Witches in Bridgeland by Salvatore Buttaci

Caterina buried her face in the pillow and screamed. In bed beside her, Mamma stirred, turned towards her, eyes still closed. Asleep.

Quietly, Caterina rose from the bed, squinted at Baby Marco in his crib, and walked cautiously into the kitchen. There in the darkness, arms resting on the windowsill, she sat staring out at 1st Avenue NE, her Bridgeland street. All of Calgary slept.

That nightmare again. Heart pounding, she reviewed the recurring scene. La strega––the witch!––holding her little brother Marco by the nape of the neck the way Gattinella did her little kittens back in Antrodoco, Italy, a few years ago. But the witch in her dream, though physically beautiful with long blond hair, blue-jeweled eyes, skin soft and white, was evil.

Somewhere in the dream room her parents were raising their voices, not at the witch, but at her. “You brought death into this house!” And the witch smiled, nodded her head. “You are to blame, Caterina,“ said the witch, then she escaped with Marco who hardly cried at all. The same nightmare over and over again.

She thought back on that late summer day Papa left Bridgeland for Antrodoco. “I won’t be there long,” he said to Mamma. Then to her, “Caterina, take care of your mother. If you see her worrying about me, make her laugh, all right?” She did not know why he was going away, but what she did know was, children of ten years old wouldn’t dare ask. Just then, as Papa carried his dark valise through the open door, a light breeze blew an oak leaf into the bungalow. “Papa! Mamma! Look!” she said, bending down to lift the green leaf.

Papa walked back from the taxi and touching the leaf, he said, “It must be a sign all will go well on my return to Antrodoco. Save this,” he said and returned the leaf to Caterina.

“Save it in a glass jar,” suggested Mamma.

Caterina could hardly believe that summer afternoon was more than four months ago. And still Papa had not come home. The leaf she had saved had long since lost its greenness. “It escaped the oak tree so it would not have to face the dying of summer, the brittle autumn,” she had told her mother. “Ah, we have a poet in our family now,” Mamma said and embraced her. But she could sense in her mother’s voice a hint that she been crying.

“Mamma, is something wrong? “Is it Papa?” But Mamma shook her head. “Tomorrow is January 6, the Feast of Epiphany, Caterina. His letter said he tried to come home for Christmas but…”

“Signor Roccantica said he is never coming back.”

Mamma grimaced the way she did when her chicken cacciatore needed spicing. “And what does that old fool Roccantica know? He sits in the shade of the Fascio Social Club all day collecting rumors and spreading them like gifts of la Befana. He loves Mussolini so much he should leave Bridgeland, go live in Italia!”

“But he says Mussolini will not let Papa come home. I heard him tell Signor Turania, “Il Duce is closing the doors of Italy so no Italian can leave and no one who is not Italian can come in.’ How can he do that, Mamma? We need Papa here. In Bridgeland, not on our old farm in Italy!”

Caterina waited for her mother’s reply, but it did not come. A sudden horrid thought came to her: Papa is never coming back. Sister Mary Immaculata, her teacher at St. Angela’s School, told the class that Mussolini wanted too much power, that was bad. He would only want more and more. Here it was 1927. He was closing the doors of Italy. With her Papa locked inside.

It was all her fault, Caterina thought to herself. She should never have brought death into their home. The green leaf that each day lost its rich green, the soft touch, the stem that once attached it to a huge oak tree, had too soon become brown, brittle, without stem. Finally, lost from the glass jar that housed it, the leaf disappeared! Or maybe, Caterina thought, it had disintegrated into a brown powdery dust and one cold night blew free of the jar and sprinkled itself over everything in their home.

The green leaf had no right to run away! Just as Papa had no right to run away and leave Mamma, Baby Marco, and me here. It wasn’t fair. The leaf was a bad sign. It had brought on the nightmares of the beautiful evil witch who stole my little brother, turned my parents against me.

Signor Rosellino was a kind man who worked with her father as a ditch digger at the waterworks of Calgary. “Don’t worry, Caterina. Your father will be home soon. You know he loves you, your Mamma, little Marco. He had to go back, try to sell your little farm in the hills of Antrodoco. Be patient, Caterina.”

She tried, but it was hard when the nightmares came. They seemed so real. How could she let that witch take Marco? How could her voice so suddenly be lost that she could not tell her parents she was sorry about the green leaf turned brown and ugly?

Then there were the pleasant memories that battled against those frightening dreams. Once on a streetcar to visit Mamma and her new infant brother at Calgary General Hospital, Papa had squeezed her hand. When summer comes, I will take you again to Shouldice Park. Would you like that?” he asked. “Oh, Papà! Yes! Yes!” They had rode past the Langevin Bridge, past Russo’s Italian Bakery, the old St. Vladimir’s Ukrainian Church, Burn’s Meat Packing plant, but what excited her now was Shouldice Park, how the women brought Italian dishes and they talked about the towns they left behind in Italy and this town of Bridgeland she would always love.

Life was ironic. Bridgeland had two witches, as far as she was concerned. The beautiful young blond-haired evil witch who plagued her dreams. And the ugly old white-haired good witch who flew the heavens on her broomstick every year after Christmas, placing in their stockings candy for children who were good all year and coal for those who were bad. Why was the evil witch without a single blemish on her snow-white complexion? Why was her smile a display of the whitest teeth Caterina had ever seen? Why was her condemning voice so gentle and warm?

And la Befana, the good witch. Who can understand. Why was the nose of so good a witch riddled with pock marks and bumpy with pimples and warts? And long. Hooked. Her face thick with soot. Her fingers gnarled. Back bent. Who can explain, thought Caterina, except to say that things are not always what they seem. Sometimes, as Papa says, “Clouds in the sky don’t have to mean the rain is coming. We can be fooled by what we see.”

Four years had gone by since she and her parents had crossed an ocean to make their home in Canada. They did not leave because they did not love Italia. Anyone who has emigrated from a country knows the pain of separation. Caterina thought it was like the oak leaf that left the tree that day. The emigrants from her town and so many other towns in the world were like that leaf abandoning its tree: they wanted so much to survive somehow in another place.

“Come with us to Canada,” Papa’s cousin Bernardo said one Sunday at dinner. “There you can find work. Earn money. Own a place for your wife and child. Here––”

“Here is our place!” Papa interrupted. “My parents, grandparents, all the way back to maybe when those two brothers founded Rome. We are happy here.”

Bernardo laughed, then lifted the glass of wine to his mouth and drank from it.

“Could there be a better wine than from Italy?” asked Papa.

“This is not a contest, dear cousin. What you need do is consider the possibilities. Be open.”

Papa poured more wine into Bernardo’s glass. “Drink. Drink. Plenty of wine. Plenty of everything we need.”

“You would think you were in the mountains of L’Aquila,” said Bernardo. “The city is called Calgary. Would you believe paesani already make their home there? A little city called Bridgeland. La Terra dei Ponti. It’s across the Atlantic Ocean. Worth the trip, dear cousin. A good opportunity for us.”

Papa kept eating. Finally he changed the subject, but Caterina was intrigued by the story of Bridgeland across the ocean. It sounded like a dream city. Too far away for her to imagine there could actually be a land of bridges like that.

Weeks later, after one more failure of crops on Antonio Vacone’s farm, he turned to his daughter Caterina, then only six, and asked, “Could we turn our backs on Italia?” It must have been her enthusiasm for Canada and its Bridgeland that made him at least open to that possibility of which his cousin Bernardo had spoken. “Would you like to live there, Caterina?”

Now in their little bungalow Caterina and her mother sat eating a quiet dinner. Marco lay in his crib. Now and then they could hear him say “Mamma” and “Papa ” and knew how much he too missed his father.

Mamma looked so weary that Caterina worried about her. She worked all day in the dairy department of Burn’s Meat Packing Company to bring in some money while during the day Signora Dolce next door watched Marco. Papa sent some money but it was never enough.

“You’re exhausted, Mamma. Why don’t you rest?” but Mamma merely waved her hand as if to say, “It’s nothing. Nothing at all.” Then she put her head down and began crying. Caterina raced around the table to comfort her.

“Please, Mamma? What’s wrong? Is it Papa?”

Mamma took the white handkerchief from her apron and mopped her eyes. “No letters. More than two weeks. I’m afraid that old Fascist Roccantica was right: they won’t let your Papa leave the country.”

“No! We live here. This is our home. Why would they force Papa to live in Antrodoco now?”

Caterina could see that these four months had taken their toll on Mamma. She appeared worn out. Summer had ended. Then fall. Now in the heart of winter, on the Eve of the Epiphany, when families ought to be celebrating, Mamma seemed hopeless.

Caterina had no idea what she could say or do that would bring back the twinkle in her mother’s eyes.

“Sometimes clouds in the sky don’t have to mean the rain is coming. We can be fooled by what we see,” Caterina said. Mamma laughed. “You sound like your father! That is what he always says when we face something terrible. Oh, that man.” Mamma was laughing now. I think when God created the world and He was handing out hope, your Papa got on that line over and over again. He will never give up.”

It was good to see Mamma put away tears and laugh again.

“Who cares what Signor Roccantica says! Where there’s a will there’s a way. And we know your Papa has the will to come home. With God’s help, he will find the way.”

That night Caterina got into bed, ready to be assaulted again at the hands of the Evil Witch. Mamma was still in the kitchen, filling a small glass of wine and preparing a plate of food for la Befana when she finally came with candy. “I will be right there, Caterina!” But when she finally did come into the bedroom, her daughter was already asleep.

In the dream, again Baby Marco hung from the hand of the beautiful witch. Caterina tried so hard to scream out, “Leave my brother alone! Go away! Take your evil back to hell!” but all those commands locked in her throat, refusing to fly free. She stood there paralyzed, her feet solidly heavy as the stone columns at St. Angela’s Church. Meanwhile, she waited to see her parents in the dream, take their condemnation again, hear them scream out venomously, “You brought death into this home!”

But when her parents appeared, they were smiling at her, and they were not alone. Behind them was an ugly woman wearing a black shawl to cover round stooped shoulders. The beautiful evil witch now stopped dead in her tracks. She held Baby Marco out in front of her and Mamma took him in her arms and kissed him over and over again. Papa had his arms around Caterina and Mamma holding Marco.

Now it was the ugly good witch, la befana herself, who at last spoke, after a cackle of laughter resounded in the dream room. “Away with you!” And in an instant, the evil young witch, enveloped in a gold rapidly swirling vortex, dwindled down into a tiny disappearing mass of blond hair on the dream floor.

“You saved us!” cried out Caterina who had at last found her voice. La befana smiled a toothless grin, then handed her a stocking. In it Caterina assumed she would find candy. She hoped she would not find coal. What she did find surprised her: in her hand now she held that summer oak leaf that had blown into their bungalow. It was green again. It felt soft and alive to her touch. It had a stem.

This time she did not awaken with a scream muffled in her pillow. She patted the bed beside her, only to find it empty of her mother. “Mamma?” She got out of bed and noticed on the back of the chair next to Marco’s crib a stocking was hanging. She took it, put her hand inside it, withdrew some candy. Marco was still asleep in his crib.

“Caterina! La befana was here!” Mamma called from the kitchen.

“I know,” Caterina called back. “She left candy in my stocking.”

Laughter from the kitchen started Caterina’s heart racing. Laughter again in this house! She walked into the kitchen lit up bright as day. When she saw him standing at the table, his arm around Mamma’s waist, she suddenly began crying.

“No, no, Caterina. Don’t cry,” said Papa. “I’m home now. We are a family again.”

Caterina noticed the glass jar where she had placed the green leaf months before. It was on the kitchen table now. In it her father had placed a photograph of the tree on which she had played as a child in Antrodoco.

“Your mother told me the green leaf withered and died. This photo has many leaves and not one of them will ever die.”

Caterina hugged and kissed her father.

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Salvatore Buttaci is an obsessive-compulsive writer who plies his craft many hours a day. His poems, stories, articles, and letters have appeared widely in publications that include New York Times, U. S. A. Today, The Writer, Writer’s Digest, Cats Magazine, The National Enquirer, Christian Science Monitor, Thinking Ten, Pen 10, and Six Sentences. He was the recipient of the $500 Cyber-wit Poetry Award in 2007.

His collection of 164 short-fiction stories, Flashing My Shorts, is available in book and Kindle editions from All Things That Matter Press here or from here.

Buttaci lives with his wife, Sharon, in West Virginia.

Visit his website.