Gabriella: La Vita Mia

By Anne A Gallo

It is 1975 and a young dark-haired girl unnoticed by the world...and who works serving store customers in the modest family fruit shop... Her family migrated to Australia in mid-1960s from beautiful Italy...Gabriella works hard in the family's fruit shop under the overbearing control of her father. She becomes depressed and introverted and isola

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shawline Publishing Group
• Release date: Dec 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781922444295

Anne A Gallo

Anne Gallo has had a very eventful life and varied professions. Always in the background has been her passion for creative writing. Leading her at one stage to motivate others to write, facilitating creative writing groups and workshops on how to write your life story. Not having the opportunity to an education in her earlier life Anne went on to become a mature age university student, whilst raising three children. Anne now balances her life as a lawyer and mediator and delves into her imaginary world to write fiction.

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GABRIELLA

La Vita Mia

Anne A Gallo

GABRIELLA LA VITA MIA© 2020 by Anne A Gallo. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review. 

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. 

Printed in Australia

First Printing: December 2020

Shawline Publishing Group Pty Ltd

www.shawlinepublishing.com.au

Paperback ISBN- 9781922444288

Ebook ISBN- 9781922444295

I dedicate this book to my mother Angela Guariglia, my sister Elisa, both taken from us too early and to my children Michael, David and John, my greatest achievements.

Acknowledging all the special people in the writing community that I have enjoyed exceptional times with, going way back to the late1980s at the Writing for Woman Program in Preston, our facilitator Kay and the other inspiring woman who,  shared many of their life stories in the group. To the members of the writing groups, that I have facilitated at Diamond Creek Living & Learning Centre and Viewbank Neighbourhood House at the Fire Station. (between 1991 to 1994)

To all the participants and teachers in the many writing courses I have taken over the years, all have been an inspiration to me to keep on writing no matter how long it takes, just write from the heart.

To my friend Kerry for proofreading the first draft of my book.

To my friends and family who have endured having to listen to me about my writing for decades now and to one of my more recent mentors who said Anne, less talking more writing I took her advice.

Chapter One

Introduction

I close the cash register, which now has enough small notes and coins to accommodate the day’s trading. I take a deep breath and survey the shop, fully stacked with fresh fruit and vegetables ready for today’s trading. It is always a relief to get to this point in the morning.

I take in the aroma of the fresh fruit and the herbs located near the register, mingled with that of freshly brewed percolated coffee coming from the back of the shop.  As everything has been done in preparation, all I must do now is stand at the counter and wait for the customers.

I hope it stays quiet for a little while, so I can spend the time daydreaming, entering my imaginary world.  My fantasy world keeps me from going insane.  My parents, Salvatore and Francesca, are at the back of our family fruit shop, having their regular morning coffee and breakfast.  My father has been up since 3am, having gone to the wholesale fresh produce market to purchase what we need for the next few days.  Our routine is pretty much set as my mother usually organises my brother Enzo, 16 and my sisters, Maria, 14 and Connie, 12 for school in the morning, while my father and I unpack the fruit and vegetables from the truck and then stock the shop with the fresh produce for the day’s trading. This is physically exhausting. 

I look out the shop window as another tram passes by. The noise of the trams and the traffic is a constant on busy Sydney Road.

My life is so regulated; my parents are so strict, apart from my friend Linda, who I met on my first day at school I have no other friends. Linda pops into the shop to visit me now, as often as she can, usually once a week, I have minimal contact with kids my age.

‘It’s not fair!’ I will often yell at my parents, usually to my father when I cannot cope with the confines of my life and on the rare occasion, I try to assert myself.  My father will usually look at me with that stern look on his face, and then I know not to push it any further.  He makes threats to hit me. If he is really angry, he starts to unbuckle his belt, to show me he is serious, and it is enough to instill fear and prevent me going any further with my outburst.  Now that I am older it is the look and the words that imply the threat, that is, I am not beyond getting a smack.  This usually stops me from pushing the issue. At these times, my mother will usually have that panicked look on her face, almost begging God to intervene before the situation explodes. Quite often it would be the panic stricken look on my mother’s face that usually defeats me and prevents me from going any further. It is then that I say no more. After one of these outbursts, which happen every few weeks, I will sulk for days. My silence then becomes another issue altogether. My mother hates it when I get that way. My father tries to be indifferent, but I know I get to him. He usually softens his approach towards me until I act normally again.  

Normal for me is only speaking when I must convey something relating to the shop business and speaking to my mother and sisters in a gentler tone.  My brother and I hate each other. Perhaps hate is too strong a word, but I have a strong dislike of him, mostly because of the privileges and special treatment he gets from my father, rather than for what he is.  I see him turning into a spoilt brat, although others might not see it that way. He still has to help in the shop after school, but he gets more time to study. Yet I had to leave school at 15 to work.

The past few years have shown me I am a young girl trapped by my culture and my parents’ antiquated beliefs on how I am to conduct myself.

 Even though I like this quiet time to myself in the shop, perhaps it’s better when I am busy, then I don’t have time to think and become even more depressed.  But how can I not be depressed when I have two people dictating my life and I have a burning desire to live my life the way I want?  Although, if I’m honest, I must admit that I don’t know what I want to do with my life.

 What could I do?  My education was cut short and my skills are limited to sales and dressmaking.  It is 1975 and women have more choices today with what they want to make of their lives. I often dream of being an air hostess and travelling around the world. But it’s not for me. My parents have the same mentality as if they were still in the old country with their old-fashioned ideas and customs.  I was ten when my family migrated to Australia from Italy.  My father came to Australia first, then my mother, brother, sisters, and I followed him on the long journey by ship a year later.

As a ten-year-old, I thought our journey to a new country and to see my father again was exciting, as I had missed him. I was sure my mother and siblings had as well. We had been apart for over a year, while my father earned enough money to pay for our passage to Australia. Now I have moments where I hate my father with a passion. We are isolated from our extended family.  I miss my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

 Things were tough for the first few years.  The language barrier was the hardest.  The bullying and teasing at school were a problem while assimilating to the new culture and country.  But somehow that all eventually worked itself out.  The bullying stopped, and I made friends at school. I learned the language, and I became the family interpreter. As the oldest, my parents rely on me for a lot of things, especially to interpret and read their correspondence.

 My Zio Mario, my father’s brother, sponsored our family over to Australia; and he helped my family settle in when we first came to Australia.  Mario, his wife Zia Anna, and my cousins Pat and Marisa are our only blood relatives here in Australia.  My Zio secured my father his first job on the assembly line at the Ford car manufacturing factory in Broadmeadows.  He found us a house to rent in Fawkner, not far from the railway station. The local shops and the local school were all close by as for several years we didn’t have a car.  

Once we had settled into school, my Zia Anna got my mother a job at the clothing manufacturing factory where she worked. This left me solely responsible to look after my siblings from early morning, till my parents got home at night and getting the dinner started.

 When I went to high school, and my brother Enzo had to look after our sisters, he hated it.  But I felt liberated for the first time at school. Although I was only there for the two years, they were the best years of my life.  My English was fluent and although my grammar wasn’t perfect, I did well with my grades. During the day, while I was at school, I got to live a normal life and be a teenager. But my home life was another story, so for a time I was living in two worlds.

The turning point was when my mother, who was still working as a machinist at the clothing factory, began to suffer from back and neck pain.  This was due to the constant work on a sewing machine, making garments. She worked on a piecework system. Being paid for the garments she put together meant she did not earn as much.  To add to our financial issues, my father's overtime was reduced because of poor car sales that year.  It could not have come at a worst time.  My parents had just bought a block of land in Campbellfield, a nearby suburb where the hope was to build a brand new home for the family.

When a vacancy came up at the factory where my mother worked, my father told me I would need to leave school to take the job.  I pleaded, begged, cried, screamed and sulked to no avail. It all became real when my father showed up at school one day to talk to Mr. Sullivan, the headmaster. To add insult to injury, I had to interpret.  I almost wanted to tell Mr. Sullivan to tell my father it was against the law to take me out of school. Mr. Sullivan pleaded on my behalf and asked my father to rethink the decision as I was doing well.  For that, I will be forever grateful to him. My father smiled at Mr. Sullivan and asked me to interpret. He said to thank him, but it was beyond his control due to the financial problems.  I had to help the family and go to work I knew deep down my father was happy to get me out of school; he hated that I was growing up and soon boys would start to show an interest.  I had heard him tell Zio Mario one day, that it was better this way as my mother could keep an eye on me.  

The first few months working at the factory were horrible.  I hated the early starts and having to catch the train to the factory in Brunswick. The factory was dusty and noisy and crowded with machines, and the rolls and rolls of fabric in every spare corner made it claustrophobic.  It did not help that my first job was standing in front of an ironing board with a steam iron, pressing small pieces of fabric. It was mundane, mind numbing work.  At the time, the emotional pain I felt at the loss of my school life and friendships was unbearable. My mother tried to coax me out of it, but although I knew that she was also a pawn in my father’s grand scheme of things, I took it out on her.

I thought I would never recover from it.  But I’ve learnt, gradually things evolve, and a pattern emerges, settling the emotions. My saving grace at the factory was Elisa and Silvana, who were a few years older than me. They also had to leave school at 15 to work with their mothers.  I hated the thought of having my mother watching my every move at first, but Elisa, Silvana and I used a small area in the corner of the lunchroom where we could gossip and act like the giggling teenagers we were.  

Gradually I learned how to sew and they gave me the job of sewing seams on certain parts of the garments. On the weekends, my mother would teach me how to cut a pattern and sew garments for my sisters.

It was not long before they promoted me at the factory to the role of machinist, where I would sew the whole garment. My mother was happy I was learning skills according to her, every young woman should have.  My father was happy with the extra money for the family budget. Out of the few dollars I earned, he would give me a small portion for me to spend as I wished, but it took months of saving before I could afford to buy myself anything decent, like a pair of shoes.  

But of course, nothing stays the same.  So just when I had settled into my new life working at the clothing factory, things changed again.  It all began when we were given notice to vacate our rental property. My parents hadn’t saved enough money to build a house on the block of land we had bought.  It was while we were at the real estate agency that my father overheard an Italian woman speaking to one of the agents about her fruit shop business. Her husband was very ill, and she could not run the shop on her own, so she was selling the business and renting out a three-bedroom apartment on top of the shop.

My father went to talk to the other Italian family about the fruit shop.  I just assumed it was another one of my father’s crazy ideas. I mean, what did he know about running a fruit shop? I nearly choked on my dinner when my father said one night that my mother and I would have to resign from our jobs in the morning.

I asked, ‘What do you mean?’

He replied that he had signed the contract for the fruit shop and as it would be a family business, my mother and I would have to help in it.

I said, ‘No!  I don’t want to leave my job!’

My father slammed his fist on the table, what he usually did to command attention and to put the fear of God into us.  I was not perturbed this time. I looked at Enzo and asked, ‘Why can’t Enzo leave school to help? I like working at my job now.’

Enzo started to pay attention. He said nothing but looked at our father.

Our father looked at me and said in his high-pitched voice, ‘Gabriella, your brother can't leave school. He has to continue high school so he can go to university.’

‘Well,’ I yelled out, ‘I wanted to continue school so I could go to university too and look what happened.’

Things moved quickly and before I knew it, we had all resigned from our jobs, moved into the apartment and taken over the business.  Although my mother agreed to the move and taking up the business, it was only on our last day at the factory I saw how she was also affected by this. I watched her with tears in her eyes saying goodbye to her friends at the factory.  It was then I saw life from her perspective. I am sure if she were to have a say, she might have preferred not to pursue the business.

We got a crash course from the previous owners over a two-week period on how to manage the shop.  My father had no experience in running a business, let alone a fruit shop. I wondered how we would cope.  But more than twelve months later here I am, once again, feeling trapped.  My father has found the business a very stressful process, having to go to the wholesale produce market in Footscray a few times a week along with the early starts and a major problem keeping the produce fresh and ensuring we have a high turnover.

The profits are not as high as he had hoped and within months; he purchases an industrial overlocker and sewing machine for my mother, who now does piece work for a clothing factory at the back of the shop. They deliver her the cut-up garments, and she overlocks the seams and, in some cases, completes the whole garment.  I can see my mother is overworked as she still maintains the home with the cooking, cleaning, and washing up and helps in the shop on our busy days.

The only good thing is Linda comes to visit me here at the shop.  I have managed to persuade my father to allow me a break so we can have some time to share a milkshake at the local milk bar.  At times I still communicate with Elisa and Silvana by letter. As our families do not associate, we don’t see each other.  I know Elisa has recently married; she is 20 now and Silvana was engaged a few months ago.  I think both chose marriage to escape their life with their parents, but I hope their husbands treat them well.  I will be 18 early next year and I cannot wait to get my licence so I can drive. I am not sure where I would be allowed to drive, given my restrictions, but it feels like some freedom.

‘Gabriella!’ my father shouts from behind me and I jump.

He walks into the shop and it unnerves me. I was doing nothing wrong, yet my father always has a way to make me feel as if I have been up to no good.  Occasionally he tries to engage me in conversation, but I always find that we get into an argument, so I say very little to him that is not related to the shop or family affairs.

‘Good morning Sal and Gabby,’ Mrs Spencer, one of our regulars and a favourite customer of mine, says as she walks in. People call my father Sal as they found Salvatore hard to pronounce and I get Gabby, an abbreviation of Gabriella, a nick name Linda gave me when we first met. My mother hates it, but I don’t mind it.

I am relieved to see Mrs Spencer, as it will give me something to do.  I smile and say good morning to her, and we have a little chat about the weather.

‘Buon giorno, Mrs Spencer, you look lovely today,’ my father says in his broken English, as the scowl reserved for me disappears from his face and he smiles at Mrs Spencer.

When customers appear, he becomes a different man. I stand there and watch the scene. It gets played out many times in this shop.  My father oozes his charm on the ladies. I cannot bear to watch; I swear some of our customers buy more than they need just to please my father.

At about midday the flow of customers slows and after my parents have had their lunch, I can have my lunch and a half hour break. I look forward to the time outside the shop. I usually eat my lunch quickly and go up to the top floor of the building, where there is a small area on the roof. I have a small outdoor table and chair so I can have some time to myself to read or think. Today is no different. My mother dishes up my lunch and smiles at me and I look up.

‘Grazie, Mama.’ Pasta and broccoli are on special today. It must have pasta. It wouldn’t be a meal in our house if it didn’t include pasta and some meat or fish as a second. I am trying to watch my weight and all this pasta is killing me.

My mother asks me the same question whenever she sees me looking sad.  ‘What is up with you today with that face?’ My usual response is, ‘Niente.’ Nothing. How can I explain to her I am so depressed about my life that I cannot smile or pretend everything is all right, just as she does?

My relationship with my mother is better than that with my father, but it is still strained.  I respect my mother for what she puts up with, my father and his often-bullish behaviour.  But at times I get mad at her for accepting her fate and not challenging him or having her say.  Why can’t she support me when I get into an argument with my father when he is being pig headed, and I am trying to assert myself?  I try to see it from her perspective, but I feel so frustrated that I can't think of anything but my own misery.

An outsider would label me an introvert. I talk little and watch and listen to the world around me. My escapism is reading. I love reading and I miss the opportunity of being guided by someone to read more widely. Mrs Spencer, bless her heart, has introduced me to the Women's Weekly Love Stories.  Some of them can be very raunchy, and I am glad my parents can’t read English.  My father would have a fit if he found out the content. As they come in a magazine format, he does not know what is in them.  

After my break I walk back into the shop, and I see my father has set up the sack of potatoes near the scales for me to pack in smaller bags. I hate this job; it messes my skin on my hands and dirties my fingernails. I have tried doing it with gloves, but they only sweat and make it worse. Without any instructions, I automatically go to the area and start the process of packing.

When the two women speaking to my father leave and we are alone in the shop, my father looks at me, but I ignore him and continue weighing the potatoes.

He tells me the same things in our exchange every day, ‘I'm going to rest but be vigilant.’  For what, I do not know. For thieves or for bad men coming to corrupt me?

‘Yes,’ I respond and continue to pack without looking up.

With few interruptions to serve, by 4.30pm I am nearing the bottom of the sack of potatoes.

‘I see you’re doing your favourite job.’ I look up and smile as Linda walks up to me and plants a kiss on my cheek, minding that she does not get too close to me so she does not get dirt on her.

‘Now, if you were a true friend, you would help me finish,’ I say with a laugh.

‘I won't deny you one of your pleasures, Sweetie. Any news?’

‘That's my question to you.  You forget I live my life through yours. So, give me the gossip.’

‘You have news. What sort of pasta did you have today?’

‘Charming! Pasta with broccoli, at least it had one vegetable in it.’

‘I love your mother’s pasta dishes.’

‘Not if you had to eat it day and night, you wouldn't.’

‘Anyway, the hot gossip from Fawkner High is that we think Mr Taylor is sweet on the new teacher, Miss Henderson, and that they are dating.  Melissa saw them in the city holding hands, so it’s a good indication that it’s true.’

‘Well that’s interesting. What did you get up to this weekend?’

‘If you remember, it was Rebecca's birthday party on Saturday night.  I got a bit tipsy. My parents weren't too happy when they picked me up.’

‘Did you get grounded?’

‘No, I promised I wouldn't do it again. So, what did you get up to?’

‘The usual,’ I say as I hurry to finish packing the potatoes and wipe my hands on an old cloth. ‘I’m going to the back to wash my hands and check if we can go and have a milkshake.’

When I come back to the shop Maria follows me in, after the usual bribery, negotiations, and pleadings having taken place between my sister, my father and me.  I can have half an hour off. Maria agrees to look after the shop in exchange, I have to