That's where the internet trail ends. He was my great-great grandfather. I don't know much about my ancestral family on either side, but I've gathered this much through online searches of a name I only first heard last July. The Villella family, my paternal grandmother's Italian line, held a family reunion for the Pennsylvania branch of the family, the first reunion in at least 10 years. From stories of that early reunion, which I had missed because I was with my mom and custody battle wounds were still fresh, I knew Villellas had also extended to Argentina. Including, some said, a famous singer or dancer, but they could never remember his name. When my dad told me about this year's reunion, I made it my mission to get contact information for the family here, hoping some of them might have even made the trip to Ambridge's rural Old Economy park for the Italian-style picnic (with homemade gnocchi & homemade wine).
When my sister and I walked up to the pavilion, we didn't even know if we were at the right place. A woman writing name tags asked us, "Paolo, Natale, or Gaetano?"
"Uh," I said, "Carmella was our grandmother. Did you know her?" My father's mother had died last Halloween, an event I missed because I was at school in Spokane. Dad said he didn't blame me, that if I wanted he'd pay for a plane ticket but he understood I had responsibilities with school. While that was true, I also had been planning a huge Halloween party for a month, before she had her stroke. She died at 1:30 a.m. the morning before the party. I held it anyway, but I've felt some guilt ever since. And with my father, to whom I haven't spoken since I left for Buenos Aires, I know it continued to be a sore spot.
The woman, whose name is Gina, had been at my grandmother's funeral. She said happily, "Oh, Gaetano!" and handed both Taryn and me green nametags. Blue was for descendants of Paolo, red for Natale. I asked her about the Argentine family, and she directed me to her mother, the tiny matriarch Aunt Mary, who spoke from time to time, in Italian, to the head of the family here. She had even made the trip to Buenos Aires a few years ago, welcomed by the porteño Villellas as one of their own. She was sure it was Buenos Aires---the city I would live in only three months later---or somewhere just outside. This family had descended from cousins of Gaetano, who'd emigrated south from Italy around the same time he and his brothers went stateside.
Gina took my email address, and after several attempts to get an email for a younger, English-speaking Argentine Villella, she said all she could give me was a phone number for Natalio, the patricarch, whose only languages are Spanish and Italian. When I got here, I was too intimidated to call. My castellano is piss-poor---I'm only good at restaurant exchanges---and I didn't want to sound stupid to these long-lost relatives. Then, this month, Gina sent me Natalio's address. It had been on the envelope of the Christmas card he sent them.
This morning I sent a letter to Natalio Villella, introducing myself as the great-grandson of Bruno Villella, first son of Gaetano. I told him my Spanish is poor and that I don't have a phone, but I gave him my email and the house address is on the envelope. Maybe, if I meet them, I'll see my face or my aunts' faces in this welcoming family of Spanish-speaking porteños. I think of Gaetano sometimes---even his name is exotic. I imagine naming my son Gaetano to keep the name and memory alive. A hundred years ago, a young man in his early twenties set off to a foreign country he'd never seen before in order to start a new life.
History repeats.
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