Looking for Alibrandi

Instead of going on vacation for Easter, Josie and Mama do what they do every year and spend the day with family at Robert’s house. The Wednesday after, Josie sits on the veranda and thinks of how all her aunts and cousins want her to get married. Mama interrupts her reverie when she comes outside and says that she has to stay with her cousin overnight—so Josie will have to stay with Nonna. Josie whines in protest; she has to share a bed with Nonna, and Nonna doesn’t shave her legs.

Later, at Nonna’s house, Josie watches Nonna put her hair in curlers. Nonna’s vanity bothers Josie; Nonna is in her 60s, and nobody that old should care what they look like. Then, Nonna asks Josie to look at old photos, since Josie looks just like Mama and Nonna did as young women. Josie knows Nonna will only stop if Josie agrees to listen to Nonna’s stories.

Nonna tells Josie about running around her village “like a gypsy” when she was Josie’s age. Her parents didn’t know what to do with her. She and her cousin would wash clothes by hand and talk about the “stupid old people.” Now, Nonna says, she’s “a stupid old woman.” Josie rolls her eyes and says it’s not true, and Nonna continues her story. She tells Josie about her parents agreeing to marry her to Francesco Alibrandi, who was 15 years older than her. She was thrilled. At that time it was a huge deal to immigrate to America. Nonna figured Francesco would take her to America too, but he never talked about immigrating with her, only to his friends.

One day, Nonna says, Francesco told her that they were going to Australia. She had no idea where Australia was. But back then, wives were expected to follow their husbands wherever they went, so Nonna had no choice. They traveled on a ship, and Nonna cried for half the journey. Then, one day, she heard music on deck and went up to dance. The men stared at her. Josie studies the pictures of Nonna at that age and figures they don’t do her justice; she must’ve been the most beautiful woman. Nonna describes Francesco angrily shoving her back into her cabin and forbidding her to dance.

Nonna says that when they arrived in Sydney, she’d never left Sicily or heard anything but Italian. In Sydney, women worked and Australian men catcalled them. After Sydney, they took a boat to Brisbane and a train to Ingham, which was out in the bush. Nonna laments that for six months, she saw only Francesco and snakes. They lived in a shack with a dirt floor. Josie looks around at Nonna’s fancy Italian furniture in her carpeted, air-conditioned house. She realizes her grandparents have come a long way from “being penniless immigrants from Sicily.”

Nonna continues that the Australians were ignorant. She explains that people her age don’t speak English well because when they arrived, nobody would talk to them. The Italians instead created their own communities. As Josie listens, she finds it ironic that people are still just as ignorant now as they were back then. She also finds it hard to believe that Nonna was only 17 when she married and moved across the world. Josie thinks that kids these days would never be able to cope with that kind of stress. She wonders what happened to 17-year-old Nonna to turn her into an old lady Josie doesn’t like. Josie also wonders if she’ll be just like Nonna when she’s 65.