The Creeds that Move Men's Hearts

by Melody Veltri

  “Carolina, you know that I have la fascina, special powers.”

  “Yes.”

  “These skills were taught to me by my own aunt in Calabria many years ago when I was just about your age.”

  I nod my head. Zia Izzy is a witch. I don’t mean that she is a mean person though she certainly can be if provoked. I mean that she is the town witch. If a woman is barren, Zia will make her a concoction of herbs guaranteed to make her conceive. If the customer has an enemy and would like her to become barren, Zia will work the appropriate spell.

  If a man looks at a woman in a disrespectful way, Zia will make him blind in one or both eyes, depending on her mood. She can put the evil eye—the mal occhio—on anyone, but she also knows how to remove it.

  “I have thought long and hard about this, Carolina. It is now my turn to train someone in the spells. Your cousin Regina, well . . . let’s just say that you have to have a quick mind to learn the spells. I always thought that I would pass them on to her, but I see now that she is worthless. Both of my children, worthless.

  She is shaking her head in remorse and pulling out a little cigar at the same time.

  “Izzy, my daughter is not going to grow up to be the next stregona. Do you think for one moment that Pietro would allow this? We don’t dance with the devil here, Isabela.”

  “How dare you say that to me when you came to me with your last three pregnancies. I could have saved Maria Luisa, too. And when your children are sick, when Carolina had the flu, who do you call? Sure, Pietro calls the doctor, but to be safe, you also call me.” Zia is seething with anger. “You don’t think I dance with the devil when I am placing garlic pouches on their chests and reciting chants to remove the fever.”

  That is true. Mama never fully believes in witchcraft and never fully disbelieves it. There is always the chance that the spells will make a difference, and Mama never takes chances with our health. She will never risk losing a child again.

  “Zia, I would like to think about your offer.” I’m saying this to get the attention off Mama and to cool Zia’s temper. She turns back to me and smashes out her cigarillo while she talks.

  “Smart girl. The spells must be taught on Christmas Eve at midnight. No other time. You think about it, but I have to know before then.” She gets up to leave, and as she is storming out, she hollers, “I can see that your daughter has more sense than you have, Lena. She will be a good witch.”

  I really think that Mama wants to lunge at her, but Zia is already at the door, her hair flying behind her in long wild tufts.

  Mama throws her hands straight up and gives me a look of disbelief.

  “Calm down, Mama.”

  “WHY-WHY-WHY would you say such a crazy thing to that crazy woman? There will be no witches in this house, do you understand?” she yells.

  “I know, Mama. I was trying to protect you. You want her to give you the mal occhio? You don’t know when to keep quiet. Zia is dangerous when she is angry like that.”

  “God protect us. She could be outside cursing me right now. I just couldn’t hold my tongue. How does she have the nerve to come into my own house and say those things to my own daughter?”

  “Mama, she thinks she is doing me an honor. She meant that to be a favor to you.”

  “Some favor. All of Sharpsburg is terrified of her. Everyone still believes that she willed the fire that burned down the hardware store after Mr. McGinnis treated her so rudely when she went in there. She is consumed with revenge.”

  “I know that, Mama. But you could have the sense to humor her while she is here. Now she’ll be ranting for months.”

  “You don’t mention this to Papa, understand?”

  “I understand. But, Mama . . .” Her brow is furrowed, and I know she is still arguing with Zia in her head.

  “What is it?”

  “Maybe I could humor her and just learn some of the spells. I wouldn’t be a witch. I could just learn some of the small spells—how to stop a fever, how to protect us from the evil eye . . .” I really wanted to slip in a few others. Zia could teach me how to get rid of someone like Mr. Vassari, for instance.

  “Maria Carolina! You want to learn those spells! You don’t fool me for one minute! Let me tell you something, and you listen carefully. There will be no witchcraft and no spells and no apprenticeship with Zia Izzy. Capisc?”

  “Si, capisco!” I roll my eyes at her and climb the stairs to my room.

  Dear Diary, April 19, 1925

  Zia Izzy is crazy and everything, but there is something exciting about the idea of learning spells. I wonder what I could do. Could I make someone fall in love with me?

  Could I start fires just by thinking about them? Could I change the entire course of someone’s life just by willing it? I can’t help but wish that Mama would let me learn the spells on Christmas Eve. I think I might like being known as Carolina, the witch of North Canal Street. I would walk through the town, and everyone would point and stare. People would be afraid of me, but they would be fascinated, too. And they would come to me with their jealousies, their illnesses, their fears, and their desires. What is it like to have the power of Zia Izzy? I would like to know.

  * * *

  Saturdays mornings are still set aside for work, and today we are going to wash down the walls. Mama is convinced that the mal aria, the bad air, the germs of the winter, is all about us, so we mix water and ammonia in big buckets, and the boys and Pa move the furniture out of the way. With rags and sponges, Ma and I attack the walls and scrub them down. Pa and Giova are standing on stepladders and assigned to the upper part of the wall that is too high for us to reach.

  “Giova, you’re dripping water on top of me. You are using too much, and it’s running all over the part I just washed.”

  “Carolina, I’m on a ladder, and I can only do a small section at a time. You can move easier than I can. Do that wall over there.”

  “Ma, I was here first, and I don’t want to move. Make Giova move.”

  “I’m not moving, Carolina. Why are you being stubborn?”

  “Stop it, both of you. Giova, you are missing the cobwebs in the corner, and Carolina, you are moving so slowly. I may as well have Marcello and Lindo wash the walls.”

  “Well, why don’t they? Why should I have to work, and they are allowed to play at the tracks?”

  “They don’t play at the tracks. They aren’t even allowed at the tracks,” argues Mama.

  She forbids the boys to play along the railroad tracks ever since a boy named Sonny was killed by falling in between the freight cars. He had been hopping from car to car, looking for coal. He would throw the coal down for the other kids to run and gather in pails. A lot of people in Sharpsburg search the tracks for coal in the winter. Sonny was only fourteen, and Mama took it very hard.

  Nevertheless, the boys are at the tracks. Sometimes they put pennies on the tracks to melt them. Every now and then, a train will go by with some kind of food, and someone will hop on. Giova once threw watermelons off the train to all of the kids. They broke on the ground, which made them easy to eat. The boys are at the track now because all of the kids—those who don’t work—meet and play at the tracks.

  “Carolina, maybe you could stop trying to get us all in trouble. What’s with you today?” asks Giova.

  “What’s with me is I am tired of cleaning while Marcello and Lindo go to school and while you go to work. I am tired of cleaning while they go outside and play. I didn’t play on Saturdays when I was ten and twelve”

  “Mama,” says Giova, “it sounds like Carolina needs a break.” He smiles at her, and she smiles a knowing smile at him. Something is going on between them.

  “Of course, they don’t always get to do the things that you do, either,” says Giova.

  “What things?” I ask. “Name one.”

  “Going to the movies.”

  “I’ve never been to a movie in my life, Giova.”

  “You haven’t? Then I guess today will be your
first time.”

  I look over at Mama. She is still washing the walls, but she has a grin on her face. I look back at Giova, and he produces two tickets from his back pocket.

  “You and I are going to see The Eagle.”

  “You mean it, Giova? You are really taking me?”

  “Well maybe not if you keep yelling at me!”

  I grab Giova so hard around the legs that it rocks the ladder. He screams, and Mama screams.

  “Madonna Mia!” cries Mama. “Be careful! Be careful!”

  “Thank you, Giova. When are we going?”

  “We have tickets to the matinee at 2:00.” It’s 10:00 in the morning right now, so I have four long hours to wait.

  “When we are done here, you wash up, and I will curl your hair,” says Mama.

  I press my lips together to try to keep from smiling and revealing my excitement. I don’t know why I am self-conscious about being so happy. I guess I feel guilty for talking to Giova so harshly. Maybe I’m embarrassed that this news is having such a powerful effect on me. The movies—I’m going to the movies, and on a streetcar and everything! I could burst.

  Papa laughs. “She is cleaning fast now, eh? Look at her go!”

  I laugh back. In no time, however, my wall is done, and I am upstairs washing up and laying out my special church dress. After Mama lays out the bread, cheese, and olives for lunch, she comes upstairs to help me.

  Giova and I take the streetcar to downtown Pittsburgh. I could almost skip the movie because I almost never ride the streetcar, and I am fascinated by everyone and everything around me. Some of the people on the streetcar look tired and worn. They obviously ride this streetcar every day, and they view this as a means to an end—a way to get home. Some stare out the window blankly, and others rest their eyes. For me, and for Giova, the ride is an adventure. As we pass the steel mills, the onion dome churches, the row houses on the sides of the hill, I am unable to restrain myself.

  “Giova, what is that?”

  “That’s a hospital.”

  “What is that over there?”

  “That area is Polish Hill. That’s St. Stanislaus Church.”

  “Where are we now?”

  “We’re in Millvale, near Etna.”

  “How much longer until we get there?”

  “Carolina,” he answers, exasperated, “it will be a while. We have to make a lot of stops. No more questions.”

  The Lund Theatre is on Liberty Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh. It is a short walk from the streetcar stop to the theater. I’m out of breath when I get there because I have skipped almost the whole way. Outside the theater, there is a small line for tickets, and the marquis above says “Rudolph Valentino in The Eagle.”

  “Giova, who is Rudolph Valentino?”

  “He’s an actor. Very famous. All of the women love him.”

  There is a movie poster of Mr.Valentino inside the theatre. He’s wearing a big black hat and is dressed as a Russian Cossack, at least that’s what Giova calls him.

  “He doesn’t look so great to me, Giova.”

  “Hey, I don’t understand women. I’m just telling you what the papers say.”

  Giova buys me a popcorn and a soda. We have quite a climb to our seats because they are in the cheapest section. When I finally turn around, I cannot believe how high we are. There is a sea of red velvet seats below us, and we are in the second balcony. Crystal chandeliers sparkle from the ceiling. People below hustle about to get into their seats, and the screen is enormous. Again, I think I could be content just to watch the people.

  A few moments later, the theatre darkens. I squeeze Giova’s arm because I can hardly wait.

  “Calm down, kid.”

  “I can’t calm down. This is the most exciting day of my life!”

  Giova laughs at me and shakes his head. In another moment, the screen is unveiled from behind the heavy red velvet curtains. The audience claps as the pianist enters the orchestra pit and prepares to accompany the film.

  As the movie begins, Valentino rebuffs the flirtations of the czarina, and she sets out to ruin him. He becomes a masked vigilante seeking to avenge the death of his father. Eventually, he falls in love with another woman who happens to be the daughter of his worst enemy. I have never seen a film, let alone a swashbuckling love story.

  When it finally ends, I am desperately in love with Rudolph Valentino, as is every other woman in the theatre. As I pass the movie poster, I wonder how I could have been so blind. I realize now how dashingly handsome he really is.

  “Thank you for taking me, Giova. I wish I could go to the movies every day of my life.”

  Giova laughs at me and pats me on the shoulder. “You are welcome.” He pulls out a cigarette and lights it. It’s a chilly walk to the streetcar now, but I don’t mind.

  “Giova, have you ever felt that way about anyone?”

  “Felt what way?”

  “Like you’ve just met someone special—someone who is different from everyone else you have ever met. Like you’ve never seen anyone so beautiful or so perfect in your life.”

  “Wow! You really are far gone! No, I haven’t met anyone like that. I don’t think they have girls like that in Sharpsburg.”

  “Do you really think that? Why don’t you ever take a girl to the movies? You know that either of Mrs. Casati’s daughters would jump at the chance of going to a movie with you. You just don’t notice half the girls who look your way.”

  Giova isn’t smiling anymore. He’s not anxious to talk about his lack of girlfriends—or anything personal for that matter. Giova is the kind of person who protects his heart by revealing only small pieces of it, even to me.

  “Can you imagine,” he says, “if I would bring a girl home for dinner? Mama would inspect her like a detective. Can she cook the right foods? Can she clean? Does she go to mass and confession? Does she have eyes too far apart, hips too close together? No, thank you. I will jump into those waters when the time is right and not a moment before!”

  “You sure take all of the romance out of it, Giova!”

  “I’ll leave the romance for you, okay? You and Valentino.”

  “Very funny, Giova.” I smile at him and know that the conversation is over. You can’t push Giova too much, or he’ll quit talking entirely. Someday, I think, he’ll meet someone like Nicoletta Pantuzzo, and all of his reasons for having restraint will evaporate like so much water in a desert.

  “Don’t worry about me. Right now, my head is clearer than yours!” He tells me.

  I have to admit he’s right. My head is in the clouds. All the way home, I gaze out the window and dream of Valentino. Suddenly the sights of Pittsburgh are of little interest to me.

  Dear Diary, April 26, 1925

  Giova took me to my first movie today. It was The Eagle with Rudolph Valentino. First, my heart began to race. Then I felt like I was actually locking eyes with him—like he was looking only at me in that whole theater. I think this might be what love is. He is the most handsome man I have ever seen—so dashing and so romantic. So Italian!

  2

  Every night before I go to sleep, I read in bed for an hour. I would like to say that I am keeping up with my studies for Sr. Norbert, but I’m not. There’s so much work to do in the day, and Mama doesn’t see the sense in my stopping just to read. She says it’s unproductive. Mama is a smart person, and I admire her, I really do. But she doesn’t actually know how to read, and when Papa tried to teach her, she had no patience. I think it is very frustrating for her. I don’t think she went to school a day in her life, and I don’t think she sees the sense in it now. Her English, however, is quite good, and so is Izzy’s. I suppose it’s because they came here when they were only ten and eleven years old.

  Anyway, I’ve been reading what I love most—Sister’s Lives of the Saints. I love biographies and stories about people. Each time I finish one, I feel as though I’ve met someone new. It’s hard to pick up my history and catechism books because they aren’t writ
ten the same way. Right now, I’m reading the story of Blessed Joan of Orvieto. She was a peasant girl who was left an orphan at the age of five. Somehow, at that early age, she seemed to have a strong faith. A family adopted and raised her, but when they arranged a marriage for her, she ran away and joined the third order of St. Dominic. That leads me to wonder if she had a calling or if she was just trying to escape the marriage. I’ll have to ask Sr. Norbert.

  Papa loves to read also. On Sundays, we sit in the garden when the weather is nice, and he and I read Il Progresso Italiano and The Pittsburgh Press together. The weather isn’t warm enough for that yet, so we sit at the kitchen table. Papa is lost in the headlines, so I read the comics to myself. If there is anything funnier than The Katzenjammer Kids, I don’t know what it is. I also read Thimble Theatre, all about Olive Oyl and her family. Marcello and Lindo like the comics, too, but I try to read them before they mess up all the pages. There is something about the thick sections of the Sunday paper that I love. I can read over these pages for hours because Sunday is the day of rest even for Mama, and all we do is go to mass and eat a big spaghetti dinner.

  Pa is ten years older than Mama, and he’s very gentle and very quiet. Mama and her sisters are loud and vibrant and energetic. I don’t know what Papa and Mama have in common, but maybe that doesn’t matter. They seem to complement each other. In spite of the age difference, it’s really Mama who is the boss here. She decides what we can and cannot do, where we can and cannot go.

  I remember once Papa came home with a car, a Maxwell touring car—a convertible—and he was wearing a little riding hat and goggles. He was so excited to show it to us. We all screamed, of course, and fought to jump in. Mama heard the commotion and came outside. In front of all of the neighbors, she demanded that Papa return the car right then and there. “I won’t have you putting my children in danger!” she said. “Have you lost your mind, Pietro!” Another time, he brought home a one-eyed pony for us. He got it from someone at work. “What if one of the kids is riding him, and he goes blind in the other eye?” Mama asked. The pony went back.