by Tracy Barone
Cheri had a million other questions too. “Will my cousins have black hair like me?” Cheri asked. Mama said, with a touch of pride, that Zia Genny was not so blond. So Cheri imagined her cousins as brunettes, and, as Mama said they probably wouldn’t speak English, she studied her Italian/English dictionary extra hard. Mama used to speak to Cheri in Italian all the time. Then one day, she stopped. Cheri asked why and Mama said, “Your father no like it. It makes him feel bad that we speak and he cannot understand. We speak, just not in front of him. Sì, cara?”
Cheri’s first thought when she sees her cousins standing behind the security gate at the Milan airport is: Normal. Zia Genny and her three older cousins Maria, Donatella, and Lucia are groomed and polite and have mousy brown hair. They try not to stare at Cheri’s mismatched eyes, but she catches Lucia checking her out. They have presents—a book of Italian fairy tales and a box of chocolate drops—but nobody squeals, “Oh my, look at you,” like she’d seen with other families. Zia Genny resembles a greyhound; she is thin with close-cropped gray hair and a taut, alert air. She kisses Mama on both cheeks and then Mama drops her suitcase and holds Zia Genny’s hands. They both start crying.
In the car, the sisters talk like Zia Genny drives: speeding ahead and then stopping suddenly. They slip back and forth between Italian and English. Between the luggage and the number of people in Zia Genny’s matchbox of a car, Cheri winds up in Donatella’s lap. Nobody talks except for Mama and Zia Genny. Zia Genny asks what happened to Mama’s tongue, she sounds like a foreigner. “Screw yourself,” Mama says.
“Screw yourself twice, in the ass,” Zia Genny says. Cheri is used to Mama cursing but didn’t expect it from another grown-up.
Many hours later, Cheri finds herself waking up on a cot in an attic room. She can see the sun setting through a lozenge pane of window. She follows the sound of voices and a piano downstairs to a great room that serves as living room, dining room, and, on one side, a kitchen. Maria is practicing on one of the two baby grand pianos that face each other; her fingers move like spiders across the keys. The walls are filled with oil paintings: portraits, still lifes, hunting scenes, a few of the Virgin Mary and Jesus on the cross, His crown of thorns dripping with blood. The great room has high, wood-beamed ceilings. The tall glass windows look out on snowcapped mountains that soar up from a vast, deep blue lake. Something pungent and garlicky is bubbling on the stove. Zia Genny holds a large rabbit by its ears and skins it with a knife in long, scraping movements. When Cici sees Cheri at the foot of the stairs she leaps in front of Zia Genny, as if to block her daughter’s view of something indecent. “How was your pisolino, cara?” Cici cries out, too cheerfully. Her cousin looks up from the piano and Cheri is embarrassed. Why does her mother treat her like she is a baby, asking about her nap?
Rabbit, it turns out, is delicious. Cheri eats and eats and then has a stomachache all night. The next day, Zia Genny sends the girls to swim at the lake. Her cousins dip their toes and adjust their bathing suits while whispering things Cheri can’t understand about the skinny, tan boys who punch each other in the stomach and scrabble up the rocks to see who can dive from the highest point. Not to be bested by boys, Cheri climbs up to the apex and jumps without hesitation, making a huge splash and getting water up her nose because she forgot to hold it shut. The cousins seemed unimpressed and she is pretty sure they are now talking about her because when she returns to where they are sitting, they all shut up.
Maria is eleven and the best bet for a comrade. In mangled English, she asks Cheri if she knows Donny Osmond. Maria provides a second ray of hope when she suggests throwing the knife in their picnic basket against the knot in a tree. Coincidentally, this is one of her favorite games to play with Gusmanov, but when she gets overconfident and proposes that Maria stand in front of the tree to make it more challenging, Donatella announces it’s time to go home.
Zia Genny takes Cheri into the library and tells her to wait while she hunts for an Italian grammar book. Cheri peruses the shelves, looking at a few framed photographs of Zia Genny’s family and finding one that is clearly Mama and her sisters. Mama looks like a beautiful little doll, not much older than Cheri is now. Behind the girls is a tall, stern man linking arms with a woman wearing a veiled hat and pearls. “Are those my grandparents?” she asks shyly.
Zia Genny walks over and looks at the picture. “This was at Chiesa Brunella. Marco D’Ameri is our stepfather and, yes, this is your nonna. She passed three years ago next month. May God rest her soul.” Zia Genny crosses herself.
“And Marco D’Ameri?”
Zia Genny waggles her finger. “Do not talk about Marco D’Ameri to your mama. They have not spoken in many years and it is best left that way. Va bene, come, let us work on your diction.”
Zia Genny’s English is better than Mama’s, despite her fifteen years in America, and Genny’s a more patient teacher. Cheri sits at the butcher block in the kitchen with her dictionary and workbooks while Zia Genny cooks and Mama uuffs around them, pointing out that nobody in America speaks other languages or travels, like Europeans, so why bother? Zia Genny ignores Mama and holds forth, especially since Cheri has proved to be not only an eager student but also a mushroom aficionado.
Zia Genny becomes another person when talking about mycology. Wild porcini, she explains, are a national treasure and the finest specimens are hiding right on our hillsides. “They wait, sheathed in darkness, yearning to be wet and moist, to push out from the earth with a firm stem. Oh, the joy—the thrill—to touch their smooth, brown caps. I know all their secret hiding places.” Zia Genny grins, leaning into Cheri. She teaches Cheri the biological names of all the local species of fungi, bemoaning the fact that her children don’t share her love of the hunt, and she is aghast that Cheri doesn’t know Latin. “Your America,” she says to Mama.
One night before bed, Lucia grabs Cheri’s arm and twists it like a towel. “I give you a warning: you eat the wrong mushroom and your tongue, it will swell up. You will vomit blood. The intestines will come out of all the holes in your body. You will be black and stinking. Then you shrivel like a leaf and die.” Apparently, she speaks English.
Soon the days begin to pass in a comfortable routine: scrabbling the rocky hillsides, swimming, fresh sunburn, fresh pasta, and Italian studies. In the evenings, when the other grown-ups are smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and drinking grappa, Zia Genny plays Chopin and the girls take turns playing Für Elise and tarantellas. Even Mama sings along. Here Mama is fun, even a little funny, not embarrassing like she so often is back at home. Maria tugs on Cheri’s hands—come, sing. They are like the Von Trapps; they are a family.
The easy routine that has quickly developed is interrupted on the weekends by the arrival of Zio Ettore, Genny’s husband, who works in Varese during the week. Finally, Cheri thinks, a relative with dark hair like mine. She’s never seen a man with so much hair. Not just on his head but in a forest of a beard, sticking out of his dark silk shirt—even on his knuckles. Zio Ettore makes a big fuss over Mama, kissing her cheeks until Mama giggles and says, “Stop, just stop.” There is a noticeable change with a man in the house; priorities shift. Mama wears red lipstick, mealtimes are fixed, children lower their voices. The great room smells of cigars and gun oil. Ettore often goes hunting with friends on Saturday and spends most of his time deciding which shot to use in which gun. Zia Genny spends her time cleaning up the black marks his boots made on the floor.
That night Cheri dreams about mushrooms with sharp teeth chasing her through the mountains. She wakes up and looks out the window to try to tell the time; she sees mountain shapes beneath a veil of gray light. Ettore is trudging to his car, carrying guns and supplies. It will be hours before the rest of the house is up, but Cheri feels wide awake and she suddenly remembers the leftover chocolate torte in the pantry.
The stone floor is freezing and Cheri wishes she’d put on socks. She stands in the kitchen eating torte, licking its residue off her fingers. Distracted in he
r rapture, it takes her several minutes to notice a man standing in the doorway. He has a cap pulled over his eyes, is dressed in forest-colored hunting gear with a wood-barreled shotgun at his side. Cheri freezes. The man comes toward her. He’s much older than her uncle or her father and he smells of tobacco, dark and mossy. He looks her over like she is a horse and starts speaking rapidly in Italian. Cheri can’t translate quickly enough to know exactly what he is saying but can tell that he was expecting something and she wasn’t it. He curses and shrugs. And then he’s gone.
Before Cheri can go back upstairs, the man returns with a rucksack and several shotguns. He barks questions at her. She struggles to answer as quickly as she can: “Cheri Matzner. Eight years old. I…” He pulls out some clothes and a pair of muddy boots from the rucksack and thrusts them at her, indicating she should put them on. Then he breaks one of the shotguns noisily and holds it to the light to inspect the condition of the bores. She can now see his face and she recognizes the stern man from the photograph. “Marco D’Ameri?” He grunts.
“Frette!” He shakes a box of ammunition and glares at her impatiently. Cheri goes into the bathroom and changes. The clothes are itchy and cut for a boy, but luckily the boots almost fit. She knows her mother wouldn’t approve of any of this. Maybe that’s why her heart is racing with excitement.
Her grandfather is on the move, guns at his side, two spotted dogs trotting next to him. Cheri runs to catch up, hiking her pants up with one hand. They head to the hillside, away from the bridle path that leads to the lake. The path is dim in the early-morning light; she has to keep looking down at her feet to make sure she doesn’t trip and fall. Her grandfather doesn’t glance back to see where she is, which makes Cheri wonder if she’s misunderstood that he wanted her to follow him. It’s hard enough to understand people when they want to be understood. Her grandfather isn’t a talker, but he makes himself clear. Like when he stops and she thinks, Whew, he’s waiting for me, but instead he gives her a gun to carry. It’s smaller than his gun. Later, when she knows about such things, she’ll realize it was an open-choked 20-gauge shotgun clearly outfitted for a child. She can’t believe he is letting her hold it and remembers what Gusmanov taught her about safety. She carries it snugged up against her shoulder like a soldier, hoping that’s right.
As they climb higher into the mountains, the air is damp from the lake and smells like firewood. Cheri is thirsty, and the gun is growing heavy and awkward to carry. Her grandfather has a canteen, but he doesn’t suggest stopping for a rest. Buck up, she tells herself. She doesn’t know where she heard that expression but it seems like something this grandfather might say, if he spoke English.
She’s lagging farther behind now and no longer catches glimpses of her grandfather or the dogs through the trees, which all look the same. The floor has the same brown needles, the same mossy patches, the same reddish dirt. It’s scarily quiet. Cheri breaks into a run, clasping the gun, then stumbles on a rock and falls on her side, whomp. Her hip hurts and her eyes burn like she’s going to cry, but she needs to get up. She sees a low area ahead that leads to a pond and courses through the shrubs and branches.
Suddenly, her grandfather appears from nowhere, grabs her by the arm, and motions to the dogs, who are behind him. You wait for the dog! Stupid girl, you scare them. As if on cue, there’s an ominous flapping of wings and she sees birds flocking out of the bushes, gray noisy streaks in the pale sunlight. He has his forefinger against the trigger of his gun, tracking the birds as they swerve and flare and go higher in the air. The dogs are on point, bodies taut. In one fluid motion, the grandfather swings his barrel ahead of the birds’ path and squeezes the trigger. Bam-bam-bam. It makes her wince. The gun is like an extension of his arm; he doesn’t stop swinging as he fires again. Bam-bam-bam. Cheri feels as alert as the dogs, her pulse thumping in her temples. A bird falls out of the sky. “Uccello!” the grandfather commands. Bird! The dogs run into the clearing, their strong hindquarters pumping. They sniff and disappear in the tall grass by the pond and then come racing back. One dog gently deposits a bird at her grandfather’s feet. Tan with brown and white mottled feathers, nearly perfect except for a broken wing. It doesn’t look like roadkill or like the rabbit Zia Genny was skinning. It looks like the still-life pictures in the great room, with fruit and cheese and a bird with a raspberry patch of blood on its breast. Marco D’Ameri’s eyes are dark shields. He praises the dogs and pours water for them from his canteen into his hand.
For the rest of the hunt, Cheri stays close to him, but not too close. It’s thrilling to watch the dogs tracking the birds; they cross left and then right, darting through the underbrush on the perimeter of a clearing, sniffing out the birds’ hiding spots. When the birds are flushed and airborne, Cheri studies her grandfather’s movements. He doesn’t aim where the bird is but where it’s going to be. How does he figure that out? He stops only once, to drink from his canteen. He sees Cheri eyeing it and thrusts it in her direction. She drinks greedily, but he grabs it back before she can down too much. He caps it and sets off again.
Cheri has lost all track of time. One of the dogs sniffs around a tree, lifts his leg, suddenly reminding Cheri she has to pee. She doesn’t want to stop and get left behind. Now her grandfather is turning around and coming toward her. Is he going to yell at her? He takes her gun and snugs the stock tight against her cheek, then positions her right index finger softly on the trigger and points to a bird in the sky. He guides her to do as he did, starting with the gun muzzle behind the bird, catching up to it, then passing it, then pulling the trigger. She lifts her head up but he pushes it down, gesturing that she should keep her head level. They repeat this movement a couple of times, practicing. Then he takes the gun, loads it, and shoves it back at her.
Loaded, the gun feels even heavier. Heart pounding, Cheri crouches in the brush with her grandfather. The dogs are on point and suddenly she hears the thundering beat of wings. She raises her gun quickly and her grandfather holds his hand up—Wait—pointing to wait for the birds to get into the air. Everything but her breathing has slowed down. The moment lasts only a second or two, but she distinctly feels the hot sun on her neck, a bead of sweat drip down her face. She blinks. Moving her gun like they did in practice, sighting ahead of the flock. She squeezes the trigger. Nothing has prepared her for the force of the kickback; it knocks her on her heels. “Wow,” she says, as she repositions and fires again, “wowza.” When they’ve made their shots, her grandfather gives her a slight nod. “Uccello!” he says to the dogs.
Cheri’s shoulder throbs from the throwback, and she is breathing like she’s run a marathon. One of the dogs has a bird in his mouth, waiting for the command to release. Her grandfather takes the mangled quail from the dog and holds it up so Cheri can see countless buckshot holes dotting its breast. His brow furrows in derision—nobody will be eating this. Cheri wills herself not to show any emotion over the dead creature. She focuses on the fact that she hit a bird on her first shot. She can’t wait to tell Gusmanov! They trudge through the woods for a while longer, her grandfather carrying his long string of birds over his shoulder, Cheri tagging along with her one bird banging against her leg.
Cheri’s face is flushed as she bursts into the kitchen. Where is everybody? Zio Ettore’s car is gone and there’s no sign of the women. Cheri wants to shout: Look what I got, come see what I did! The clock on the wall says it is ten fifteen, so they’ve been gone for hours. Mama is going to be insane with worry. But it doesn’t matter. This has been the best day of her life. Her grandfather throws his string of birds on the butcher block; Cheri copies his action. He sets to cleaning his guns, his fingers dexterously working with a cloth and oil. Cheri is filled with pride. Marco D’Ameri is Zeus to her, the most powerful man she’s ever met, and she is a member of his family. It doesn’t matter that he is her step-grandfather and she doesn’t literally share his blood. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t love her. She loves him and will always love him.
&n
bsp; Mama flings open the kitchen door, holding one of her ruined shoes in her hand. She has clearly been in the woods this morning, frantically searching for Cheri. She assesses the damage inside: dead birds on the kitchen table, shotguns disassembled for cleaning, her daughter’s face scratched, hands cut and covered with black powder and blood, Marco D’Ameri calmly oiling his gun. She rushes toward her stepfather like a harpy. “You kick me away like I am dirt!” she cries. “You say if I go to America I can never come back. And now…you dare to take my child, without permission…with a gun. You could have killed her!” Marco D’Ameri doesn’t look up during Mama’s tirade. She uses words so bad that Cheri doesn’t even have to know what they mean to know she must never repeat them. But it is the look—a narrowing of the eyes, a puffing of the chin like a lizard makes when it’s threatened—that makes her mother so fierce. That look would have earned Cheri’s respect had it not been directed at the object of her newfound adulation. Mama grabs a bird from the table and holds it up like it’s the devil incarnate.
“No, that’s mine. I shot that one, don’t touch it!” Cheri snatches at the bird but her mother lifts it higher. The dogs are in a frenzy of barking. Mama grabs Cheri by the collar with her empty hand.
