The Sicilian Woman's Daughter

Tuesday 22nd August-1

Tuesday 22nd AugustSusi’s mother, Zia, had been another one of those peasant children. Zia means ‘aunt’ in Italian. But in Sicily it is used as a term of respect for older women, as is zio for older men. Also, Susi’s mother is a ‘donna d’onore.’ That is ‘a woman of honour,’ which implies that she is to be handled with utmost care because she has mafia links. So ‘Zia’ is the least you can call her. But, as coincidence has it, she is also my real aunt. And, although she is less than transparent, I am fond of her. I’ve kept her at arms’ length to protect Humps, but he is now nearing the end of his career, so I need not fear an entanglement as much as I did before.

Seems like a lifetime since I saw her. Years. She is eighty-seven and lives on the other side of London from us, the East End. To get there, I walk about a mile down the Thames towpath, along the edge of a football field, and up a main road to the nearest underground station. I could take the bus but I’d rather get the exercise. Then, forty minutes by train with a change. It isn’t exactly next-door. But the distance isn’t the reason for not going to see Zia, it is an excuse.

My mother died young, when I was still at university. For five years, during my mother’s illness, Zia had helped look after her and was often round at our house. The two sisters were very close, always had been. They have another sister in Sicily called Peppina. I did what I could to help during those years, but, emotionally, I was all at sea. Trying to deal with my teenage issues as well. Because I am an only child, I couldn’t share the burden. My father stayed away from home for as much as possible. I never saw them exchange gestures of affection. No conniving glances. Even worse, at times they fought each other, never mind that I was present. My mother would growl at him like she did at me, and I remember objects and even furniture flying in our living room. When her illness became serious, he moved into the spare single bedroom, and started thinking about a new wife. A dark brooding atmosphere had always hung inside our house.

As if it hadn’t been black enough, it became blacker when her incurable disease was found. Zia kept my mother company and livened the place up a little. I didn’t know the full force of the illness, the gravity of it. Until I accompanied my mother to the doctor one day. I had to translate what the doctor was saying to her. He wanted her to have a complicated operation. She was scared and refused point blank. Sitting opposite the doctor, and with my mother at my side, he dropped a bombshell that I wasn’t, even remotely, expecting: “If she has the operation she could live for another four to five years, if she doesn’t it’ll be six months.” I was gob-smacked. It was as if a ton of bricks had come down on me. I felt deeply sorry for her.

On the tenth ring, Zia answers the phone with a forceful “Hallo!” Zia doesn’t talk, she shouts, as my mother used to do.

“Zia, it’s Maria, your niece.”

“Maria, I no believe you call me. Long time no hear. Why you no call?”

“Sorry, Zia, I’ve had a busy life, what with the house, work, family...”

“You make excuse. You no make time for you Zia.”

“But I’m calling you now,” I say. “I’ve got a grandson, you know? His name’s Benjamin.”

“I know. Susi she tell me. Ah, you daughter give baby nice name?”

“Zia, he’s the most gorgeous baby you could ever hope to see. Anyway, Zia, I wanted to check you were at home this afternoon.”

“Cousin here, but you come. You remember Angelina and Provvidenza, yeah?”

Zia doesn’t do plurals. Like many native Italian speakers of English, she finds an ‘s’ at the end of a word difficult to pronounce.

“Yes, I remember, I think.”

Actually, they aren’t our cousins at all, not even ten times removed. But Zia likes to collect cousins. So any Sicilian she’s been on particularly good terms with is awarded the status of an honorary cousin.

“Angelina?” she shouts even louder, irritated that it took me a moment to retrieve the women from my memory. “She has daughter, Provvi. You know, she have bad leg, she limp.”

“Oh, yes!” I say. “I know.”

I sincerely hope that Angelina and Provvi are in another room and the doors are closed, so that they haven’t heard what she just said.

“See you later, Zia.”

That’s what Zia is like. If she has to describe anyone, she distinguishes them by their physical faults: the one with the crooked teeth, hawk nose, squint, big mole, shrill voice...

Though, of course, Zia herself has never been an oil painting, nor is she ugly. One might describe her as nondescript, quite short and thin. She wears flat sensible shoes, pleated skirts and blouses. I’ve never seen her in trousers. Her movements fast, darting around all over the place. And she throws her arms about a lot. Walking with Zia was exhausting, as a child I had to run to keep up. She has acquired a hunched back. It makes her head stick out at the front. It isn’t parallel with the rest of her body. Her hair is always clipped back by a large tortoiseshell slide. Overall, she has an odd schoolgirl style. Her appearance is deceptive, though, because there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, naïve about Zia.

I swing our Residence’s heavy gate shut behind me and step onto the towpath. Strolling along the Thames always makes me feel good, that fresh light breeze in my face and in the trees, the clouds floating by... But today, I am more absorbed in my thoughts. Going to see Zia after all these years has brought back memories of my family as a child. I’d heard that Zia had been involved in things not quite above board in her past. I don’t know what exactly. I couldn’t ask and, even if I did, she wouldn’t tell me.

My earliest memory of my extended family in Sicily was when I was there as a nine-year-old when we stayed with my grandparents and Aunt Peppina. Zia and her family were in Sicily, too. Though Zia’s family stayed with her in-laws in the same village, within walking distance, as there wasn’t space enough for all of us at my grandparents’ house. Zia and Susi spent most of their day with us, though. Susi and I were very close and we loved playing together. Our grandfather didn’t like us. I vaguely remember him. A severe man. He never spoke to me, or to Susi, come to that – only to Silvio and Stefano, Susi’s brothers, out of his grandchildren. He had a deep revulsion for females. Susi and I were playing in the courtyard with other girls in the neighbourhood. My memories are those of hearing the sound of the hooves against the cobble stones, then looking up to see him arriving sitting proudly on his mule. You could even describe him as arrogant. Getting off, he landed lightly on the ground causing some dust to lift. Then he spat not far from his boots, led the mule to the stable, and yanked the reins hard, on the sharp corner, to turn the mule round, and force it in. At that moment, my grandmother came down to the courtyard all in a tizz, like she did every time he arrived home. He didn’t acknowledge her, so much was his disdain of the sight of her.

The mistreatment was due to the fact that she hadn’t been capable of giving him a son. I remember he insulted her in front of visitors and threatened to hit her by raising his hand into a slap position. Once I overheard some women saying that when my grandmother and grandfather were out in the village together, they bumped into the mayor and stopped to talk to him. My grandfather slapped my grandmother in the face, while she was standing there silently, just to prove he was boss in his house. A real man.

Our grandmother signalled to Susi and me to go back inside the house. So we followed them upstairs. He sat on a chair in the kitchen, lifted one of his feet for my grandmother to pull off his boot. She tugged so hard that she jolted backwards as the boot came off. Then the other boot. After which she took the boots out to the garden where she gave them a wash and brush up.

It was also during this holiday that Ziuzza’s husband died in the unforgiving campagna. It was summer. Not understanding what was going on, all I could do was to listen to the shrills and shouts in my grandmother’s house. She sat down and slid her hands into her hair, rocking backwards and forwards in the chair, in a kind of distressing trance, yelling and repeating in Sicilian dialect “Ammazzru me cugnatu, disgraziati. Ammazzru u marito di me sorru!” meaning: “They’ve killed my brother-in-law, the villains. They’ve killed my sister’s husband.” I was frightened and couldn’t understand what was going on. She knew that Ziuzza would be left vulnerable, without a husband, and on the wrong side of victory. And Ziuzza had always been defiant. Her enemies knew she wouldn’t back down, that she had been the driving force behind her husband. And that she was more than capable of taking the helm.

Ziuzza’s husband’s body was brought to my grandmother’s house because it was bigger. Ziuzza’s house had a narrow spiral staircase up to the first floor and there was no way they could bring a coffin down, if not vertically. Like my grandmother’s house, Ziuzza’s house had a stable on the ground-floor. It would have been disrespectful to hold the wake there.

I can still remember the day when they brought his body back to The Village – it’s impressed on my memory. I’ve forgotten a lot about my childhood, but I will never forget this episode. Ziuzza needed support when the body arrived in The Village, so my grandmother and other women were there to comfort her. Ziuzza had two sons. They had both emigrated to England and could not console her. So she was accompanied by a couple of men, while others went before them and cleared the roads by telling people to go inside. With a sheet over her head, she walked to my grandmother’s house through, what was at that point, a ghost village. Even the two little grocery shops and the chemist pulled down their shutters. Only stray cats and dogs roamed the streets.

My grandfather and two other men, all on mules, went to fetch the body. They knew exactly where his land was. A man whose land was next to his had noticed that his sheep had strayed. That meant they weren’t being herded. He went to inquire and found Ziuzza’s husband lying perfectly immobile face down where his blood had coagulated with the dust. Flies hummed around him and feasted on his injuries. The peasant rushed to The Village to raise the alarm.

The grown-ups stood at the entrance door and in the courtyard to wait for his body to come into sight. Susi and I weren’t allowed to be there with them. Silvio and Stefano, had been sent to their other grandparents. Susi and I were told to go out and play in the garden at the back of the house. But we knew something extraordinary was happening and didn’t want to miss it. So we went to sit quietly on the balcony, on the first floor, and kept our heads down. We had a wide open view of the whole courtyard and, to the left, we could see the women spilling out of the entrance door while they waited for the body to arrive.

My grandfather on his mule appeared first around the corner. Following him, close behind, was another mule tied to the first one by a thick rope. Both animals dribbling foam from their mouths. Slumped over the second mule, face down, hands and feet dangling, was Ziuzza’s husband’s body wrapped in a blanket with blood seeping through it. A man walked by the side of the mule to keep an eye on the body. All you could hear was the clip-clop of the hooves in the stillness under the outrageously hot sun, until the women caught sight of him and began howling to the sky, hitting themselves, pulling their own hair, and out of rage Ziuzza tore the black skirt she was wearing. It was a sorry sight.

As the body was being brought up the stairs, Susi and I scarpered to the garden. But when the body was laid in the middle of the room, we crept into the kitchen and watched through a slither of the open door. They washed the body, put a suit, shirt and tie on him, combed his hair, pulled his legs straight and folded his arms across his chest. Everyone sat in a circle around the body. Peppina led the rosary. The room filled up with visitors who’d come to pay their respects. Standing room only. The people who had killed him were there, too, offering their condolences to his widow. Ziuzza spat at one man in the face. He slowly wiped the spittle off, grinned, turned around, and left.