Notoriously Beautiful

9

Harvesting Olives

I go home from the beach. I want to take a shower right away. Instead I make pasta with sauce for my mom and I. I want to do something nice for her. She tells me she's hungry, I put the pot with water on the stove top. I am hungry too, after burning all those calories running around on the beach. The water boils. I hear the sauce in a desperate pot, I put the pasta in the water. I drain it when it's cooked nicely.
"That nice plate of pasta looks really good," my mom says without even looking at it. I roll my eyes. Come and taste it with me.
My mom and I went to the market to buy the sauce yesterday night. There was a man there who told us he had made the sauce with his wife and daughter. I can tell it's organic, I take a bite, it's very delicious. In America even when a jar of sauce says organic, it can never, and will never taste homemade. It's only normal, it is not homemade. How can it taste homemade?
I tell my mom I want to learn how to make sauce, I will learn. Some people think I want to be an expert on everything, but I'll settle for just learning the basics of everything so that I can find something that I really like, eventually.
I watch TV, until I feel my eyes close. I let them.

(Sunday afternoon)
Simona calls me to see if we want to walk together to Tomasso's nonno's house.
It's 4:00PM, it's cooler at this time. We didn't want to go earlier than this. Harvesting olives is not an easy task, and with the sun blazing on your head full force at 12:00, or 1:00, the task becomes much harder. So 4:00 is the perfect time, it's still warm out, but it's not hot.
I pass by Simona's shop. There I see Marco strolling up and down the block, he's looking for me, I mean, he is looking for Simona, and I.
"Marco," I say, waving and standing on my tippy toes. I don't know why I do that sometimes. I'm rather short, so I guess subconsciously my brain thought Marco won't be able to see me unless I become taller. It's actually funny, the games that my mind plays.
"Katerina!" He says, his voice sounds excited.
"Simona, ciao," after greeting me he says hello to Simona. I realize Simona's standing right behind me. We walk, all three of us until he points to a plot of land. Tomasso's grandfather owns a whole lot. All that stood in the grass were olive trees, perhaps hundreds.
"Ciao, Simona!" Now Tomasso's voice sounds excited. I feel the nervousness in his voice. He's sweaty, I am too actually. He's nervous about Simona, definitely, I can guarantee that. It's so, so obvious. Simona's nonchalant about it though.
"Hello Katerina," he says waving to me, as he goes over to Simona.
I couldn't help but smirk, it would have been worse if they both fell for the same girl. I shake my head at my own thoughts. I don't know how they feel, I mean I have my suspicions but—
"Katerina, Simona, this is my nonno Giacamo," Tomasso says, he interrupts my thoughts and I look over at his grandpa. (Nonno means grandpa in Italian).
"Nonno, these are my friends, they want to help us gather olives," Tomasso says in Sicilian dialect, it actually takes me a little bit of processing to understand.
His nonno smiles. He definitely didn't speak English. Marco and Tomasso drift away with nonno Giacomo. I can also tell that he knew Marco already.
I don't know what to expect of olive harvesting. It seems like a lot of work, I look out onto all of those trees, this is going to take a while.
I see nonno Giacomo give a whole large roll of white tarp to Tomasso. He tells him to bring it to the closest tree he sees.
I see him give a knife to Marco, I think it's for cutting branches. Oh, no it's actually to cut the tarp.
He gives Simona and I the task of bringing the water bottles from the coolers in the shed, to outside to where we all are. I don't think we need all of them, but maybe we do. Nonno Giacomo seems really nice, his smile is crooked, and his teeth are a terrible yellowish brown, but I can tell his heart is pure.
I watch as the guys open up the tarp, cut out a piece of the roll and set it down around the tree. I'm sure how we're going to harvest them. Is it like picking apples? Nop, nonno Giacomo grabs a big bunch of branches and shakes them. Almost all the olives from that one tree are on the tarp now. A few are still latching onto the tree.
"We do the majority, we don't spend time picking each one though," Tomasso tells me.
Nonno Giacomo points two of his fingers to his eyes and then points them at the tree, olives and the tarp. He's telling us to watch. "Now do," he says, he smiles with his rotton, cavity ridden teeth.
Now that we watched him do one of the trees, that was the example. We are able to do the rest. We set up an assembly line. Tomasso cuts the tarp, Simona and I shake the branches, and Marco takes the tarp and ties up the ends of the tarp so it becomes a bag that holds the fallen olives.
Then after a while we switch positions, I cut the tarp, Tomasso and Marco shake the branches, and Simona ties up the ends of the tarp. Nonno Giacomo draggs the tarp bag, back to his house.
It's actually really hard work, even though it's not burning out. I look up and around, we have done almost all of them. Woah, the trees are bare and naked, and the olives are on the front door step of a run down house.
"Next Sunday, we make oil," Tommaso says grinning widely.
"If it's as much work as this, I'm not sure if I want to come," Simona says, laughing.
"No, next week the machines do all the work," Marco steps in.
I ask him if he had harvested the olives before.
"Did you just ask me if I've done this before," he says.
"Yeah?" I say, a little confused.
"Bella, I've been doing this every summer since I was old enough to perform manual labor!" She said that sentence without taking a breath. By the end of it he was gasping for air. Still, he's laughing and shaking the hair on my head around.
"Oh wow, so you're a pro," I say.
Apparently the answer was yes.
"Not to be, what's the word?"he asks.
"Not to what? Not to brag?" I say.
"Yes, not to brag but yes, I AM pretty good," he says smirking. Him dominating emphasis on the word am was very childish.
"But you did pretty good too Katerina," he says, passing me a bottle of water.
"Mhmm, I rolled my eyes sarcastically." I'm so thirsty, I drink the whole bottle in less than 2 minutes. From the corner of my eye, I see Marco watching me, but it's not weird even though it should be, it's actually comforting.