Annette Bellaqua talked with her hands. The curls on her head shook whenever she argued or swore, and so the dark ringlets were in perpetual motion. She wore wire-framed glasses and came from New York City with her husband, Sal, who was on staff at Corpus Christi Church.
Unlike the women I’d previously selected as mother material, there was no sweetness, no saintly indulgence about Annette. She was smart and though barely twenty, had already finished college.
She took me to her place, cooked for me, went on and on in her down-state voice about the superiority of her marinara. Annette talked passionately about the Greeks, and took me to the Village Green bookshop for paperbacks, Japanese postcards, half-moon cookies.
She taught Latin to kids nearly her own age at the local Catholic boys’ school and though she had a large and solid heart, she was barbed wire on the surface. She snapped her gum and if any wise-ass comment was to be made, it came from her. She certainly didn’t put up with sarcasm from me and, in truth, Annette was so busy spilling forth run-on sentences on the topics of religion, politics, and feminism, there was simply no room to get mouthy in her company.
Annette was sharp. And in pain, brought on by the frequent absence of the husband whose job had carried them to the artless vacuum of western New York—the very same husband whose attention was lavished all too obviously on any number of other women in the parish.
Annette was alone, with all that poetry and tomato sauce stewing in her head. So she made room. For me. And I followed.
In Annette’s kitchen, I opened my eyes and ears, felt the limits of what I knew begin to stretch. I kept my eye on her hand as she chopped parsley into green frill, took notes on which utensil to use as she stirred sauce, noticed the way her eyes closed, as if in love, as she read poems in Italian.
She was brilliant. And hard. Like cut glass. Centuries-old verse, modern thought, and words I’d never heard fell from her mouth like tiny flames. I was entranced. And for as long as I could, I stood nearby, watching.