La Tragedia

By Elissa DeNunzio

La Tragedia is the personal and moving story of the Lombardo family who immigrated to the United States from Italy in the early 20th century. After settling in the bedroom community of New Rochelle, New York, tragedy strikes. Filomena, a homemaker is accused of interfering in the marriage between Maria Grillo, a 17 year o

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elissa DeNunzio
• Release date: Nov 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781087932088

Book preview

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First printing November 2020

Printed in the United States of America

Copyright © 2020 by Elissa Nanna DeNunzio

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photographs, information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passage in a review.

Although the publisher and the author have made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time and while this publication is designed to provide accurate information in regard to the subject matter covered, the publisher and the author assume no responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, omissions, or any other inconsistencies herein and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

Library of Congress Control Number 2020919625

Library of Congress

US Programs, Law, and Literature Division

Cataloging in Publication Program

101 Independence Avenue, S.E.

Washington, DC 20540-4283

La Tragedia

an Italian immigrant’s quest for justice

Author: Elissa Nanna DeNunzio

Edited by Lisa Clifford

Cover design by Fiona Jayde www.FionaJaydeMedia.com

Book formatting and design by The Deliberate Page www.DeliberatePage.com

Published by Elissa Nanna DeNunzio

[e-mail]

For my husband, Arturo

my children Lucienne and Matthew

and especially my grandchildren

"Know from whence you came.

If you know whence you came,

there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go"

James Baldwin

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Acknowledgments

Afterword

About the Author

Chapter 1

The early morning fog had lifted. There was an astringent smell of burning leaves in the air as Filomena Lombardo took her usual route from her home on 21 Bonnefoy Place. Even though she took the same path most days today Filomena felt a sense of unease. She was wary. The chestnut tree branches were beginning to bow down with the weight of their bounty. Toward the basket factory, along 4th street, the scent of wet straw floated on the damp air.

The houses of New Rochelle, New York, were simple in construction. Large Italian, extended families lived within shouting distance of one another, often calling out greetings in their native tongue. "Come stai oggi? How are you today? Cosa avete mangiato?" What have you eaten?

Strains of a violin concerto, Filomena’s son Antonio practicing, could often be heard wafting on the breeze. When he played the correct notes, all was well; but if the notes became shrill and piercing, his nearby captive audience was not pleased.

Daughter, Teresa, played the upright piano that occupied pride of place in the living room. She too was also subject to reproach, if the rag time music she preferred reached the ears of her neighbors. Teresa’s music teacher, Madam Schicatella, rapped her knuckles with a ruler when Teresa broke into boogie-woogie for a laugh. Madam Schicatella was not known for her sense of humor.

Filomena and Giuseppe, mamma and papa, shared a bedroom on the ground floor to avoid climbing three flights of stairs. Their room location ensured a bit of privacy from their boisterous brood. It also placed them near the heart of the home—the kitchen la cucina. Not only was the kitchen at the heart of the home, but Filomena and Giuseppe were the heartbeat of everyday life, doling out both love and discipline in equal measures, connecting the family through the language of food and love. It was here in the kitchen that meals were cooked and served at a large wooden table that Papa Giuseppe had fashioned from long planks of wood. Filomena covered it with an oilcloth to avoid the splash and stain of the red marinara sauce that bubbled on the small gas stove for hours. The savory smells reached all the way up to the third floor.

The Lombardo home was a plain shingle wooden structure with painted wooden steps opening onto porches that wrapped around the front of the house supported by carved pilasters.

On the second floor were the boarders many of whom had left Italy to escape the devastation caused by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and the Messina earthquake. The Lombardo’s accepted them into their home, and the number of occupants seemed to expand and contract like Giuseppe’s concertina.

The third-floor attic, with its slanted ceiling and dormer windows overlooking the noisy street, was the domain of all the Lombardo children—Antonio, Teresa, Isabella, Victoria, Viola and Clara. They slept cheek to jowl, not a care in the world about lack of money, privacy, or modesty. It was more like a noisy dormitory amidst shouts of laughter, pillow fights and games of hide and seek. Most mornings the children hurtled up the sash, extended their bodies precariously over the street, and watched as daily life unfolded below.

The knife sharpener, arrontino rode through the neighborhood weekly on his foot-operated wooden cart to fashion tiny paring, hunting and kitchen knives into sharp and gleaming instruments.

Women! House wives! Mothers! Come out of your kitchens and sharpen your knives, he called. His flint wheel whirred and ground edges into copper hued sparks.

Sometimes there was an organ grinder cranking out carnival-like music. A live monkey perched on his shoulder holding a tin cup for pennies never ceased to amuse the children.

These were some of the sounds and sights that served as backdrop to the Lombardo’s daily existence. Such was the rhythm of their daily life – like the click of a metronome following the pulse of life from sunrise to sunset.

On this particular fall morning, Filomena was walking to Rosa Servello’s home to pay a social call. They had been friends in Italy and Filomena was delighted that she too had chosen to settle in New Rochelle, although the circumstances of Rosa’s relocation were grim.

When the Messina earthquake hit the toe of Italy in 1908, Rosa and her family were among those living there. The town of Messina was in full holiday mode three days after Christmas and the streets were still decorated with lights and trees. It was dark, and only the fishermen and the bakers had begun the working day. Everything was ordinary and quiet. Rosa, eight months pregnant, was asleep in her bed when the earth began to shake at 5:20 a.m. Still in their night clothes, she and her husband Luigi scrambled from their bed, and groped in the dark to reach their three-year old daughter Sara who lay sleeping in the next room. While they frantically tried to reach Sara the walls began to crumble around them. Sara sadly perished as the roof collapsed.

On the Messina streets terrified survivors, most in their robes and pajamas, clambered around seeking shelter. They searched for loved ones, as families tried to reunite amidst the chaos and devastation. They ran across the ruins in a cloud of dust, under the rain and in the mud. They screamed louder with every aftershock in an effort to discover if loved ones were alive or dead.

Hundreds of thousands died that day. Many were forced, like Rosa and Luigi, to emigrate to other parts of the globe. Houses in the provinces of Sicily and Calabria, which had stood for centuries, were leveled in a matter of seconds.

A home is meant to be a place of safety, tsked Filomena, shaking her head and squeezing Rosa’s hand in friendship and understanding. The intervening years had not diminished Rosa’s memory of Sara. Born one month after that terrible tragedy was Maria, now a teenager. Filomena’s visits to Rosa were always bittersweet.

Passing now the blue clapboard sided home of Nicola Meo reminded Filomena of the colors of the azure Tyrrhenian sea back home. Nicola had been a fisherman in Calabria at the time of the tsunami. He had lived just outside Reggio Calabria on the Straits of Messina. A more idyllic place could not be found, the sea right outside his door with the view of Mt. Etna in his backyard.

On the morning of the tsunami Nicola and his brother Carmelo were getting ready to push their small boat into the cold waters for a day of fishing. As they were nearer to the sea they avoided the initial effects of the earthquake as the majority of deaths were caused by people’s homes collapsing. After the initial seismic shock, people began to gather near the water and away from falling debris of homes and buildings.

Within minutes the sea began to recede and the words ‘maremoto’ (tsunami), could be heard uttered by the crowd who had gathered on the beach to seek safety. The first wave carried Nicola’s boat out to sea. The roar of the ocean was deafening like the whistle of a freight train. It rushed towards the shore—crushing, drowning and breaking everything in its path. Boats, furniture, doors, students, soldiers, priests washed out to sea. Frantic, Nicola grasped a tall tree nearby and shimmied up as far as he could climb. His brother Carmelo quickly followed and began to scale the tree in search of higher ground. Carmelo was not as lucky.

Even though Nicola extended his strong and weathered hand to grasp his brother’s arm and pull him to safety, Nicola was no match for the angry sea. He watched helplessly as Carmelo slipped away, pleading for mercy and cursing his fate to the gods.

The following tsunami waves, coming in rapid succession and higher than the first smashed the pier, and broke parts of the sea wall. Nicola watched from his perch, as his friends were washed out to sea. The only sound remaining was the wailing and crying from those who survived, mourning those lost. Perhaps it was in Carmelo’s memory that Nicola painted his house the color of the sea.

Filomena paused to catch her breath. She leaned against her older brother Domenico’s fence and cast a quick glance over her shoulder. Domenico Costa emigrated from Calabria in 1909 after surviving the eruption and devastation that followed the Messina earthquake and tsunami. The ensuing outbreaks of cholera, malaria and shortages of food placed him on a trajectory to leave Italy. The Italian Government relocated groups of the Messina survivors to America, and transported them on the cargo ship, the Florida. During the two week voyage on the Atlantic, the Florida’s passengers endured a second disaster. Lost in dense fog, the Florida collided with the Republic, a luxury passenger liner. Several people aboard the Florida were killed. Pandemonium broke out onboard and the captain was forced to use ‘extreme measures’ to regain control of his desperate passengers. He fired gunshots in the air. After being rescued at sea, the damaged Florida and the Messina earthquake survivors arrived in New York’s harbor. The immigrants confronted a new challenge: to start their lives again. Domenico soon relocated north of NYC to join a cousin in New Rochelle.

She thought how life was so capricious. Never, as a child, would she have guessed that almost her entire family would settle in America. She thought how, in essence, the Lombardo family hadn’t actually chosen New Rochelle, New York, and how it had chosen them.

In 1923, New Rochelle was a sleepy town that had been settled by immigrant Huguenots (French Protestants) who were fleeing Catholic pogroms in France. Many of the settlers were artisans and craftsmen from the city of La Rochelle, France, and thus the choice of the name New Rochelle. Even though he realized his good fortune, surviving the natural disasters back home as well as the treacherous ocean voyage to America, the scars her older brother bore after his hasty departure from home made him feel like a man without a purpose.

Still, Filomena thought, Domenico had found his way. She angled her body towards his house and waved just in case someone saw her resting at the gate. It wouldn’t do to have her brother’s family think she had ignored them. She gave another jaunty wave and heaved herself into forward momentum. She raised her head and adjusted the cotton scarf firmly knotted below her heavy