The Girl Who Rode the Wind

“Home to Italy.”

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Our house in Ozone Park was so close to JFK airport that I could look out of my bedroom window at night and see the plane lights above me in the sky.

Now I was one of those lights, shining in the inky darkness above the city.

“Lola.” Nonna clasped my hand as she peered out from the window seat. “Look how big it is. It goes on for ever!”

Nonna had never seen New York from above before.

“When I arrived from Italy, I came by boat,” she told me. “I remember I had just enough money to buy a third class berth. The meals were free, thank goodness, because I didn’t have any money left for food.

“When I got off the boat at Ellis Island they asked me all these questions and I was so scared they would put me on the boat straight back to Italy again, but I was strong and healthy and I could speak a little English, so even though I didn’t have a cent to take care of myself they let me through.”

“Were you all alone?” I asked. I knew the answer to this question before I even asked it. Nonna had told me the tale of how she arrived in New York many times. But I loved the story and I made her tell it again and again, always prompting her in the right places.

“I didn’t know a soul,” Nonna confirmed. “And I had no idea where to go. New York was a very big city, even back then. I asked the man at the immigration counter where I could find horses. Well, he said I should go to Aqueduct because it was the finest racetrack on the East Coast and right here in this very city!

“You wouldn’t have recognised it, Lola. Aqueduct was a beautiful place back in those days, so elegant! All the stables were brand new and on race days everyone in the grandstand was dressed in their best clothes like ladies and gentlemen.

“I went down to the stables and I asked around for horses to ride, but they were shocked that a sixteen-year-old girl wanted to be a jockey. None of the trainers would employ me. So I took the only job I could get, at the clubhouse as a waitress. On my first day, in front of everyone, I dropped a whole tray and all the cutlery and the coffee cups went flying and this nice young man bent down and helped me pick it all up. He introduced himself as Alberto and that was how I met your grandfather.”

“Was he working there too?” I asked.

“No,” Nonna said. “He was an apprentice jockey. We got to talking and he told me they needed someone to ride trackwork at his yard. He took me to the stables and gave me some silks to wear. We tucked my hair out of the way so that no one knew I was a girl and I mounted up on this big bay Thoroughbred and rode out on the track like I’d been doing it all my life. The head trainer saw me ride and it didn’t matter that I was a girl any more, he gave me the job …”

“Ma’am?” It was the flight attendant. “Would you like a cup of tea or coffee?”

Nonna looked up at her. “Young lady,” she said. “How long is this flight going to take?”

“New York to Rome is eight hours exactly, ma’am,” the young woman said.

My nonna looked amazed. “It took thirteen days last time!”

“When was that, ma’am?”

“1945,” Nonna replied. “I haven’t been home since.”

The attendant smiled at me. “And is this your granddaughter, ma’am?”

“Yes,” Nonna replied. “Do you know she’s never been to Italy before?”

“I’ve never been anywhere before, Nonna,” I pointed out.

“Are you staying in Rome?”

“Oh no!” Nonna said. “Rome is too busy – a crazy place. We’re going to my town, to Siena. Have you been there?”

“No,” the attendant replied. “But I hear it’s very beautiful.”

“It is. The most beautiful place in the world,” Nonna said softly, and I felt her grip tighten, like a child who suddenly panics and strengthens their hold on their mom’s hand at the edge of a busy intersection.

“It has been a very long time since I went home, Lola,” she murmured.

The attendant brought me an orange juice and a little bag with two tiny sweet biscuits as well. I wanted to eat them, but I decided to put them in my bag to take home. I had kept my boarding pass too. I was gathering souvenirs. I couldn’t believe that I was actually going to Italy. Mostly I couldn’t believe that Dad had agreed to let me go.

Dad is overprotective of me. Nonna says it’s understandable because I was only four when Mom died. But I’ve always had Nonna to look after me.

Dad refused at first, but Nonna wore him down. “Why not?” Nonna said. “Lola’s got no school. What else is she doing for the next month, Ray?”

“That’s not the point,” my dad said.

“Why can’t Nonna take me too?” Donna whined.

“Don’t you get involved!” my dad snapped. “Anyway, you’ve got beauty school exams.”

Donna glared at me. “I don’t see why Lola gets to go. She gets suspended from school – and her punishment is a trip to Italy?”

“Lola is coming to help take care of me,” Nonna said. “I need a companion.”

“Loretta.” My dad rolled his eyes. “You don’t need anyone to take care of you!”

“I’m an 85-year-old woman,” Nonna shot back. “And you want to send me off halfway across the world on my own?”

“Mom,” said my dad, sighing. “What’s the hurry all of a sudden? Why don’t you wait? We can all go together. It’ll be a family holiday, maybe at Christmas …”

“Christmas is too far away when you are my age, Raymond,” Nonna said. “Besides, we can’t all go at once. You know someone has to stay with the horses.”

Dad began to grumble, but Nonna was stubborn, there was no way she was changing her mind. “All I want is this one last journey home,” she told him. “And I want my Piccolina to come with me.”

I am a New York kid, so all the people and traffic didn’t make much of an impression on me. Rome was just another busy city like back home. What knocked me out though was how pretty it all was, all the monuments and statues. Everywhere you looked there were sculptures of naked gods and chariots and horses, some as big as buildings, made out of smooth grey stone.

I stared out the window at the gods as we drove to the railway station. Nonna was rattling off instructions to the cab driver, her hands waving wildly. I can speak a little Italian, but Nonna talked so fast I couldn’t make out a word. At the station she hustled us through the crowd, bought our tickets and guided us through the terminal and onto the right train. That first train took us through the dingy suburban outskirts of the city and then we were clear of the buildings and in the countryside. Two hours later we changed to a different train and soon the view became nothing but rows of grape vines and hillsides of olive trees zipping by.

By now we had been travelling for almost a whole day and I had barely slept so I was exhausted. The jetlag made me feel weird, too, like there was an ocean tide inside me, ebbing back and forth, making me almost seasick. By the time we got off the train at Siena and into a taxi I could barely keep my eyes open.

“Are you sleepy, Piccolina?” Nonna gave me a cuddle. “Don’t worry, we are almost there …”

I must have fallen asleep in the taxi because the next thing I knew, Nonna was shaking me softly by the shoulder.

“Piccolina, wake up … We’re here.”

I opened my eyes. We were in the middle of an olive grove, bumping along a narrow gravel driveway. Ahead of us, I could see a row of tall conifers forming a sentry, and as we drove past them our destination came into view.

It was an old stone villa, two storeys high, with shutters on the windows and overgrown yellow roses smothering the arch of the front doorway.

“Is this a hotel?” I asked.