As we returned from the walk around Gabi, we passed by the old
house where Zio Remo was just finishing his lunch. He called us over with a
wide grin. His was the old, vine-covered house we had passed on the first day.
It looked quaint from the driveway, something out of a Hollywood movie, but as
we drew closer I could see that the stucco on his walls was even more chipped
and gouged than ours, the old front door sagged on rusty hinges, and a line of
laundry hung below the dirty, cracked, front window. We passed under the vines,
and George murmured the polite "Permesso"
as we stepped over the worn, smooth stoop. Zio urged us forward, "Vieni, vieni."
 | ||||
| Zio Remo's house |
It was gloomy inside, but light enough to see the worn
walls of the large room. Little Matthew tripped where he didn’t notice broken
tiles that had sunk into the dirt below. Remo sat us at the wooden kitchen
table covered with a brightly-patterned cloth and offered us coffee. I said in
Italian, yes and thank you, and I was happy with my ability to speak to him.
I looked around and noticed that we were sitting in
the right side of the house. George confirmed later that Remo lived in just
half of it, and the rest was even more run-down. Remo had lived in that house
with his mother (George’s grandmother) looking after her until her death some
years before. The house was now his, but he had no money to keep it all in good
repair, so after she died he had closed off most of it. His bedroom was above
the kitchen/dining/living room that we sat in, and his toilet was the outhouse
we had seen on the other side of the driveway.
After he'd given each of the children a cookie, and
poured us coffee in tiny cups, I asked Zio Remo in careful Italian how long
he'd lived there. He looked at me strangely and said, "Eh?" I repeated myself, and so did he. His
smile fading, he asked George in rapid-fire Italian mixed with dialect what I
had said. George translated, and I listened carefully to Zio Remo’s
answer but only caught two words,” house” and “father”. Remo had been born there,
as had his sister and all of his brothers, including George's father, and their
father before them, and he didn't know how many fathers before that. George had
to translate for me so I could understand Remo's answer. Our eyes and our smiles
had connected, but the words had gone wide.
I realized then that my language
was stifled. Words, my tools of communication, were useless for now. I would have
to learn much more Italian to reach a point of mutual understanding. Apparently,
I could not even ask a simple polite question, nor understand the answer. Up to
that point my foreign language skills had been confined to a classroom, where I
had received straight A’s. I had taken French and Latin in ninth grade, Spanish
in tenth, French in eleventh, Spanish again in twelfth, and a year of French in
college. No Italian. Each segment had been learned in a different school, so
that I had no practical skills in foreign communication. When I arrived in
Italy my education began.
I almost choked when I tasted the coffee. It was a
really strong espresso, not at all like the coffee I was used to. If this was
what coffee meant in Italy, I figured I’d better stick to tea! When Zio passed
a bottle of brandy and invited us to add some, I willingly poured in a dollop
then sipped. Much better. So I sipped more and accepted a second cup of coffee and
diluted that too. Always a light-weight when it came to alcohol, soon the room
began to tilt. I was tipsy. Then all language bets were off. The words I tried
to speak, and the words George and Zio Remo spoke, became more and more scrambled,
so I sat in silence, watching the children and grinning idiotically as sounds
swirled around us. It was just past noon, and I was well and truly soused!
We went home for lunch then put the children down for
a nap—and me. I had to sleep off the brandy. When I awoke, my head was clear,
so I searched through our luggage for my Italian book and attacked the grammar
and vocabulary. I needed to study harder. How could I find out where I fit if I couldn't converse with
the people around me? How would I know what they thought, and where our ideas
met if the language they used was a wall to me? I recognized my isolation. I
still had a distance to travel to connect with the people I wanted to
know.
We were not the first immigrants to face this problem,
nor the last. It is not easy to leave common references, similar ideas, and
comparable values, to live amongst people who are different. I had read of
them, the American forebears: Germans, Chinese, Poles, Mexicans, Italians, and
many more. They came to America looking for a better life, but the battle
across frontiers was only the beginning. They brought with them their native
assumptions, just as I had when I went to Italy. Like me, they owned customs
that didn’t fit the new environment, and like me, they stumbled as they learned
new customs, new words, and new ways of thinking. They had fought the battles I
was fighting. They had reached over gaps and divides to make sense of a foreign
land and language. They are still arriving, still struggling, but the people
who make that journey are strong and determined. And America, land of
immigrants, expands to incorporate them all. I knew it would be difficult, but
I thought I was strong enough to break down the barriers to my Italian assimilation—as
long as I stayed sober!
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