How A Croissant Led Me To My Unknown Family: Part 3/4

I blame my bladder. 

I’m not sure if it’s proper to say that in a travel essay, but the truth of the matter is this: if I never had to pee, I never would have returned to where I started. After walking Katarina to the bus stop, I run across the street to ask the woman at the bar if I can use the bathroom. Public restrooms are few and far between in Italy.

But before I can ask anything, the woman yells to me.

“Did you find them?” 

In the same breath, she explains to the rest of the bar - which somehow consists of the same customers from that morning with a few exceptions - who I am. I tell her the names of my relatives and show her the photos I took of the town hall documents. She holds my phone closely to her face and passes it around so the others can see.

An elderly man steps forward. I think I recognize him from earlier but it is hard to say; most of the bar patrons look similar.

“I will call,” he says, as though I’ve asked him a question. Others also take out their phones - all flip phones, the kinds of devices you’d find fifteen years ago - and begin to converse. 

When I return from the bathroom, the number of people on the phone has only increased. I hear the same elderly man inform the receiver that he is with “una bella ragazza, Staropoli e Ribisi. Conosci?” He winks at me. I am with a beautiful girl. Staropoli and Ribisi. Do you know her?

But they do not know me. They are not my family.  No matter; he will try the next number.

I make the translations in my head, planning to tell the men that while I appreciate their time, it’s okay if they can’t find my family. I wasn’t looking for them, anyway. I doubt they’re even alive. Today has already been more than enough.

But like any Sicilian, the man on the phone is relentless, with no sense of time. The phone calls persist. 

I can only decipher snippets. Staropoli. Ribisi. Ciro. Cousin. Anna.

When the man grabs my arm, still on the phone, I let him drag me out of the bar and across the street and into a little home a few steps beyond the bus stop, a few steps away from where my day began. Now would be the time to think of the safety repercussions of following strangers through a foreign town but everything happens so rapidly that I miss the chance to think. The man pushes me inside the house, waves goodbye, and shuts the door, leaving me with a strange man in a strange living room on a very strange day.

***

The stranger’s name is Benedetto and while not my blood relative, he knows everything about my family. He has white hair, crooked teeth, and a kind smile that makes me wonder how this simple, soothing man lives in a town with so much energy. In patient, slow Italian, Benedetto explains to me just who he is.

For starters, he is a teacher. Retired now, but knowledgable about history and literature, of all things, and he is thrilled when I tell him I want to be a writer. His daughter is a literature teacher. Reading runs in the family, and he asks me about my favorite books. If he is surprised to see me just appear in his home, he doesn't show it but continues with get to know you questions before I get answers.

He has lived in Marineo his entire life. When he ushers me into a chair, I have no trouble believing that the furniture has been in that exact spot for 50, 60, 70 years. There are no couches in his living room, only a few wooden chairs situated in a circle over the tiled floor. The living room opens into a dining room where a clunky tv is atop the kind of stand I haven’t seen since elementary school. Behind the dining room is a staircase and a closed door that presumably leads to the kitchen. The entire downstairs is no larger than my living room at home. I try to imagine growing up in this town, in a home so different than anything I’ve ever seen; even in this lifetime, Marineo appears a lifetime away.

Benedetto’s neighbor Giuseppe appears a moment later and sits in the wooden chair across from mine. He has a teenage daughter who wants to go to America, and he assures me that she will stop by later to help translate. For now, we make do the best we can, chatting until Benedetto’s wife emerges from the closed door. I see now that the room is, in fact, the kitchen; there is a stove, an oven, and a rack that squeezes boxes of barilla pasta beside a plastic bag of brightly colored prickly pears. His wife is wearing a long black skirt with a sweater, and though she looks younger than my own grandmother, she is still wrinkled, with gray hair and a shrinking body.

“Lina,” her husband says, as though it is perfectly normal that I am sitting in this woman’s house. “This is your cousin, Anna. The granddaughter of Ciro, great grand daughter of Giuseppe.” He turns to me. “My wife was your grandfather’s favorite cousin.”

That is all it takes for Lina to reach for me, her arms outstretched. She kisses both of my cheeks once and then twice and then again. For a woman so frail, she has a strong grip, and even though I am with strangers in a strange house, I feel a pull toward this place and to these people. I have yet to process anything that is happening and while I never met the one person who ties me to Lina and Benedetto, family feels familiar. We share no more than a last name and distant lines on a family tree but maybe that is enough.