Miguel Bornaschella - The satisfaction of having achieved my aims

Domestic utensils after arriving in Argentina.

Cooper pot, frying pan and basin used in Italy. They also “migrated to Argentina”. Now they are in my house giving good testimony of their old working functions.

I had started classes in Italy in September the year before. On April the 20 th, I went on with my classes at school here, in Argentina, as if nothing had happened in the middle, as if I had fallen asleep in Italy and suddenly awakened here. My father personally took me to School number 41, today is number 10, in Villa Giambruno. He introduced me, gave the headmistress my personal data and some pieces of recommendation: if she noticed any misbehavior, she should not doubt in correcting me by beating me with a ruler on my head, with its edge, and after that she could call for him, he would take me out of school to go on “speaking” with me. Only four days had passed that I had met my father and I did not have the best impression of him. The way he imposed to me, his rough and severe way hurt me gradually. Immediately the Headmistress took the decision of evaluating me to be able to establish if I could start in the superior first grade or in the inferior first grade. She made me read the content of my passport to value my reading. She considered I could start in the superior first grade. But reading in Italian was not a problem for me, learning in Spanish was. Trying to understand this language delayed my comprehension and I end up repeating the grade.

Two days later I was in the classroom, with a huge, thick and heavy overcoat, with the murmurs of my classmates surrounding me and looking at me as if I were a different being who spoke differently and a teacher who wanted to teach me things in Spanish. All those events marked me forever: the relationship with my father, the way he treated me, that excessive shock against reality, and the feeling of discrimination at school with the constant jokes, the creativity of calling me names, I can remember the most usual ones “ tano mangia-broccoli”, “tano mangia-onion” delicate and foolish phrases that made me grow up all of a sudden and feel very sad.

I had counted between two and three fights a week until I could make a deal of no aggression. To make things worse, my mother cooked broccoli at night. This was something that made me so angry! In order to refute those arguments and my classmates’ bullying, I refused to eat onion and broccoli and the rest of vegetables that were cooked at home. But this did not work. My father did not know about my problems and would not consider applicable my point since whatever was on the table to eat had to be well accepted and eaten without discussing. Then to make me understand this new lesson, I had to eat only vegetables for three days. I did know the lesson, I finally said: “Eating vegetables is good. I like vegetables. They are delicious”. My father added: “and… yesterday they were even better …”. From that moment I ate whatever Mum prepared to eat, anything, cold, hot, raw or over cooked. I think I had never been sad before. It seemed to me that I was in the middle of an abrupt abandonment. Those children who had immigrated before were older than me. I sometimes looked for their sympathy, but far from that idea, they, who had already gone through that experience, were not well-disposed to go through it again. It was then and once more, as it had happened in other unpleasant circumstances, there was not any possible chance for complaint, but for submission. The unique wellness oasis that there might have existed when meeting my sister, Josefa, at school breaks, did not happen either, because the boys’ and girls’ play yards were separated. I soon understood that I had to take care of myself and stand up on my own. The fights I used to have in order to limit the teasing jokes caused physical consequences and others a bit worse. This was the case when my pinafore was totally torn. Pinafores were the same for boys and for girls in Italy. Once Mum put me one that belonged to my sister (she had two) since we were in a hurry and did not take into account those “silly” things. Nobody at home had taken notice of this. Nobody had paid any attention to this. But I did. I protected myself of the shame of wearing a girl’s pinafore by carrying that huge, thick and heavy overcoat and the scarf that I had brought and worn since I got on the ship up to that moment. I did not take it off during the whole morning and was careful enough not to let any single part of it be seen. It became a torment because everybody wanted to see and find out my clothes. When I came back home my mother understood her confusion and in the afternoon she found the solution mending the pinafore. The accumulation of adversities and current discrimination in such short time caused my deep sadness and induced me to utter my rebellious phrase: “I’m fed up. I’m coming back to Italy”, and left the house, absolutely convinced of my purpose. I ran in the direction to the river, because after the river was the sea, and then I would reach my country. My father let me go away for some blocks and then he went for me. He did not comfort me. He took me home by my ear and back to the usual tasks.

But little by little, as my mother had to put up with some things, I did the same with some others. My father used to sit down at the table and though he did not have the intention of being severe, he had acquired habits that made him rough. One of those habits was sitting down at the table with his belt unfastened to be able to react very quickly and skillfully with this correctional method which he used when considered necessary. I still have a lot of memories of the measures taken by my father to correct those disciplinary deviations. And I do not judge them with the vision of our time. Even more I do not judge them anyway. They were methods and circumstances of those times, and they took their effect because in a certain way, they have educated and formed me.

On some occasions my brother Angel, said the colloquial expression: “me cache en die” ( I poop ten times), and without having it clear at all when to use it and what for, I used it. I repeated his expression one day while we were sitting at the table. But I was very unlucky, because my father was sitting on my right and with the speed of lightning he slapped in my face, making me reach a sudden conclusion. It was not convenient to use that phrase and apparently only older people were allowed to use it. There was silence. I kept in silence. And I never repeated that phrase again.