“SI SI I WAS ADOPTIVe ANCOR” from Christmas in naples is a sport…
where I try to tell my cousins the story of what happened to me in a language I don’t know, in a region that can blow…
“What do you mean?”
Carmine shoved food in his mouth. “What do you eat?”
Staring at them—blank—my heart skipped fast, not knowing how to answer this question. Why were my eating habits of such concern to them? I hated talking about this, and at the same time, I saw in their eager faces a chance. I didn’t want to talk about how I spent more time in other people’s kitchens than my own, however that’s where I tended to park.
“At home, with my father? It depended on the day. Lunch was well, cold cuts from the Italian market, parmesano, sourdough, and avocado.”
Italian flew fast between them with gestures, sometimes to me. I mostly understood the back and forth but was not adept enough with the language to interject at the same speed. I had learned another language already so I knew what stage I was in—the delay. It required patience and stamina, a skill that we, as children, we used without thinking. We absorbed—listened—observed.
I rode the sound of their voices like waves that swept me away to a vast landscape that stretches in all directions, desolate, open, with some foliage that I recognize. It’s always twilight here. I deal with the mess of words, regardless of my actual location, swinging on Latin or Greek roots like trees, sometimes landing on a branch, sometimes my bottom, which usually makes me laugh and in turn, confuses others. The ground changes in topography, weather. Sometimes, it is quite a climb into the fog in which I can stay for a time while people speak to me like I am thick. Do I walk across it? I tumble, flip, fly, I even trail. I break down and cry in a heap of nonsensical rubble. It makes me laugh, thinking about a baby doing this, on the outside, which startled them.
Their words fell from the sky like rain. When they landed, they transformed into pictures and objects. I couldn’t be certain that they actually corresponded with what they tried to say. A “robe” drops—a bathrobe—but what they meant was stuff—it’s the images and objects that look strange, together, given the context of our conversation, so I asked for clarification. My mind was littered with objects: dolls, forks, mothers and fathers, beds, paper and gravel.
“Maria, Maria…”
Carmine hovered above their voices.
“Hai capito…?”
When reduced to a basic, juvenile language, back to clown school, again, so that made me laugh—hard. Like my Italian headmistress said in French: “You can fail with panache!” She puffed her chest out, proud, when she said it. My story was too complicated, though, even in English, let alone a language that I didn’t speak. So great, a challenge. A fit of incoherence, inebriating, I had not the capacity, the actual capacity to tell these people what happened, but they couldn’t stop asking me questions. And the more I spoke, the more ridiculous my story became. I rumbled with my hands, made Flora laugh like I was sweet and stupid. I liked throwing in “Americanisms” at Franco. But he had other plans this evening, the giant window behind him like a two-way at a police station at night.
“LA ZIA MARIA LA ZIA?? What happened to the “ZIA JOHANNA RAFFAELLE.”
I looked at Franco with a slice of cake. You wanna know, chief, what happened to the AUNT? You wanna know, finger between us, “SI,” he said simply.
“She doesn’t speak to her…” Carmine said against the radiator, passing on the cheese.
“So, Maria, Asiago. Did I want Asiago?”
“MARIA?” Flora rang.
“Si,” Carmine subtly lifted his nose, hovering there with owl eyes.
“Do you want Asiago?”
“Why don’t you speak to her?”
Franco asked.
“Chocolato!”
I pleaded with him.
“Marmalata, Maria?”
He was joking.
“No, I do not SPEAK!”
I made the universal symbol for talk.
“Are these crab claws?”
Franco made like a crab, clamping at both ears, shoulders a little raised, with an alligator smile. We entered an abstract universe as crabs searching for meaning. Flora cracked up, about to apologize for Franco still acting like a crab. I stopped her. “I like these” crab claws “to speak in metaphor,” about the dark waters I was in. Franco was also right. I gave him the palm of appreciation. He took it.
“Tutto è nero alla profundità della mare…”
Everything is black, I said, at the depth of the seas…
He echoed. I got up. “When you is not SERIOUS!”
“LA ZIA, MARIA,” he was a man who wanted information.
“Nicoletta” was a master baker.
“Grande,” I said.
Moist and soft, it wasn’t too sweet, rather dark and tart, with bits of chocolate, delectable. We had a “buono” break.
“Buono, buono? Buono, si si buono…buono.”
“It’s the sym, symbol? Representa…”
Franco grained away.
“Symbol…”
“SCUSA Maria…”
Carmine turned his cheek.
“For talk…”
“Maria…”
Franco began…eyeing the cake.
“When you talk…” I said.
“No,” he said, arms crossed. “When YOU, you talk, you need to talk.”
“I’m asking a simple question,” he continued, a cop. “What happened to the ZIA…”
“The name is JANE,” I looked into both his eyes. “WE ARE DEAD IF SHE HEARS THIS NAME JOHANNA RAFFAELLE. DEAD.”
“JAYNE.” I felt bad, in a posture of formal apology, a bow. I couldn’t lie.
“Si, si,” he had tight teeth, amused. “Say it again Maria…where is she from?”
He bent over with a tight smile to hear me better and brought himself upright.
“NEW JERSEY,” a flashy announcer. Through the laughter, he said it again.
“Neeeew Jersey…” He put his body into it. “Si, si,” tight smile, “New JERSEY…”
“Do you SPEAK? SPEAK? TO THE ZIA, MARIA!” Suddenly switching FRANCO WAS BACK ON THE CASE. “Franco NO!” In a tight cuff, he swept me in. “Perché no?”
“It happened again! Franco!”
Franco put down, kindly, clementines.
I looked at them, at him, rocking on his heels.
“MARIA LA ZIA, LA ZIA…”
“Tutto boom!”
“Tutto boom?”
“Tutto boom!”
“Maria, tutto boom? MARIA? Tutto boom?”
“Tutto boom…”
“Maria tutto boom?”
“Tutto boom…”
They didn’t understand why I was laughing.
“MARIA? TUTTO BOOM?”
“I was adoptive! SI! Ancor!”
“ANCORA Maria,” they corrected me.
“I speak Neapolitan like you!”
“POSSSO,” can I, please! Speak Neapolitan like YOU.”
“Brav.”
Flora looked up a solid person in the middle of this splashing around—ringing through. “MA-ria? Adopted? But Maria, you weren’t adopted…”
“I know!” I got up. What do they know? Hands up. Did I? Sat down. I was though I wasn’t. I went dark, can I say that? Wait. “COME,” I kept saying “like” which didn’t make sense. “META.” Laughing. “QUASI,” Were they right? Was I always wrong? “She said it, okay?” Evidence. "It was true. It was, wasn’t it?” Their faces: my story was so ridiculous. I laughed. Holy shit. “She said it. I was like her daughter. She said it, she did. I know she said that. She said I was like her daughter.” I was repeating myself.
“Wasn’t this nice?”
Franco asked.
Shaking, basically, I had no idea!
Fast words flew between Franco and Flora playing a close match, a team. They tended to disagree with Carmine, but he was always right, though sometimes he wasn’t.
“You were like her daughter? La zia?”
“OUBLIE!”
I cried in French.
“LA TANTE.”
Carmine didn’t break his composure.
“BASTA CON LA ZIA.”
I poofed. The word for “to forget.”
“DIMENTICARE,” I pointed to Carmine suddenly standing. He nodded, arms crossed, good. Then, he looked off when I said “I forget,” not “you forget.” Though both might have been true. “Emotions,” I said. “Difficile.”
I brought in Carmine for a round of charades.
“No,” I laughed, “in the language, to speak…”
“SPEAK!”
“EMOTIONS DIFFICILE!”
But of course, they didn’t speak another language.
“WITH THE LANGUAGE. WHEN YOU SPEAK ANOTHER….okay,” I clapped, “OH kay, okay, OH kay,” the echoed. I gripped onto the sides of nothing. Must focus. “Focus,” I said in French, cracking up. “Perspectivo.” And as “aahhh,” came from Flora, I turned the wheel—quick. “In marriage, there are…two people…the words for this…” Franco said something funny. Flora thought, a pensive person. Carmine watched me walk down an aisle.
“SONO?”
Who am I?
His brows raised, he said, you know, “no lo so.”
“THE BRIDE,” Franco punched in.
“The bride,” Flora said.
“E…”
Carmine looked over to the side. I lifted my palm high and turned it in a large circle to indicate “the person with whom I make this marriage…” Franco cracked up at my palm.
“WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE?”
“No lo so,” Flora said, simply.
“Her son,” who? “LA ZIA!”
“The mariage Carmine! The bride of her son!”
“She said…”
“Groom, GROOM, ahhhhhhh (Flora), the GROOM Maria the GROOM…”
“SO THE SON THE WIFE THE ZIA HER SON HER DAUGHTER.”
“SI, NO, SI, SI, SI.”
“THE SON OF THE ZIA? HIS WIFE?”
I said “si,” as if this would make sense to them, “SI,” as if it didn’t make sense to me, “SI,” as if I was lost, you know, just lost, couldn’t help but laugh. I realized that I never spent Christmas with my father, actually, so I gasped, suddenly, wide-eyed. “What’s happening?” Flora rang “Maria?” What am I saying? Confused. Guilty. Defensive. Oh my God. Wait, too tense. “I DID NOT DO…” What is the truth conceptually? Chaos! Franco held down the perimeter. “SPEAK!” Where are you?! He was there,” I patted the air, “BUT NO.” I was in another family. “What?” Holding my hand out, did that even mean anything? “After everything she did for me,” who knows what I said. Franco was SICK and TIRED of this phrase! Another one? “It didn’t make sense,” Franco had to be honest, whatever it was. “Si,” Flora agreed. They didn’t understand it conceptually, “wasn’t this family?” “Si,” Flora said.
I laughed.
I mean, was it?
“Who?”
“What?”
“I can say that?”
Franco gave me a palm.
“Can you say what?”
“Was it nice?”
He didn’t know. They couldn’t know. I didn’t want to be ingrateful, which they didn’t get, my complex of gratitude. My head in my hands, cracking up, lifting it to regard this scene a moment. Thanks to this family, I celebrated Christmas. What a mess.
“Alright,” Franco said, “tutto boom,” we got there.
We drove through a terrible, awesome blizzard that day as if there was no such thing as space. Flashes of houses, cars. Pure confusion. Nothing was solid. That was okay. Franco’s just interpreting me now at this age, you’re confused? I laughed. “You appear confused. How could you NOT be confused? Given away to a Brazilian mother when you are FOUR FOR UNKNOWN REASONS?!” The whole thing crashed. I laughed. “The same thing.” In a sense. Why do I have to talk about this, do I have to, am I insincere?
“No is real, but maybe it was real, she said it, I got sort of adopted again, but yes, this was my ‘real family,’” I made air-quotes, “how amusing.”
“What happened to the Brazilians?”
“They’re done! Gone.”
“No one even knows why you were there…”
I couldn’t tell them that.