Strega Rosa: Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Motown's Pure Fallen Snow; 1970
Antonia Teresa Amore-Broccoli, LCSW
We had been flying all night from Michigan as we approached the southwest of the great American skies. A magnificent glowing light filled the air plane waking me from a lucid dream. It was the week between Christmas and 1971. Detroit skies were gray and cloudy from the airport when we took off early that it was the dead of winter that late December morning. The sun hadn't shined for months. Before this particular morning, I had not seen the sun so bright after such a long winter with lots of storms and snow. Motown was filled with old dirty gray snow piled on the side of the city roads. Ma drove us to the airport and I looked at her with pending grief and loss as she smoked on her filterless pall malls.
Cars zipped by in multi colors across the School Craft highway. Our house on Archdale Street was only a few blocks from the familiar sounds of the freeway. Sitting in the back set of Ma’s blue Pontiac, I grasped the Madonna medallion around my neck as I pulled my wool coat around my knees. I wanted to disappear, so I began to think about home on Archdale. I loved that I had learned how to make dinner when Ma arrived home. I would miss calling her everyday after school to be reminded of the recipes and directions for how to prepare dinner for us all; my three sisters and my Ma. But more so just hearing her voice and knowing she spent a few minutes from her busy job talking to me, giving me just a little attention.
I sank and buried my head in the center of my blue wool coat to remember what Pa said; ‘it will cost too much to call your mother all the way from California.’ I was saddened to think I would not hear the comfort of her voice juxtaposed with the anticipatory wonder of a far off ocean in California which I was eager to see for the first time.
Our home on Archdale, on the north-western side of Detroit was a modest brick home, the house we moved into right before my Pa left us in 1967. We had lived in lots of places but since I was about two years old we lived on the north west side of Detroit and this was our third house on the west side of Detroit. When I was an infant we lived in Livonia and Owosso. My Pa moved us a lot with his impulsive brilliant ideas and job opportunities. When I was eight; in the middle of 2nd grade we moved from Ilene street to Archdale only months before my Pa left my Ma and us four girls. Pa moved to South Carolina to marry a woman with five kids after he had yet another affair with my mother on one of his business trips.
After he left, I would fantasize about how happy his step children must have made him. I imagined a large spacious house overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and his new-found wife taking care of the children and their home while he worked. The mother would brush their hair, hold them in her arms and lap to read stories. Perhaps she took the kids to dance or music classes and always attended the school socials? Pa would return home and play with them, swing them on his knee, eat American meals like hamburger helper, pork chops and applesauce. The latter was one of his American favorites, I later learned as a teenager.
My cousin Paula tried to convince me that it was not my/our fault why he left. But I always felt so guilty for being such a bad kid and making him get so pissed off and hit me. If only my mom did not have to work and she could stay home and make him happier. If only I kept in my room more and stayed out of his way. When Pa left, Eva was 6, I was 8, Mary was 12 and Franny was 16. My brothers had grown and moved out on their own with their wives.
Archdale Street had large trees on both sides creating a magnificent arch in the middle of the road. That early morning. as I shoveled the driveway I was comforted by the sight of the new blanket of white snow adorning the barren trees. The swollen bark of the large trees exposed magnificent hues of red, rust and brown by the light of the rare winter's shimmering sun. The purity of the newly fallen snow from my last morning in Michigan left a profound memory that has stayed with me for many years. I can always close my eyes and think about the peaceful image of the arched trees covered with magnificent hues of white snow contrasted by the bare black branches and the multi-colors of the tree bark. The presence of the sun that morning was somehow a guiding light out of that city which held so many mixed emotions.
As a kid, I loved to walk the streets of Motown coming from or leaving home. The familiar neighborhoods were a place I was able to escape the complex feelings that my home, my family, my heart and my mind always brought up for me. I loved to be outdoors in the seasons, the fresh air and among so many different people. I especially liked to witness springtime blossoms after the black and brown deadness of winter. Blossoms contrasted the glorious colors of green and golden light filtering through the heavy clouds. The days growing darker and longer days intensified the promise of more sunlight light and color. The soil was black rich and fertile in our backyards, alleyways and even on the little patch of dirt separating the neighborhood driveways. When we were younger, before they passed away, my maternal grandparents grew tomatoes, sweet peppers, lettuce and green leafy veggies on every inch of the property line.
Three and one half years after my Pa abandoned my mother and us girls in 1970 he showed up unexpectedly and unannounced on Christmas Eve while we were asleep. We awoke on Christmas morning surprised to find him at the kitchen table drinking coffee when we came down to look for our stuffed Christmas stockings.
My sisters and I were stunned and in shock by his presence. It was as if the entire room was as frozen as the icicles that hung out the window on the front porch awning where the Christmas lights hung. It was thick, cold and a terror filled my entire body. Eva's too cuz she grabbed my hand so tight it turned purple. I put my arm around her shoulders only for a second. Then like a lightning bolt went through both our bodies like a jolt I quickly picked her up and turned around to climb back up the stairs.
"Hey where are you going missy? my Pa called out "got a fire to put out up there?" I stopped dead in my tracks as the weight of Eva slowly moved down the front of my flannel PJ's and she stood on her own leaning against the wall. "Oh, I have to go pee . . . " I quickly responded. .."Well at least leave little chatty Eva down here so you can have some privacy." Eva had tears welled up in her eyes as I gently guided her back down the first two bottom steps we managed to get to. I couldn't bear to send her to him alone; so I silently peed my PJ's and walked her down by the Christmas tree as the warm urine distracted me.
Italian nougats in their little tiny square packages with pictures of beautiful portraits of women pointed out the side of the hand made flannel stockings. Stocking my Ma had glued glitter on the top of the felt stockings: each spelt in croocked letters each one of our names. I always loved collecting the portraits of the women from these Italian imported nugget sweet candies. There were aristocratic looking men too, but I loved the women's faces so gentle with pierced eyes that seemed to look right through to my soul.
An orange and array of mixed nuts and chocolate candy coins lay quietly at the bottom of the stockings we soon in a split second were to forget.
"Come give your father a kiss, Ma explained in an old familiar tone." 'Oh, shit I thought, what does he want now?' He had a gray shirt on with black trousers and he looked like he was way more bald and older than I remembered from last Thanksgiving: at least a year or even two ago. He had not been home for Christmas since that last terrible Christmas morning when he raged like a mad man. It was a common occurrence on Sundays, on the Saturdays he did not go into work and always on Holidays. What seemed like a war zone lasted for hours.
But somehow like that last Christmas he was home, we always seemed to be able to quietly sob as we ripped each other's faces with a warm washcloth, put on our Christmas dresses with black patent leather shoes and climbed into the old station wagon to go to church. Only that morning he left and never came back, that was 1967. I was wishing he had not come home, afraid of the pending doom his presence would bring to us all. Maybe I was dreaming and Eva and I should climb back up the stairs and start all over. We'd come down while Mama was still asleep upstairs as it was her only day off, working even on Christmas Eve.
My voice and entire body froze as Ma brought out the baby blue Samsonite suitcase with a big Red bow on it unwrapped. I was mystified why I'd need a suitcase when the farthest I ever was was to Pittsburgh on a family road trip. Ma happily announced I was going to California with my Pa.
“We're not moving to Arizona after all. Your Papa and I are getting married again and he wants us all to move to California. Pa will take you and Franny on an airplane out to Arizona to pick up a car at Uncle Vincent's house and then you'll all drive to San Diego. Eva, Mary and I will come out to join you all in California by Easter or by the end of the school year at the latest. ”
My chest began to feel super heavy as I remembered that it was only after Thanksgiving when the Credit Union had a retirement party for Ma. Us three younger girls were all supposed to move with Ma to Phoenix where her two brothers lived. We were looking forward to being close to all our cousins who had only recently left Motown the year before during the beginning of the Detroit white flight out of the city.
It was supposed to be the best thing for Franny because they had the best brain doctors in Arizona and she was gonna be herself again soon. I began to worry so much about Franny, that not going to Arizona was not a good thing for her at all. I had such faith in the doctors my Ma had been talking about who were gonna return Franny to her sweet smart college student self. The one who was brilliant and a talented artist. She had been enrolled in college that last year before her mental breakdown.
She was a ceramic potter and an incredible artist especially of floral arrangements which I learned later was Ma’s favorite art of all. I still have one of Ma’s Van Gogh's framed prints which she received in the mid 1990's as a retirement present from the group of women she worked with. It is an old man walking across a field of flowers. It is a less known print but one can recognize his style and colors right away as it hangs in my living room foyer. I hung it next to the Italian print I bought at The San Jose Italian Cultural festival of a young girl herding sheep. The old woman I bought it from said she brought it back from Italy herself: so I bought it with a copy of "The Gleamers." as well. These paintings console me today with my southern Italian ancestors' presence.
What I also dreaded about going to the California sunshine state was the fact that Franny would not have access to what my Ma promised ‘great miracle worker doctors’ at least it's what I had imagined. My Aunt Mary ( my Uncle Tullio's new wife ) was a Jungian Therapist and according to Ma she knew a community of great Psychiatrists in Phoenix who could help Franny mental health. So when I heard the horrific news that we were now moving to California, I ran out of the living room and threw my face into my pillow crying until I vomited all over it. I refused to eat Christmas dinner and I stayed in my room until I fell asleep with swollen eyes and an empty nauseous stomach.
Time seemed to stand still and the next thing I remember is the familiar act of pulling the bottom of that old wool coat over my knees. Pulling my knees to my chest seemed to comfort my long thin body as I curled up next to the window seat on that huge airplane. The plane was filled with cigarette smoke so I tucked my head under the coat close and tight. My twelfth birthday was only two months away. My father, this man I hardly knew, was seated in another aisle on the plane.
He left when I was eight and besides a few yearly visits, this holiday season was my first longest encounter with him in three years. He had left and moved to North Carolina to marry another woman. He came back twice to see my sisters and me. Once he took us to the Thanksgiving Parade downtown by Cobol Hall. It was so cold and we got there so late we couldn't see anything. He put Eva on his shoulders and later we sipped hot chocolate in a bakery on the corner. The woman was voluptuous and sweet offering us a variety of Italian sugar cookies filled with jelly along with hot chocolate with tiny little marshmallows on top.
The last time we saw Pa, he took Eva and me to see Doctor Doolittle in the fancy little Detroit suburban town of Farmington Hills. He took us for ice cream afterwards at a parlor shop that had a little round red table and chairs outside like in a story book. Later we drove around the neighborhood of large mansion homes and he asked me which house Ron Ziegler lived in. I was angry thinking he really had no reason to see us other than to find the home of the man he disapproved of dating his oldest daughter; Franny. I began to despise the suburbs even more and simply told him I couldn't remember where he lived as we hadn't been there since the Seder in the spring. This obviously really pissed him off to think that we actually went to the house and had a Jewish holiday such as a Seder. We were Catholic and in the 1960s it wasn’t acceptable for Catholics and Jews to marry let alone date each other. at least not at our conservative Italian Catholic upbringing. Both my parents were Italian Catholic and my mother later told me that she didn’t feel like she had a choice but to marry my father because he was Italian and Catholic. She did have another gentleman that she was very much in love with, but she knew she could not marry him because it would bring much pain and disapproval from her parents so after the war, she married my father. She told me that she always wondered if it would've happened if she had not married my father.
Pa drove us back home to Archdale in Detroit a good 30 mins away, fast and recklessly. Eva held my hand so hard my fingers ached. When we got home he yelled at Franny and chased her out in the back yard and slapped and punched her so many times her lip bled and was swollen for a week. I cleaned her up and put ice on her lip as we had learned from many of the bloody lips and noses when Pa had beat us up. But these last three years we had been free of him since he had moved to North Carolina and married that other woman with five kids.
The last words I remember him saying that night before he left was, "You're a no-good whore giving yourself to a . . . Jew, what kind of a Catholic girl are you? Your mother is raising a bunch of whores, before you know it you'll have a little bastard Jew running around here." I did not understand my fathers hatred of Jews was rooted in society and I had no idea about the holocaust being I was only nine years old at the time. But I knew that it was not right. I knew hatred of anybody else that was different from us was wrong. Learn this from the racism that was rampant in Detroit.
I knew my sister Frannys’ boyfriend and his family and they were very nice.
Pa drove off and we hadn't seen him until this particular Christmas morning of 1970.
I was very confused why he came back because I had convinced myself that he wanted to be the father to these other woman’s children, that these children were somehow more deserving and they did not make him into the monster he could become which we/I believed was all my (our) fault. It is so baffling how children can believe they have such powerful effects on their parent’s moods and behaviors. Children internalize their caregivers' shame and pain. Unfortunately, kids often believe they are the cause of their parents’ actions towards them and thus somehow deserve the mistreatment or neglect. Benign emotional neglect, as well, can be just as damaging. Developmentally children cannot separate themselves from their caregivers.
I think that's what happened to Franny cuz Pa had been beating on her and my two older brothers for the longest time and the hardest, compared to us three younger siblings. Both my brother's Giuseppe and Vincent 24, and 22, were both happily married and apparently happy adjusted individuals.
So in late December 1970 I found myself on that long trip to Arizona on the airplane and the memory of taking off that morning stayed with me profoundly. My mind was filled with everything I was leaving, everything that I had known. Nature was hidden in the landscape of the Motor city. Dandelions in empty lots of abandoned buildings, piles of brown mud in construction sites, green grass lawns outlined with petunias and impatiens. I was afraid of leaving the nature that urban Detroit had, but even though I could not really articulate it as I was really terrified of being away from my Mama and my sisters. Sleeping in the same house with them brought me security. Especially these last four years that Pa was gone; it was peaceful at night when we said our prayers and went to sleep. Even if us girls had been fighting with each other it was predictable and we could all finally sleep without waking up to Ma and Pa fighting or Pa coming home in a rage.
I still had to sleep over at Aunt Angie and Uncle Sam’s house despite begging my Mama not to make me or give them her permission. My Uncle Sam insisted in secret to my older cousin "Jimmy" to ask my mom if Terry could spend the night. Being at home with Mama and sisters late at night these last three years had been the safest us kids had felt in our whole life. This was a new-found safety late at night in my Mama's house. I wanted to stay at my Mama’s house, but she was sending me far, so far away to be with Pa and Franny. At least I would have Franny so I thought.
Before getting on that plane to the south west so far away for a kid my age my daily routine after school was the one sure thing I counted on. I walked from one side of Finkel to Eight mile down to Grand River or South Field frontage road to the other side of town until my feet hurt.
The streets and people of Detroit were a familiar comfort zone. I either walked or rode a bike: confident and fearless. I passed as a boy, not intentional, but I naturally walked with a strut and my hair was always a pixie cut. I wore jeans, tee shirts, an old baggy coat or Michigan sweatshirt and a watch cap. All hand- me- downs from my many boy cousins. The guys at the corner store always called me son or boy and I liked that they didn't notice I was a girl. Maybe because I liked the attention. I liked that they treated me like a young boy, maybe cuz I felt much different than most girls my age. I hated the way folks doted on Eva and told her how she was gonna grow up to be so beautiful. Her brunette curls and baby face made her the popular little pretty Italian girl. As a tom-boy, I was spared Eva's vulnerability at least on the streets of Motor City.
I stayed out as long as I could get away with: until I thought someone might begin to notice. We were always supposed to be home on the street. Lights came on, but I always pushed the limits. Ma worked late a lot or was at night school taking business and accounting classes. Sometimes just a phone call from me after school at the credit union where she worked as a bookkeeper was enough to satisfy her.
My faded navy blue coat became my staple clothing that late December. I carried away from Detroit the worst sins of all, sins that would stay with me my entire life after Mama sent me away to live with my Pa. I didn't have a language for the feelings of shame, humiliation, self-degradation and deep inconsolable loneliness that bubbled up beneath my blue coat inside me. Instead I buried my face with my chin against my chest; all of the feelings I could not name that morning and there they stayed for decades to follow.
