Buried Secrets

Chapter 2: Would-Be Witch

Chapter 2: Would-Be Witch

It’s another typical Saturday morning in Shively, Kentucky, and I’m rifling through my closet full of drab and repetitive school uniforms, searching for my black embroidered dress. It’s the only garment I’ve managed to get that makes me feel like a real witch. I have a feeling Mama swiped it again and hid it in the laundry room. My family is so hopelessly conventional! How can I ever hope to become a real devotee of Diana?

Not that there are any other real Italian witches in this backward town; there are hardly any Italians, much less those who were born into the Stregha tradition. I am a lone wolf, a solitary practitioner. Or at least I will be, once I get all my ritual tools in place and officially call down the Moon.

I finally find the dress, and shrug off my nightgown as fast as possible in order to get into the spirit of witchcraft. As I stand there naked between garments, I hear the familiar sound of small footsteps in the hallway.

“Hill! Mama wants you to come down to breakfast. She says no kidding or you can’t go to the thrift store with us later. And I know you want to…”

I refuse to answer a pest of a four-year-old, even one as smart as my sister Patrice.

“Hillary Calvano! I see you naked, and I’m telling Mama you’re not wearing panties if you don’t come down to breakfast…”

“Alright! Get out of my room, Ri-ri. I’m not kidding either.”

A small head of curly auburn hair appears in my doorway. Patrice makes what she calls her “monster face” and then runs noisily back down the stairs.

It is Saturday, after all, and I should have time to myself. I should be able to wear what I want and read what I want without interference. But in this family, I know that’s a hopeless fantasy. Even more far-fetched than the possibility that I will figure out how to cast spells and incant charms, stranded here in Middle America as I am. Even though I am the granddaughter of a real Stregha-Nona, a witch of the Old Religion.

My grandmother was my only thread of connection to my Italian heritage, since my dad determined years ago that he was an ‘upwardly mobile professional’ and a true-blue American. Which is weird, because he looks stereotypically Italian, dark hair, olive skin and all. I seem to be an exact mixture of his genes and my mom’s, whose ethnic heritage is English and Dutch (she says). Anyway, Pop doesn’t want to hear anything about anything Italian, and now that my Nona has died, I am more determined than ever to preserve my pagan Italian roots.

I found a book that might set me on the right path to being a neo-pagan witch; it came from a library book sale at the University of Kentucky. This past summer, Pop had a consulting job at UK and he let me go with him for a couple of days—he wanted me to see how “wonderful college life could be” (a direct quote). Mostly the trip was boring and awkward, but I did find this incredible guidebook at the book sale: Italian Witchcraft by Raven Grimassi. I bought it for fifty cents, and then looked up the author online. Grimassi is apparently the head guy for passing on Stregheria in the 20th Century. Of course, this is now the 21st Century, but whatever…much better than anything I could find in Shively with my parents breathing down my neck all the time wanting me to be normal.

I bring The Book to school every day in my backpack, because it seems safer to keep it near me. Sometimes I have a chance to read in classes that I’m hopeless in anyway. Chemistry and math definitely fit this category. Not that I’m stupid or anything—I just tend to think more creatively rather than logically—at least that’s what I try to tell my math and science teachers.