He sprawled out and rolled a bundle of lavic stones on his body, arranging them like a black cross over his torso. I saw traces of my father’s pioneering spirit in him, but wilder. His lean, tapered fingers placed stones up his chest all the way to the center of his forehead.
“The cross is for Tindara. In case she’s watching,” he explained, glancing up at the mountain. “She lives up there. She was our neighbor at the time.”
I had heard stories about Tindara since I was a kid. She was the island’s evil-eye remover. I knew she lived alone off the eastern flank of the island in a cliff dwelling inside a canyon, and hardly ever came down to the shores. She grew her own vegetables and performed rituals in a round cement court she built with her own hands. She didn’t need men. She didn’t like them and didn’t like the sun. A nocturnal creature, with frozen blue eyes. The fishermen anchored their boats below her cave at night for good luck. Some said she had the power to filter moonlight and change sea tides, some had seen her reflection beam under the stars. They believed she magnetized fish to nets with only a gesture of her hands.
“One day we had a squabble with her and a rock tumbled down the mountain close to where Alma was swimming. We knew it was time to leave.”
My uncle cackled and made another cross with his hands to ward off Tindara’s evil eye.
“She’s a powerful one,” he explained, and grabbed his testicles three times—a superstitious Italian ritual I had forgotten about.
—
I walked to the dump next to Santino’s farm with a dripping trash bag over my shoulders. The dumpster was so tall I couldn’t manage to swing the bag over the top. Donkeys and ostriches stared blankly at my maneuvers. Angelina, the older donkey, was pregnant. I left the bag on the ground and crept into the farm to take a closer look at her belly. She was swollen. It was impossible to make out where nipples began and breasts ended. I put my hands over her belly to feel if anything was moving inside her. She blinked, swatting flies out of her doey eyes. I fell in love with that look right away. I kissed her forehead and petted her crimped mane and snout.
“You’re getting there.”
The ostrich sisters stood next to each other, perfectly still on their two-toed feet in a corner of the muddy farm. They’d lost most of their feathers in the sun and seemed confused—but that was the thing about the animals of the island. They all looked confused and I felt pity for them—the ones in the sky, on the rocks, and inside the sea—sparse and ugly as they were, with their missing paws, their dirty dens, and the patchy body hair that burned under the sun. I was drawn to their cries. It’s too hot, it’s too hard, it’s too rocky, we’re too hungry, they all seemed to say. Even the mice, squeaking through our kitchen drawers at night, sounded desperate.
I heard a thud from the dumpster. When I turned around I noticed my trash bag was gone. Santino stood next to the big metal container, barefoot on the dirty ground. He didn’t say hello, didn’t even look at my face.
“Too heavy for you,” he muttered. “I threw it out.”
He approached me, locking eyes with mine.
“You’ve grown, Eugenia. You were a kid the last time I saw you. You like my farm?” He chuckled. “All Americans like animals, right?”
“I like animals. I’m not American.” I smiled.
“Yes, sure.”
I glanced over to his house behind him. Rosalia was leaning over the small balcony—suspicious eyes staring at me below wild graying curls. As far back as I could remember I had never seen her communicate anything warm toward a living being. Even with her daughters she was distant. The most affectionate gesture I’d seen from her was tying their shoelaces or feeding them a sausage sandwich. When they were too loud she hit them over the head and told them to shut up.
“You like staying up at Antonio and Alma’s house?” Santino asked with smiley eyes.
“It’s nice…”
“Does Alma still walk around naked?”
I blushed.
“All those Germans do. They think we can’t see them.” He cackled. “You do that too?”
“Do what?”
“Go around naked?”
I glanced up toward his wife and blushed again. She was still on the balcony, staring.
“No. I don’t…”
He was a wild, beautiful thing. Now that I saw him up close, I remembered his green eyes from childhood. His whole story suddenly came back to me: Santino the crossbreed, Santino the orphan, Santino the Egyptian. He was the son of a pale fisherman, but his mother had an affair with a migrant worker from Egypt one summer, and he was born nine months later with dark skin, green eyes, and curly black hair. His father rejected him and after his mother died, when the boy was five, he stopped taking care of him. Santino grew up without parents like a savage creature climbing barefoot on the island rocks. He never went to school, couldn’t even sign his name. Islanders took him in when they could. They fed him until he was old enough and strong enough to tough it out on his own. I remembered as a little girl noticing his solitary tours. He hiked to the top of the crater, screaming at bulls and mules. Animals were his life. Owning beasts on the island was more convenient than owning a house.
“Why do you keep ostriches? Don’t they need to run? They have nowhere to run to here. There are just stairs,” I asked.
“They need to run? I decide what they need,” he told me with a smug look.
—
It was the end of July and there was no more air. The sea was still like a lake at dusk. The first fishermen were beginning to go out for squid. When the sun disappeared, their boat lights turned on. They looked like suspended Florence Nightingale lamps, caring for the wounded waters, looking after exploded aquatic animals with missing body parts. No donkey screams, no mice squeaks. It was so still I could hear the Mediterranean lapping gently and the fishermen’s voices chatting in dialect as if we were all inside the same blue room. I was on the island’s second plateau, taking a break from carrying groceries up the stairs. The thin plastic handles had sawed through my fingers, but I insisted on bringing up the bags on my own because I didn’t want to overload the donkeys. I sat down on a cement bench and noticed a shadow move across the heather bushes. I recognized her from the shape of her hair—a frizzy mass pinned down by three aquamarine plastic clasps. Rosalia.
She hovered toward me awkwardly, like a troll.
“Is it true you’re prominent overseas?” she asked without looking up.
It was the first time I’d heard her speak.
“No,” I replied, confused by her use of the word prominent.
She looked disappointed and sat down next to me on the bench.
“You’re not famous?” She sighed. “But everyone says you’re famous. You do commercials.”
“I did one commercial, a year ago.”
“But it was for canned meat! You were on RAI 3. We saw you. I’m sorry, but you’re famous.”