The Knowhere Girl

[35] And it Haunts the Present in More Ways Than We Think

It me a week to realize that I was no longer angry about what Nonna did thirty-something years ago. It took me even longer to finally work up the nerve to go and see her, I hadn't even gone to see my own mother yet. It's funny that all my life I've been worried about what people think of me and say about me behind my back. Yet all of a sudden, I realized that I didn't care what they thought, and I even began to doubt that anyone, give or take a few gossips gave a damn either. I thought of my mother and my father, who didn't seem to worry about people's opinions. And by the looks of things, Nonna didn't have the right to. Jason never cared who I was, Barbara and Tim had accepted me the way I was. So that covered all the important people, and I'd be a pretentious hypocrite if others were more important to me than those who loved me.

That doesn't mean I wasn't angry at Nonna, because I was. She lived her life as a lie. She missed out on having a wonderful relationship with her daughter because that lie allowed her to be trapped.

She dominated our lives hypocritically and made herself look the victim, when in actual fact it was Mama who was the victim.

I began to cry. I must have looked pathetic walking along, clutching my backpack and crying my head off. But I think I cried more out of relief than self-pity. Relief because I was beginning to feel free.

From whom?

Myself, I think.

So I jumped on the first bus that would take me to Nonna's place.

Maybe thinking of your grandparents as unpassionate people is wrong. I tend to think that passion is only for youth, but maybe older people can teach us a thing or two about it. Okay, so the thought of Nonna Angela having sex makes me sick to the stomach, but one day my grandchildren will feel the same and I'll say to them, "Why? I once felt passion for a boy. I was once young. I was once in love."

So I knocked at her door, and when she answered I hugged her, and like all grandmothers and mothers and people who love you no matter what you do to them, she hugged me back.

"Why?" I asked her when we were seated in the living room.

"Because I was young, Gita," she whispered hoarsely. "Because I was beautiful and for all those years nobody treated me like I was beautiful but him. Marcus Sandford made me feel special," she said fiercely.

"Didn't Nonno Francesco?"

"Your grandfather Francesco treated me like one of his farm animals," she spat.

I closed my eyes, wondering how she would have felt.

"I dreamt too, Gita. I did it because I had dreams just like you dream now. I was not always old."

I hugged her hard and cried my guts out. More than I've ever cried in my whole life because I had never thought her capable of dreaming like me.

"When did it happen?" I sniffed.

She took out a hankie and wiped my eyes. "He came to bring me a letter from my sister," she said, holding me against her. "After I had told him not to come to me again, he still came. So I took the letter from him and asked him to go. He shook his head and touched my face and told me I was so beautiful. He said that he could take me away from the life that I hated so much, but I . . . I pushed him out of the door, Gita. Pushed him."

There was anguish on her face as all the feelings and memories that she had buried in the past were brought to the surface. I almost felt cruel asking her to bare her soul in such a raw way.

"I . . . I pushed him because he was saying someting that I had dreamt of him saying for so long and by pushing him out I was trying to . . . to push my own feelings, Gita. Push them away. But he just grabbed my arms and shook me and I could not fight him anymore. Do you understand?" she asked me.