“There was something strange and extraordinary about her.”
~P. L. Travers
Flora Maria Domenico came into this world, unlike her cousins who wailed and screamed announcing their arrivals. She barely made a whimper, causing her grandmother to check that her airways were clear. Nonna, who had taken the midwife duties, saw that her cheeks were a flushed pink hue, and she was warm to the touch; therefore, declaring the baby salutare, in good health.
“This little one is as delicate as a rosebud and as tranquil as a field of daisies,” Nonna announced to the family soon after the birth. “Her name is Flora, like the Goddess of the Flowers. Our very own little flower.”
She was born at home on a summer’s day in Lorry Landing, two blocks from the Oyo River. Her family’s Craftsman-style house stood amongst similar homes in a quiet neighborhood where the Italian immigrants settled soon after entering their unfamiliar country. Because of their similarities and common backgrounds, everyone treated each other like family.
They constructed Lorry Landing for the incoming employees of the new mill across the river. Word of Western Pennsylvania’s booming steel industry traveled back to the little villages along the hills of the Abruzzo region, and Flora’s parents moved from Italy to America. Her parents saw an opportunity to provide stability for generations to come, so they convinced her father’s brother and his wife to make the journey with them. Of course, that meant bringing her father’s mother, Nonna, with them. At the time, her aunt and uncle had their two tiny girls but decided that they would travel across the Atlantic with them in tow, and they would raise them along the riverbank of Lorry Landing.
So, her family arrived and settled in together in the Craftsman house not long before Flora quietly announced her arrival. The home had a wide and open front porch, which soon became an extension of their living space during the warmer months, and a perch to sit upon to watch the snowfall in the colder ones. Both married couples occupied the first floor’s two bedrooms, and soon after they moved in, the men built a room off the kitchen for Nonna. That left the attic, which ran the length of the house, for Flora and her two cousins.
A wooden staircase behind a door led upstairs to a finished second story. The adults strategically placed three beds under the three windows around the room. Each girl had a modest dresser and desk in their appointed areas. Flora loved her corner the most, for they gave her the front window built above the wide-open porch. She felt she could see the world from her bed. Her attic corner became her sanctuary as she grew older, a haven from the rowdiness of the cramped first floor, where she could read her books and peer out the window towards the mighty river to watch the barges come and go from the mill. However, she seemed never to have the time she wanted to hide away above the porch because Nonna would summon her to the kitchen; something always pulled her away from the best parts of her stories. But Nonna would never relent, for the old Vecchio saw something in her young nipotina, granddaughter. It wasn’t quite a fire, maybe just the hint of a spark, but it was there. She felt the warmth of it each time Flora held her hand. Nonna certainly never felt the heat from her other two granddaughters, nor did she see the flame flicker in their eyes. The delicate bloom, whom Nonna helped enter the world, could not conceal the gift she unknowingly held inside… the magic of the old traditions.
Nonna learned the practices and traditions of the family from her grandmother. And her grandmother learned from hers, and so on. She was determined to teach Flora what she’d learned all those moons ago, but Nonna, and all the nonnas before her, would never call attention to what they cultivated. They merely mentored the next generation of casalinghe, the other housewives. Call it superstition or what you will. These wise-aged women dared not speak the word witch, Strega, in mixed company.
Flora’s neighbors clung to the belief that the entire community watched over children, so there was no shortage of teachable moments amongst the other nonnas on their block once word got out about the fiery little flower, the Fiorello infucato. She had ample opportunities to learn how to sew on a button, knit a simple scarf and cook a hearty minestrone. The young girl did not immediately grasp that, at the same time she was learning to use the possessions of her ancestors— the very items that Nonna had brought with her on the journey over the sea, she was being taught the traditions behind them as well.
Each day, Flora tried with all her might to disappear into her attic nook, and her mother would call her to come to the kitchen every day. Once, Flora thought of finding a hiding place in the basement, but she soon discovered it was an additional kitchen area. It was where Mamma, Nonna, and her aunt, Zia Elena, canned the vegetables from their garden. It was the space where Papà and her uncle, Zio Carmen, made sausage with the other men in the neighborhood. Flora could watch the process, but it was something she would leave to her father to do. It seemed like an experiment gone awry with meat grinders and just the right amount of fat, not to mention the casings. Her cousins, Angelina and Sofia, consistently but politely declined the invitation to watch the process. Flora didn’t mind it because she enjoyed spending time with her father and listening to the men’s jovial banter. They sent her upstairs once the homemade wine appeared to celebrate the well-made sausage links. As Flora climbed the basement steps, the men would sit around the rickety old kitchen table on mismatched chairs while Zio Carmen pulled out the box of drinking glasses from beside the utility sink.
No matter where Flora turned or tried to hide, there was food. Nonna preferred to show her affection through the amount of food she made for her family. She also gauged how much her family loved her by how much they ate in one sitting, so they had better come to the table hungry, and she concocted herbal tonics for the sniffles and sore throats. Angelina and Sofia learned how to tend the backyard garden so that the household had sustenance in the summer and year-round once everything was canned. Mama and Zia Elena contributed the most when canning the vegetables, jellies, and jams, making the kitchen and basement extremely hot and humid, especially for the aging Nonna.
It was in all this that Flora unknowingly learned all the old traditions. Before Nonna started her pie crust, she would take the coarse sea salt and sprinkle a bit of it in each corner of the kitchen. Flora followed closely behind, sweeping the spilled salt towards the center of the room with Nonna’s well-loved corn bristle broom. She would then sweep the small pile into the metal dustpan and toss the salt out the back door by the stove. Only after this would Nonna gather her ingredients to combine them into her dough, but not before making sure she gently placed her beloved broom in the kitchen's corner to wait for the next sprinkling of salt.
“Nonna, why do we waste this salt by throwing it on the floor and then toss it outside?” Flora once asked after flinging a dustpan full of salt yet again.
Her grandmother, busy kneading the lard into the flour with her fingers, answered, “We’re cleaning the kitchen.”
Never one to question her elders, Flora closed the door, walked over to the sink, washed her hands, and tied her apron around her waist, ready to learn Nonna’s secret to a flaky crust. And so, that is how Flora, the firoellino infucato, learned the secrets of the vecchie streghe, the old witches.
Years passed, and Flora learned the ways of housekeeping and the old traditions of the streghe. She and her cousins attended the local primary school two blocks from their home and eventually graduated to the high school building in neighboring Castor. That was where Flora met Jonas Godfrey. They were in the same ninth-grade class but had just crossed each other’s paths. Jonas had attended his neighborhood’s elementary school in Beacon Township, a rural farmland area only a few miles from downtown Castor.
Each small neighborhood in Castor County kept their little students close by for the first level of learning, but once they were older, they were all sent to the larger building constructed in the middle of Castor.
Jonas sat next to Flora in science class and often peeked at her notes to ensure he had the correct answers. He quickly caught on that Flora was an avid reader and guessed that she took extensive notes. And he was right. It took an entire grading period for the naïve Flora to realize he pretty much solely relied on her class notes to pass the weekly tests. She wasn’t sure whether to be mad that Jonas squeaked by in the class on her hard work or to be flattered that he thought enough of her to peek at her notes every day.
Soon, Jonas found his way to Flora’s lunch table. Her friends quickly asked her why “that boy” had infiltrated their inner sanctum.
“I don’t know,” Flora mumbled and shrugged her shoulders.
“We know why. Somebody likes you,” they singsonged in response.
Time passed in a blink of an eye, just like the saying went. Flora was a senior and ready to graduate. She had learned all she needed from Castor High School, and the school planned on setting her loose on the world. Flora did not plan on traveling far. She had fallen in love with Jonas, and they planned on marrying soon after graduation. But there was one problem with that plan. Her family in the Craftsman house by the Oyo River did not know about the boyfriend, let alone the wedding.
One day after school, Flora was again in the kitchen with Nonna and her Mamma. They were preparing a chicken brodo for an ailing neighbor. That morning, Nonna had acquired the fowl and put the raw carcass, bones and all, in the large stockpot. Flora oversaw washing the carrots and celery before Mamma chopped them up so the pieces could soften in the simmering brew. It was then that Flora thought it best to approach the subject of Jonas. She thought it best to do it before her father and uncle arrived home from the steel mill. Her aunt was visiting Angelina for the day. Her cousins had both graduated and gotten married to boys from the neighborhood not long before that. They now had their own households to run while their husbands joined the labor force at the mill across the river.
“Mamma, Nonna,” Flora started with a shaky voice, continuing to wash the celery and carrots at the sink.
“Yes?” Mamma asked, focusing on the vegetables she was chopping in front of her. Nonna remained quiet, stirring her broth with a large wooden spoon.
Flora coughed to clear the lump in her throat and busied herself vigorously scrubbing a celery stalk.
“Well, graduation is just around the corner, and both of you have done such a good job teaching me how to run a home, and I’ve learned everything I can learn at school, and…” she babbled.
“What is it, Flora? This kitchen’s getting too hot for any hotter wind from your rambling,” Mamma warned. A bit more cautiously, Nonna continued to stir but said nothing.
Flora did not look up from her shredded celery stalk but announced, “I am getting married. And his name is Jonas.”
She dared not look behind her but could feel her mother’s silence hang heavy in the room. Mamma’s chopping and Nonna’s stirring ceased. The only sounds in the steamy kitchen were the gentle pops of the tiny bubbles in the simmering pot and the stove’s slow flame’s steady stream of gas.
“Jonas? No one around here has a name like that,” Mamma said.
“He’s not from around our neighborhood,” Flora replied cautiously as she watched her mother put the knife on the counter. “He’s from Beacon Township.”
Nonna stirred the soup again but remained silent.
“No daughter of mine is just up and getting married,” Mamma responded loudly, “Why Beacon Township? What’s wrong with the boys from here? We don’t even know him! Your father has no say in this?” her mother pressed.
Nonna remained quiet. Flora tried frantically to think of something to say.
“Jonas? Does this boy even have a last name?” Mamma asked.
“Godfrey,” Flora stated, turning around from the sink to face Mamma and Nonna.
“Godfrey? In heaven’s name, what sort of name is that?” her mother demanded.
Flora continued to face her mother and braced herself. She took a deep breath and said, “It’s Irish.”
Mamma stared at Flora with saucer-sized eyes, mouth agape, but no sound escaping. Nonna, her back to Flora and facing the stovetop, froze with her wooden spoon in her hand. It was only then that Flora heard Nonna’s uttered response.
“Signore aiutaci! Lord help us!”