Chapter 44
ON SUNDAY AFTERNOONS WHEN THE weather was nice, the Navy Support Office hosted potlucks at the compound.
The command provided paper products and burgers and hot dogs, which volunteers cooked on a couple of extra-large grills, and everyone else was expected to either bring a side dish or make a donation at the door.
For our first potluck, I had thought I might go all-out and make a potato salad, but Paul caught wind of the idea, intervened, and said that, for everyone’s sake, we’d be better off forking over the cash.
When we arrived, there was a volleyball game in full swing and a handful of guys playing horseshoes in a makeshift pit.
Paul couldn’t play on account of his toe, which a corpsman on the tender had confirmed was broken, but he ran into a radioman he knew, and after he introduced us, they settled into a conversation about Hank Aaron’s home run record that was so boring I wandered off.
Over by the picnic tables, a couple of wives were bustling around, removing Saran Wrap from casserole dishes and putting out extra serving spoons. They clearly had everything under control, but still, I asked if they needed anything.
“I think we’ve got it,” said a woman whose arms were piled high with bags of hamburger buns. Only after she’d set them down did I realize I was talking to Mary Lou Jenkins.
“Oh, hey,” I said.
“How was the seminar?” she asked, and I was glad I hadn’t played hooky.
“It was good.”
“Isn’t Angela the best?” she said.
“Mmmm,” I said, trying to think of something nice to say. “I certainly learned a lot.”
“She is such a marvelous resource.”
On the other side of the compound, I saw Laura talking to a woman who looked vaguely familiar. “Be right back,” I told Mary Lou. “There’s someone I want to say hi to.”
Laura and this woman—who I realized was the American I’d seen on the ferry the first day we’d shown up in La Maddalena—were deep in conversation when I arrived in front of them.
“Oh my God,” said Laura, raising a Miller High Life in my general direction.
“I was just telling Sheila about your fiasco.”
“My what?”
“The business with Angela,” she said, then barreled through introductions so she could get back to the story.
I didn’t know what to make of Laura treating the story like it was hers to do what she wanted with.
On one hand, I was embarrassed for this stranger to learn I’d been called out by Angela.
But on the other hand, there was something conspiratorial about the three of us being in on this secret, and I definitely needed some conspirators.
“Do you think she thinks I’m some sort of communist sympathizer?” I asked when Sheila had been brought up to speed.
“Not a chance,” she said. “But the thing you’ve got to know about Angela is that she’s got zero patience for anyone who doesn’t toe the party line.”
“Do you know her well?”
Sheila shook her head. “No one knows Angela well. She’s not knowable. But I did go to those Italian lessons she offers for a little while.”
“Oh,” I said, interested. “How are they?”
“They’re crap, but it’s not her fault. She’s got all these different students at different levels. Like, you barely know how to say your own name, and the person next to you will be reading Dante in the original Italian.”
I had read a little Dante in twelfth grade. And by a little, I mean enough to know he wasn’t for me. “I find it very hard to believe there’s an American on this entire island who’s reading Dante—in English or Italian.”
“You know what I mean,” she said. “You kind of need something more serious if you want to make any real progress.”
“Like private lessons?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’d recommend. I take them with a gal named Felicia, but she’s not taking any more clients right now. Her mom’s sick.”
“Can’t Paul just teach you?” Laura asked me.
“Not if we want to stay married,” I said, and they nodded in understanding. “Besides, he’s busy.”
“The other reason Angela’s class isn’t great,” said Sheila, “is that she’s Napolese.”
I was happy to have reasons to avoid Angela, but I didn’t understand what her being from Naples had to do with anything.
“She doesn’t speak Sardu,” Sheila explained.
I gave her a blank stare.
“The native language of Sardinia.”
Paul had said something about Sardinia having a dialect that was tough to understand, but I hadn’t realized until that very moment that it was an entirely different language. I felt like a fool and said so.
“Don’t beat yourself up,” said Sheila. “It’s the older folks who use it. People our age heard Sardu at home but learned Italian at school.”
“Is Sardu similar to Italian?” I asked.
“I think it’s closer to Latin, if anything.”
I thought of the Gullah who lived on the barrier islands of South Carolina and sold their sweetgrass baskets at the market in Charleston.
For years, linguists dismissed the Gullah language as substandard English that had been corrupted over time.
But eventually, some academic realized that half of the words the Gullah people were saying came straight from the shores of West Africa and had been preserved across more than two hundred years of slavery and everything that had come after.
“So, you think it’s better to have a teacher who speaks Sardu?” I asked.
“Or at least is from Sardinia,” said Sheila. “Because it helps to know some Sardu words. Like, for instance, the word for house is casa in Italian, but it’s domu in Sardu.”
“I’m never going to get the hang of this.”
“Honestly, it’s not that big a deal. You’ll get along fine with Italian. And then you can use it on il continente, as the Sardinians say.”
Laura looked a little bored and said she wanted to introduce me to Bobby, if we could find him, so I said my goodbyes.
“Where are you staying?” Sheila asked as we were about to part ways.
“The Excelsior.”
“I’ve got the names of a couple of other women who give lessons. I don’t have their addresses with me, but I’ll look them up when I get home and leave them for you.”
“That’d be great,” I said appreciatively.
“No reason for you to spend any longer with Angela than absolutely necessary.”