How A Croissant Led Me To My Unknown Family: Part 4/4

It’s taken me a while to write Part 4, mostly because in telling this story in four parts, I’ve come to believe that Part 4 should signify something conclusive. A story follows an arc; readers want to be satisfied. This writer wants to be satisfied, too, but the experience of finding my family has been anything but complete. While the story of my day in Marineo ends on a note of finality, what follows has been anything but definitive.

In the time since I found my family, I’ve attempted to contact them numerous times. I called Lina and Benedetto throughout the weeks following my visit, but my Italian was not fluent enough for muffled phone calls and my cousin lacks the proper technology for email or texting. Keeping in touch, even while I was in Palermo, proved extremely challenging and the few phone calls we had were brief and slow.

Back in Sicily, I also attempted to return to Marineo; Lina and Benedetto wanted to show me my grandfather’s house, and we made plans for lunch at the castle. However, in between all of the attempted phone calls, I discovered that my cousin Lina was diagnosed with lymphoma and unable to see visitors. When she first informed me she was sick, I was led to believe she had a cold. She referred to her sickness as “la influenza” - “the flu,” yes, but also, as I later realized, “the condition.” Cancer was her condition. Though Lina is still a stranger to me, the realization that she had cancer felt oddly and intensely personal. We are connected by blood, after all, and share a history that simply deviated at one point in time. The day I returned from Marineo, I remember calling my aunt on the phone. My aunt had recovered from a bout with breast cancer that summer and wanted me to ask Lina if there was a history of any cancer in her father’s family, as there was a gap in my aunt’s paternal medical records. Clearly, we got our answer.

I wish I could say the connections I formed that day weren’t continentally bound, but truthfully, I haven’t spoken to Lina or Benedetto since I left Italy in December. Since Covid-19 hit Sicily, I’ve wanted to get in touch, but I have no way of doing so. I suppose that’s the limit to non-fiction. You can’t make up an answer just to complete something; you have to learn to live with the unknowns. It was an unknown that I’d meet my family in the first place. Perhaps this current unknown re: my family’s health is better than knowing an ending I may not like.

Below is my memory of how my day in Marineo concluded, as informed by my journal entries that day. Make sure to have read the first three parts before you read the not-quite-an-ending ending!

***

Giuseppe shares a name with my great grandfather though he is not related to Lina or Benedetto, just a close friend. He sits at one of the chairs in the living room that remind me of the ones my grandmother had in her house growing up. But here, the chairs are in place of a couch and make me feel as though we are gathered for some sort of intervention, all of us circled around each other as a form of socializing. 

Sofia arrives moments later. Giuseppe’s daughter is sixteen but she looks older than I do. It is the middle of the day but she returns home early from school because of the weather. She attends high school in Palermo - right beside the cathedral - and when it rains, she must leave for home immediately. Otherwise, the public bus won’t make it up the windy Marineo streets and she will get stuck in the city.

As we sit around our chairs, everyone chatters at once, looking at me for my reactions. I smile and laugh and nod, not entirely sure what they are saying, but I know it is positive by the grins on their faces. At one point, Benedetto leaves to make an espresso run and I see him walk across the street to the Central Bar that started this all. I don’t particularly like espresso, but when he returns, I sip mine to be polite. I feel weak in comparison to Sofia who, though sixteen, informs me she drinks six cups of espresso daily; she gets them from her school cafeteria. She downs this one in a single gulp whereas I needed three packets of sugar to make mine drinkable.

Lina sits beside me the entire day and when she turns to me, she narrates something I don’t understand. I look to Sofia to translate - her English is better than my Italian - but it is her father who jumps in.

“Lina è stupita,” he tells me.

I shake my head. “No, no,” I say. “Lei non è stupida.” I repeat myself vehemently because even if Giuseppe is joking, I feel a fierce loyalty toward my cousin, and anyway, it is not my place to refer to anyone here as “stupid.”

But the room erupts in a burst of coffee-soaked laughter. Lina kisses me again, beaming as though I myself am her beloved cousin.

“Not stupida,” Giuseppe clarifies. “Stupita.”

Surprised. 

“Oh,” I say.

Lina continues speaking and I look to Sofia to translate. Sofia looks up at me mid-instagram scroll. “She said you are the best surprise. She can’t believe you are here. It is like a dream.”

***

After I tell Benedetto I want to be a writer, he pushes my living room chair against the wall and sits me down, instructing me to write. I can feel his eyes on me as I open my journal and I ask him instead to tell me more about our family. He responds with glee, making me again, this time to the dining room table. Already I can tell he was a history teacher by the way he stands over the table and narrates the story of my grandfather’s life slowly and methodically.

Sofia has been instructed to record everything Benedetto says. I feel somewhat badly for her; she has been thrown into this scene on a day that should have been her early dismissal. But she doesn’t seem to mind. She writes quickly, her hand moving across the page to make big, calligraphic letters. There is an adolescent frill to her words that contradicts the heavy subject matter.

When she finishes, I have a sheet of paper with words that appear illegible. Sofia and I translate it together. This is the best we can do:

In the immediate post-war period, your great grandfather Giuseppe went to the United States to reach his wife Carmela Ribisi and their children Ciro and Antonino. The journey took more than 10 days and during the crossing, third class was served legumes and baccala at lunch. After such a long journey, he finally arrived. At first, he felt like a fish out of water because he did not know the language and needed to find a ob. His was a life full of sacrifices; he often expressed nostalgia for the relative left in Marineo and therefore desired to return. For this reason Giuseppe often stayed in the village, always as a guest of his sister, Anna [Lina’s mother], with whom he had a particular attachment. He spent his days in marine where he lived until he was 88 years old.

Some parts confuse me. Did Giuseppe, Ciro, and Carmela all go over on the boat together? Why did Carmela make the call and why did nobody else follow then? I knew Guiseppe died in Marineo - he did not return to the United States - but what else is missing, what else do I need to learn?

Benedetto looks expectantly at me while I process the information. He asks if I have more questions. Of course I do. I have so, so many, but I don’t know where to begin.

“Let me think,” I say, but then it is time for lunch.

***

Lunch is five courses. Salad and bread, pasta, meat, figs, dessert. Each dish emerges from the little kitchen Lina disappears into. 

More family joins us for the meal. Sofia’s father has left but there’s Sofia. There’s Benedetto and Lina’s daughter, Anna Maria, who Benedetto has called to come specifically to meet me. And there’s Anna Maria’s little boy whose name I don’t catch. The boy sits at the head of the table across from me and slinks into his seat, his arms crossed. His mother tries to hug him, she wraps her arms around his tiny body, but he shifts away from her so all she gets is his back. I realize it is better I don’t ask for his name. He won’t even hug Lina.

As Benedetto heaps food onto my plate, Lina forgets my name. “Remind me,” she asks. “What is your name?”

“Anna,” the entire tables answers for me.

Lina laughs and repeats the name, a smile growing on her lips like it’s the first time she’s hearing it. “Ahna,” she repeats. “Like my mother.” 

***

After lunch, Sofia’s father returns with his wife and younger daughter. He wanted them both to meet me and they treat me like I am their family. They hold out a giant pastry box to me and since it would be rude if I didn’t try them all, I take one of each. They watch expectantly. 

“Sofia wants to study abroad in America,” Guiseppe tells me. 

Sofia nods. “I love America,” she says.

“Well, now you have a friend in America,” I say, thinking of how often I’ve heard that exactly sentiment. Everyone from Sicily seems to be enamored with the United States. But their reasons for loving America are different from the reasons I love Italy. For them, America is enchanting not in how it looks but it what it offers - in the opportunities it allows and the way they can pave a future beyond their small villages. For me, the appeal of Sicily is the exact opposite. I like being in the kind of place that lets me break from a traditional path. Back home, I constantly feel like I am behind my peers, not doing enough, but in Italy I am able to savor moments like this day, enjoy a three hour lunch, and appreciate the in-between experiences our country often sees as unproductive. I never thought Sicilian teenagers would crave the opposite.

***

Benedetto stands by the window to look out for my bus. It was supposed to be here a few minutes ago but he tells me not to worry; he will watch for it. For the first time in three months, I don’t have to shoulder the responsibility of myself. I’ve gotten used to checking and double checking schedules, problem solving on my own, making sure I’m accountable for every moment of time that passes because when you move to a new country by yourself you have to constantly be aware of what’s going on. Not having to worry about catching the bus or having to come up with a plan B for if the bus does not show (in Sicily, there’s always a chance of a transportation stand-up) or wondering which bus is mine makes me feel like a child in the best way possible. I’m with family now.

As Benedetto keeps watch, Lina shows shows me photographs of her family, pointing to one framed image of her mother taken however many years ago. I don’t dare ask how her mother died or when nor do I ask what happened to her sister or the rest of the cousins. The only death I am entitled to talk about is Ciro’s because that is the one I know something about.

“My father never talked about his father,” I say. “I don’t know anything.”

I have to repeat those phrases a few times over but I know she understands my Italiam when her face falls and she nods.

“Ah,” she says. “We were all right here when we heard the news. Your great grandfather was here with us. Giuseppe. He sat over there.” 

When the bus finally arrives, I say my goodbyes and Benedetto leads me outside. My backpack is still drenched from the morning’s rain, my arms heavy with the box of pastries. 

“Aspetta! Aspetta!” Lina calls out. Wait, wait. I turn around, my backpack slung over one shoulder, my shoes untied, papers sliding out of my notebook. She runs toward me with the string for the pastries and in the middle of the street, she ties a haphazard bow. She pulls my head to hers, kisses my cheeks. “You need to refrigerate those when you get home,” she says. “Call us when you get back so we know you are safe.”

She gives the string a final tug before giving me her blessing to leave and when I get to the bus, all I can do is watch it drive away. Lina is not phased when Benedetto and I return back inside, the pastries half-tied. As I pull out my chair once more, Benedetto launches into another story and Lina carefully unravels the string. This time, she will properly box up the desserts.

As we sit there, it is just me and two strangers at a table, two strangers who know more about my history than I I do, two strangers who had a stranger stumble into their house by the kind of word-of-mouth circulation I simply cannot make up. They are two strangers connected to my family’s past - a past that fills them with nostalgia and love in a way that should be paradoxical.

When the next bus comes, I run toward it with my pastries secured in one hand. The bus driver is the same one I had that morning, the same one who saw me escort Katarina to the bus.

“Sei pronto adesso?” Are you ready this time? 

On the way back to Palermo, I sit in the very front row so I can look out the window, but it is far too dark for me to see anything. I have to trust that the bus is winding down and out of the village, leading me back toward the sea, just I have to trust that this is a ride I will make again and again because there’s no point in finding something if you don’t get to keep it. I think of Sofia returning home early from school because of the rain. I think of how chaos can be so orderly. I think how the things that disrupt this country, the disorganization that makes Sicily so un-American, the schedules that simply don’t exist, are the very things that enable perfect moments and even more perfect days.