My children will not understand these feelings. I am two-three hours away from each of them, by car or by plane. They get to come back home anytime they wish. We get together anytime we need to be. But their roots are shallow and their branches are not truncated. They only know what is in front of them.

In my dreams, I’m back home, in the same little house, everyone around me, having a big Sunday meal. Only then, I feel whole.

By Rosaria Williams

Chapter Seven: Do You Speak My Language?

The guy at the counter deposited a slice of gooey pizza in front of me with a thud. “Enjoy, nothing like the pizza I knew, but it’s the best in L.A.”

“No. ” I said, trying to think of some thing else to say.

“Yeah? Where did you eat better pizza?” I had offended him.

“In Naples!” I said with conviction.

“No WAY. Where ?”

No, I thought, I can’t keep up this conversation. I am not sure what it is he is saying. No way? What does that mean? Go away? Which way?

“O.K.” I said, meaning yes, I ate better pizza in Italy.

“So, where are you from?”

I understood that. “I am from south.” I said carefully, each word spaced out so I could study his face to see if he understood.

“Ma che, anch’io sono da quelle parti!” (Why, I’m from that region!)

“Tu, dall”Italia?” (You, from Italy?)

“Da quando ?” (How long ?)

“Solamente un paio di mesi. Non parlo molto Inglese.” (Just a couple of months. I do not speak much English.)

"Come ti piace Los Angeles?" (How do you like Los Angeles?)

"Tutto `e diverso. Ogni sogno `e del mio paese." ( Everything is different. Every dream is of  home."

Then, he was called away. It was the first time in many months that I could tell another soul how it felt to be so far away from everything I loved. I was afraid to even think those thoughts. Wasn't this what I wanted, what my parents wanted for me?  How could I be so ungrateful?

I finished my pizza and left.

The next day, I went into that drug store and approached the soda counter. Somebody else was there.

“The boy here. Italian? ”

I blurted something. The girl at the counter smiled and said,

“Peter. ”

Then, divining my real intentions, she shouted out to another person at the corner of the store.

“Mark, this girl wants to talk to Peter!” A busy man yelled something back.

The girl, still smiling, interpreted, “ I think he works part time”, she said to me with a big smile.

The next day and the next day, and each day for an entire week,  I went to the soda counter until I saw Peter again. He saw me coming up to the counter.

“Well, look, la ragazza?”

“Yes,si, sono io. ”( Yes, yes, it’s me.)

He told me that when someone got sick, he filled in. I was disappointed, and he saw that in my face.  It was enough, he said. He went to school the rest of the time.

I continued to drop in, buy a soda or a milk-shake. Or just wave at the person behind the counter. Peter saved a space at the counter for me whenever he worked, with a handwritten ‘riservato’.

Two, three times a week after I finished my lessons at the Berlitz School on Wilshire, and before I hopped on the bus for my trip back home, I stopped at that drugstore. 

I told myself it was ok to talk to boys. No harm done.

I was not surprised when he remembered my Saint’s day, and offered me a complimentary soda. I did not want him to. It was ok to talk; but receiving gifts meant something else.

“Let me take you out to the movies after I get finished here”, he said.

“I can’t. I am not allowed.”

“Who says?”

“I just can’t."

I kept meeting him once a week or so for months. In September, even after I had enrolled at a junior college, I took an extra bus, a long detour to get to that drugstore for a slice of pizza and a conversation in Italian.

Before Christmas, Peter left a corsage on the space he reserved for me. It was an elaborate pin with holiday greenery and silvery objects. I should have refused. How could I explain it at the house? I decided then and there that I couldn't do this anymore. As I started to leave, he blurted, “Wait, you have not given me your number. How do I get in touch with you?”

“You cannot.”

Someone called him away, and I was off the hook. On the way home, I threw the corsage away.

That Christmas was a balmy 85 degrees. We planned to eat the customary turkey, as we did at Thanksgiving. All holidays felt the same, the same food, the same sunshine. Time was standing still.

The passing seasons were discernable through window displays at department stores. After Christmas, I never went back to that drugstore.

Chapter Eight: Instruments of Grace

Instruments of Grace

Theresa and I  were the only full time, continuous foreign students at Immaculate Heart College. Yes, others came in for a semester or two to study music or work on some project, rich girls whose families had sent them to America to study English or art, but they never made friends as we did, or worked hard at fitting in.

We ate lunch together,  audited each other's classes, talked on the phone after hours. She came from Lebanon in her early teens and lived with an aunt and uncle, just as I did.

Our lives had other parallels: we both came from strict catholic families, had left our nucleus families behind, and had hoped everyone would eventually settle down in America.

Our school, Immaculate Heart College,at the foothills of the Los Angeles  Observatory, at the tip of Western Avenue, sat on a hill covered by rugged terrain. All around, instead of a fence, thick growth of scrub oak, coyote bush, palm trees and blackberry bushes kept us safely inside.  In the sixties, the campus included a convent, a church, classrooms, laboratories, auditorium, library and concert rooms. It expanded  over the hills, with a beautiful view of the city all the way to the beach. It ceased to be a school in the late seventies, and the buildings were sold to The American Film Institute. The story of this school and the nuns who used to run it became front news in the Los AngelesTimes when the local archidioce refused to support the nuns when their political views had been held too publicly.

I was struggling to breathe normally and to find ease in my new rhythm. A gnawing depression seeped into my veins like the gray, nauseous smog over Los Angeles.

I told myself it was only temporary. What I needed to do was learn to eat American food, accept life in a new household, and finish my studies. I doubled my efforts, swallowing bread that tasted like cotton, and eating meat that was still raw.

My uncle’s wife prepared the main meal at seven in the evening, cooking steaks by turning them once, enough to burn their outside only. She served the meat with a baked potato and chocolate cake for dessert. Once, I attempted to recook the steak by slicing and sauteing it with tomatoes. She yelled at me for stinking up the kitchen. Steaks came in two sizes, fillet minon and New York Strip. They tasted the same to me. Only rarely I was allowed to cook pasta, or  minestrone, and only when my uncle wanted such things.

I never thought food would become such a bone a contention in my life. I never imagined that I would miss the humble pasta e fasul.

Life at school was much easier than I had anticipated. Most of the work comprised of reading from a text and writing reports. In Italy, tests consisted of oral recitations in front of the class, everyone hoping you would mess be disgraced. Now, all tests came in written form. I could read and write English better than I could understand or speak it. My studies were going well, and I continued to receive extensions on my student visa.

Theresa would practice with me some troublesome words she caught me mispronouncing while we talked about our homelands, food,  smells, friends and pleasurable activities we no longer had. She spoke of her large family in Lebanon, of how lucky she was that her Aunt brought her to America. After these talks, whatever had been bothering me dissipated for a few hours.

We each represented our respective country to the girls at schools.

People wanted to know about the life I left behind, though they already had fixed pictures of Italy from the movies they watched. Many had traveled far and wide and knew more places in Italy than I did. Their experiences were not mine.  I only stayed one night in Rome, the night before boarding the plane to Los Angeles. When they spoke of the Vatican, of the Villa Borghese, of  the Amalfi Coast, I smiled and nodded.

I had seen these places only in books and postcards.

I could not explain that pizza was not an entire meal, but a quick bread, eaten before the real loaves of bread came out of the communal oven, a bread with a bit of cheese and tomato, not drowned by a mountain of toppings.

Theresa seemed to know just what to say to ease my adjustment.

“English is not that hard. You just have to learn to use the verb ‘to get’. The idioms will come to you with time.”

And the lessons went on like that. “Get” had a different meaning based on the preposition following it, get in, get around, get over, get up, get out.

"Get it?”

“Stop, I’m confused”, I shouted back.

I was waiting for the right moment to shed my skin and emerge fully formed, speaking flawless English. While the troubles adjusting at my uncle's house were weighing heavily in my heart, feeling all the time that his wife really didn't want me there, I didn’t want to go back home before I finished my studies.

I couldn’t go back a failure. Nobody would have believed me if I told them that life was too difficult; that Uncle was too busy to see that I was unhappy; that I felt like a servant in his house.

If only I could cook the food I knew.

I started out majoring in science, until formaldehyde made me sick. Most subjects were easy for me, mathematics, French, Art History. My papers, even with errors received high marks and encouraging comments.

My accent was thought "charming."

It was Dr. Cordero, one of my English teachers, who encouraged me to take more English classes until I had enough courses to declare a major. When I told him I lacked vocabulary and the proper formal education, he reminded me that I had Latin as my trump card and had read more literature than any eighteen year old he knew. In a poetry class, discussing Ezra Pound, my knowledge of allusions in Pound’s Cantos seemed to please him. He remarked to the class that if they wanted to be literate they needed to read Dante, Virgil, Boccaccio.  I began to feel the admiration and respect of the class, no longer thinking of me as a poor immigrant girl.

The place hummed with a golden innocence. Though we didn’t wear uniforms, we looked alike, pleated skirts and white shirts ,meticulously starched, sporting a pin or two, hair in pony tails or worn loose with hair bands. We all covered our books with verses from favorite poems, done in beautiful calligraphy.

Under the tutelage of art teacher Sister Corita, we learned to observe and express our point of view.

“We choose our roles in life the way we choose our paints," she imparted wisdom with each lesson, " the way we impart an overall mood and emotional effect on our canvasses." “We select what we pay attention to and what we ignore, consciously and unconsciously. Choose your strokes, your focus, and the attention will go there. Art is the human effort to create a new world on each canvas."

In a cavernous room full of paints, brushes, canvasses in various stages of progress, collages, serigraphs, banners, and assorted materials, a small framed woman in her mid twenties, Sister Corita, infused energy in every corner, asked us to think about our world, about concepts such as justice, peace, the power of the image.

"We are all  instruments of grace, able to dream solutions, able to shake the world off its axis. Observe,  relate. Express your thoughts with words and symbols. "

At Mass, singing in English, rhythms joyous and humble,  we expressed  love and joy for the world around us. The discussions in class related to what was important, and the roles waiting for us.

The stirrings reported in the local newspapers were discussed at the same time as the poetry of John Donne, or the tragedies of Shakespeare. People lived in fear, we heard. People were prevented from entering certain buildings, from frequenting certain neighborhoods, taking up certain careers.

Protest songs made their way into our liturgy, or in our daily procession up the hill to the Grotto with the statue of the Virgin, a rugged path that kept us focused on the terrain and the rhythm of the song.  "How many times must...." a Bob Dylan song became our walking prayer.

When we heard of the thousands of people who marched on Washington, D.C.  to hear southern Baptist minister, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak of the need for justice and equality for black people, we improvised a protest march across  campus. In an informal way, classes were dismissed and the procession grew. Everyone out of class grabbed make-shift banners and chanted their way to the Grotto, gaining members as they went  through  the entire campus.

We lived in a rarefied atmosphere, in the security of a private institution that was well endowed, with money and power. Yet. we were encouraged to express our beliefs through actions.

I took the bus to school. Theresa walked from nearby Hollywood Boulevard where her relatives had a business. Most of the other girls were dropped off in chauffeured  Cadillacs or limousines.

Uncle had enrolled me at Immaculate Heart because he believed girls my age needed to remain innocent. Theresa's relatives enrolled her because she could walk to classes, and in the afternoon, she could work at the costume shop.  Most people’s main interest in keeping girls in Catholic schools was to keep those girls in a protected environment, away from improper influences.

Uncle had no idea of the kind of education I was receiving.