The Sicilian Inheritance

by Jo Piazza

small village loves nothing more than gossip because what else did we have to keep us amused and connected to one another?

For the first time women broke free of the bonds of marriage and motherhood. They taught themselves to read and to write and do math and run businesses, all because they had to support their families and step in while their husbands were an ocean away.”

“For the first time in their lives they were free.”

Everything they’d learned was useless. They were back in their homes.” “Having more babies.” “Cleaning and cooking.” “And miserable.”

“Which is worse?” Giusy asked. “A life of servitude or death?”

“That she did not have to follow her husband to America and just be a wife again. Here in Sicily she was a healer and a landowner.”

When Rose did something she did it with every ounce of her body and soul.

The setting sun above the water turned the sky a chaotic swirl of pinks and purples and the air had a gauzy haze to it.

You didn’t even need to squint to make it the most beautiful scene in the world. This tower was the highest structure

had been so long since my body was mine and mine alone to do whatever I wanted with. It had belonged to my husband and my children and my patients, but never to me and never to a man I truly desired as a grown woman.

The story I knew about my family’s matriarch was the story of a saint, a martyr, a mother, a wife. A stock character, really. A duty-bound woman who waited patiently for her wandering husband. How many of those kinds of women populate history books and great novels? A sexless being, free of passion. She was a vessel of purity who bore and raised strong children. For generations, we passed down the parts of her that the storytellers found appealing.

But once I began reading, I saw no trace of loneliness in her words.

I’d worked so hard to be successful in a world dominated by men that meaningful connections with women fell by the wayside.

I’d never had many close girlfriends, something I regretted only now, as a grown woman, when I could use more witnesses and confessors to assure me I hadn’t made all the wrong decisions.

“Paola was not the kind of woman to stray. She works hard and raises her children, takes care of her crippled mamma. She bore her load with the patience of a donkey.”

Cettina had told me herself that she had no interest in sex, that all that mattered to her was raising the children, that it brought her every joy she would ever need. I

believed her and for years I understood. I had felt very little in the way of desire for a long time, believing it to be something that had simply passed me by.

was delighted to see cartons of Mugello milk in the dairy section. It was a legend among small dairy farmers in the States. I had it once when a friend smuggled it back from a trip to Florence. Mugello is made exclusively from cows who live in the rolling green pastures around Tuscany and their claim is that happy cows make happy milk, which I completely believe because I also think happy cows produce fattier and tastier steaks. Mugello was the richest and creamiest liquid I’d ever put into my mouth and I wished I could open one and drink it straight from the bottle right in the store, but I controlled myself.

Prior to meeting my husband, I mostly loved men who would never love me back.

Maybe taking money always came with its own baggage, no matter who gave it to you.

Saint Agata, my namesake.”

Agata

She died in prison and now she is the patron saint of women who have been raped. Just the fact that we need to have a saint for such a thing in this country.” Agata shook her head.

A woman with no real family is never safe.

secretary of state, who I was hard-pressed to name. I had discovered

often imagined living alone in the stone hovel, the peace and the loneliness.

tried to quiet Rosalia’s voice in the back of my head. You will do more than I ever could. That would not be the case when I joined my husband in the strange city of Scranton. I would be put back into my place in the home. He would keep asking for more babies. My intellect and my talent would wither. I would slowly die.

The doctor insists on them. He says that staying in bed for days on end is the primary reason so many patients remain ill. The blood must be moved through the body.”

He saw me as a woman again, as someone worthy of desire. I hadn’t felt that way since becoming Sophie’s mother and that was something to be grateful for.

“She created her own destiny when everything was stacked against her.”

She’d endured a lifetime of setbacks and still managed to reinvent herself and find a new path in life.

Maybe permanency was not the only metric of success. My marriage didn’t work out, but I got a wonderful daughter out of it. My restaurant was a great success, just not forever because forever is hard. Maybe I couldn’t do it a...

“I’ve fucking got this.”

With the boys I knew that I had already done my best. I had raised them, shaped them, been both their mother and their father. I was proud of the young men they had become, and I knew they could live on their own. I knew they would always remember me.

was wise, brave, and kind, that she could do anything her brothers could do if she put her mind to it, no matter the constraints the world put on a woman.

clutched each of them furiously to me, trying to hold on to some small piece of them and imprint some small piece of me before I let them go.

knew that Gio never remarried, which surprised me at first. But he had become used to living without a wife for so many years, perhaps he no longer needed one.

She was there when I got my degree and walked across the stage clutching it to my chest at the age of fifty-five, joy and pride coursing through my veins.

hid, lied, and disappeared to create this marvel, this brilliant, educated, independent woman singing alone in her car in front of a house that she owned, a woman beholden to no man. I saved myself, but I also gave my daughter the chance to be her own person.