Of My Father’s Vineyard

“The blood of grapes is the life of man.”

I looked up towards my father’s worn, bearded face. He was a stern man, sun stained and leathered from his toils in the vineyard and, despite his earthy labor, his clothes were seldom blotched with soil or juice.

In his nimble, coarse right hand, pinky-less due to a childhood accident he had never disclosed, he held a half filled glass of the reddest Merlot towards the shaft of Mediterranean light that splintered the dusty, sandy darkness of the cellar, as though it were the cup of Christ being offered to the masses, and my father the priest waiting for God’s blessing. He sighed, smiled, and sipped.

Kneeling without his khaki panted knees touching the floor, he offered the cup to me.

“Momma says I can’t.”

Grimacing, the words already in his mouth, “Your momma ain’t here and she ain’t coming back.”

I didn’t like the sound of those words as much as he didn’t like their taste. Still, they needed to be said, even if they were rough and rude. I took the cup into my small, pale hands, sighed, smiled, and sipped.

And spit it out.

Groaning, he stood and found a rag to wipe up the drink. His strokes were intentional, direct, neither wasting time nor energy. He was efficient. Momma had called him cheap.

Finishing the task, he stood, tossing the rag on one of the several large shelves that held barrels of wine in the various stages of fermentation. Each barrel rested on its side, marked for the type of grape, style of wine, and the date.

Even after three weeks, I still wasn’t used to the salty air of the Sea that engulfed this foreign island. Father’s vineyard was planted some ten years ago in a small patch of heaven about twenty miles outside the bustle of Palermo, whose Cathedral attracted more tourists than ever bought my father’s wine, though not for lack of trying. Thankfully, he had picked up some basic phrases, even though most natives knew more English than he did Italian. A strange American in the stranger Italian culture was a sight to behold, and father had become something of a local legend, the recently divorced, somewhat attractive gentleman from Oklahoma who had decided to stake his claim in a business no Tulsan had any business in attempting. But, he managed, somehow.

Pointing a thick finger towards me, “Don’t do that again,” he reprimanded for the fifth or sixth time. While momma liked to correct me with the back of her veiny hand, father never touched me in anger. His eyes did enough to convey his seriousness. Still, I saw the defeat growing with each passing rebuke. In truth, I got a kick out of watching his frustration.

Taking the glass from my hands, he found the right barrel and pulled the tap so that the dark ruby liquid flowed, half filling the cup. “Well, come on then. Let’s see how the girls are doing.” He walked towards and up the rasping wooden steps and I quickly followed, my blue and white checkered blouse swishing above my knees. Like my father before and above me, my feet were shoeless as I gingerly vaulted up the small flight, emerging into the pale clay and dark wooded villa. The radio was playing some organetto song from the kitchen. Being quicker than I, father was already outside the open villa, making his way towards the “girls,” his vineyard.

We passed by the Worker’s House, a small, makeshift hamlet of stone and mud that father and a former hand had build. Another oddity for the time, father had wanted the workers to work and he figured the best way to keep workers was to treat them like people. So, if you worked for my father, you’d have a home close to the work. Dinners were had together and there were no exceptions. Sundays were the worker’s own, but the other six, they belonged to “Il Comico,” a name I never learned if they were referring to God or my father, but since both held life and death in their hands, what did it matter.

Two of the three hands were still among the fruit, despite the setting sun. My father stopped just before the vines began, his feet unconsciously digging at the soil. I caught up to him and brushed back a strand of hair that had freed itself from my pigtails. From there, I could see the whole green and tan vineyard, rows of grapes ordered like soldiers in rank awaiting for their officer’s barked directions. The sun was gently setting behind the smoothed blue-grey mountains on the other side of the deep shadowed valley. Tomorrow was the Sabbath, a required rest for the workers and “Il Comico.”

But my father was surveying a different feature within the landscape, distinct from the paradiso before me. She stood just above the vineyard’s leafy canopy, her bronzed, firm figure clothed in an eggshell dress and waded effortlessly through the green roof. Under raven-like hair with eyes to match, she worked twice as hard as any of the uomini. She looked nothing like momma.

I shouted, “Ciao, Isabella!”

The vineyard’s goddess looked up to me as my father looked down. While her eyes were soft and kind, nothing like momma’s, his were sharp and displeased. Clearing his throat, he saw Isabella waving towards us. I waved back quickly, casting a sideways glance at father who grinned his awkward left-sided smirk and reluctantly waved back, as if a school boy seeing his sweetheart from across the playground.

Still holding the half-filled glass of wine, he absentmindedly brushed his blue long-sleeved linen shirt, despite it being free of any residue or sediment. He took a deep breath, told me to stay put where I was, and then walked towards la bella of the valley.

I watched as father masked his nervousness under the masculine guise of humor. Isabella was already laughing as he met her. The other worker said his good-bye and left them alone, walking up one of the designated paths between the stalked rows which held the vines from the ground.

Father held up the glass for Isabella to see. She nodded, seemingly pleased with the hue and shade. He offered her a taste. Shyly, she nodded, bitting her bottom lip before sampling the wine. She did not spit it out. I disapprovingly crossed my arms.

The other worker reached where I was rooted and turned beside me to watch the embarrassing scene unfold. His clothes were dirty and he was unkempt, his hair a mass of tangles and his hands more soil than skin. I think his name was Roberto, or some other traditional Italian name for men born forty years early than that day. We watched the two of them stiffly waltz in their floundering dance of disgusting flirtation. Momma had scoffed that father never could talk to women and few of them even bothered to listen when he tried. He seemed to be doing fine now.

“Tuo padre è un brav’uomo,” Roberto said, his voiced scratchy, like a record. “Sarà buono per la mia Isabella.” He patted my shoulder with his heavy hand and let it rest there, causing me to look him in the face. “Mi dispiace per tua madre. Spero che abbia trovato pace con Dio.”

I politely nodded, not understanding what he said. He was always kind to me. I think he knew I didn’t know what he had said, so, he just smiled and patted my shoulder again.

A mechanical roaring sound ripped through the silence.

Looking above, we all saw, what father later identified after the war, four Caproni Ca.309’s soar across the purple-orange sky, weaving in and through the scattered, low hanging clouds. They had become more frequent since I had arrived here in March and more men had been leaving Palermo and country villages whether they wanted to or not to join “The Duke’s” army, though I didn’t know any of this at the time.

“Accidenti al Duca,” Roberto mumbled to himself. “Un tale spreco di tali meravigliosi Ghibli.” He left me standing there as he wearily made his way toward his makeshift home to sleep. Tonight, he would find his food on the villa’s counter next to the stove. My eyes were transfixed by the shiny sight of men defying the world’s gravity. They were beautiful and terrible.

“Hey kid.” My father’s voice brought me back down to the vineyard. Isabella was standing just behind his right shoulder. “Inside. Time t’get ready.” He motioned at the villa with a nod.

I didn’t move, my arms still crossed.

Isabella grinned at my defiance.

Father looked at me, surprised. “Did you hear me? Inside.”

“I want to come,” I almost whispered, my lips trembling.

His furrowed brow produced creases like the crinkled maps in his first floor office where he did his planning. “You want to what?”

I shifted my weight. “I want to come with you. What if I don’t like her?”

Embarrassed, father switched the cup to his other hand and tried to reason. “Joan -”

I stamped my bare foot into the grass. “If I’m gonna be gettin’ a new momma, I wanna say in it.”

His right cheek twitched. “You didn’t have a say with your first momma and you ain’t gonna have a say with this’un neither. Now, Joan -”

“I wanna go.” I dug my toes into the dirt, further planting myself to the spot where he told me earlier to stay put.

His jaw clenched. “I’m not gonna say it again, kid. Inside or -”

“ - or what? Why can’t I go with you?”

I could see his embarrassment blooming into anger which reddened his tanned ears tips. His toes gripped the dirt and grass beneath them as though trying to find his footing to handle such an obstinate child.

She touched his arm.

“Va tutto bene, Mark,” she almost sang. “Let her come.”

Looking back at her, I saw his anger wane, like when bees return to the hive for the night. Momma never could do that. She had, between bottles, always told me about my father’s fits of rage and how nothing and nobody could calm him when he 'got goin’.

Stepping around from behind him, Isabella knelt before me, her dressed knee pressing into the dirt, uncaring whether the soil crushed into her clothes. She had a glow about her head from the final beams of Apollo’s course as she took my hand in hers, which were softer than they should have been, considering her work.

“I would have you join us. Come, I think I have a dress for you.”

My father curiously, begrudgingly nodded his approval, and with a quizzical look considered Isabella as she led me to the Worker’s House, where, leaving me at the door, went to her cornered bed among the others and pulled one of the two suitcases from under it. This suitcase was smaller than the other, more childish in color. Roberto was resting on his bed, a straw hat on his face. The other worker was yawning, stretching his arms while lying on a bed, waking from his own pisolino. The House had a sink, some chairs, and a table. Opening the suitcase, Isabella sifted through a handful of items until she produced a faded emerald dress with a white collar and matching belt. Her eyes were heavy as she found a yellow dress from the other suitcase. Returning to me, she took my hand again, mumbling, “Una casa senza donna è come una lanterna senza lume,” leading me to the villa and we went upstairs to my furnished bedroom. The songs from the radio still playing from the cucina.

Standing before the hanging full length mirror, next to Isabella, my girlishness was shadowed by her womanhood. I had never noticed my flat chest or scrawny legs or my alabaster skin. Isabella helped me out of the checkered dress that momma had given me before I came to father. It was the last thing she ever got for me. It was itchy, a second hand dress from a neighbor who was throwing it away. Momma had found it before the garbage man did.

Isabella’s dress fit me just right.

“Destino,” she said. “You would have been about her age.” I looked hard at her, not sure what she meant, but her face was fighting with itself. She wiped her eye and looked back at me. “My Sofia loved to danza… oh, how do you say it? Dance! She would dance in the vineyard and chase after the gulls. I think you would have liked her.”

She walked around and released my pigtails, letting my reddish, coiled mane breath. Finding the dark brush from my nightstand, she called me to the bed, and, after I obeyed her, she brushed my hair with gentle, smooth strokes. Not like momma, who wouldn’t apologize for always pulling my hair and jerking my head around. With each stroke, I felt more and more calmed, not like when momma did it. I always had to brace myself for her affection.

Isabella stood and walked to the mirror where she had placed the other dress. Unmoving from the bed I watched her undress. Her body was full and healthy, not so thin or too fat. My own arms and waist were small and frail, like momma’s, though mine were because I disliked the running in the sun while momma liked a white powder that she said helped her “work through the world.” But, Isabella looked more sturdy and proud. In that moment, I wanted to stand like her and not lounge like momma who didn’t stand all that much before she she didn’t stand at all. Isabella was radiant like the sun, but momma was pasty like bleach.

She pulled the blonde dress over herself, adjusting it so that it fit without wrinkles. I remember thinking how I would never be that beautiful, even with tanned skin or obsidian hair. She ran the brush through her own hair, making it bend to her design. She styled her hair like mine. Catching my gaze in the mirror, she grinned while I kept watching. When she finished, she came back to the bed and sat next to me.

“Joan, can I tell you a secret?”

“Yes.”

“I am nervous.”

“What about?”

“Your father was taking me to a ristorante in his car. He called it a la data, a date? But,” she took my hands in hers and looked in the eyes, “I didn’t want to leave you at the villa alone. Your padre is a good man and he has been very kind to mia famiglia for many years. Lo ammiro, that is, I admire him.”

I liked how her hands felt, warm like sunlight. These hands wouldn’t hurt me like momma’s.

“I am nervous, because I want you to like me, too. So, I have a deal for you.”

“What deal?”

“Let’s all enjoy our first meal together tonight and if you find you like my company, we could do it again, perhaps?”

I thought for a moment.

“Ok. Deal.”

Isabella smiled. “Affare. Come now, it is rude to keep tuo padre waiting downstairs for us.”

We left the room, hand in hand. Father was waiting with a freshly filled bottle of the merlot I had spit out before. Still in his blue shirt, he had found sandals to wear for the evening.

“You both look…uh…bellissima,” he fumbled as he shifted the bottle from one hand to the other. He and Isabella stared at each other for a moment before the radio interrupted.

“Un bollettino urgente: Mussolini ha appena ordinato l'invasione dell'Albania. Le truppe dovrebbero entrare nel paese il 7 aprile -“

“Per favore, Mark,” Isabella requested, “no politica tonight. This is a special moment.” My father agreed, found the radio and turned it off. She winked at me as we all walked to father’s cream Fiat 1500.

The two of them sat in the front while I sat in as back. As he drove from the villa, father handed me the bottle, which had his vineyard’s log and information pasted on it. They were laughing at something I didn’t understand. After a moment, I spoke.

“Isabella?”

She turned in the leather seat to face me. “Sì, Joan?

“The blood of grapes is the life of man.”