Stella Mia (38 page)

I'm awakened by the sound of something banging loudly. I sit up in bed, and my clothes are nearly drenched in sweat. The window shutters are open and are swinging violently back and forth against the walls. I can hear the wind whipping up outside, which I find strange since it's the end of August. It shouldn't be this windy in Sicily now. I get up to close the shutters, but stop in my tracks as one last howl of wind screeches through. The shutters bang back into place against the windows. It's then eerily quiet. I stare out the window, and though it's cloudy, I see the sun is beginning to break through.

Glancing at my wristwatch, I see it's almost eight o'clock. I'm surprised Mama is still sleeping. She's usually up at six, getting breakfast ready for me. I walk over to her and nudge her shoulder gently to wake her up.

“Mama,” I call her repeatedly, but she doesn't wake up. I then notice her complexion looks awfully pale. I touch her cheek and am stunned to feel how cold it is. A thought enters my mind. I try to push it away, but it won't let me. I feel for her pulse. Nothing.

“No. No. Not now. Mama, please. I need you. Please. Not now after we've been apart for so long. I still need you, Mama. Please.”

My legs buckle beneath me as I fall onto my knees. Placing my head on my mother's chest, I cry uncontrollably. I don't know how long I remain there until Zia Carlotta walks in and pulls me off my mother.

Losing Paradise

 

 

 

I
am sitting at the airport in Calabria, waiting to board my plane to Rome. It has been a week since my mother died. I extended my stay and let work know I would not be able to return at the start of the school season.

Mama's funeral was beautiful. We kept it small. Besides me, Zia Carlotta, and Carlo, the only other people in attendance were the priest and Mama's brothers, Enzo and Pietro. Zia Carlotta asked me if I wanted to sing at the service. I sang “Ave Maria,” one of my mother's favorite hymns.

I am leaving on the day after the funeral even though Zia Carlotta wanted me to stay longer. Kyle has been worried sick about me and wanted to fly to Sicily to be by my side. But I told him I would be fine. He finally found a job, and I didn't want him to risk losing it by taking off so soon. Kyle told me he didn't care. But I assured him I would be okay and would be home in a matter of days anyway.

Before I left, Zia Carlotta made me promise to stay in touch with her. Even Enzo and Pietro extended an invitation for Kyle and me to visit them next summer. I promised them all I would stay in touch and come back to visit when I could.

Poor Zia Carlotta. After the initial shock of my mother's dying so suddenly, I asked Zia if Mama had been sick. She admitted to me that Mama had been diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago. It had been in remission, but had come back earlier this year. It was too aggressive to treat. I then remembered how much older than her age Mama had appeared to me when I first arrived in Sicily. I also remembered the regular coughing she did, which I had just attributed to old age. And her body had looked so frail. But other than that, I wouldn't have known she was dying. I unleashed my anger on Zia, furious that she had not told me when I first arrived about Mama's illness. She told me she came close to telling me the morning after I had arrived when she brought me breakfast in bed. But Sarina had made Carlotta promise not to tell me. She couldn't go against the wishes of a dying woman. That was why she had implored me to stay longer in Sicily. Zia Carlotta knew I would never again have the chance to see my mother.

I would have hoped that after being reunited with me and seeing how much I had been hurt by her secrets as well as my father's, Mama would've learned her lesson and chosen to confide in me about her cancer. Zia Carlotta said Mama didn't want me to feel any sense of obligation toward her. She wanted me to stay in Sicily because I truly wanted to finally get to know her and not because she was dying.

Zia said that Mama had asked her to take care of Carlo if she should die before him. I was stunned that Zia Carlotta would sacrifice so much of herself and her own life to take care of the man her sister had loved, but as she explained to me, Mama had given up her life in New York and her daughter to help Carlotta and her mother and her siblings when they needed her. Zia Carlotta was honored to be able to repay her sister. Enzo and Pietro would now help with Carlo as well.

Carlo didn't stop crying at the funeral. We all thought he would confuse me with Mama and refuse to believe she was really gone. But amazingly, he knew she had finally left him forever.

I glance down at an envelope with my name written on it. It's a letter from my mother that she had written about a week before she died. Zia Carlotta found it among her belongings and gave it to me the day before the funeral. Mama had told her about the letter and instructed her to send it to me after Mama died. Apparently, she thought she had at least another six months before the cancer would finally get her. I haven't been able to bring myself to read the letter. Taking a deep breath, I break the envelope's seal and pull out the letter.

I take out a tissue and wipe the tears that have fallen down my face.

“Flight 380 from Calabria to Rome is now boarding at Gate 11.”

I put my mother's letter in my purse and make my way to the airline attendants collecting boarding passes.

Half an hour later, my plane is in the air. I have the window seat and am staring at the serene panorama below. How could my mother have left such a beautiful place behind? Seeing how stunning her homeland is makes me finally have some understanding as to how difficult it must have been for her to leave all of this behind and adjust to life in America, no less New York City. She went from an island paradise to a densely populated metropolis with views that are almost always marred by scores of skyscrapers.

If only my mother had been able to convince my father to move to Sicily, things could have been so different. But then I suppose Daddy would've been the one to be unhappy? I guess I'll never know how that could have played out. I just wish Mama had been able to get the help she needed with her postpartum depression. All I know for certain is that I'm through with wishing things had been different in my life. It's time I look to the future.

I continue staring at the magnificent view when my mother's words come back to me:
“The true paradise I lost was you.”

Sarina's Grapevine

 

 

A
s I stand in the backyard of my father's home, looking at the grapevine, I can't believe three years have passed since I went to Sicily and was reunited with my mother. I think of all that has happened since then.

When I returned to work, I had forgotten about the family tree project I had assigned to my students before the summer break. I couldn't believe I'd forgotten about it since if it weren't for that assignment, I would've probably never found my mother's diary. Of course, my students reminded me on my first day back to school, and they were actually excited to share their family trees. When my class was all done relaying their essays about their ancestors, they told me it was my turn. I had nothing prepared since I had forgotten about the assignment. So I skipped to telling them about one of my ancestors. I told them about my mother, but I decided to tell the students she was my grandmother instead. I didn't feel comfortable revealing the fact that my mother had left me, and I was concerned they would have asked me why she lived in Sicily, while I grew up in New York. So I told them about how Mama's father had mistreated her and how brave she had been to run away from home when she was just seventeen years old. I told them how she read people's fortunes. The students seemed to especially love that. I relayed her love of singing and how she sang at the Villa Carlotta, where she met her first love Carlo. And of course I told them about Sarina and Carlo's storybook romance while they went from one Aeolian Island to the next. My class was impressed to learn she had become a famous folk singer in Sicily, but what they really loved was hearing how she had been reunited with Carlo after so many years. I ended my story there. It was still too painful for me to talk about her dying or even to tell them about Carlo's Alzheimer's and how he was slowly, but surely, forgetting Sarina.

When it was time to vote on which student had the best essay, I was surprised that my class had unanimously voted mine the winner. But I reminded them the rules of our contest and that as the teacher, I could not win. So we took another vote and chose a different winner.

Believe it or not, Daddy got remarried about a year after I returned from Sicily, and to none other than Penelope Anastasos! I guess it wasn't that much of a shock to me that he had fallen for her. I eventually added two and two together after I overheard Kyle teasing Daddy about thinking of her too much and also after I met Penelope at Astoria Park, and she told me that Daddy had been visiting her at the café regularly. While Daddy was dating Penelope, he had a strong feeling he would ask her to marry him if things continued to go well between them. He was planning on finally getting a divorce from my mother. But then he received the news that Mama had passed away. Daddy actually cried when I told him over the phone. Though I knew he was no longer in love with her, he never really stopped caring about her.

I also learned after returning from Sicily that Antoniella had found out that Daddy was a regular customer at Penelope's café. Naturally, Antoniella blew up at Daddy and stopped talking to him. And whenever Antoniella crossed paths with Penelope on the street, she gave her the dirtiest looks. But Penelope smoothed things over when she asked Antoniella to make her wedding cake. Nothing makes Antoniella happier than making money—even if it's from an enemy. But I think Antoniella also appreciated that Penelope was respecting her talents as a baker by asking Antoniella to make her wedding cake. The two women soon became friends, and Antoniella finally stopped fretting that she was losing business to Penelope's café.

After all these years of having Daddy to myself, it felt strange to see him remarry. But the feeling quickly vanished when I remembered there were times that I had worried about his being alone and never having loved another woman besides my mother. Now he would have the love he deserved to have—and should have had—a long time ago. My thoughts drift to my mother and Carlo. I think about how they were apart for all those years and how Mama and I were also separated for so long. All that wasted time only to be reunited and then to lose her again so quickly. Life is too short to spend it alone or apart from the people we love. I hope that Daddy and Penelope have more years together than Carlo or I had with my mother.

A month after I returned from Sicily, Kyle and I moved back into our house since he had found another job and we were back on our feet financially. I was saddened to see that the grapevine in my father's yard had inexplicably died while I was gone. Kyle assured me that both he and my father had been regularly tending to it, but no matter what they did, it just seemed to get weaker. The following year, the grapevine didn't grow back. I couldn't help but see the irony in it, since the grapevine had always been a reminder of my mother and now it had died just like she had.

“Mama!”

I'm startled out of my thoughts by my two-year-old daughter, Sarina, who runs to me. I pick her up and raise her high into the air, just like my mother had done with me all those years ago. She squeals and giggles. I then lower her and hold her against me. Sarina's head nestles against my chest. The sun brings out the auburn highlights in her light brown hair. Like my mother, she has an olive complexion. But she has Kyle's large blue eyes.

I had found out I was pregnant a month and a half after Kyle and I returned to our house. We were both stunned since we had been trying to have a baby for so long to no avail. I had begun to think it simply wasn't meant to be. It wasn't until I was pregnant that I remembered the tarot card reading my mother had given me the night she died, and how she had predicted that I would have a transformative experience in the future. That experience was Sarina's birth. It has changed me so much and given me new understanding, especially where my mother is concerned. For ever since Sarina was born, I have been filled with some anxiety, worried for my child and worried that I will not be a good mother. To think I had stood in this yard three years ago, fearing I would be a terrible mother if I ever had children because of how my own mother had left me. Once I had this epiphany, I understood the fear that had gripped Mama so tightly when she had hit me and thought she would become the abuser her father had been. My mother's fears of being a bad mother no longer seemed so unjustified. And then I remembered how young she had been. She was seventeen years old when she married my father and eighteen when she gave birth to me. Though she was in her early twenties when she chose not to return to me, she still possessed the spirit and fears of that lost teenage girl who had run away from home, dreaming of a better life.

While my healing began when I was in Sicily, reconnecting with my mother, I am still healing. Sometimes I still get sad for that little girl who had to grow up without the love of her mother. I have finally forgiven Mama. I only wish I had told her that before she died. But I was still trying to fully come to terms with her abandoning me and figuring out where she belonged in my life then. The time for regrets is over though. I made a promise to myself on the plane when I left Sicily that I would let go of the past and focus on the future. Having Sarina has definitely helped ease the ache of Mama's loss.

Kyle was a bit surprised when I told him I wanted to name our baby Sarina. But then I told him about Mama's prediction when she read my tarot cards and how I couldn't help feeling she had a hand in the miracle of our conceiving Sarina. It's also my small way of showing my mother, wherever she is now, that I have forgiven her.

My thoughts return to the grapevine. Ever since that first year when it didn't grow back, I have tried to plant offshoots from the grapevine in one of my father's neighbor's yards to see if those would take hold. Finally this past spring, a grapevine is growing once again in Daddy's garden. It is now August. The grapevine has grown, but it still has a few years to go until it becomes once again as lush and beautiful as the previous one was. But I have faith it will get there.

I talk softly to my daughter as I take her hand and let her touch one of the grapevine's leaves. “When you are older, Sarina, I will teach you how to garden and care for the grapevine. Then you can grow one in the yard of your home. This way you, too, can continue the tradition that Nonna Sarina started with this first grapevine. And I promise I will tell you all about your namesake—your Nonna Sarina—and what a fascinating life she led.”

Sarina begins to cry. I rock her as I softly sing,
“Stella mia, stell-ahhh mia, tu sei la piu bella stella. . . . My star, my star, you are the most beautiful star.”