How A Croissant Led Me To My Unknown Family: Part 1
Marineo is the kind of place the world forgets. Hidden in the mountains, the village sinks between granite while a dainty cross stretches from the town’s peak like an inverted charm on a necklace.
I’ve never been here before. No one in my living family has. But my grandfather grew up here so in another world, I would have grown up here, too. Today is November 11 and I intend to see the town of my origins. I don’t know of any remaining family here. I barely know that my grandfather had a brother. I certainly don’t know if he had cousins, grandparents, aunts, or uncles who remained in this town. Truthfully, I am not here to discover any of that; I am simply here to see the landscape that could have been my normal and to contextualize the grandfather who died before I had the chance to meet him.
When I step off the bus, the rain has just begun to coat the ground and I feel my feet slide over the stones, the off-balance pavement becoming a slip-and-slide. The town is small and bleak in the rainstorm, and though it is only 45 minutes outside of Palermo, it feels worlds away from the bright chaos of Sicily’s capital.
Everyone who gets off the bus seems to know where to go; the man with the bicycle wheels it down the street quickly, positive about where he is heading without having to double check his map. This isn’t a tourist destination; the others on the bus arrive with people to see and personal reasons to follow through on. I don’t have a set plan. So I step off the bus slowly, landing in the middle of the town square beside a statue. Two cafes bookend either side of the street while what looks like a school or perhaps a library marks the dead end behind the statue. Beyond those buildings, the rest of the town seems to consist of only apartment complexes, all run down with narrow windows and no sign of people.
My bus left Palermo at 7 a.m. I am exhausted from the early wake-up and in need of sustenance so I head across the street to one of the bars, fittingly called “Central Bar.” I can just make out a side street where a cluster of old men stand beneath the canopy of the other bar, waiting for the rain to pass even though they are in no rush to leave.
No one sits at the outdoor tables. Water droplets have formed puddles in the middle of the seats.
Central Bar has only two tables inside. I order at the counter where a waitress with dark brown hair and a black apron hands two men ceramic cups filled with espresso. They are in no rush to sip their coffees but instead leave their cups on the countertop as they flit throughout the bar. They move to the doorway and then onto the street and finally they return to the counter where their coffees remain untouched. I am not surprised.
When I peer inside the pastry case, I spot what looks like a brioche and donut hybrid coated in powdered sugar. It’s a pastry I’ve never seen before and as I try to determine what it is, the woman in the apron watches me expectantly.
“Umm,” I say. “Che cose?” What is it?
She explains to me patiently in Italian and after she informs me it is indeed a brioche, I ask for a croissant. As she hands me the croissant, its pistachio filling oozes onto the paper thin napkin and she smiles.
“Di dove sei?” Where are you from?
“Stati uniti,” I tell her. I continue in broken Italian. “But my family is from Marineo. I’m here to learn about them.”
She peers down at me as though trying to decipher if I am telling the truth and then asks for my name. “Anna,” I say, but I pronounce it the Italian way.
“No, no,” she says. “The other. Surname.”
“Staropoli.”
“Staropoli?” she says, repeating it the way I said it. And then she says it again and again until the pronunciation morphs and she recognizes my name only with the mispronunciation I’ve been telling people not to use for the past 22 years. When she says my name as such - Stuh-rahh-pull-i - she makes me think I am the one with the improper pronunciation. Somewhere between Marineo and America, my last name changed.
“Yes,” I say. “That’s my name.” And I show her the passport my grandfather brought to America to prove that I am who I say I am.
She takes the passport and suddenly begins to speak in rapid Italian, announcing my name to the men finally drinking their espressos, the man making my cappaccino, the man just walking in the door, the man sitting at the table behind the pastry case. Every person in that bar, each elderly man and chain smoking woman, leather-jacket clad local and umbrella holding passerthrough, now looks at me. They face me as though I am one of them and the bar begins to bounce.
My grandfather’s passport plays a game of hot potato. It moves from one set of coffee stained fingertips to another until it returns to the woman behind the bar. In a matter of seconds, it has become the bar’s mission to not only identify me as one of their own but to help me find one of my grandfather’s. I did not set out to find his family but now we are in this together. The stakes for them appear higher than they are for me.
“You will need the names of your great grandparents,” the woman behind the bar tells me. “And then we can help you find your family. We have many Staropolis here.” She instructs me toward City Hall, straight down, then left, then three streets up, right, and ahead. Before the castle.
Everything happens so quickly and as I leave for City Hall, I press faces against everyone in the bar, kissing them goodbye, waving at them like I am my grandfather leaving on the ship to New York. They all watch me leave, each offering their own mumbled words of wisdom, and one kind gentleman follows me onto the street to points me in the direction of Via Mille. That street will eventually lead me to City Hall, he tells me. My great grandmother’s name was Mille, I remember. It was a nickname for something longer, I don’t remember what. Camilla? Carmela? I don’t know. But I take the name as a sign and leave my breakfast behind, crumbs on the counter, passport in my hand.