Come to Me Fi, Show Me the Way

I sit here, watching her. Waiting. Feeling so impatient that at some point, I begin squeezing my left hand, making a tight fist beneath the table.

I am trying hard to read her expression. But that face is a mask. It reveals so little.

What I am proposing, going forward, is rather novel.

No one has ever heard of a rescue like this before. Certainly, not where Filomena comes from.

And since it was my idea, or at least I think it was, it is only right that I give her the chance to weigh in.

“I know it might sound … a bit radical,” I said when we first sat down. “So…what do you think?”

Naturally, she can shoot the idea down. And then, if she does, what choice will I have? I certainly can’t force her to take the story in this direction.

Or can I?

More than anything I just want her to speak to me. Because I care so much what is going to happen. To her. And to all of the other women who, like her, fall in love and end up getting pregnant -- without being married.

But she just continues to sit there. Sipping her espresso in silence.

Which is really rather infuriating, because she is the one who insisted that I meet her. Again. Here at the stylish Café Gambrinus, in the

Piazza Plebescito in Naples.

Such a monumental space, the piazza. It’s the place where I fell in love with myself and my Italian heritage.

I am deeply grateful to Fi for all that. But she has me to thank too.

As I sit searching her proud face now, I realize that all along, I thought I was in control. But really, she has called the shots since day one.

Day one.

It isn’t every day that your great-great-grandmother arrives. In a vision that you cannot distinguish from reality. She asks you to tell her heart-wrenching story. And so of course you do. Or more accurately, she tells it.

Through you.

But now, as we close in on the ending, who’s in charge?

*** Note to reader: This is the an excerpt from my new novel, "Finding Filomena," the story of my great great grandmother, Filomena Scrivano, who had a baby, my great grandfather, out of wedlock -- OMG I am so glad that term is almost dead -- in 1870 in southern Italy. Filomena, like hundreds of thousands of Italian women, was forbidden to raise him. Most of the babies born to "UNWED" mothers died!! Miraculously, however, Pasquale Orzo, my great grandfather, survived. What or who saved him???? That is the mystery my novel will answer!!!!