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public workers as they did in Calabria.
    â€œ Why can’t we make any progress here, like in the North?” he said.
    â€œYour father doesn’t really want to leave,” Mother told us after one of his outbursts. “He’d be happier if we all moved to Milan.”
    When Father left in September, Mother kept telling everyone that, for her, the main advantage of Father going to Canada was that the family would be able to live together in one place.
    Before leaving, without telling my mother, he bought my brother a bicycle.
    To me he made a promise. One day, in the piazza, he sat me in Don Cesare’s car and said, “When you turn twenty-one in America, I’ll get you a car. You’ll learn how to drive like one of the americane in the movies. You can be whatever you want to be there…
a teacher… a lawyer… a doctor.”
    â€œI want to be a teacher,” I said.
    When I was not in school or at the seamstress’s shop, I spent my free time in church. Every time I went to confession, Don Raffaele would urge me, “Pray that you become a saint.” Maybe Don Raffaele said this to everyone he confessed, but he singled me out enough times to make me feel he was grooming me for sainthood. Even before I could read, I belonged to the Catholic Action Movement. One could belong to this group from childhood to adulthood; each age group was identified by a different name, from the Piccolissime to Donne . Boys and girls met separately once a week with a group leader who read stories about saintly people who dedicated their lives to the service of others. Every month we received a magazine from Rome that taught us about the Catholic missions in Africa, South America, and many other parts of the world. There were rules and regulations, and each year we were given different parole d’ordine, words to live by. The one I remember best was saper sorridere sempre – know how to smile always. The selfless saintly life was what we were taught to aim for, so each night I prayed, “God, help me become a saint.”
    I didn’t imagine myself as just any old saint, one who simply prayed, went around blessing people, and performing miracles, but rather the type who earned her halo through acts of charity and heroism. We children used to exchange holy pictures of saints who were our heroes. Saint Maria Goretti was one of my favourites. She was a young girl who let herself be beaten to death rather than succumb to a rapist. Naturally, she was the patron saint of chastity. One picture of her was worth two or three ordinary ones. It was the same for Saint John Bosco, who was everyone’s favourite. The patron saint of children, he helped wayward kids find their way. In pictures, he is depicted with children staring at him adoringly, like a teen idol.
    While I was still in kindergarten, and still a Piccolissima, Don Raffaele chose me to recite a poem in church on the occasion of the Pope’s birthday. Mother read it out loud until I learned it perfectly. At the altar, standing on a chair in front of the microphone, I saw the sea of faces looking up at me, and I panicked. My mind went blank. The priest came up next to me, and whispered the first line, “ Noi siam le piccolissime del nostro buon Gesù .” I recited the rest. Afterwards I ran to my mother and hid my face in her lap, ashamed that I had forgotten my lines. But that didn’t deter Don Raffaele from putting me on stage again.
    On a Sunday early fall afternoon, just before the start of school, the priest came to speak to us at one of our meetings. He gave us the happy news that a big celebration was planned for the Feast of the Rosary. The village’s masons had built a new house for the priest and a grotto with a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes outside the church. Under his house, adjacent to the church, would be a theatre, so he could show films all year long. As part of the celebration, a play of the story