Fig in Winter
When Grandpop Tullio came from Italy, he brought the fig tree as a cutting, wrapped in oiled paper and straw dampened with red wine made in his own village. Hidden in the inner pocket of his best and only black coat, it was over-looked by distracted immigration officials, and so the family tree entered the new world in quasi-secret, a scion lost to the old world. Angie understood the lesson, that if you wanted to succeed, you had to keep your business private, hold your cards close to your vest, watch out for prying eyes. She glanced around at the board fences which enclosed her doll-sized, down-town, back yard, but not up at the windows, which over-looked her from the backs of other houses. Over-looking, over-looking–jealousy, envy, even admiration, too strong, could give you the over-look, the malocch’. And her figs, year after year, were the best. But she didn’t show them around. To family, yes, to little Anthony and Susie, who were going to inherit, of course. But you had to be careful.
Spring to summer, Angie added judiciously to the layer of decomposing mulch under the leafy spread. Some things you wanted– coffee grounds, lemon rinds, onion skins, corn-husks and the cobs–some things were too strong, they would make too much leafy growth at the expense of the crop, crack the fruit, make the tree grow too much, right into the cold, and get hurt by the winter– left-over kitchen waste that might have been eaten, grass clippings, manure. The fig had never fully adjusted to the new world and needed a strong hand to restrain it and put it to bed for the winter. For that very reason, Angie had waited until the chill of mid-November had thoroughly penetrated the wood and soil. She took a rake and pulled mulch from under the bare branches, making a mound to one side in order to remove whatever plant food remained. In the spring, she would spread it again as the first layer under the budding twigs.
Then she took the old clothes-line, kept from year to year just for this purpose, and made a lasso around the many grey stems. Northern winters had never let the fig develop a real trunk Come spring, she would cut away what had died in the cold. It took a lot of pulling, but Angie knew–the tighter, the better. But first, she threw some arm loads of dry leaves into the branches. Her brother, Joe, brought them home in bags for her, from out in the country, where people put them out for the trash. She pulled some more, put in more leaves, pulled, put, pulled and then began to wind the clothes-line up the length of the tree, until it was a spring-loaded leaf-bomb of cris-crossing twigs and ropes. Then came dirt. From over in the empty bed, where she grew basil and tomatoes, Angie carried earth by the shovel-full to heap about the fig’s base, burying the bottom foot of the plant’s crown and adding at least six inches over the cold-vulnerable root system, that lay so close to the surface. Her breath was hot in the air as she stepped back to look.
Time for the shower curtains. Joe, when he came on weekends, said she ought to use the big plastic sheets builders used, and he had offered to bring some, but Angie preferred shower curtains. They let in the air where they overlapped, but kept out the wet, mostly. They had always worked for her and for her father, though her grandfather had good success with tar-paper. And besides, you had to do something with old shower curtains and it appealed to her sense of thrift to use them this way. More rope had to go over the white and blue shower curtains to hold them secure against the gales of winter to come. Then, like the angel on a Christmas tree, came the bucket. She used the bucket in the yard all summer and then put it upside down, on the top of the fig, to prevent water from penetrating the crown of her wrapped package. That bucket never saw the inside of her house for more than a few minutes, as she unloaded tomatoes on the drain-board. She lingered on the step-ladder to tie the handle to one of the strands of clothes line.
Climbing down, Angie stood a few moments close against the tall, pointed shape. Her lips moved, but that could not be seen by nosey neighbors, any more than her words were meant to be heard.
"In nome del cielo,
Delle stelle e della luna,
Mi levo questo malocchio
Per mia magior fortuna!"
From her lips to the saint’s ear; it was not necessary to shout. She understood that there would have been no help in the same words in English: "In the name of Heaven, of the stars and moon, I lift this evil eye for my greater luck." Her hand strayed lightly back and forth from her bosom to a slit where two curtains overlapped, inserting a piece of blessed palm, folded back and forth, so that it hid in her hand. She took a breath in completion and turned to fold up the step ladder.
In the kitchen, shielded by white curtains, Angie filled a bowl with water and, holding a bottle of olive oil in her left hand, made the sign of the cross over the water with her right. She shifted the oil bottle in her right hand and used it to make the sign of the cross again. With dexterous, care she dripped three drops of oil into the bowl.
Ah, just as she suspected, they were drawn to one another and formed il malocch’! But she had received the words from her grandmother, as they must be transmitted, on the eve of her fourteenth Christmas .
"Befania! Befania! Befania!
Chi mi ha dato il malocchio
Me lo porte via!"
"Scoffing! I make a fool of you! Ugly old woman!" English could not convey the meanings, which included the suggestion of the Epiphany as well. "Whoever has given me the evil eye, take it away from me!" Taking up the waiting kitchen scissors, Angie rapidly snipped the drop of oil into a scatter of invisible drops. With firm lips, she poured the bowl’s contents down the drain and dried it with a dish towel before returning it to the shelf.
The phone rang, so she finished drying her hands on her way into the front room. "Hello, Florence," she said into the receiver. It was time for her sister’s afternoon call. After a listening pause she replied, "Well, I got the fig ready for winter. Nobody knows what I go through with that tree."
appeared November, 2001