The Girls of Piazza D'Amore (3 page)

We girls all lived in the same square, Lucia and I even in the same house. The L-shaped row of houses that faced the road and Piazza Don Carlo had once been one large mansion which had housed Don Cesare Cicala's family. Over the years, it was subdivided between Don Cesare, my mother's family and Rosaria's family, the Abiusi.

Aurora's parents – Domenico, known as Micu, and Paola – were peasants who worked for Don Cesare and often spent the night at the
casale
on the farm. Aurora never worked on the farm, but attended school in the village. As a child, she often slept at Don Cesare's house to keep his wife company when he was away. As she got older, she did little chores around the house, but she was never considered a maid.

The backs of the houses formed an enclosed courtyard with an orchard, which was accessible only to Don Cesare. His home still had all the semblance of a mansion, with a protective stone wall around its entrance, a front courtyard, and large rooms with high ceilings. It was the grandest home, not only of the square, but of the village, and it gave all who lived in Piazza Don Carlo a sense of importance.

Lucia, Tina, and Aurora had grown up together, and Lucia and Aurora had been desk friends throughout school. School desks were built for two, and friends were usually allowed to share the same desk; they called one other
cumpagne e bancu.
Desk friends developed a very close relationship. They shared the same inkwell, borrowed one another's pencils and erasers, learned to read each other's handwriting, and found ways to cheat and copy from one another. If during the course of the year the friendship ended, however, having to sit so close became torture.

The three older girls' education had stopped after the fifth grade. They would have had to travel to the provincial city of Catanzaro to continue, but none of their parents could afford the expense. A girl's only possible occupation was to work for free for the local dressmaker in exchange for learning the trade. Giovanna, the seamstress, took me in as an apprentice that summer in spite of my young age, because she and my mother were good friends. I was very mature for my age, everyone told me. I was given the task of basting seams before the pieces of cloth were sewn together into skirts, dresses, and blouses. Neither Tina nor Lucia was particularly adept at sewing. They spent time chatting and laughing at the shop, but their sewing skills never progressed beyond basting seams like me. Aurora applied herself more, making and cutting patterns, and doing finer needlework. I often saw her sitting on Donna Rachele's balcony, mending clothes.

Aurora was as well-groomed as any of the other village girls. Her fair skin and hair and large, light-grey eyes set her apart, but her fragile beauty was somehow tarnished by the fact that her mother was a peasant, a
Ciociara
, originally from somewhere near Cassino. The gossip in the village was that Paola slept with the
padrone,
and that the reason he was so kind to Aurora was that he felt a fatherly love toward her.

Aurora had a very friendly disposition and went in and out of people's houses with more ease than was usually considered acceptable, but this was easily explained by the fact that her mother was an outsider. Aurora spent a lot of time with the Abiusi's, even eating her meals there whenever she played with Lucia. Comare Rosaria called Aurora
a zingarella
or the little gypsy.

In the summer evenings, the three girls would go out with their water jugs for a
passeggiata
to the Funtanella. I followed them. I was a useful little helper, since I distributed all their love notes back and forth. Each of the three girls had a boyfriend courting her. By the time they were fifteen or sixteen, it had become common knowledge that Lucia “
made love” with Don Cesare's nephew, Totu; Tina with Michele, a young tailor who looked like the actor Rossano Brazzi; and Aurora with Saverio, a blacksmith who was a close friend of Michele.

Fare l'amore
was what the ritual of courtship was called. Many marriages, though arranged by families, in reality entailed personal selections. In the restrictive society of the village, where women and men knew to keep their distance, sexual interest started young. Most teenaged girls strolling to the Funtanella were conscious of the long glances young men gave them. If interest was kindled, a young man would station himself under the girl's window, and, if she were keen, she would peek out. A few words might be exchanged, but lovers mostly communicated with their eyes. Whenever a young man slouched against a wall and looked up at a balcony, people would say that the couple
faceva l'amore,
was making love. Some couples “made love” this way for years, every day for hours, before they were ready for the official engagement. If the families were agreeable to the relationship, they would pretend not to notice the young man gawking at their window. When the girl spent too much time on her balcony, her parents might threaten to shower the man with dirty dishwater, or worse. When the family objected, the wooing would be kept discreet.

In the three corners of Piazza Don Carlo, there were three girls making love, often at the same time, with the three young men stationed beneath Lucia's, Tina's and Don Cesare's balconies, while I sat on my balcony, like a little guard watching their every gesture.

One afternoon, on his habitual walk, Professore Nucci stopped by our square and stood for a few minutes staring, taking in the scene of the three couples making love. Maybe emboldened by each other's presence and the absence of adults in their households on that particular day, the girls leaned over the balcony rails and went beyond the permissible silent eye contact, giggling and responding to the words of love whispered by the men below, who gestured with outstretched arms as if wanting to touch them. Aurora's mother had left a basket of freshly-picked figs on the fountain wall for all to taste. The men gorged themselves on the first ripe figs of the season, savoring the juicy red pulp while looking up at the girls with yearning eyes.

“
Che bellezza! Piazza Don Carlo é una vera piazza d'amore,
” exclaimed the Professore, startling the three couples from the spell of unrestrained passion they dared to display out in the open for all to see. He declared Piazza Don Carlo a piazza of love.

“
Bravo, maestro,
” Totu shot back clapping. Everyone laughed and applauded while the Professore bowed, picked a fig from the basket, and walked down the hill.

After the girls recounted the incident at the seamstress's shop, Giovanna took to calling them “
l'amuruse
,” the girls in love, and whenever she chided them for talking too much, or not paying attention to their work, she'd say, “Where do you think you are, at the
Piazza d'Amore?
”

When the three girls walked to the Funtanella for water and passed by their boyfriends, on the bridge, before descending the steps to the fountain, one of the boys would hand me a candy with a little note around it, which I passed on to the girl it was addressed to. 

I knew to keep the letters secret, especially from Lucia's brother, who was known to have a bad temper and to dislike Totu. One evening, when he caught the two whispering together in the alley next to the house, Alfonso dragged Lucia by her long hair and kicked her inside, yelling as he shut the door, “Stay inside and don't let me find you going around like a
zingara
again.” This didn't keep Lucia from going to the Funtanella the next evening and giving me a note to pass on to Totu.

Alfonso always seemed angry at someone. I never saw him smiling. Totu was an innocent bystander. He and Alfonso had never had any fights, but Alfonso had an ongoing feud with Don Cesare, his second cousin, and the reason he disliked Totu was that Totu was Don Cesare's favourite nephew.

“I don't understand why your brother is so against him,” Giovanna told Lucia after the hair-pulling incident. “Totu is the best catch for any girl. He's good-looking, smart, and has a future ahead of him. Does your brother think you're going to find better than that?”

“I don't care what my brother thinks,”
Lucia answered, not very concerned. “He's just jealous. I love Totu, and he loves me. That's all that counts.”

I lived for those evening
passeggiate
and never wanted to miss one, often arguing with my mother over what to wear. After a light dinner of tomato salad with a piece of
provolone
cheese or
mortadella
, she washed my face, combed my hair away from my face, and tied the top with a large pink bow before letting me run out to join the trio.

Thinking back to those summers, I realize how easily we girls let life take its course and shrugged off as normal the contradictions present in small parochial villages: love and hatred, friendship and rivalry, generosity of spirit and petty jealousy. My world then just
was
. It was going to
la Funtanella
with Lucia and other older girls every evening to fetch water in the two-handled clay jugs that we carried, not on our heads like the older women, but balanced on a hip, which forced us to walk with a slanted and languid gait. At times, the spring water gushed in tiny torrents out of the mouths of the stone gargoyles; at other times it just trickled down. And sometimes, in the arid spells of summer, the mouths were dry, gaping holes, making the gargoyles look like the catechism book pictures of the desperate, damned souls destined to be thirsty forever. But the flow of the Funtanella was never questioned then. For many years after settling in Montreal, I'd replay those past moments in my mind, like a bedtime story that children read over and over, each time finding new pleasures or new questions to ask. Though these memories have become less frequent over time, they come accompanied by small pangs of discomfort, a tightening of the chest. I remember reading that, for some, having had a happy childhood is almost as painful as having suffered an unhappy one. It feels like a persistent ache of yearning, like the grief for a lost love.

The summer slid past us, and then Father left. He left the village so often that the actual parting didn't leave a vivid memory. We all knew the absence would be short; he would call for the family as soon as he could.

My father was portly and solidly built. He had a large forehead with a receding hairline, prominent red cheeks, and a dimple on his chin. He looked like a jolly ice-cream vendor who would give second scoops for free. He was one of the few men in Mulirena who had no enemies; he was known as a friend who could never refuse anyone a favour. Everyone liked him, especially the children. When he returned from Milan, he always came back with small toys for all. When the children of the
ruga
passed him at the bar, he bought them candies or ice cream.

The summer of 1955 was the longest period that Father spent with the family, and I discovered things about him that I had never noticed before. He liked reading as much as I did, and, for someone with only a fifth-grade education, he could discuss politics and music as well as the other more educated men of the village. He liked to peruse a thick book on ornamental architecture, with pictures of different styles of stone columns, cornices, and friezes, that he had studied from in Milan. He said he wanted to be well prepared for working in the new country.

After his return from the war, Father had tried his luck working in Monte Cassino with his father. There was lots of construction going in at that bombed city, but earnings were meager and often not paid on time – or not at all. Like many other stonemasons from the village, he eventually found regular work in Milan. His seventeen-year-old brother, Vincenzo, was anxious to earn his own money, and Father brought him there as his assistant.

On a routine climb up a scaffold, Vincenzo fell and, right under Father's eyes, died instantly from a blow to the head. This happened when I was a baby, but later I heard stories of Father's return to the village late at night to give his mother the news. He had promised his mother he'd take care of her youngest child in Milan. Unable to face her, he had his best friend prepare the family before Father showed up to ask for his mother's forgiveness. He had to bury his brother in Milan since the cost of transporting the body was prohibitive. The death left a wound in the heart of my father's family that would never heal. I always remembered my Nanna Caterina dressed in black, with a sad, drawn-out look on her face.

Father was the only remaining son of his family, but he had four sisters. Two, married with children, still lived in the village, one had joined her husband in Argentina, and the eldest had settled in Montreal. It was this sister, my aunt Rosina, who sponsored Father and made it possible for him to emigrate.

My Nanna and all of my aunts had broad faces with strong jaw lines, wide hips, and solid legs. I was often told I had taken after that side of the family because of my large face and high forehead, but my mother worried because I was too skinny for her liking.
She used to make me drink
Ferrochina
, an iron-based drink, beaten into a raw egg every morning.

My mother's side of the family was better off than my father's. They owned land, a grocery store run by her brother Pietro, and a bakery adjacent to the store. My mother worked at the bakery a few days a week, helping her widowed mother bake round firm breads almost as big as a bicycle wheel. I loved going to the bakery for lunch when my mother had a slice of warm freshly baked bread ready for me with a chunk of
provolone
cheese from the store.