My grandfather Raffaele had a bungalow someplace, but all I can remember of it is a triangle of sunlight and faded sea green walls and the curlicue cadence of the words that it held. He and my father spoke Italian. They talked in the tempo of the south, a fervent and volatile kind of speech whose words never ended flat but spun in capricious dances through the air and concluded on magnificent mellifluous vowels. It was a sumptuous, sun-drenched language, and in its passionate rhythms I intuitively understood the punchy ardors of life. I wished my tongue would know this dance, wondered what the secrets were that could only be expressed in such a way.
The English Grandpa spoke to me came out in coarsely broken pieces that did not reflect his soul. Truth was, he didn't speak to me much at all, but I watched him closely and I felt connected to him in a fundamental way I did not understand. I have a photograph of him taken at a beach, and even on the sand, he is wearing loose trousers, light straw loafers, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up slightly, and a tie. He had the dapper look of a European gentleman, although he was built like the peasant he was, stocky and short, and was even missing a tooth or two. His hands were strong and his nails uncut, and even through his seventies, his hair was black but for a gray patch at each temple.
Raffaele had come to America in 1906, leaving behind three brothers whose aging children I would meet eighty years later in the Vesuvian village of their birth. My grandfather was the only son who left. He abandoned a stone house and a small good field of rich volcanic earth to come to a place where he would never truly belong. I don't know what he was seeking when he arrived in New York. I only know that a tattered Italian village could not contain his husky dreams, though it held his heart forever.
Life in the new country was hard, but Grandpa was too proud to write home about defeats and disappointments. Letters from the brothers went unanswered as he painted the walls of the RKO theater, ran the Eden Pizzeria on MacDonald Avenue, bet on the horses, and occasionally speculated in real estate, though he always had to sell too soon and too cheaply. My brother Eddie and I used to wait for him in his little real estate office in Canarsie, fascinated by a safe which he told us held countless thousands of dollars -- if only he hadn't lost the combination. As he worked undisturbed at his desk and checked the names of good race prospects in the newspaper, we persistently experimented with different numbers and various twists of the dial. The safe of course remained sealed, and the three of us always went home penniless.
At various times, both my father and my grandfather worked as painters. Grandpa had learned art techniques from his father in Boscoreale. He made elegant charcoal drawings of faces and figures, a fine craft that eventually metamorphosed into broad-brush house painting in the interest of survival. Daddy's specialty was murals and decorative art -- he painted Roman ruins and leafy boughs, and could make a surface look like marble or wood grain. The walls of our house were the canvas upon which he practiced, and so I grew up amidst peacocks, clowns, exotic flowers, and a general effect called "splitter splatter" which was created by hitting a hammer on the handle of a wet paintbrush at just the right distance from the wall. Sometimes Grandpa and Daddy worked together with Vito Plantamura, who respectfully called my father "Buss". Along with my Uncle Joey, they had an interest in a place called the Marlin Hotel in St. Petersburg, Florida, which they renovated in the fifties and then sold.
The Eden Pizzeria was the Grandpa venture I remember best; I could easily walk there after school, and often did. In its storefront window my grandfather created a veritable jungle of plants in large olive oil tins with punctured holes for drainage. When the sunlight slanted through the grimy glass, the leaves became luminous, and the splendid tins with their Italian names were gilded and shiny. My favorite plant was one whose slender leafy hands closed whenever I touched them. Grandpa said they were like me --sensitivo -- and he called this the sensitive plant. I never learned its true botanical name, but many years later, I found its timid sisters growing wild in Florida, recoiling at my touch, or perhaps my silly, excited squeals.Pizza at Raffaele's shop cost fifteen cents a slice, and though this was substantial change, I would not accept it for free. I shyly put my coins down on the white formica counter as though I were an ordinary customer, and waited for the warm slice, served up on wax paper. I loved its bubbly crust and stretchy strings of chewy mozzarella. Unfortunately, Grandpa thought pizza was fine for other kids, but for his own grandchildren it was never as good as the oily fish he had just baked in a pan, nor the cooked escarole, nor the hard crusty bread from the oven, and more often than not, these became my lunch.
Food was a serious matter with Grandpa. Once a week, he would drive his faded green station wagon to the farmer's market before daybreak to get first choice of the very best produce. He sought and found perfection in tomatoes. He gathered dandelion greens and put them in salads. He brought back sweet firm plums, small tender artichokes, and fresh fish from Sheepshead Bay tidily wrapped in newspaper. Olive oil was essential to all cooking; it was years before I realized that other kinds of oil existed. And bread was not bread if the crust provided no challenge to the teeth.
I saw my grandfather as an emissary from a faraway land, and the colorful remnants of his culture appealed to me greatly. But I did not believe it was possible to truly know him without knowing his language. I asked my father to teach me Italian, and he helped me memorize a sentence or two, but it was only a game. "You can learn someday," he said, "but it's not important now. In this world, English is the key, and you must concentrate on that." So I simply listened from the silent outskirts to conversations which seemed ornate, tumultuous, and lush with mystery. But sometimes my heart had a way of translating.
There was anger between Grandpa and my father, as well as a stilted and powerful love. How else to explain the raised voices, the snap and spit of shortened words, the palpable, familiar pain? Childhood had not been easy for the sons of Raffaele, for he was often gone, and his wife Assunta, to whom he had been untrue, was a saintly suffering woman. She sat at her window on Coney Island Avenue, knowing all the sad truths, as such women do. When she died, Grandpa married his mistress, a woman named Rose. Daddy never forgot these misplaced loyalties, but the gnarled bond between father and son endured. He often brought Grandpa jars of homemade lentil soup, and in the late afternoon, he would secretly place a small sweaty stack of dollar bills into the cash register at the pizzeria.
Only once did I have time alone with my grandfather. It was July 17, 1954, the day my sister was born. My parents were at the hospital, and I don't know where my brothers were, but I became Grandpa's charge for an afternoon. He took me to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, and a more enchanting place did not exist anywhere. We walked through a greenhouse together, where the air was moist, tropical, and fragrant in a way I had never known. I remember a ruckus of green and yellow parrots from the palms and rubber trees, though I am sure there were none, and a wooden footbridge over a clear pond into which glinting pennies had been tossed for wishing. It is as though we took a journey together to some South American dream, just my grandfather and me. And to this day, I cannot enter a greenhouse without thinking of him, nor can I see one without entering.
Those summer days of childhood were served to me in thick sun-buttered slices, and anything was possible. I never doubted that I would learn Italian, never believed there was a single thing I would not do if I chose it. I loved the smells of paint and work, for these held promise. I loved the fruits of earth, and kitchen sounds, for these were life's comforts. But discord was my native tongue, for nothing ever seemed to settle and end right. Watching the struggles of my grandfather and my father, I braced myself for battle, believing that my life would be better, but not without a fight. In the meantime, there were rain puddles full of neon light, and lemon ice in pleated cups beneath the el.
When my grandfather moved away to Florida, summer had ended, and there was no good-bye. The New York winters had always been mean, and his various endeavors and speculations were becoming harder to sustain. He would live near Uncle Joey in St. Petersburg. He would have a garden. It was the right decision for him. But within two years, he had a stroke. He lingered for a week. Uncle Joey's daughter stayed at his bedside and spoke to him gently, as I wished I could have done.
And so on a bleak day in February 1966, I sat in the back of a funeral parlor in Brooklyn doing my chemistry homework. I could not comprehend the casket within my view that held my grandfather's body, so I lowered my head and tended to my book as though it were more important than anything. I could hear Rose wailing, and there were strands of Italian entwined with English, punctuated with sobs. My own feelings were twisted into a terrible knot and I seemed to have no voice. I had never told my grandfather that I loved him. There were so many things that had not been said, so many things I would never know.
But Grandpa came back to me in dreams. He gave me a gypsy ring with ruby stones, and spoke to me in an eloquent wordless language that I effortlessly understood. He visited me many times, and he always returned in the winters to bring me the sunlight and warmth of greenhouses, gardens, and southern Italy. He began a journey in 1905, and had reached the eastern shore; it was for me, he said, to continue, and so I have. He gave me his trust and his yearning. He told me about work, which is good in itself. He told me about love, fierce, irrational, and everlasting. And he told me about outrageous hope that can stare down anything and never blink, hope which is born and reborn in a thousand incarnations. And I knew the secret language then, and I hugged him through his overcoat and time.
Cynthia Carbone Ward
