(Aunt Jane called me the phantom when I first arrived in New Jersey after I spent four years on Miracle Mile… at the Brazilian-Jewish house…because my mother paid her to protect me from my father, the child molester…)
I made a poof with my hands.
“Sono la…phantome…”
“C’è cosa…”
Franco air-quoted back.
“Phantome?” He pinched his fingers in the kitchen. “Phantome, scusa, Flora…Maria, I’m sorry but what is up with the bunny ears?” He air-quoted. “What are these bunny ears you’re putting on around words in the air…?”
I could tell that there have been “discussions” happening behind the scenes about “the bunny ears.”
Flora was pinching her nose. “Phantome…Maria…C’è cosa…? C’è vuoi dire…?
I started waving my arms in the air, like they did in that movie, Angels in the Outfield.
“When you die, but you’re not really dead…”
I made ghost sounds, which made us all laugh. These did not translate, but the Napolitanos were mildly game for a round of charades with Maria.
Carmine snapped his fingers at me in hunter green, scoop neck.
“Fantasma!”
“Si!”
I applauded him.
“Bravo, Carmine…”
Franco presented Flora her son.
Since my arrival, they didn’t let on about the bunny ears, I could tell. However, my story and my comportement which is a word in French with a greater wingspan: behavior, attitude, performance, conduct, together inspired many a person to treat me as a little “special."
I could imagine the scene; she comes with an outrageous nonsensical story, crazy curly hair and a black Mongolian fur coat too and she’s putting bunny ears on words. The Napolitanos only seemed to want to know more, and never did their engagement with me stop. I couldn’t tell them everything, nor could I say that, I had to negotiate the truth in the moment, that is, focus.
My eyes were turning about the room in an attempt to figure out the word of quotation marks in Italian. It was pointless—“Guillemets?”—I laughed at the French word; I couldn’t stop. They didn’t understand. It’s—I gave them a gesture for “emphasis,” and “when you…speak the words of another person but it’s not the same…symbol in Italian?”
“You know…” I was giggling as I had taken a whole bowl of lentils and green olives on a plastic plate—I was stunned with a short red Saperle in a plastic glass but just slightly, before catching myself. Filippo the canary was tweeting on the other side of the window as flames simmered vegetables low. I pointed to the bowl, “the my,” I said. Carmine was not pleased. “My father and…me ate this ma soup.”
Miraculously, somehow, Carmine had followed this dialogue so well that it startled Franco and Flora. As clear as a bell, he nodded that infatti this form of punctuation was employed in Italian along with—he gave me two pie signs. “Lentils are a common dish.” To Franco and Flora’s growingly amused faces, Carmine attempted to ascertain the meaning of these bunny ears. He cleared his throat.
“Is this significant…only…to you? Or do other people do…this too? What is the meaning,” he pinched his fingers, “of this?” He clapped his hands, suddenly, and Flora came to the table with risotto con mushrooms. “Eat, eat, eat!” Franco cried along with “Speak, speak, speak!”
Franco remarked on how I took my wine. He found this funny.
“Napolitane,” he pointed and Flora nudged at me, nodding in approval of his observation. “No, Maria,” they cascaded, “this is how people around here typically take their wine…or, it is,” Franco threw it back and grunted in amusement. “Small shots,” he jiggled an invisible cup. “Ssi, ssi, little bits at a time…” Franco, Flora, and Carmine were having carne well-done. He could tell emotion was coming to the surface though he couldn’t fit together what he felt and what he saw on my face—insisting on skating on the razor sharp edge of laughter—listening to my epic, precious tale shredded to confetti falling about me.
Carmine brought another bottle of still water. They didn’t have any wine. And, of course, they asked me questions about wine, my relationship to it. If I drank it often. I was already skidding fast—I was two degree of separations away from my native tongue which made it easier to strike a match and tip and fall on my ass, trying to talk, laughing. “Well, no…I mean,” I looked at the glass. “Speak, Maria, speak…” Franco said.
“Well, my mother was an alcohol?” I shook the glass. “This is why, I drink small glasses.” I had no idea why I had just said that. They watched me freeze, blink, and slink back to my neutral stance in the chair.
Franco blurted like a bullhorn through our laughter, Flora nasalizing—“MA MARIA, I’ve understood nothing of this story of yours…your mother was an alcohol, who, which? Drank?” He got doctoral, “when? This, this is tough, it’s not an easy thing, this condition.”
“Eh—“ Flora shook her head like the truth was the truth.
“She went to the casa of the, the, my mama Brasiliana,” and I gave them the walk of shame; Dr. Joy only came over, “well, dr…”
“Ma, do you talk to your mother?”
“No!” I laughed.
“Why?”
Now, I snapped like Jane. “Perché?”
Franco got quizzical.
Flora asked plainly. “Maria, do you want chocolate, Panettone, or permissions,” her thumb touched the edge of the giant ceramic fruit bowl over her left shoulder—“Fruit? Cheese? Terrone? Maybe chocolate dipped,” she pointed and frowned towards the commode on the other side of the sliding door. “The girlfriend of Emilio made a flourless chocolate cake.” It was sitting on the microwave with a napkin over it.
“I…know…” I gave Flora the Pope’s fingers. “Peace. There was a little doll,” I arrived to say to Flora smiling at me like I was a little special, “in the empty bar at my home; the Pope giving the sign: Peace be with you, no grazie.”
Franco wanted me to eat the cookies of Santa Lucia. He pinched in my face “THE EYES OF SANTA LUCIA,” and he delivered his next line as if each word was the operative one: “Eyes that see in the darkness,” he shrugged. “Santa Lucia.”
Suddenly, there was a plastic plate with saran wrap over it with glazed sugar cookies. Swept into their gestures, I had no idea what they were saying but “a patient” left Franco an offering, and Carmine whipped up a warning with a finger—the presents of food were coming. “Here,” he pointed with owl eyes at the table, “in this region pure everywhere, “Doctors, urologists,” he cracked up at his father who, in response, demonstrated Flora’s son, “are like Gods here. No, you don’t understand, around this time; the Feast of Santa Lucia, the offerings of tiny,” he picked invisible delights, “sweets, normalement, arrive and arrive,” he regarded around sharp corners. “It is custom.”
Everyone felt that I had imploded.
“Domani,“ Flora assured me. “E La Festa di Santa Lucia. The thirteenth. Are you a po’ confused?” I staring at the food I’d just eaten that I couldn’t but did somehow. “Jet-lag?”
“Again?” I asked.
Frowning, Flora was confused. “Ma, Maria, penso di si…”
“E?”
“E? Mangiamo…Maria…” With finesse, she encircled me with her fingers and pinched at me. “What do you think we’re doing?”
“What are we going to eat?”
“Gattò…”
“Come French?”
“Ah, si, ma no. It’s a traditional food from here. Normalement, on this feast day, Maria, we do not eat bread—“ she put it in her mouth and with a devilish twinkle in her eye asked, “Did you understand? No bread and no pasta. Inside, there is mozzarella and salami and Parmesano—o pure, o pure o pure…”
“Pure…” I began, not knowing what this meant—“also”—but I was gathering the gist. I could never be sure until I was. I never assumed that I knew anything. I loved food, though, and my workspace is my kitchen. This is where I write. I told them this, which made them giggle at me, trying not to. “Sempre scrivi, Maria, you’re always writing: scrivi, scrivi, scrivi, what,” he pinched his fingers, “are you writing, two artists in the house, now, Flora, what are we going to do?” My eyes were focusing on him like a sniper. I didn’t hide, and Franco acquiesced to my perspective that we didn’t have to talk about yet.
“Io penso,” I think, I said.
“Ssi, ssi, io penso, io penso, Maria?” They chimed in.
“Can I help?” I clapped like a monkey with cymbals. “I like watching…people cook.”
“Si… Maria, certo,” and my sincere enthusiasm over this domanda was remarkable to her. “You don’t know how to cook? No one…” she trailed off. “What did you eat a casa per esempio?” She eyed me suspiciously and gestured to the pots on the stove. “No ho capito.”
Franco was defeated. “She doesn’t eat and she doesn’t know how to cook. MA did your father cook? What did he cook? What did your…mama cook? What do you eat? We want to know…”
“What do you mean?”
Carmine shoved food in his mouth. “What do you eat?”
Staring at them—blank—my heart was skipping fast not knowing how to answer this question. Why was the subject of 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 the fact that I spent more time in other people’s kitchens than my own, even, however this was 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.
A lot of fast Italian flew 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 already learned another language so I knew what stage I was in—the delay. It required patience and stamina. It required a skill that we, as children, we did without thinking. We absorbed—listened—observed. I rode the sound of their voices like waves that swept me away to a place I voyage to when I’m constructing meaning in speaking languages.
It’s a vast landscape that stretches in all directions; desolate, open, with some foliage that I recognize. It’s always twilight here, for whatever reason. I deal with the mess of words here, 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 quite a climb into the fog in which I can stay for a time while people speak to me like I were 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.
They took a moment to land and when they did, they transformed into pictures, objects, but I couldn’tbe certain that they actually corresponded with what they were trying to say. A “robe” dropped—a bathrobe—but what they meant is stuff for example—it’s usually these images, objects that look strange, together, given the context of our conversation, which was usually when 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, even juvenile language, it was 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. It was too complicated, even in English, let alone a language that I didn’t speak. I was in a fit of incoherence, and it was 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 rumbledmy hands, which made Flora laugh at me like I was sweet and stupid. I liked throwing in “Americanisms” at Franco.
“But what happened with this family…speak?” Franco was definitive, “speak with your zia, Johanna Rafaela…”
I made an explosion with my hands. “This family too—like Vesuvio.”
Both their heads turn towards Carmine whose eyes are large and wide like an owl with thin glasses. “No lo so…” what’s she’s saying, in other words. “Difficile,” he said. “It seems,” he scratched his scruffy beard. “She’s saying that this family too, exploded.” Franco turned to me in fear. He mirrored the gesture back, “Metaphorically, si, Meri?” Everyone giggled, and Carmine defended himself: “Well, you never know…Dr. Joy, a doctor of economics…?”
I was surprised myself that he followed along quite well.
“…Is now being chauffeured around and going to mysterious places such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi in Mercedes of which there are two for reasons we do not know and cannot ask about? So, you’re speaking metaphorically, no? This family also…fell apart Merí?”
His beard he’d trim in a couple weeks when it was time for him to put the guitar away and become a doctor; a moment that would break my heart in two ways. As Franco says, “there’s no money in music…” Lavoro, lavoro, lavoro.
“So,” Franco clarified the facts. “Alora, what happened…?”
“I had a mother in this family…”
“Johanna Rafaela…”
“Jane, scusa, she was very dura, as in “hard” in the feminine, about this. No, the person who…was like my mother…adopt…adoptiva?”
“Wait, another Mama? Not the Brazilian…” He took a deep breath, “not your Mama…”
I made a “quasi” sign to which Franco made tricky winds for little bird wings. Sometimes, I got the impression that he was delighted by me, as still, a little kid with a mushroom cut. I clapped in my face and his. “No Brazilian…”
They encouraged me along. “She was from Connecticut, this is also a culture, or!” I put up a finger, “I came to find out thanks to someone also from this commune. So,” I thought back, and began to frame this within the context of a desire that they historically and experientially understood at its roots. “My grandparents left…for the American…Dr…eam, no? Dream. I think this begins here…secondo me.” I learned that from Emma: “in my opinion.” No one validated me because they didn’t know what I knew in Italian and what I didn’t.
-
I think this is a better version of this section — though I exploded around the alcoholism, so I’ll figure out that part, if that comes later, something, since “FINALLY,” Franco said. “Here’s a reaction.” So that seems like an important moment, because I end up saying that his unmerited statement about me — he asked me, do you drink? No. Not outside of rare moments with Vico, quite frankly, alright? I don’t drink. He always pours me a generous glass, and when I’m eating lunch with them, and I also don’t eat lunch with them that often, right. It’s just a — I can’t. Not on this one. The point is, Franco asked me this without merit, I had given him NO reason to. Fishing for problems, and he admitted it. With a story like this… right, right right, the assumption is I would have problems and people don’t understand how they can encourage problems. Another hurdle. I felt. Just crazy. I interviewed an addiction specialist, who said that often when it comes to addiction, you have to treat the whole family, in fact, due to how dynamics function. So that’s another moment. And they still do, fish for problems, when go look at someone else. Teeth. I mean, I had to cut some people off, too, to be honest, just because alcohol is one of these — flashy, flashes, nothing but flashes, of “ironic phrases” on towels, or people just wanting to go on vacation and drink, and um, no one seems to have a problem with that. I’m cruising out… okay? Shit’s crazy down there.
In any case, I think this is a better section to begin with. Old drafts. So still putting it together, spending the beginning of this week, looking through what I’ve done already. In some senses it really could be in any order. Off I go.