It was strange. It seemed
easier to conceive a child than it was to decide on and get the desired
godparents one wanted, he thought as he talked strategy with his pregnant
girlfriend, named after Sao Paulo where she was born while he was called
the Braziliero also born in that country when both sets of families had
migrated from the town of stairs to the land of brazil wood to work on
coffee plantations hundreds of miles from each other, whom he would marry
as soon as his future mother-in-law gave her sought after consent - which
she was refusing to do for the past many months.
"What about the shoemaker?
If he accepts, at least the child will be
in shoes for as long as we live here," he said slapping
his forehead.
She laughed, squeezing her shoulders
with both hands, thinking he was
joking but his hurt expression made her go into a
shrug of her shoulders
buttressed with a nod saying: "No, my mother thinks
he was the scoundrel
who gave her that horrible nickname - dresslifter!"
This angered him for he thought
she was agreeing with his choice so he
decided to hurt her a bit by saying,"It's true isn't
it? After all she did
go often to the barn and help that young farmhand
you were teaching to read
for his labor after she found out your father was
beginning another family
in a New Haven!" He lowered his voice concerned
her mother might hear him. He would not mention that he also had heard
that her father had named each child after the ones he left at home.
He delighted in this for her mother
who would be his nemesis for the next forty-three
years with her little
sharp teeth that could rip one apart if she used them
but instead she used
her boneless tongue that could break bones with words
as lethal as a wolf's
mouth on the neck of a goat.
Only after he said he was running
away did she accept the shoemaker -
whom male customers did not trust alone with their
wives. His wife paid
him back ten-fold for his wanton ways.
Both Pauolina and Gaetano carried
the basket of fruit to suggest more
abundance than there was into the shoemaker's shop
and after being told not
to stand on ceremony, they asked them to be godparents.
With tears in his eyes and a tremor
in his voice the shoemaker promised
that the child would never want for shoes as his wife
gave the twenty-five
year old father to be a wet kiss on the lips.
Their second born, a girl also,
was to get the baker the most gentle man
in town to whom they brought flowers - both carrying
the small bouquet and
for his sweet even gentler wife they gave a picture
of Christ holding a lamb that he had stolen from a merchant in Naples who
had tried to shortchange him on his delivery of pasta and white candy nougats.
For the third, a girl too, with
the pickings few they chose the tailor;
a person who was considered by the whole mountain
town of having lost his
Fridays and his wife who had lost all her Thursdays
too. After they said yes, they gave him a pinwheel wrapped inside
many layers of fine tissue which Gaetano said was a symbol for the best
tailors in all of Benevento and
to his wife he presented with great flair a pin cushion
that he swore on his
future mother-in-law's grave once belonged to a Roman
emperor when he had
summered in Naples in ancient time.
The three girls ages of two to
three months still had unmarried
parents. Due to all the nasty talk in the town, Pauolina's
mother consented to a wedding which had a hundred people attending: devouring
seventy-five liters
of wine, fifty liters of pasta, along with the hundreds
of meatballs and
sausages that if stretched out would have strangled
the church twice, fifty
chickens which were stolen by Gaetano and his five
brothers from the hard
working farmers in the valley. The fifty loaves of
bread, one hundred
zappoles and wedding cake were a gift from the baker
and his wife. The
tailor and his wife provided them all with wedding
clothes and their feet,
all ten, were comfortable in the shoes made by the
shoemaker.
The reception ended an hour before
dawn and to Gaetano's astonishment
his wife's mother said she would be staying in the
padrone's house as she
nudged in between them in the large bed. The
owner of the delivery
business so much liked Gaetano for his gentle ways
with the four horses and his hard work; staying on the road for weeks at
a time gave as a gift his big home for them to stay in and honeymoon.
The reason Pauolina's mother said she would not leave was because she feared
retaliation from the farmers below
who might make of them a hunter style meal - after
finding out the persons
who had raided their stock - and went and on about
how their body parts
would be cooked in olive oil and garlic ....
"Didn't you know whore-master that
children become like their
godparents?" she screamed into his good ear.
Unable to stand her talk any more
(and he would always suspect she was
the influence behind why most of his wife's nephews
and nieces would never
call him uncle and he would insist that disrespectful
words that came out
of the mouths of children were planted there by adults)
he leaped from the
bed; ran out of the house and up the five hundred
stairs weaving their way up to the top of the mountain that could almost
see Mount Vesuvius and there he beseeched God as to why a good man had
to be tormented by an evil evil
lady. Gaetano would invent the word "Mamasu" which
when translated tightly meant "her mother" but tell all their children
they were words of great
affection.
There was no answer from God.
Only the shrill voice of that bad
bad woman screaming words that called
him a thief, a womanizer and a people-user broke the
peaceful silence of
foreboding.