BY FRANCESCA FIERRO
There is a small rural village in Southern Italy called Maione. Time doesn’t play by the rules. When I visit, the past and the present collide like tectonic plates. I bring the volcano as a carry-on item, tucked into the overhead compartment until we land. You see, everyone in Maione is related, which means that as you walk along its narrow, cobbled streets, you feel like you’re following the map of a family tree. You start to realize there are certain features that crop up— smiles that unfold like sentences, from left to right. The same head tilt when they ask you where you are from. I am the only person in Maione who has ever been asked this question. Da dove vieni? “My grandmother lived here,” I want to tell them. “She was born in the house up on the hill that still stands today. My mother’s mother.” But I never do because my face contradicts my words before they’re even formed. I am Chinese. When they point me out to their neighbors, their fingers land on my eyes first. The mark of a foreigner but also evidence of my blindness. I will never see things the way they do. I will never be one of them. That is where my mother chimes in, explaining away the confusion with her reassuring Mediterranean complexion and Italian that rolls off her tongue. She explains the adoption, the trip to China, and there is a rumble in the earth. I can feel the different countries and eras and histories converging noisily as they come together beneath my feet. I sulk over my glaring “Chineseness,” weary of the stares and the whispers. As my mother comes more alive with each passing day, joyfully meeting cousins she never knew she had and poring over old photos albums with them, I feel like I am slowly disappearing. Where do I belong in this strange place, with my Chinese face and American clothes and Italian name?
SPRING 2021
28
ITALIAN AMERICA
