Nonora has not returned home to Sicily in over fifty years. What secrets will her grandson find out if he ever makes it to her home town there? Angelo's pilgrimage to the "old country" is sidetracked when an attractive modern Italian women needs a r...
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First of all her name's not Nonora. To many she was Nonna, which means grandmother in Italian. To others she was Lenora, the shortened version of her given Sicilian name, Eleonora. But to her Americanized grandchildren she was affectionately called "Nonora". Her favorite days were when a warm afternoon turned into a cool evening with gentle sea breezes migrating across her island porch; this warmed her heart. It was Angelo, of course, her most attentive grandchild, coming up the creaky wooden steps. A mutual smile and four out stretched hands between them was more common than a hug when they met up daily.
Nonora lived in the carriage house behind Angelo's parents. It was a raised wooden house, as were most in this low lying part of west Galveston island, just blocks from the frequently flooding bay. From her back porch, there was a good view of some bad aspects of life, there in the alleys of Galveston. Her birth name in Sicily was Eleonora, as were the names of her eight cousins who were also first-born daughters. After she stole away to America, she semi-Americanized it to Lenora and but eventually it became Nonora. As little girls, she and her sister fantasized about all of the foreign queens and princesses who had ruled over their sweet island of Sicily. They often played among the aging, decayed Spaniard's castle of the "Contessa of Ribera". Now grown up, she still heard the whispers that she was "Nonora of Galveston". Finding herself aging in a foreign home, she nostalgically recalled her life and her lifeblood through her scribe, her closest grandchild, Angelo.
Reclining on the back porch, smoking a thin, flavorful cigar, in the not so mosquito ridden evening air, she typically chatted the evening away with her grandson. Angelo was always asking questions, wanting to know his family's past; his working-class parents were limited in relaying the family history to the next generation.
From the unscreened, second story porch came conversations like this:
"Scrivi quisti... ma, non scrivi quella!" (Write this down, don't write that down) emoted the spry, late 70's Italian-American woman. Nonora was very guarded in what would be passed on to the next generations. She was full of delightful, and not so delightful stories of family, her adopted Galveston, and her Sicilian bloodline. She vacillated on what to reveal and what she planned to take to the grave
Nonora was quite complacent with life. Though widowed, she had many children and extended family nearby. She had the neighborhood children, who generation after generation, grew up before her eyes. She had Angelo to converse with. She loved reminiscing and he loved the stories. Her wit was not diminished and she only repeated herself at times, for emphasis. Often Angelo brought over his momma's maccarun' (pasta) to enjoy a quiet meal, excepting the occasional barking dogs in the neighborhood. Afterwards Nonora usually leaned back and took a slow puff of the aromatic cigarillo.
The summer break was coming up and Angelo secretly planned his first trip to Italy. He knew that Nonora forbade him from going to Sicily; for some reason she did not want any of her family to every return to their roots. But Angelo could not wait to make his pilgrimage to "the old country": he noticed how Nonora and other Italian-Americans always called it that. It was as if there is some old place, some unchanging entity that had been etched out of stone, like some Michelangelo's relief sculpture. Angelo was determined to one day go to modern day Italy, and of course it's southern island Sicily.
(Decades later Angelo, having been marinated in family names of Nonora's hometown, he would view these same names in young vibrant modern Italian young people on Facebook! The passed down story of Tortorici –the old grocer who started out with dollars' worth of merchandise at the corner of Winnie and O, next to the Barese paisano Perrelli, the fish monger... as the story always started out; on Facebook, Tortorici teenagers in Italy post selfies! )
He would have to determine for himself what the malicious mystery was. In addition, maybe, just maybe confront his Sicilian American grandmother, Nonora, with the reality. He's heard all his life "tutti morti" when he inquired about cousins that must exist; he would confront this claim that "all are dead"; if any breath of life existed to having a relationships with the succeeding generations of those who left their roots, then maybe his generation would not feel so rootless.
~ Port of Galveston – Nonora arrives as an Immigrant ~
The port of Galveston sits on the north side of the island, safe from the stormy Gulf of Mexico. Ships can enter and dock securely, although the town must fear the periodic hurricane flooding that comes from this bay. One calm day, twenty years after the historic 1900 Hurricane that nearly annihilated Galveston Island, two young women disembarked. The ship emptied its cargo and passengers for customs inspection. To be ushered through the west exit meant acceptance to America, free to make it or not, no matter your family background. But those who were corralled through the east exit were put in line for the purgatory of the Quarantine Station or the hellish trip back: exiled from America, condemned to the ocean waters to return to the old country. There are worse fates though. Ask the eight thousand who perished from this island of opportunity during the Great Storm. Ask the deceased nuns who tied sheets to attach themselves to the 93 orphans in a futile attempt to avoid drowning. Or better yet, ask one of the three orphanage survivors, 28 years old now and looking for work on the docks. His dead eyes crossed those of the Sicilian sisters as they passed through the west exit.
These two women were barely past their teen years but with their maturity and poise, they were not phased with this transoceanic migration from the Old World. Giuseppe, Nonora's husband, appeared slightly anxious on this new island, this new town, this new continent; however he found the temperature and the gentle breeze strangely familiar to his home island of Sicily. She took his hand tenderly and seemed comfortable in these new surroundings. She had already met people who were coming to Galveston to see their fellow Italian friends and relatives. Giuseppe was carrying a package that a Sicilian paisano had asked him to bring to someone in Galveston. It was for a prominent family in Galveston, the Liceo's. Suffice is to say that Nonora had a hand in much of the success of that family; this connection helped her own family.
Nonora and Giuseppe had stolen away to America. It was a mystery why they left the rich land estates of her Sagrado family in the west central Sicilian highlands. Many thought that it was problems that Giuseppe and his brother had with certain criminal elements. Some thought that it was men from the mafia who killed Giuseppe's brother, Momo; or was it just some random robbery. Was one sister helping the other to run away from a social miscue like a pregnancy? But some ascribed Nonora to having an unappreciative, overly ambitious soul that leads her to forever leave her roots for some American pipe dream.
On that back porch, with her cigarillo, she denied to herself that she was overly ambitious. "Chi dice quista?" (who says that). She did a little soul-searching. Even though she was conversive in multiple languages, she had problems with her own Sicilian dialect with understanding certain words. In Italian and Spanish the word for soul is alma. But in Sicilian the word is arma, who's meaning in most Romance languages is weapon. In the end she was at ease with her arma, clearing herself of being over ambitious, all the while scheming to keep Angelo from succeeding in a trip to Sicily.
