Estella was, to say the least, a surprise for her parents who were two young adults just learning how to take care of themselves let alone not even set up in life with a job or full education—practically children themselves. Fortunately for Estella, they had options and support. Her father’s parents volunteered to take her, either wholly or partially until the young couple was ready. It turns out that they never were ready for the little girl they brought into this world. A world beyond their comprehension, which suited them both just fine. Jack de Luca had spent most of his life not looking too close at his parents, afraid of the way the air shimmered around them if he stared too long. And for much of his life they avoided being looked at. It was this very shimmer that Jack saw on the day of his daughter's birth.
It made for an awful parent-child relationship, to say the least.
And so it is that Estella, from the time of her birth, was raised by her grandparents in a little house tucked into the woods on a small plot of land. Her grandparents set her up in their son’s old room, repainted in a quiet purple, and hung soft Christmas lights on the windows and bookshelves. Unfortunately for her grandparents, Estella wasn’t afraid to look too closely. She noticed a little too much, too young like that her grandmother’s wooden spoons never quite touched the cabinet or that her grandfather’s hand never fully reached the pages of his books to actually turn them—and yet the pages turned. She noticed stains never stayed on their clothing no matter how deep and that she never once saw her grandparents touch the broom and yet the floor was always swept. Once, when she was six, Estella came into the kitchen after she should have been asleep and when her grandmother heard her—just before Estella was to round the corner—she dropped a bowl on the floor with a loud shatter. When Estella fully came into the soft yellow room she found her grandmother clutching her old family recipe book in her hands and the bowl several feet away on the floor, food scraps mixing with pottery shards.
Staring at her petite fille, her little girl, Marguerite saw her son in the child’s owl-like dark eyes. The son they put so much pressure on to be perfect, to be safe, to be human, to be so distinctly American and therefore foreign to them both, these immigrants from another place, even another time. Her son, who won’t come home even for his daughter. It was at that point that her grandmother decided not to repeat the same mistake she made with her son. She wasn’t going to pretend anymore—she was a witch and she knew that no amount of protection or hiding would keep Estella safe forever. Estella did not know it, but she was standing at a fork in the road, and her grandmother was tugging her by the hand through a very thorny path.
Marguerite decided to tell the truth. Fortunately, Estella gave her the opening to do so.
“Mémé, what happened to your bowl?”
Her grandmother knelt in front of her, still holding the family recipe book close to her chest, “I dropped it.”
Estella looked hard at the old recipe book, its cloth cover slightly fraying, “But you were holding your book.”
“I was holding the bowl too.” Marguerite’s eyes twinkled in the low light.
The little girl scrunched her face like she ate a lemon, “But how?”
“Like this,” and suddenly Estella felt a familiar air in the room. An air that hugged her at night and gently swept around her during the day, filling her up, being the air in her lungs. She always thought it was her grandparent’s presence in the room, an aura that was bigger than their bodies that filled up the entire space with love and smelled like fresh herbs. Her grandmother always smelled like thyme and bread, her grandfather like sweet basil and citronella.
Looking at her grandmother now, Estella thought she would walk over to the bowl and demonstrate some dramatic, theatrical drop or mime tossing it across the room, but her grandmother did not move. Did not even look away from her eyes. “Why don’t you go and see?”
Estella was not quite big enough to see over the kitchen chairs blocking her view, and when she peeked through the legs only the mess on the floor was left — no bowl. Walking around the small blue table set she still did not see the bowl.
“Where is it?” she asked, whirling around back to her grandmother, her arms swinging about her body.
The older woman looked suspiciously innocent, “Well dear, you haven’t looked everywhere yet. Have you checked all directions?”
With the petulancy only a child could have, Estella pointed to the floor, “Directions? It was here!”
Her grandmother pursed her lips, “You’re right. It was right there and now it’s not. So where did it go?”
“Well I don’t know,” Estella huffed at her grandmother. Her shoulders coming up to her ears in a big child shrug.
Marguerite smiled sweetly, seeing an opportunity. “Estella, you do know.” Just when Estella was about to protest, she knelt in front of her and instructed the girl to shut her eyes and take a deep breath. “Now, with your eyes closed tell me what you feel. Be specific now. I want you to search with your senses.”
Estella tried her best, she really wanted to know where that bowl went. Her grandmother was acting so strange about it. Breathing deeply she thought about all that she smelled. First and foremost she smelled her grandmother, always of freshly baked bread that she made and minty like thyme. She felt the floor beneath her little feet and the presence of the dining set not far away. She knew the countertops and cabinets were close to her left — both it and the table set she could feel their physical boundaries pushing in on the air around her. In front of her she knew was her grandmother, who may as well be an extension of herself. Behind her was the living room and nothing felt different there.
Estella struggled and got frustrated. She didn’t feel any sort of bowl. What does a bowl feel like? Round? She stomped her foot. “Calm down, Estella. Breathe in again and recenter. You will find it if you just look — but only with your eyes closed!”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
If she had less of a grip on her temper the little girl would have kicked a kitchen chair. Instead, she did what her grandfather taught her when she got upset —”Come now bambina, let us breathe. Nel. Fuori. Nel. Fuori. Ci siamo.” — she took several deep breaths to center herself before trying again.
Once calm, Estella restarted the process of searching with her eyes closed. Again she stretched out her senses and found the table, the cabinets, the refrigerator, the hutch across the room full of cookbooks and jars. She felt the floor beneath her feet and the bristles of the broom that always leaned against the corner and the pile of shoes next to the door. She found the edges of the living room again, felt the contours of the lamp and end table that marked its beginnings.
She took deep breaths to stave off more frustration. She searched the countertops and the table, felt in the sink and found the dirty dishes there. Everything she sensed pressed in on her mind, feeling so real that Estella thought she might be able to touch the wine bottle on the counter if she wasn’t so small and the bottle wasn’t several feet away.
“Este, bébé, que vois-tu?” baby, what do you see? The French slipped out of her grandmother easily, naturally flowing from her lips as wind through tree leaves.
Estella understood the question and responded to her grandmother in kind — many languages were spoken in their home. Her grandmother was raised in northern France and her grandfather was from southern Italy where from a young age he learned many languages. When it was time for Estella to begin primary school in the United States her grandfather was insulted that not a single school offered a secondary language course, which speaks also to his absence during the youth of his son that this came as a shock to him. He drew the line and withdrew Estella days later when she was told to speak only English after counting her crayons in a mixture of her native tongues: English, French, and Italian. One deux tre four five six sept… From then on Estella was taught at home by her grandparents, who created a world for their little granddaughter that they wished to see.
“Mémé, je vois la table et les comptoirs. J'ai trouvé le balai et la bouteille à côté de l'évier mais je ne vois pas le bol.” Grandma, I can see the table and the counters. I found the broom and the bottle next to the sink but I don't see the bowl.
“Este, bébé, look up.” Estella knew her grandmother didn’t mean for her to open her eyes and physically look but she couldn’t help the instinct. She cried out when her mémé’s hand flew to cover her eyes.
“Closed, mon amour.”
Stomping her foot again, she stretched her senses in a direction she had not taken them: the air above her head. It did not make sense to Estella to look in the air. How could a bowl be there? Still, Estella extended her senses upward, coming into contact with an unexpected object. Eyes flying open, mouth agape Estella pointed in the air:
“Mémé, le bol! Le bol is in the air! Comment?” Grandma, the bowl! The bowl is in the air! How?
Her grandmother remained kneeling before Estella, her hand reaching out for the bowl — in one piece. Estella watched as the complete bowl slowly floated down to meet her grandmother’s hand. “La Magie. Estella magique.” Magic. Magic, Estella.
And like that, a missing piece fit into the puzzle of Estella’s life.
It was near this juncture that her grandfather came home and found his wife and granddaughter in the kitchen. They had cleaned up the mess on the floor and were now leaning over the old recipe book her grandmother had been holding earlier. Upon her grandfather’s entrance, Estella greeted him, throwing her arms around him as she jumped for his neck, her tiny arms encircling him, “Nonno!” Grandpapa!
His laugh reverberated through his chest, “Estella, bambina, what are you doing up?”
“Magic, nonno! Grandmama is telling me about our magie!” The young girl squealed in child delight.
Her grandfather looked then at his wife with her eyebrows raised, saw the excitement in her face, and threw his head back, “finalmente.” It turns out that both grandparents had long grown tired of hiding themselves from their grandchild, afraid they would lose her the way they had lost their son who they never truly let know them — or himself.
And so it was that little Estella began to truly learn about herself and her family.
This letting go felt much like an unused bagpipe that had its dusty wind let out of it to fill again with clean air — the letting out was a bit clumsy at first but eventually the music came, sweet as a melody.
The small family of grandmama, grandpapa, and young Estella, their bébé, spent the night going over the family recipe book until Estella’s small frame finally collapsed into sleep from the excitement. Her grandfather carried her up to her room and tucked her into bed before coming back downstairs to share a final glass of wine with his wife.
“Margherita” his Italian accent always struggled to say his wife’s name properly, much like her northern French accent makes Estella difficult for her (it comes out more like Estelle). She always loved the way he said her name. “Do you think it is right to let her in?”
Marguerite reached for her husband and with her index finger caressed the back of his hand that was lying on the table, tracing the veins there, “Timoteo — you helped raise our son. You know that we will only find out if this is right later. We know we made missteps with Jack — we didn’t teach him our ways and were overly harsh.”
Timoteo added remorsefully, “And I was absent a lot.”
Silence passed between them then before his wife responded, “Oui. You are here now and we have been teaching her French and Italian — she’s more European than American with how we’ve raised her so far.”
“You know, I think she has a bit of an accent when she speaks English.”
“Mhmm. I’ve noticed. Do you think we should have her watch more American television? She doesn’t see many other people in person.”
“Perhaps we can put something on in the background for her to help her pronunciation.”
Together they mulled over their wine a little longer, thinking of the days ahead. When they finally laid their heads on their pillows, Timoteo asked one final question for the night, “Margherita, will you tell her when you were born?”
It took his wife so long to respond that he thought she had already fallen asleep and began to do so himself when she finally whispered, “if she asks.”