Read Crazy in the Kitchen Online
Authors: Louise DeSalvo
Throughout my mother's life, her hands shook, causing dishes to fall and shatter on the floor, flour to spill all over the
counter as she tried to shake some from a bag into a measuring cup, soap to enter my sister's eyes or mine when she washed
our faces. But my mother's hands never shook so badly as after her stepmother died.
After my grandmother's death, my mother was alone in the house while my father was away at work. I had my family to take care
of; my sister was living on the West Coast. Being completely alone never suited my mother. Yes, she loved to be by herself
and not be bothered by anyone, but only so long as someone else was there.
Now that there was no one for my mother to fight with, she became detached and depressed. Having an evil stepmother in the
house for all those years was better than having no mother at all.
While her stepmother was alive, at least my mother felt something, even if what she felt was hatred, rage, even if what she
wanted was retribution.
Perhaps my mother really missed her stepmother. Yearned for her, as she had yearned for a mother's love. Or if she didn't
miss her, missed the drama that having my grandmother in the house permitted her. But whatever the reason, unhappy as she
had been before her stepmother died, afterwards my mother was unhappier still. And the affliction she'd lived with intensified.
After my grandmother's death, my mother had to grip a cup of coffee with both hands to bring it to her mouth. She had to make
her hands into tight fists and rest them in her lap to still them. She had to steady her right hand with her left to put on
lipstick, and often the effect she achieved was that of a raw wound rather than a cosmetic enhancement. Many pieces of her
forget-me-not dishware fell to the floor as she wiped them.
Once, she was so distraught that she called me to come over and help her. She was clearing out my grandmother's room. I was
married, busy with small children. Still, my mother's anguish was evident, and I couldn't forsake her.
She was packing things away, and she had dropped the glass bell that covered my grandmother's statue of the Blessed Virgin.
It shattered on the floor. All morning, as she was cleaning up the glass, my mother was afraid she would slice herself with
a piece because she couldn't keep her hands from shaking. And though she wasn't bleeding, I saw that there were little slivers
of glass embedded in the palms of both her hands.
My mother believed that if she took up something that required using her hands, something that required concentration, it
might retrain whatever was going wrong.
And so, she began to embroider.
She took little trips outside the house to a shop in the next town and bought what she needed— linen for a ground, silk and
woolen threads, fine needles, a wooden frame, a tapestry bag to hold her equipment. Although all this was expensive, she indulged
herself. She needed to. She believed that her life depended upon it.
At first, as she worked on scrap pieces of fabric to teach her hands their discipline, she pierced her fingers, and there
were bloodstains on the cloth. But slowly, surely, she found she could insert a sharp needle into the material and pull it
out without damage to herself or her work.
Her first successes were two pillows, a wheat-colored ground covered with flowers. Next were placemats and matching napkins
that she would set atop her stepmother's crocheted tablecloths. (After my grandmother died, my mother used the tablecloths
often, and not only on special occasions, but also for Sunday dinner in the dining room my grandmother no longer inhabited.
She washed them by hand, starched them, and stretched them on a frame embedded with nails my father made).
Samplers came next. On one, my mother embroidered orchids, mimosa, almond blossoms, poppies, daisies, thistle, gorse, asphodel,
iris, cyclamen, rockroses. On the other, parsley, thyme, sage, rosemary, dill. And although my mother didn't realize it, many
of the flowers and herbs that she embroidered grew in or near Rodi Garganico, the village where her stepmother came from,
on the Gargano peninsula in Puglia.
I didn't know this until recently, when I traveled to Puglia in search of my stepgrandmother's village, because I thought
that going there would teach me something I needed to know about her, about my past, my family history.
One sun-drenched day, walking along a path on the edge of a hillside near the Adriatic, looking at the white houses of Rodi
Garganico in the distance, I saw a very old woman dressed in black, sitting in the sunlight on a chair in the doorway of a
small house by the sea. On her lap was an enormous white tablecloth (for her granddaughter's trousseau?). On it, she had sketched
a wavering border and bouquets of flowers caught together by furls of ribbon. Many of the flowers she was embroidering were
blooming on the hillside behind here, and they were the same as my mother's.
As my mother sat during those long winter days of sorrow after her stepmother died, her embroidery returned her to the old
ways. And to the flowers on the hillsides of Puglia. All the way back to the village her stepmother had left so many years
before.
My grandfather once told me that, when he was hungry, he used to walk past the priest's house in his village so that the aroma
of the priest's dinner would season the moldy bread he would be having for his supper. My grandmother once told me that the
fart of a bishop was more nourishing than the food she ate while she lived in Italy, and that her food didn't taste any better
than the smell of the bishop's fart.
I knew, from my grandparents' stories, that they had come to America for a better life. But because they were proud people,
they got on with their lives, did what they had to do, and didn't waste much talk describing the past. So although there was
much that I knew, there was more that I didn't know.
I didn't know that the fields my grandfather worked were seven miles from where he lived. That
zappatori
— diggers— walked there with their tools on their backs. That they began work at sunrise and left their homes at three or
four in the morning. I didn't know that they worked from sunrise until sunset. Then they walked back to their homes, where
they'd eat something— bread, softened with water; in a good year, a few broad beans; some pasta; and whatever their wives
or mothers could glean or steal without getting caught. I didn't know they would fall into their beds too tired to unlace
their boots. A few hours later, they were awakened by their wives or mothers to leave for the fields. (If they got sick while
they were working, they had to find their way home alone; their friends were forbidden to stop work to accompany them.)
I didn't know that farmworkers had to use the mattock, an archaic tool with a short handle. (Long-handled tools cost more.)
It was not uncommon for workers' bodies to become deformed from years of using the mattock.
I didn't know that during harvest they were forbidden to go back home. They slept in the fields, without shelter or blankets.
Those would have cost money, diminished profits. And besides, these people were used to living like animals.
I didn't know that while they lived in the fields, they were fed
acquasale,
a soup of hot water, salt, a little bread, and a tiny bit of olive oil. They were supposed to show their overseers that they
were grateful for this food. While they lived in the fields, they were permitted to forage for wild plants and weeds. The
overseers, on horseback, were amused by the spectacle of men and women crawling along the ground searching for wild onion,
a shoot of
ruca,
to stuff into their mouths, amused by the spectacle of men and women fighting over a blade of dandelion.
I didn't know that farmworkers who ate every day were considered wealthy. I didn't know that there were frequent famines in
Puglia. I didn't know that the landowners,
latifondisti,
used droughts to force workers into debt so they'd have to accept lower wages. I didn't know that workers paid 60 percent
interest on loans, so their wages were taken to pay their debts, and they were forced to work only for an insufficient amount
of food.
I knew that children started working at eight. But I didn't know they worked for half-wages. Didn't know how brutally they
were treated. That they were beaten. Forced to run through the "blood line"— a line of overseers who lashed their backs with
belts. Didn't know that if a boy shirked his labor, the overseer would tie a string to his penis and tie the other end to
the stalk of wheat he'd missed, to shame him.
I didn't know that workers lived in what were called rabbit hutches, housing built by landowners. And that most lived underground,
where there was no light, no air. That five to ten people lived in a room sixteen feet by sixteen feet. The average rent was
one fourth of the worker's annual salary in a good year; workers paid a year's rent in advance. I didn't know that farm workers
had no furniture, no changes of clothing, that they slept on the floor and ate on the floor, that each family owned one communal
bowl.
I didn't know that taxes were levied on what the poor bought, that taxes could amount to a family's income for a year. (Landowners
avoided paying taxes by buying wholesale in large quantities.)
I didn't know that parents with young children left them behind when they went to the fields. Older children cared for younger
children. But no food was left for the children, because there was no food. I didn't know that parents had to hope someone
would be merciful to their children and give them something to eat.
I didn't know that Puglia had the highest death rate and the shortest life expectancy of all the provinces in Italy. That
there were virtually no doctors, no medicines, no medical equipment. (In Bari, only 180 people out of 120,000 had ever seen
a doctor.)
I didn't know that a landowner had the right to have sex with— to rape— any peasant woman in his employ when she became engaged.This
right was written into law.
Ius primae noctis.
This right was written into law.
Ius primae noctis.
I didn't know that "good" laborers— submissive, obedient, respectful workers, who bowed when they encountered people of authority—
were rewarded with a bonus at payday: one finger's worth of grease to rub into their shoes. Without the grease, shoes hardened,
cracked, split, and were useless. Without shoes, you couldn't work. To buy new shoes, you had to go into debt. The cost to
landowners of keeping their workers under control: one finger's worth of grease.
I didn't know that the land my people came from was colonized by Rome, France, Spain, by Garibaldi's army, by armies from
the North.
I didn't know that the people of the South, my people, were considered by those people of the North (and are still so considered)
to be primitive, barbarian, animalistic, racially inferior, ignorant, backward, superstitious, degraded, incapable of being
civilized, lazy.
That they were so regarded from the period of Spanish rule and that these beliefs justified the colonization of the South
and the refusal of the North to fully integrate the South into the country after unification. A common saying, still used
today: 'Italy ends at Rome.
. . . All the rest is Africa."
I didn't know that over 17,000 acres of land in Puglia had been held in common by the poor since before Roman times. That,
after unification, this land was confiscated, sold to the rich. I didn't know that the poor tried to reclaim the land that
had been seized from them, and that when they did, they were driven off, or were executed by armed gangs of thugs hired by
landlords. Because they were poor, they could not afford lawyers, so they had no legal way to challenge the confiscation of
land that had been their property for centuries.
I didn't know that my people were no longer allowed to enter this land, except to work it for the profit of the landowners
(land confiscators). Wheat and grapes were planted on this confiscated land. The poor could no longer feed themselves, for
they could no longer farm the land that was once theirs, could no longer forage on the land, could no longer graze their animals
on the land, could not fish in the streams on the land, could not hunt small game on the land.
Instead, they were forced to farm the land that was once theirs for the landowners (land confiscators). The landowners knew
that the poor could no longer raise their own food, and so knew they could be forced to work for very low wages; the workers
had no choice but to accept whatever wages were offered them. (What they lost when they lost their land: their means of subsistence,
their independence, their self-sufficiency.) They stopped being peasants and became day laborers. Entered a life that resembled
indentured servitude, only worse, for there was no freedom to look forward to at the end of a number of years.
I didn't know that the diet of farmworkers consisted, mostly, of bread. Not pasta, not beans, not meat, not vegetables, not
fruit. Just bread. And poor bread, made from flour that had been adulterated with clay, sand, chalk, that was infested with
mites and contaminated with mite shit. Water was often not available; when it was, it had to be purchased; it cost more than
wine. Many workers drank wine, not water, so many died from heatstroke. (This was no problem for the landowners; workers could
be replaced more easily than farm animals.)
I didn't know that many people in Puglia died of thirst. The Romans, during the empire, brought water to Rome: eleven aqueducts
served the city. But well into the twentieth century, no water was brought to the people of Puglia.
I didn't know that farmworkers were overseen by guards armed with whips and rifles. Didn't know that landowners hired gangs
of outlaws, misfits, and thugs to terrorize farmworkers into submission. That these gangs assassinated leaders, threatened
workers' families, stole their possessions, set fire to their homes. I didn't know that landowners collaborated with fascists
to force the farmworkers into submission. Didn't know that the first third of the twentieth century (after my grandfather
left Puglia, but while my mother's stepmother still lived there) was a reign of terror. I didn't know that armed gangs of
thugs were granted immunity from the law for past crimes and future offenses in return for enforcing curfews, ensuring that
farmworkers didn't vote, assassinating political candidates sympathetic to the workers, ransacking the homes of union organizers,
ambushing groups of laborers and killing them.
I also didn't know that, throughout history, the people of the South mounted well-organized insurrections against the injustice
of colonial rule. These movements were written into Italian history as criminal. During the uprisings against the inequities
of Garibaldi's rule, ten thousand people died in the South in violent confrontations and executions; twenty thousand were
imprisoned or exiled.
I didn't know that farmworkers launched a powerful revolutionary movement. Didn't know that women were among the most militant
of strikers. That they were in the front ranks when crowds of strikers stormed public buildings. That they lay down with their
babies in front of cavalry.
I didn't know that the epicenter of the labor movement was near where my people came from. Didn't know that the names of members
of my family— Libera, Libero— were common only among anarchists, socialists, and union organizers. I didn't know that among
the emigrants from Puglia were political exiles trying to escape reprisals. (I wonder whether my staunchly pro-union maternal
grandfather, who joined the labor movement in the United States, belonged to the movement in Puglia.)
I didn't know that Puglia was called the land of chronic massacres. Government troops routinely fired into crowds of unarmed
strikers. (Striking at harvest time was the only power farmworkers had, since landowners wouldn't bargain with them: they
believed the workers had no right to make any demands. In 1907, about the time my grandfather emigrated, there were forty-five
strikes, involving 109,000 workers.) This is what the workers wanted: union recognition; wage increases; contracts; shelters
for sleeping in the fields; transportation to and from fields; payment for time lost for bad weather; better food; rest periods;
broad-bean cultivation in winter to provide employment during this slack time; a holiday on May 1; the right to walk beside
their employers during the Sunday
passeggiata.
(Antonio Gramsci, on the South: "It was disciplined with two series of measures. The first was merciless police repression
directed against every mass movement and involving the periodic slaughter of peasants." The filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini
called this genocide. Booker T. Washington, when he visited the South of Italy, remarked that peasants and farm workers there
lived in conditions worse than slavery.)
I didn't know that the emigration of Southern Italians— some twenty-five million people from Italy emigrated between 1876
and 1976— was a form of rebellion against these harsh conditions and against the refusal of successive governments to build
a more equitable society.
Without a history, there can be no present. Without a past, there can be no future.
I learn all this about my people not from the schools I attended, not from my grandparents, not from my parents, but from
books written by Italian American and other historians. About the most painful truths of their lives, of my family's history,
my grandparents were silent. Of my grandparents' lives in Italy, my parents only said, "It was hard for them."
Hard for them.
I take out my grandfather's wedding pictures, look at his face, his hands, his body, his eyes. Look for signs of what he's
lived through. Look at my grandmothers' eyes for signs of what they've lived through.
And it is there in the eyes, the pain, the sorrow, the despair, the rage. But what is there, too, in the way my grandparents
hold their bodies, is a dignity and a pride beyond imagination.
Without a history, there can be no present. Without a past, there can be no future.
I didn't know any of these things about my people. Nor did my mother, my father. But perhaps we knew them in our bodies. Perhaps
my mother relived the life of her ancestors in the way she treated food. Perhaps my father's rage began there. Perhaps this
is why I hoard food, treat it as if it's sacred, bless it, revere it, let it nourish me, let it excite me, calm me, placate
me, spend as much time with it as I can. Perhaps I do this because my people could not.
As I learn all these things, I have many violent dreams. In them, I am the avatar of my ancestors. I fight, and defeat, all
those who have disrespected my people, all those who have taken their land, who have forced them into submission, who have
overworked them, starved them.
I ride on horseback, through the wheat fields of Puglia. I scale walls, flit across rooftops, drop down the sides of buildings,
crawl into windows. I rout landowners from their beds, impale them on my lance. I find their stores of food. And I take everything
that I find to feed my people.