Issue 4 2010 - Learning and teaching portal - Victoria University

fondness as if things were better there—the air, the trees, the food, the coffee. We forget; we
forget the things we didn’t like, the reasons why we left or maybe now that we are here—
those things don’t seem so bad and we wonder if we should have left.’
‘I’m glad we left. I hated Castellino. I have no fond memories of it. I hated my mother’s
house—the stone walls, the narrow stairway; every time I climbed my mother’s stairs, every
time I opened that door—even after they’d left, even after you and I took it over—I felt
breathless, claustrophobic. There are no good memories for me there.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing Alberto. Nothing.’
Carmela sighs and leans hard against the wall. She closes her eyes and begins to talk,
Alberto is not sure if she’s talking to him.
‘I remember my doll, Yanna. I slept with her every night. I loved her. She was the only
thing in the whole world that belong to me. That was all mine. One night, Paolo took her
from me and threw her into the fire. She turned black, and half her face was burnt away.
My mother yelled at me. At me, not at Paolo. She was angry with me for getting soot all
over myself. As I pulled her out of the fire; she took her from me, pulled her out of my
hands and threw her back in the fire.
“It’s too late now to be crying, you should have looked after her. Anyway you’re too old
for dolls,”she said.
‘She never liked the doll because my father had made her for me. He had spent hours,
several nights in a row carving and shaping her out of a block of wood. He painted her
face—blue eyes, long curling lashes, a tiny nose and large red lips that always smiled. My
grandmother made me a dress for her, and we glued strands of wool to her head for hair.
She was a happy doll. I loved her. My mother knew how much the doll meant to me but
she didn’t care.
‘It was the same with everything I loved. I loved school and I was good at it. I could
read better than anyone in my class. My teacher thought I could have studied and become
a teacher myself. She came especially to visit my mother, to ask her to let me study but my
mother never said anything about that; never talked to my father about it; she just took me
out of school as early as she could get away with. I still remember the teachers. I wanted to
be like them. When I close my eyes, I am back in that classrooms. I can see the blue-green
slate; I can feel the chalk dust on my fingers, specks of it catching on my throat. School was
my favorite time of the day. Sitting in the classroom listening, writing, reading; that was the
happiest time of my childhood; they were the only happy times I can remember.’
Alberto took Carmela’s hands in his, ‘It is better to forget all this. You have a different
life now.’
‘I can’t forget Alberto—if we had children maybe I could...I thought by loving my own
children I could...’
‘Carmela, don’t; there is still hope.’
‘My mother made me lots of dresses when I was young, a new dress for every festa. I
didn’t ask for them. I didn’t care about new dresses. “See how lucky you are, your friends
can’t afford new dresses.” She made those dresses for show, so people would think she was
a good mother. All that fuss over a dress—and over and over I would hear how much the
material cost, how special it was, how lucky I was to have a dress made from material that
came all the way from Vittoria. But I could see—she knew I could see how her face lit up
at the sight of Aldo or Paolo or Luciano—never for me—never glad to see me. The sight
of me was the memory of things to be done. “Bring the washing in, put the pot on, and do
the dusting, the bed.”’
Carmela straightened her shoulders and held them back, ‘I don’t remember her ever
kissing me or holding me. I don’t remember her ever having a kind word. There are no
good memories.’
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