VITA’S PARENTS KNEW THAT ONE DAY THEY’D GIVE THEIR daughter a beautiful wedding. Simple, but beautiful.
And they had no doubt they would make the right match—the bashad.
When Vita was coming of age in the late 1860s, her mother would say to her “Non hai peli sulla lingua”—an idiomatic expression that meant literally, “You don’t have hair on your tongue.” It actually meant, “You always speak your mind.” And Vita always did.
It’s what made her attractive to the boys in the village, that edge she had over them. She was smarter than they were, quicker, more direct, and they were in awe of Vita.
By puberty, she was forbidden to speak to a boy without being accompanied by a guardian, but she would simply give them the look. The other girls—and women—looked away when a man looked at them, lowered their eyes in the usual submissive way.
But not Vita.
She stared right back at you, no matter who you were. The sindaco, or mayor, the pezzi grossi, the big shots, even the padroni. She stared you right down and seemed to say, “What the fuck are you looking at?” It wasn’t the malocchio she gave them. No. It was even stronger than that. It was an inner strength and confidence.
It was moxie.
Vita wasn’t beautiful, but she was sexy, the curve of her neck and the way she tilted her head when she listened. She was smart and wise all at the same time—what the Italians like to call “veramente in gamba.” The Italian version of thinking on your feet. But it meant more than that. Liveliness and love of life was hard to find in a place as miserable as nineteenth-century Bernalda. And Vita had it. Vita had it in spades—to quote an American idiom.
She was so bold and so full of life that some of the other girls jealously called her a puttana, starting rumors.
On top of it all, Vita was funny. All the women in our family were comedians. People often called Vita macchietta, which meant “entertaining little person.” She could turn a phrase. Tell a joke using a play on words, a favorite of Italian comedians. As the much hated tax man made his way down Via Cavour, Vita did a mean imitation of the man walking down the street—her legs bowed, her back hunched, her teeth bucked and eyes crossed. Vita was a skilled impersonator and mimic, like most of my great-aunts. The comedy gene had to come from somewhere.
THOUGH THERE WAS NO SUITOR JUST YET, TERESINA SET ABOUT HER mother’s duty: gathering the girl’s linens, bit by bit, piece by piece. Even the poorest mothers provided a trousseau for their daughters. A bedspread was cut and fringed. Teresina made and gathered the pillowcases, the wool blanket, a mattress of straw, secondhand dishcloths and napkins, which she lovingly embroidered with tiny flowers and patterns.
All Teresina’s spare linen from her own marriage was recycled and made to look like new. The embroidery was beautiful, because Teresina was a talented seamstress and weaver. She would pass her skills on to her daughter, teaching her the complicated pedals and strings of the wooden loom, which looked like the inside of a piano.
In addition to the linen, Teresina and Domenico had to provide Vita with a chest for the linen and a chest of drawers, a board for kneading pasta, and one for carrying bread on her head to and from the communal oven.
Her father, Domenico, an old man by now at fifty-five, made them all himself with his still-strong hands, from the wood he chopped from the public land, the few parcels of land that didn’t belong to the padroni yet.
Before the wedding, the parents of the bride and groom agreed in an unwritten contract as to what linens, furniture, dishes, clothes, and glasses would be given away with the daughter. Richer families discussed an actual dowry—money and lands that would be transferred from one family to the other.
And finally, the bashad was made. The love match. From the word “to kiss,” baciare. Vita Gallitelli would be engaged to marry a neighbor, Francesco Vena, seven years her senior.
Who knows if Vita and Francesco were in love? Probably not. Few in Vita’s day had the luxury of marrying someone they’d fallen in love with. Marriage was for convenience, for survival, for having babies to help work the farm.
Francesco knew Vita because he was friends with her brother, Leonardantonio, who was four years older than she was. Francesco had worked with him on the farms surrounding Bernalda and so he knew, from chatting every day with Leonardantonio, that Vita was not engaged to anyone. He liked the way she looked, her dark, thick hair, her long, lovely neck, and though she was small, her strong shoulders and hips.
Before the proposal, he floated the idea of marrying Vita past Leonardantonio, who was almost as enthusiastic as Francesco was. His sister was getting old, entering spinster territory. His parents were starting to worry.
She was nineteen.