The Hairbrush: Three Tails

by Terrapin

The streets of America were not paved with gold, after all, but that didn't matter much to Pietro when he was finally allowed to leave Ellis Island. In fact, when he fell to his knees with tear- blurred eyes and kissed the terra firma of his new home, Uncle Sam's choice of paving material was the furthest thing from his mind. The stench and dysentery of the nightmarish passage across the Atlantic was washed free from him. He was in America.

His stay in New York was longer than originally intended by some seven months, due to his initial underestimation of the costs of getting where he wanted to go once in America. His destination was not all that far - several hundred miles to the western edge of Pennsylvania, where there were distant cousins of his paisan from his home village who would take him in and introduce him to the customs of this new world. New York found him a naive Italian boy with seventeen dollars to his name - a fortune by his standards and all the villagers could raise to send one of it's sons off to the rumor of a better life. This kingly sum of Pietro's was quickly divested into the pockets of shysters who were quick to prey on the wide-eyed peasants newly adrift in the city. A hard worker, Pietro soon found work on the docks and learned America by immersion. Although he never would fully master English, he quickly absorbed enough to survive, although he would break cleanly into Italian if nervous or excited.

Which he rarely was. Pietro was a man of few words, and rarely angered. Those who did not know him well occasionally thought him dull, but that was not the truth. Pietro was very bright indeed - just quiet.

Bethel Lake, Pennsylvania was a significant change from the bustle and noise of New York, and suited Pietro well. A small town with an even mix of Italians, Poles, and Germans, nestled in the rolling green hills not far from Pittsburgh. He soon found a niche for himself with his new family, and found work on a steady rotation of construction crews. He even talked Anna Cassachia, the iron-fisted matriarch of the family, into letting him start a garden in the little plot of land behind the house. Life grew as full and sweet as the tomatoes that graced Pietro's vines...

One summer Saturday Pietro was roused from a nap under the grape arbor by a commotion from the house next door. This in and of itself surprised him, as the house had stood empty for some time. This, however, was changing...

The center of the commotion seemed to be a heated Italian debate conducted between a man in his forties with his daughter, who was yelling to beat the band. Pietro shifted about in the bushes that lined one side of the arbor, trying to get a better view of his new neighbors.

And when he did, his heart almost stopped.

The daughter, one Bertha Buzzelli, was by standards then and now gorgeous. Petite, slender, with a blaze in her eyes that spoke in shades of the fire in her Italian heart. Pietro fell in love instantly, and watched the domestic squabble, one of many he would see and hear from the house next door, unfold. The source of conflict seemed to be Bertha's insistence on letting her hair down from the traditional braid that unmarried Italian girls wore at that time. A girl would either have braided hair, be married, or was not a..well..."nice" girl, by definition. This, at least, was the bellowed contention of Papa Buzzelli, a man whose patience was more or less constantly running a frayed edge from the abrasive effects of his wife and four daughters. (He once confessed over too much wine to Pietro "Mother of Christ, Pete - they're ALL like this!!"). Bertha, her mother, and one of her sisters kept a chorused verbal assault running about how this was America now, and the old rules didn't apply anymore. Midway through the battle, Bertha sought to prove her point by dramatically unleashing her hair from its bondage.

And such hair it was! Shaken free, it fell full and black, cascading down her back to a point well past her hips. Papa Buzzelli's rage blossomed at this juncture - no daughter of his was going to be naked on their front lawn! Dragging his belt from his waist, Papa Buzzelli chased the now howling Bertha into the house landing an occasional lick on the bouncing backside of his impetuous daughter.

Pietro stood for a moment, fascinated, then turned and went into the house to see Anna Cassachia.

"Who are the new people?"

"They're Buzzelli's, from near Rome." Why, you think you know them?"

"No", Pietro smiled, but the one daughter looks like an angel."

"Ha! And talks like a devil! You listen to me, boy - those are Buzzelli's. I heard some talk the Papa's got some money somewhere, and don't you think he's gonna let some Castel Di Sangra sharecropper at his daughter!"

But Pietro won the heart of Papa John Buzzelli faster than he would win the heart of his daughter Bertha. Papa John was a gardener at heart like Pietro, and when Pietro showed his a few family secrets regarding the art of growing tomatoes, he began the slow snaring process that won him the respect of the elder.

It was Papa John that first mentioned the young Pietro to Bertha. "You know, Princess - you could do worse than that young man." Bertha sniffed. "I want someone with a future", she pouted, "He doesn't even have a steady job!"

In truth, he did not. Construction work was good when it was available, but the work was not steady. Pietro knew this would be a problem with Bertha. But not once did Pietro ever think of her as unattainable. He had made up his mind to win her, and that was that. In due time, He got wind of a large construction project about to happen - a factory of some sort. It was to be his single biggest break in America.

U.S. steel opened it's third factory the following August, and took it's initial crew of workers from the construction crew that built the mill. Having made himself through hard work a favorite of his foreman, Pietro was offered his choice of position in the mill. Pietro said "I wanna run the crane.", and for the next thirty years he did just that, earning a significantly higher wage than the steelworker typically on the main floor of the giant blast furnaces. He moved out of the home of Mama Cassachia and took his own apartment a half block away. Still it was months before the fiery-eyed Bertha would even look at him. Finally with the blessing ( and pestering of her father, she consented to see him.

Their first dozen encounters were highly chaperoned, of course, but Pietro being the honorable young man that he was soon won the right to see Papa Buzzelli's oldest daughter on his own. They went watch the old men play bocchi in the park, went to the movies for double features and newsreels, and slowly Pietro worked his way into Bertha's heart.

It was in the summer of their nineteenth year when Pietro asked Bertha to marry him. She flatly refused. Undaunted, Pietro pressed on. More movies, more bocchi. Under her mother's careful eye, Bertha would sometimes make gnocchi - Pietro's favorite - and bring them to him when he arrived home from the mill.

One day, he asked her inside. "Bertha, come in - I have a present for you." Bertha entered, curious. What was the young fool up to now?

Pietro disappeared into his back room for a moment, and emerged with a small box. He bade her to sit at his small table. "Bertha, I've watched you, and courted you for a long time. Now the time has come. I have a good job. I have money. I want to have a family. Will you marry me?" Just like that - simple and to the point.

Bertha smiled in a stunned sort of way. She knew the boy was crazy about her, but - marriage? Her eyes strayed to the box. "What's that?"

"A present." Something of beauty for you, because you're so beautiful. Go ahead, open it." He handed the box to her.

Driven by curiosity more than anything, she opened the box.

And laughed in Pietro's face. For there in the box, was not an engagement ring, but a hairbrush! In truth, it was a beautiful hairbrush, solid chestnut with brass inlay woven up and down it's flat, solid back. In point of fact, Bertha had never seen a brush so gorgeous. But this fact did not register on her until much later, for at the moment she was far to indignant to see it.

"You IDIOT!" she screamed "You proposed to me with a HAIRBRUSH?" She reached out and boinked him on the forehead with it! Pietro sat, back stunned, and rubbed the emerging lump on his pate. Bertha howled derisive laughter and went to the doorway, flinging open the front door with a whoop.

"Look at this! This idiot tried to propose to me with a damned BRUSH, for god's sake! Not even the decency to buy a ring!"

In response to the young girls bellowing, a small crowd soon gathered from the neighborhood, among them Mrs. Buzzelli and her long-suffering husband. Bertha, brush in hand, stormed down the walk and went into the story for the third time when Pietro appeared in the doorway, his embarrassment obvious.

"Bertha, why are you doing this to me?" I've treated you so good.."

"Because you're a PEASANT, that's why!" Bertha turned and threw the brush at Pietro. Missing it's mark entirely, the brush sailed past Pietro and through his front window. The crowd laughed. Pietro retreated inside after it, emerging moments later with a look in his eye Bertha had not seen before. Shoving through the crowd to Papa Buzzelli, Pietro conferred with the elder Italian briefly and then turned to face Bertha. Without saying a word, he grabbed her by the arm and marched back towards the house. Seating himself on the edge of the porch, Pietro grabbed the squealing Bertha and hauled her across his knee. Yelling in Italian about how she had disgraced and embarrassed him he, aimed the brush at her behind before anybody realized what he was doing. SWAT!

Mama Buzzelli, leapt forward. "I'll break his arms, he hits my daughter!". But Papa John's big hand clamped her shoulder firmly, and she knew she wasn't going to do any such thing.

SWAT! SWAT! The hairbrush landed painfully on the seat of Bertha's skirt. She clamored on in rapid-fire Italian, but Pietro didn't stop for a long time...

Whap! "AAAiiiyeee!"The more Bertha wailed her protestations, the more Pietro was determined to take her down a notch. The brush was a blur of motion, and dear Bertha was eventually reduced to a puddle of apologies.

It was two days before Bertha could sit comfortably again, and another week after that when she finally consented to marry Pietro.

I remember watching my grandmother brushing her long silvery hair with that brush when I was a child growing up in Bethel Lake. I also remember its occasional sting on my behind, much as I remember the stings of the bees that pollinated the tomatoes in my grandfather's garden.