Erminija: Again a Slovene Woman
A Story of My Grandmother
by Robb J. Frederick
Preface
I
cannot tell the real-life story of my maternal grandmother, once an immigrant
from Slovenia, and later an American citizen, without first describing the
ambiguity and vagueness that have always clouded my own sense of ethnicity and
heritage. This has troubled me for years, being a grandchild of four poor
immigrants from different parts of Europe (Slovenia, Italy, Lemko Galicia, and
Hungary).
Many times I asked specific, probing questions, but the answers were never
well formed. In the end, we were
Americans, I would be told, but it was clear that the heart of my
maternal family bore an Italian identity. Truly, we were an Italian-American
family. Except we all knew that "Gramma was Austrian."
"So Gramma's language was Austrian?", I would naively ask...
"So how did she ever learn to speak Italian... did Grampa teach her?"... "What
was the name of her town?"... "What was her mother's maiden name?"... "Who was
her grandmother?"...
My annoying, nosy questions were almost always answered by my mother or one of
my numerous aunts with "Why you gotta know so much?... "Whaddya you... writing a
book?" But we were not a purely Italian family. (Interestingly, my
father's family bore a Ukrainian identity, which was not really Ukrainian. That
is another story, but I mention it here as an aid to understanding my
frustration with my own blurred ethnicity.)
I
It
is only recently that I have learned more specific facts about my grandmother,
Erminija Apollonia Kaucic—not from my family, but from unknown clerks in offices
and church dioceses in Europe, far from my sheltered small town in rural New
York State. Now only a few of my aunts remain, but it wouldn't matter. I already
asked the questions, over and over, years ago. No one in my family ever told me
that Gramma was a Slovene, only that she was "Austrian." When Gramma wrote
words, they were in her "mystery language," which we all called "Austrian." I
can remember receiving birthday cards from Gramma, on which she spelled my name
(Bobby) as "Babi." I was always annoyed at this, because it looked so much like
the word "baby." I vividly remember trying to decipher her hand-written recipes
in the flyleaves of her old battered cookbook, again written in that "mystery
language." Inside the back cover of that old cookbook was a poem, or maybe a
song, written in her own hand, titled "Tiho Luna." I wish I could remember the
verses.
On her passenger manifest, as well as the church document that recorded her
baptism, it is clear as day that Gramma was Slovene. I still cannot understand
why this was never made known inside our family. I do understand now that for
many, many immigrants to this free land, there was a forgetting, a
looking-ahead, whereby the painful, difficult, bittersweet past had to be put
away, alongside the memories of wrenching, tearful good-byes. Here might lie the
reason for all my unanswered questions.
For me, the by-products of all this forgetting, however, are the big, dark blind
spots in my identity. I have formed an obsession to learn my family's history. I
need to resolve, to restore, to own a connection to the families from whom I
come. I want to know their names, but I need more than just names.
II
Erminija Apollonia Kaucic was born in May of 1884 in Nabrezina,
Slovenija, Kingdom of Austria-Hungary, slightly north of the present-day Italian
city of Trieste, then also part of Austria-Hungary. Slovenija was later a
province of the former Yugoslavia, but today is an independent nation. It is
situated near the top of the Adriatic Sea, east of Italy. Across the narrow sea
to the west sits Italy, whose coastline actually curves around the top of the
Adriatic, like a folded cuff at the top of the boot, so that the Italian city of
Trieste is actually across the water from the mainland of Italy to the west.
Erminija's parents
were Martin and Katarina Peric Kaucic. She was baptised at Zupna Sveti Rok
(Chiesa San Rocco), in Nabrezina. She had a brother Augustus, and I cannot say
whether he was older or younger, but I do know he died at about the age of
twelve. This I can personally recall from Gramma's own telling—how he died so
young, and how devastated she and her parents were. By some family or cultural
tradition, hundreds of pieces of candy wrapped in colorful paper were strewn
inside the young boy's coffin during the wake. Young Erminija and her companions
could not resist taking pieces for themselves, but they were discovered, only to
be humiliated and punished by the grown-ups. What a fascinating story I found
that to be... especially that Gramma was once naughty! The Gramma that I knew
was almost always stern and austere and, because all her idle time was spent
with a rosary in her hands, more pious than I could ever hope to be!
Erminija's father Martin died when she was still quite young, and her mother
Katarina later was remarried, to Stefan Zaharia, who had no children of his own.
Erminija's new stepfather apparently provided well for his ready-made family,
building a house for them, and becoming a supportive father-figure and companion
to Erminija. He planted beautiful gardens and fig trees and, for a time, life
was sweeter. He died not long after that, leaving Erminija and her mother to
fend for themselves in pre-war Europe, as young Augustus had already died.
Somewhere
around the age of twenty Erminija met young Giuseppe Martellotta. He was a
stone-quarry worker from Massafra (in the heel-of- the-boot), far south of
Nabrezina, which, for Italy, was a universe away, geographically and culturally.
Tall, lanky, swarthy Giuseppe had found similar work in Nabrezina, a town known
for its beige, marble-like rock, and abundant work in the quarries. Giuseppe's
hometown of Massafra was also a source of stone and rock, and also riddled with
caves, probably explaining Giuseppe's familiarity with or attraction to his
work.
In February of 1906 Erminija and Giuseppe were married, at Chiesa San Rocco.
By the end of that year their firstborn, daughter Adele, was born. In the fall
of 1907 came their second child, a son, Angelo. In mid October of 1907, a month
after Angelo's birth, Giuseppe would sail from Naples to New York, aboard the
SS Algeria, with some paisani. Oral family history has it that they
were traveling to meet a load of Nabresina stone destined for the
construction of some state government buildings in Albany. The passenger
manifest, however, indicates that they were headed to Little Falls, New York, a
mill town about 70 miles west of the state capital. Little Falls is on the Erie
Canal, as well as a railroad artery, so it is possible that the Italian stone
was there, waiting for transport along a final leg to Albany.
During this year-and-a-half separation from her husband, Erminija and her two
children stayed with her mother in Nabrezina. Adele grew more cherubic each day;
grandmother Katarina grew more and more enamored of the infant Angelo. How,
thought Erminija, can I leave my mother alone? How can we go so far away,
forever? How can I do that? Somehow, Erminija made the choice to take Adele...
and leave Angelo. I cannot say whether this choice was made between both
parents. Did Giuseppe know that Angelo, the son he had only known for one month
before leaving for America, would not be coming to America? Erminija had made
her choice, and it would haunt her for the rest of her long life.
In
January of 1909, Erminija and Adele boarded the ship SS Martha Washington
at Trieste, destined for New York. The combination of painful farewells must
have been agonizing—a daughter leaving her twice-widowed mother, a mother
leaving her infant son, a grandmother seeing off her three-year-old angel.
Goodbye to Nabrezina, to the blue Adriatic, to the blood-red soil of the
northern Istrian Peninsula, to the beautiful Trieste, and off into the unknown.
Sometimes the worst-imagined nightmares become true. Midway along the voyage
across the winter's cold Atlantic, the young Adele became gravely ill.
Terrified, Erminija was beset with that pit-of-the-stomach parental ache that
dread and fear bring. The ship's doctor likely removed the baby girl from
steerage class accommodations, the bowels of the ship, and moved her into an
infirmary; at this time Erminija was likely separated from her daughter. At some
point someone came back to summon Erminija to Adele, for the last time. The baby
girl struggled, and then died, after burning with fever. One of the ship's
crewmen brought orders from the Captain, completing Erminija's nightmare. She
was told that Adele would be bundled in muslin and buried at sea. My
grandmother, facing the unknown, having left behind her own infant son and
mother, then saw her beautiful little girl cherub dissolve into fever and die
aboard the tossing ship. She watched her three-year-old angel being hurled into
the icy Atlantic. I cannot, I must not, fully imagine that horror. This year,
when I saw the passenger manifest of Erminija and Adele for the first time, one
chilling reminder elegantly retold the story—a black line, crossing out the
entire manifest entry for Adele, all the way across the page. My family's
retelling of this story always ends with the merciful comfort of other
"Austrian" (Slovene) women passengers, who embraced and cared for Erminija for
the rest of the voyage, encouraging her to keep hope alive, giving her chamomile
tea and blankets.
III
After
processing at Ellis Island, Erminija likely boarded a crowded train into upstate
New York, along with other immigrant passengers bound for the many
industrial-age river towns whose companies had beckoned the masses to come to
America and power their factories. Little Falls was a major industrial town,
with factories for textiles, paper, cheese-making, shoes and leather, and
furniture. It was also a canal town, with jobs on the canal throughout the warm
seasons.
Giuseppe and his paisani had rented quarters in the immigrant district,
on the south side of the Mohawk River and the parallel Erie Canal, just below
the rocky cliffs that towered over the waterways. Erminija stepped off the
clackety train at the Little Falls station, carrying her bundles, and the little
suitcase with her baby's belongings. The joy of their reunion was overshadowed
by her onerous task of the moment. She broke the tragic news to her husband,
almost choking on her sobbing grief. I have always wondered what was my
grandfather's reaction.
With the arrival of Erminija would Giuseppe's married life resume, with the
touch of a woman upon his household, in the kitchen, as the warm partner in his
bed, and as the "engine" of his soon-to-be boarding house, which would provide
survival income for the household for years to come. Among their boarders would
be Italian, Slovene, German and Irish immigrants, most of them hard workers—and
hard drinkers. The protection of her gentle parents had evaporated. All things
familiar had disappeared. The blue Adriatic was but a memory. She was far from
warm sea waters now, in landlocked upstate New York, in the middle of a cold and
bleak winter. Her hard American life was just beginning. She would bear ten more
children in her new world. Eight of them, Albena, Dante, Carmela, Eda,
Michelina, Anna, Maria, Gloria, would survive. Two of them, Mario and Almo,
would die in childhood. She would endure poverty and forced humility all of her
young life. During one winter of the Great Depression she burned all the wooden
furniture in the house, in lieu of coal, to keep the family warm.
Her husband would die twenty-five years before she would. She would never own a
home, instead renting flat after apartment after old house, then living as a
guest in the homes of three different married daughters, at various times. But
by her will, her strength, her body, and her wits would she build and shape the
American lives of her children, her grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so
on.
In our family we call ourselves good people, and we have always put family
first. Ours has always been a family headed by a matriarch, and our matriarch
was Erminija, from Nabrezina, just north of
Trieste, by the head of the Adriatic
Sea. We are an Italian-American family who always knew Gramma was "Austrian."
She was my grandmother. Her name was Erminija, and as she once was, she is
again, a Slovene woman, forever in time and in memory.
Copyright 2001 / Robb J. Frederick
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