LITTLE VITA WAS ALWAYS HUNGRY.
Each morning Teresina would feed her and the whole family a thin minestra soup made with tomato and oil. Then Vita’s father, Domenico, trudged into the piazza, with his hat pulled tight over his head, where he would get in line for the shape-up with the rest of the town’s braccianti, waiting to be called as a day laborer by one of the village agents. The only thing worse than working the lattifondi (estates) was not being called to work the lattifondi. This was the 1850s, before the sea of workers began flooding into America.
The luckiest had a mule, who slept at the back of the house. He would trudge along with his master to the farm each morning, both man and beast practically sleepwalking.
But Domenico was too poor to own a mule. Maybe a chicken or a goat.
Because they lived and slept so close to their animals, the braccianti smelled like them and were considered barely human by the landowners—the padroni. In the summer, the animals stayed inside, while the family slept out on the cool cobblestones on the street, sometimes on a bed of straw, to avoid the stench and the body heat of the animals.
If he found work for the day, Domenico would walk alone the two or three miles to the farm. Sometimes farther. If it was raining when they got there, the braccianti were sent back home without pay. If the weather was good, they worked all day—even on Sunday—and then were fed a lunch of cornmeal polenta.
When work was more than ten miles away, Domenico would spend half the month in a tiny country hovel provided by the padrone. And when they were desperate, Teresina would go, too. Sometimes the workers would all live together in a larger house, a masseria, locked in at night, sleeping on the floor like animals, with a piece of canvas to cover them all, a tarp separating the men from the women.
In the cold months, from November through March, they would eat bread soup cooked by the women. In the hottest months, they ate bread with a crushed-up tomato or pepper, some olives. Maybe a little cheese.
Domenico worked like a mule all day in that punishing sun, beside a real mule that didn’t even belong to him, but who recognized him, who saw in him the same weary look. The two of them worked the fields together, with a small wooden plow that barely scratched the surface, and depending on the season, sowed wheat or harvested it, or sowed tomatoes or harvested them, the mule stopping every few minutes in his stubbornness and Domenico waiting, always waiting, never hitting him or yelling at him. With the patience of his patron saint, San Domenico, the Italian monk and healer of snake bites. This mule was his partner, his friend, and Domenico even had a name for him. Though that name has been lost to the ages.
Just because you worked like a beast didn’t mean you thought like one. Domenico—whose nickname was likely Mimmo—had hopes for his children. He worried about them and prayed Vita’s life would be better than his had been. It had to be. It couldn’t get much worse. Or so he thought.
Like most of the farmers, Domenico was kind and gentle, his face creased and tanned, a tan so dark and deep that it reached down to future generations, guaranteeing they would never burn.
Vegetables, fruit, and citrus were grown on what was called the corona, a small area surrounding the lattifondi, and were harvested in winter for the padrone’s personal use. Winter was also hog-slaughtering time. Domenico killed the pigs, even though the pork wasn’t his to keep.
On the larger parcels of land, Domenico planted tobacco, dried it on huge wooden frames, then threaded the leaves for hours, until his fingers bled and his eyesight started to go. In fall he harvested the grapes in tight bunches and turned them into wine with the other men on his crew. They sang songs while they worked, about sneaking to a lover’s window in the night, or about meeting a pretty girl in the fields, or about being in love with three sisters, each one prettier than the last. Anything to take their mind off their grueling job.
Then came olive season. Domenico built a lunetta—a half-moon wall of stones—around every single silver-leafed olive tree to protect it from erosion. He placed a blanket under each when harvest time came, and shook the olives from the branches. You never picked the olives off the ground that were there before the shaking of the tree, because that meant they were old and dead. That is, you never picked them for the padroni. You picked them for yourself and your family. The freshest olives made the best and longest-lasting oil, since they were ripe with natural preservatives. The older the olives, the lower the quality of the oil. Your oil.
Domenico pressed them with the other farmers, using a mule or cow to turn the huge stone wheel that squeezed out the precious golden liquid. When there was no cow or mule, the men used their own strength to push it, singing a rhythmic call and response to help them move in unison, grunting after every erotic line to push harder.
Come on
Another press
Come oooooon
See how it comes out
Press gently, like a kiss
Give another press
So that the young girl can marry
DOMENICO AND HIS FELLOW BRACCIANTI WERE PAID IN WHEAT, olive oil, or wine, sometimes a little salt, rarely actual money. And on feast days and holidays, Domenico had to bring an offering to his padrone, hat in hand, to thank him for the work he had given him throughout the year. It was usually some produce or cheese. Some even gave sausage, those lucky enough to live with a pig or two in their own house. It was outrageous, really, having to give gifts to the rich padroni. But you had to show the proper respect. Those who didn’t could be beaten or whipped. Or worse, not chosen to work the lattifondi, their families left to starve.
If a husband had any money at all, his wife and daughters didn’t work the land, but rather stayed behind in town, since women could get into all kinds of trouble on the farm. But Vita’s family had no money. Teresina often worked in the country and would sometimes bring Vita along, especially during the wheat harvest, when everyone worked—men, women, children, animals.
Domenico and Teresina couldn’t read the newspapers from Naples, so they usually had no idea what was really happening on the rest of the peninsula that would soon become Italy. But they heard the gossip. Beyond the farms where they worked, they knew that changes were coming that might one day affect little Vita’s life.
By the 1860s, a bearded man named Giuseppe Garibaldi was leading something called the Risorgimento—or resurgence—out of Sicily, employing a mighty army of volunteers known as “the redshirts,” who fought their way to Naples and beyond. They were victorious in their battles, uniting the north of the peninsula with the south and creating one nation, called the Kingdom of Italy.
They were promising a better life for the peasants, fewer taxes, land for everyone. Maybe soon, Vita’s life wouldn’t be so hard.
WHEN VITA WENT TO THE COUNTRY TO HELP HER MOTHER WORK, she wore long skirts and woolen stockings, even though the heat was so hot and the sun so strong that it felt like it might crack your skull open. If your legs were bare, the wheat sliced them like a razor, like the one the local barber used to shave the galantuomini—the gentlemen in town.
Vita helped her mother bundle the wheat, using a long piece to wrap around and tie each bunch. The wheat was tricky because if you didn’t harvest it fast enough, it would overripen and burn. Her mother never planted, since it was thought to be unlucky for a woman to sow. But she would harvest. Everyone harvested, from the end of May sometimes until the end of July.
The wheat was cut by many hands, then taken to the aia, the square on the farm bordered by bricks, where it was beaten with sticks to separate the chaff. The straw was thrown to one side and the grain to the other. Then it was placed in the granaio, the open-windowed building used to keep the air flowing onto it and keep it dry.
Teresina made flour at the communal gristmill using the small bits of grain Domenico was paid, and then baked the family’s homemade bread—pane casareccio—in the communal stone oven in town once or twice a week, gossiping with the other women as she waited for the loaves to be done. Then she carried them home on her head on a big wooden board. The dough was stretched to feed the whole family with anything she found that week—some corn, chestnuts. The most desperate even used sawdust. Salt was used sparingly because it was highly taxed. The children were given bread according to how big they were, another inch for every inch they grew. Tiny Vita prayed to the saints that she would grow faster.
If there was enough work and pay, a good night’s dinner consisted of a round loaf of bread, cut usually by Vita’s father, placed up against his chest, the knife making its way toward him, but stopping just short of a nipple-ectomy. The bread—never enough to go round—was rubbed with a found pepper or maybe some garlic and a quick brush of olive oil. And if they were really lucky that day, a bit of crushed tomato or a few olives.
It was placed on one big plate in the middle of the small wooden table. There were many mouths to feed. Vita’s siblings, her grandmother and grandfather. Domenico, if he was not off on the masseria. You shared your space, everyone sleeping and eating in that one room. If you weren’t fast, you didn’t get any food. But Vita was smart and quick. She got some. Though never enough to satisfy her. There was an Italian saying that went, “You’ll never be sated with bread and olives.” And it was true. It was never enough for Vita.
Until she was four years old, Vita slept in a small hammock above her parents’ bed, where her mother could easily reach up and rock her daughter when she cried out in hunger, that black hole in her belly growing deeper and wider with each passing hour. Sometimes she cried out in thirst for water that wasn’t there. Teresina soaked a sponge in wine to quench her thirst, like the Romans had done to Jesus on the cross. But that’s if there was any wine.
Usually, Teresina just sang her daughter a lullaby, because lullabies were free. The town favorite was “Ninna Nanna,” which never failed to get Vita to sleep, her thirst fading only when she faded.
Do the ninna, do the nanna
Your real mother is the Virgin
Do the ninna, do the nanna
The wolf ate the little sheep
Oh, my little sheep
What did you do
When you saw yourself in the mouth of the wolf,
Who ate the skin and who ate the wool?
Poor little sheep how it screamed.
Sleep, my sweet friend
sleep for a long time
and don’t make me suffer.