Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: HISTORY (03/10/22)
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TITLE: Them | Previous Challenge Entry
By Anne Warden
03/16/22 -
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Oh, the stories I can tell of Mama’s infectious laughter, the songs she sang, the dog she gave me, the adventures we shared, the many ways I knew I was loved.
But alas, I am just an American which, to me, is not as Rome-antic.
Mama used to say, in Italian of course, “One could get lost in this city.” How I wish we had stayed lost!
Because, after they tore me from Mama’s loving arms when I was just eight, I never saw her again. They demanded I forget her. But you tell me, how can a boy forget the only mother he’s ever known? How can eight years of one’s own history just be erased?
In America, I learned English quickly. It was a language which already seemed familiar. They punished me if I spoke or wrote Italian. Yet I refused to let it go. In my mind, should I forget my language, I would also forget Mama. And that scared me. So, I continued to practice Italian to myself, hidden in my corner room, staring at their tree – which looked exactly like the tree outside our Rome apartment.
Someday I would be going back to Italy to find Mama.
Ten years passed. I worked hard in school, sequestering myself in my room to study. Though I had started in America one year behind, an early graduation with honors was the reward for my excessive diligence.
The day I turned eighteen, I moved to my own apartment. They were not my parents, or so I thought, and I needed out.
Four years on a college scholarship bought me an archaeology degree, with a double major in Latin. It was a shock to them, hearing that read from the podium on graduation day. I could see it on their faces. Ha! I pulled that off without their knowledge or consent. Latin is so easy for me.
Three weeks later, when I boarded the international flight, I had a letter tucked in my rucksack, confirming acceptance to work on a dig in ancient Rome. It was time I find my mother. And “forget” them.
A little digging, on my off time, in the right city offices and I did find Mama. She lay under a headstone in a small churchyard in our old neighborhood. A pauper’s church, it was called. But it would take another month of digging, both in Rome and with calls to America, to realize the hows and whys.
“Mama” had been our housekeeper in America. The day I disappeared at two years old, so did the housekeeper. Since she had come from a small rural village way in the north of Italy, it had taken six years to track us down in the big city of Rome. Especially when the trail of our flight ended in Spain. For there, “Mama” had assumed aliases for us both.
When I was finally located and my parents flew to Rome to get me, they came to the apartment door with three officials. In my digging, I discovered my real mother had asked I not witness the arrest. It was only after I was whisked around the corner in a taxi, that those officials had placed handcuffs on “Mama.”
But she had died in prison only a few months later. One fellow inmate I found said, “She was so sad. Cried all the time. I think she died of a broken heart.”
My heart is broken too. But not solely because of “Mama’s” deeds. Or her death.
My real parents shushed me when I needed to talk, to ask questions. In their fear, and not knowing how to deal with my confusion, they hid from me the truth. When the communication line was closed, I distanced myself. Now my heart is broken over wasting fourteen years of my own happiness – and that of my parents – with my resentment.
It’s time I go back to America. And help right our future family history.
------- Colossians 3:21; Malachi 4:6
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Yes I think you have a book there.
Beautifully written.
Thank you.
I woke up one morning with these words infusing my mind -- before I was even awake: "When I was young, I thought I was born in Rome. But I'm an American. Yet, I speak Italian. Where did I learn it?"
That prompted me to get out of bed and write the story. And no, I don't speak Italian.