I was a bad baby on the Feast of the immaculate conception

Our glasses swinging in the air, NA NAAAAA, NA NA NA, NA NA NA, we were back in the game with La Traviata. I got what this was — a sport. And I was prepared to meet it. Giggino, eyeing me at the head of the table came at me gator smile over the steam at 7:30 AM the next day with a plate of cookies—gift wrapped. “COMPLICATE.” No it’s not, yes it is, no it’s not, yes it is. COMPLICATE.” ‘Tis the season. Glasses swinging. Bravo! “Separelle!”

Straight outta the gate, I got a couple of “concerned parents” on my hands, a father, especially. I hadn’t even had coffee yet now receiving wine. No sugar, no sugar? Freak? COMPLICATE. But of course, my personality: problem problem problem. How am I supposed to act? I’m floating in a lone universe. Opening invisible cages, cracking up, because it was a crack up, swinging. I did that well, on top of it, “do it again!” Of course, life goes on, regardless. Hey! Lunch.

He called my father “over-protective,” Giggino, as if that would explain my story, and I hadn’t even begun. I didn’t understand where that came from, though he was “always on me,” according to Giggino, while we were here.

My father left me with a drug addict and alcoholic for over a month at a time who was getting pulled over by the police “night after night” in his words, since my word meant nothing, “for drinking, driving, and looking for sex downtown.” A direct quote from his divorce file. Does that sound overprotective? Our glasses swinging, you see, I cannot help what happened, I cannot help what their experience of my father was, I cannot help who SHE was, I cannot help the journey it took for me to get here, but I cannot change the facts. Overprotective?

Quick switch— you gotta be quick — we were singing “My Way” the reprise now. Ricotta hitting my plate. Boom, baby, Rosa—with nails of burgundy. No transition. Their intuitive group dynamic astounding. GIGGINO led the way, down low, this time, tight smile.

“Do it,” he said, “show us how you did it. Told this woman to get out of your way—do it.”

“Esci esci,” Assunta said, chuckling to herself. “Exit exit.”

“This is my way,” Giggino tapped the table. “Not your way.”

My mouth dropped, fork in hand, which they didn’t pick up on.

They didn’t understand anything I said.

*

On my way to the very first feast of Christmas on the fifth of dicembre, you know, “the one,” where I channeled La Brasiliane to be believed, I had tried to come early as this story didn’t go with Christmas to discover that it had already begun.

In Giggino’s gold Audi without leather seats, an unnecessary expense, round the rugged cliffs that rose from volcanic explosions rolling along the coast, I tried to give them a sense of it so that they would understand what kind of story we were dealing with as we passed a Hotel Sporting with six stars, mountain bikers pumping uphill.

“A Brazilian woman…came to your house? Giusto?” Giggino asked for clarification.

“Si, si, when I was four!”

“MARIA…” 

“I was the Tasmanian Devil! Do you know him?”

“Animale O cartoon?” Diordora asked, plainly.

“Both…”     

She laughed. I think she thought I was joking.    

“Piano piane,” Giggino said. “Piano piane…”

Naples was never piano piane as in piano, the instruction on a sheet of music, easy on the entry. Ascending to the left, passing “everything is going to be okay,” graffitied in red on a tight winding road cutting up a cliff, I would have to change my whole understanding of this story. How I approached it. We all have circuitry; we all have our way, carved, even, that we move through a story. I would have to change mine— get in the driver’s seat. Not give someone else have the keys. Yellow leaves falling, the brush in fall colors, this was the end of an era for me. We turned around a retro AVE MARIA gym and a dusty pink castello on a cédrat farm— a variety of citrus. Huge, bumpy lemons.

“I SAY TO HER CUGINE — THIS IS MY WAY!” Don’t you see?

“Brav.” 

“Brav?”

“Si si BRAVA MARIA…”

“I say to her cousin…”

“Si si, Maria, they got the point. BRAV.”

“IN THE DOOR! HER CUGINE.”

“Very good…”

“I SAY this is MY WAY… YOU IN MY WAY.”

“Good, brav, YES.”

“ESCI ESCI, I say! EXIT, YOU EXIT,” I tried so hard to communicate it.

“Obviously,” Carmine said.

“This is MY WAY!”

“Napolitane,” Giggino said.

“What?”

He made a sharp turn into a driveway, “it is to be expected,” Diodora said, as the car dipped.

“What?”

The gate opening, a couple soccer goals in the weeds, soccer flags waving in the breeze, we took a tight winding gravel path through a condominium complex with dogs up above barking against a fence. Carmine launched a feeling into the air like a billowing canopy to land on a point of confusion.

“Exactly,” Giggino said. “Si si, si si, si.” “She was standing in the doorway.” “Eh brav,” Giggino said, “eh,” Diodora said. “Si.” “Maybe my manner was rough, but this is a cultural trait (?), and I was four. “Now, is everyone like this? No, but everyone here understands it,” Carmine said. “Si, guisto,” Giggino said. Diodora took a deep breath. “Si,” she said, dry, curt.

“I said EXIT!”

We veered to the left, “Si, Maria, si.” He honked to alert any cars that might be coming. He laughed like a fairy Godfather now. I pushed open the DOOR in HER HOUSE. Giggino was proud.

“It was the first time!!”

“And what of it?!” A shadow cast over the car. “Who gives a shit? You’re four!”

I pointed. “Lemons!”

“Also, lemons, Maria?” Giggino asked. 

Carmine shifted his eyes. “You see a garden…”

“No,” his parents said. He hung there, shifted his eyes to me.

“Si…” I said.

I gave Carmine EYES at the lemon grove in front of us. I mimed shaking the KEYS. I pointed to Giggino’s round, ignition, to make, I mimed steering wheel, “go,” as I was too emotional just trying to communicate, to be understood, which happens in a foreign language, and this story was that. The car KEYS. BEFORE this. “Carmine!” The word for THIS. KEYS. Putting one in and turning it, desperately.

“Chiave,” his hand hung there as if it had dirt in it.

“CHAIVE?”

“Ahhhhh,” Diodora.

I gasped.

“WHAT?”

She had so many keys…I remembered that! Carmine blinked. He got it, adjusting his seat. “Before she took the keys out…” he presented the palm for “you jumped out of the car.” “WHAT? WHAT?” Lemons, sincerely, I went running out of the door. “You see a garden,” no inflection Carmine, as if all this made sense, “and you obviously want to go play…”

Giggino couldn’t STAND this story, getting out of the car.

“You’re FOUR. You see a GARDEN, and you’re going to want to go outside.”

“But it is the first time,” pleading with them to understand with one finger.

GIGGINO doesn’t give a SHIT…

I pushed open her door.

“Yes,” Giggino gets it, fatigued. “Si,” Diodora as well. Carmine raised his brows.

“OF COURSE, BRAVA.”

“I told HER CUGINE!”

“NorMALE,” Giggino honked to BLAST this nonsense away and fumbled with plastic bags in a scene of nature.

He sizzled, “zzz zzzz z.”

You see, I thought that would make sense because of how these four years went down because I was the problem, and apparently, this made sense to this Brazilian family. In my mind, I expected them to nod, “okay,” we can discuss this later, “thanks.” I can’t get to the point, because who would want to? But you can see that my LOGIC is kooky.

Oh, the bags, the BAGS! I forgot myself. I went to help them. Giggino braced himself. He had enough of my desire to help, already. Wincing. Giggino and Diodora GOT IT. Carmine stood there like Superman. He gave her one of his looks that I wasn’t supposed to see but wasn’t hidden either. He felt I got self-conscious though my face was blank. “Maria.” He collapsed with bags, bumbling with Diodora, so together, they said.

“We get the GUILT, si,” passing bags, “we GET the GUILT, si, but, si, zzzzzz, why the guilt? WHY??? Si, si.”

Carmine hung there with owl eyes like they really got it.

“I did well, the right thing,” they began reassuring me by default. They got that this was supposed to communicate something, but “what? What?” They got the “rar rar,” taking out styrofoam containers, they supported it. I was in the right. This lady standing in doorways.

“Uh, uh,” suddenly moved, eager, “I, uh, speak like this.”

“Si si,” they got it, “normale, zzz, zzz, how else was I supposed to talk? Si, si.”

Carmine held his stance — brows.

*

So imagine, after being welcomed back by a siren with my name song, feeling Assunta’s empathic nature (?), clocking tennis on TV, I was against the closet, about to appear to her at the glass. “Where’s Meri?” Proper, diffused, who knows who she’s talking to. And right when I did, we gasped at one another. She couldn’t believe what I looked like, and I couldn’t BELIEVE that

“MY WAY” by Frank Sinatra was playing on a speaker.

“MY WAY?!”

“Si si Meri,” her face so bright, “MY WAY!”

Out the glass, behind her figure, a moshpit of middle-aged men in cashmere sweaters tight in composition fired bravo like a call to arms. VICO’s cashmere limbs urged me to join him! Taken by some spirit stronger than I, wanting to smash a window, Assunta saw nothing in my electric regard but cute. I could not believe it. I swung open the front door open in a state of visible disbelief!

“My WAY?!”

They rushed me like football players — wanting translations.

Our bravos shook the canyons, and by the time we got to DOUBT — DOUBT? I punched my fist, laughing so hard at the impossibility of the task. “The people who say no is possible.” Unable to keep up with them, I SPIT IT out. Flicked it. I had to stop laughing. They were going to attack.

“ARE YOU LAUGHING, EXCUSE ME??? AT FRANK SINATR?”

In the end, we moved through the one body in an emotional moshpit, smiling, clapping, some of us too moved. Bravo. Pizzas and calzones steamed towards the house, filling my senses with old flavors, ones to remember. Giggino punched through all that with Diodora ringing clear and dry. “Maria?” Ducking beneath the canopy of bravos as the word is a real entity here, they gnawed on the first two words in English.

“Geddow MY WAY.”

They came at me.

Vico looked down at me with pride. “Brav.”

“Wasn’t it this, Maria?”

They floored me. “What?”

Smiling as if I were cute, Diodora and Giggino held up four fingers at me. I was holding a pizza. Rosa appeared. “Don worry baby.” They remarked on my issues with her taking it, not knowing what to make of it. 

“It was why we put on the song,” Giggino said, Diodora still adoring me.

“Brav,” Vico said.

“Who?”

“What?”

I couldn’t speak.

I told a woman, they said, skipping over the SMASHUP of “exit,” “this is MY WAY,” they followed that. “Get out of my way.” They understood what that meant because of Frank Sinatra. Telling some woman, they didn’t care who it was, to get out of my way was an accomplishment. I was a Neapolitan baby. Something to celebrate. They put on the song for me.

Vico’s face.

“Brav.”

Giggino looked up like “the blood was strong, nothing one could do,” an authoritarian now. He didn’t understand what this “shyness” was, since when? Everyone wanted to watch me do it, especially Giggino with a tight smile. Show us how you told this woman to get out of your way. I didn’t want to. Do it.

A note that haunted me my whole life was flipped into a triumph before I even said a word.

And then, they hit me with more doubt than I had ever experienced in my life during the first feast.

And then, I get hit with concern from Giggino.

And now, I’m a triumph once again.

*

“I WAS NOT BRAVA!”

The commentators discussed, pointed.

"Cute baby, tell em Meri!” Assunta yelled it like a coach.

“You see it, see it? Her at four? We can.”

“NOH!” I cried.

“That’s her at four, you see it? See it, yes, you can, we can.” They waved to me as the snappy four-year-old that I was inside, Diodora especially warm-hearted about the snarl, and the more I snapped, the more they appreciated me.

“I WAS NOT BRAVA!”

“MARIA?”

“NOH!”

“What’s your name then?”

“Brav.”

Carmine took a sip of water, looked over at them, didn’t change his face. He assumed his position, getting ready already. No emotion. He just got languid and droopy in his body in front of me. I laughed. Tweet tweet.

“My way Brasiliane!” Vico said.

“No Yay My Way!”

They appreciated my phrasing.

“I was a grande grande problem!”

Cristina appeared with more wine, poking at the crowd with her earthy, boisterous personality. “Allora, Maria.” Moving with swagger, frowning, she filled our glasses around the table and engaged in side conversations, telling the table what she had understood based on “the Q & A” that she recapped in her presenter’s voice: loud, clear, pulling the reigns in. She slammed-put down the bottle and got up in my face.

“What are you saying?!”

I couldn’t help but laugh, uncomfortably, they kept pushing buttons.

“What problems does a four-year-old have?”

I cast my hand once again.

“SHE GAVE ME TO ANOTHER PERSON!”

And what of it?

Ever get socked in the face?

The fish came with breadcrumbs and a light dusting of HERBS farm fresh. Gotta be quick, hmmm, delicious. Greens too — broccoli di natale. Vico: his farm. Staring at the plate, POW — they came at me FAST — what is she going looking at the plate? Giggino made a stupid, is this NEW to you? A plate of food? “Wow.”

Something about me, something about this story, though I couldn’t speak Italian might have been received as a foreign language. There’s concern but lots of disconnect. Giggino, with the demonstrative palm, couldn’t get over this adorable baby, her grit. This is what Christmas is all about. My way.

I snapped. “STOP.” Stop making me look cute!

I wasn’t, (uh oh), “no, you don’t understand.”

At four, I wasn’t cute. I wasn’t treated like that, even if I was. So their innocence, mine, my shadow, the shadow, not ever having anyone who went to bat for me even if it didn’t look pretty, that’s Giggino, I think, and he swung a bat in my face at the same time, funny how that can happen…breathless. I couldn’t always complete sentences or thoughts. Separate thought.

Nothing I said, in the way that I said it, helped to communicate the basics. So now, I’m angry, but I don’t know that. I have no awareness whatsoever in that way. I wouldn’t be able to “tell you how I felt.” So now, “how do you say,” um, thinking about IT. Carmine shifting his eyes.

“A bad baby?”

I said it in English, almost happy to inform them.

What?

Yeah, exactly.

Their faces. “COSA?”

My sincere, performed, searching, for the words in Italian. “Hmmm.” La Brasiliane called me the biggest bitch that ever was at four years old, smiling, even, for this woman had a RAZOR sharp smile, laughed in my FACE. Spoiled. Does the word “brat” even exist in Italian?

I got up.

They commented.

Carmine: on the move. He watched me point at fruit in the kitchen, positively. His eyes shifted back to the fruit… why the fruit? Maria? The crowd was SHOOTING LAMPOONING COMMENTS on top of my every feeling, move, reaction. He remained still in the chaos of it all.

“When the fruit IS NOT BUON,” I said.

They corrected my Italian.

I was impersonating them! I loved the accent, trying not to laugh, also.

“I SPEAK NEAPOLTIAN.”

“Brav,” Giggino slid it in.

“WHEN THIS,” innocently, punching it up, not knowing the difference between unconscious and conscious decision-making anymore. “IS NOT GOOD. When this…”

Carmine shifted his eyes.

This comedy routine was not working, Maria, Giggino gave it to me as an alligator at the head of the table. This one…

“What IS the word for devenir, baby,” underscore, “an adult.”

“BAD! NO IS BUON for ETERNITY! The FRUIT is not good for eternity.” Didn’t you know? Even. Was it a foreign song? So unfamiliar to you? Hmmmm, Giggino wasn’t too sure.

They…called my foul in sounds. I was out of bounds. Zooming in on them really fast— what is this? Diodora hit me with a dry ring — karate chop — “Maria?”

“Monster?”

I wondered, even pleased to tell them, nodding at Carmine, “is that how you say it, ohhhh, how…?” How lovely to learn, know. Learn. I didn’t have “lovely,” so “interesting,” I turned my hand through the adjectives that I knew, “amusing, splendido,” I said like Vico.

They grained back. “Monster?”

“Si, si,” I seared like Diodora. Tried to. Capture her.

“What is this?”

Carmine’s thought trailed off.

“MERI?” Rosa rang in.

“What is she doing?”

I was laughing. She’s joking. No, their reactions made me laugh for the love of GOD. I mean, this was the weirdest comedy routine to Giggino. It’s NOT WORKING, Maria, his hands opening across my statement.

“When the fruit is BAD…”

“It’s a word…”

Yes, they shuffled past it.

“In English to say, a bad baby.”

“Si si si…”

“When the fruit…” I gave a palm.

“is bad…”

“Si, si…” Carmine trailed off.

“This is an expression in English for a baby?” Assunta.

I had to laugh.

“Babies? Rotten FRUIT?”

They were aghast.

“A beast in a baby?” Assunta, interested.

“Separelle,” Vico shrugged tensely at my laughter at him and poured me more wine. He wasn’t that moved in any direction, which was funny, “anche brute,” he pulled it out from within me with magical blue eyes. “Napoli anche brute…” it’s fine, there’s a real brutal side to Naples. It’s okay. But it wasn’t, “OH?” Collectively. “It wasn’t BRUTE,” when they just reflected the opposite. “What else would you CALL THIS?” Vico let the crowd be, they existed, nothing we could do about it. “Ancay Francay,” he reminded me on the pour. “If not BRUTE.”

“Yes,” I assured them. “I was a grande problem.”

They were not afraid of awkward pauses, seconds…

No one tried to change the subject.

I can’t run off, I can’t just spill out in English. I didn’t want to be here.

Throwing my hand, big, over there, again, my gestures large and excellent to them.

“MARIA WHY—” Pinches.

“She GAVE ME TO ANOTHER PERSON!”

Trying to be curious, positive, gay, “away, Carmine, how do you say? Away?”

“And WHAT of it? WHAT?”

“My Way Brasiliane.” A hand. Vico.

Well, wide-eyed, in a kind of Groundhog’s Day, “I had problems…”

“WHAT PROBLEMS…?”

“Bathroom.” Quick maneuver. I had to.

They insisted, as they do, rubbing it in, what problems does a four-year-old have? I couldn’t help but laugh. Her voice in my head— the biggest bitch that ever was! YOU, were, the biggest bitch that ever was. Unable to hear, too much.

*

Okay, I thought, sliding the door closed: safe space. Silverware clinking; they were singing. NA NA NA. I was so full I couldn’t breathe. I was pacing. Running water in the bathroom so that no one could hear what I was doing to catch myself. What am I doing? Why don’t they get it? What do they think they get? Confused. Can’t look in mirrors. Joy covered her office walls in mirrors…just didn’t want to get caught up there.

My mother took the top floor of our townhouse for her office, and this set-up of mirrors perked my interest at four because Joy was so bizarre. Her psychology became a point of fascination. This was the first working metaphor I had for her. This was “kinda like her.” And this story could feel like a strange mirror.

“My way,” taking a breath. This stupid phrase marked me for life. I wasn’t sure if that was the right note to strike across these years, blinking, who cares, get over it, but how was I supposed to counter GIGGINO coming for me the second I stepped out of this bathroom?

How do I do this?

Preparing for the next round, I would have to — with fists —tackle the problem this time proactively, positively, with a little show and tell. We can, we can.

*

“Pensiamo…”

“Pensiamo, Maria, pensiamo…”

Let us think.

I approached the glass in the living room. Pensiamo. They laughed. It satisfied me. I tried to have fun with it, at least, I don’t know. I laughed. A lot. Go ahead. Not a big deal. Sure. I put my chin into it like Giggino.

“My favorite film, cinema…” I shrugged. “Cartoon.” They laughed. I did. There was nothing appropriate about this story, you see. In formal postures, “my favorite cartoon at four years old was Santa Claus sta arrivando alle commune. Santa Claus is coming to the communes. I knew what I sounded like.

“In questo cartoon,” I made a fist that opened, “Fred Astaire did la voce…” the voice.

All at once, “Fred Astaire?”

“Si si, Fred ASTAIRE.”

“Ah bello.”

“Si si,” I said like Diodora, “Fred Astaire, bello.”

“Bello voice.”

“Si si, bello bello.”

“Molto…”

“Bello, si si, bello voice.”

“Bello bello.”

Carmine stood on stage with me, the living room, as the official translator.

“She always did this,” they said, “si si,” “what?”

“Put on shows, for us…”

“Really?”

“DON’T YOU REMEMBER?!”

Assunta showed the hula hoop in the air. “OHHHH,” they said, acting like it was amazing, her especially. “WOW.” That’s what you do, Giggino shrugging. “With Rosa.” I didn’t know I did that here too. Si, si, all the time. “True?” “Si, si true.” They were so shocked that I didn’t remember, but do they remember what they were like as a kid? I would blank at moments like these because this is what I wanted to do back then, I also didn’t go in that direction at all, which they didn’t understand. They would forget so much, too, so going through this ten years later, I sort of put up my hands, since they don’t remember any of this. It’s not a critique, I just can’t forget.

Giggino, cheek, “MARIA?”

Right. I blanked. I made an arch in the air through time to cast us there in their terms, pointing at them. “In this story, also profound…” I tapped the air with pinches like Diodora, a bird of paradise. “HOW Santa Claus is Santa Claus…”

Diodora said “aahhhh,” as I rocked a baby.

“This is Santa Claus in the future…”

“He was first a bambine.”

Si si sisisisisisisisisi, si, on the same page.

I’m standing in the living room trying to tackle this “proactively.”

I rang a doorbell as his “Mama.” I left the baby at the door and ran away, fingers pinching a hooded cloak, looking around sharply, ensuring no one was around. I had to laugh. They were impressed with my characterization. I had to perform to keep up with them.

“But why?” So caring, invested, Rosa, “why is she leaving the baby?” She asked.

“I do not…know…” brows raised like Carmine.

The people I told, often, in my experience, searched for a reason across the board. “WHY did she do what she did?” I didn’t always know how to handle that one, like, “hmm, it’s not a simple answer?” And people tended to share their opinion quickly, this quickly, yes.

“Well she did it because…” with just as few facts. Before I even began.

“Abandonate,” Giggino had a hard time with it.

“This is you?”

No, siiii, no, si.

In the moment, they could get it, but what do you concentrate on in a story? That wasn’t what I meant. I stood there; I never felt abandoned, thinking about it all these years later. Now some might call that inspirational, unbelievable, but I refused to feel that way, and was I wrong? Someone might say, yes, but can they relate? (I haven’t even told you the story yet.) Maybe someone else would say, who cares? Just get ANGRY. How dare you, type of deal. Abandonment, fuck that. Joy was so messed up, I could hardly take this woman seriously. But they played with me from day one, which was sweet and moving. I didn’t have that.

“He has a friend,” I made an antler. “Also young.”

“But where? WHERE? In the North? The North Pole?”

“Finlandia…”

Carmine’s nose raised.

“Ragazzi CAFÉ!” Cristina came with tray. “Finlandia? Maria, Finlandia…? It is cold—IS IT?— fa freddo—in FINLANDIA, MERI?” Mumble, bumble, Giggino, cafe.

“The young Santa Claus goes to the mountains…” I gestured to the mountains.

“Ahh,” Assunta said, brightly, “he’s going to the mountains?”

“Hm hm,” Diodora was intellectual about it.

“Bello…”

“Si si,” I seared like Diordora. “Bello bello.”

“Bello si, ah si, bello.”

“WHY MERI,” they encouraged me, “WHY is he going to the mountains…?”

Now, we’re playing because they also enjoyed listening to me talk like this in Italian.

“WHY?” Diodora got low and playful.

“Per verdere the magical people, small,” I made an elf.

“Ahhhh.”

So now we’re playing. This skate through seriousness, play, all these nuances, were present in this story. Just change the text, “you can never see your father again,” La Brasiliane shushed me. “We’re going to play,” she shushed me, “a nice little game,” with this mother fucker— subtext. My mother told her that my father raped me. La Brasiliane slammed her chair down at the tennis club in a hot red one-piece and cut-off jeans to show me the real tears she cried before I had all my teeth. Beginning on her pinky, “rape,” that was first. I had a mushroom cut at the time. I’m on a different channel than most kids. I cannot help that. I do not know who makes up something like this, but, again, I cannot change the road it took to get here. What PROBLEMS does a four-year-old have?

“He sees a monstro.”

“A monster?”

“Terrible,” I said. “This monster eats the people.”

Giggino didn’t like that.

Beginning to bounce, they responded, “what’s happening?” What is this bouncing?

“It’s the HORSES, no, Meri?” Diodora adjusted her glasses.

I think at times, it was the innocence in people’s eyes, I didn’t want to take them down this road, because they can’t imagine it, but they think I have the ability to — for show. They think, and how hurtful is that, that I possess the ABILITY to imagine it for SHOW? I would put a group of innocent people through artifice, sensationalism, looking at the goddamn TV. And then, in a reflection of light from a mirror that disturbs the eye, my mother exhibited this kind of storytelling for show, whether it’s true or not I cannot confirm. I’m dealing with these themes, but I don’t know what to do. They pushed every button, and I had to assemble them in this way to tackle the body of them. (Not my problem, or responsibility, now, just leave, but again, the road… is the road.)

“To the mountains…” I gestured.

“Ahhhhh,” they understood. To the mountains, right.

I looked off—the word “dangerous.”

“DANGER,” I said in French.

“Danger,” Vico confirmed.

“SANTA?”

“Si si, the monster EATS people.”

Diodora asked, plainly. “Anche l’amico?”

“Anche l’amico,” I echoed. Also the friend.

Antlers. I made the sleigh. “The animal that makes…” fly..

Ohhhhhhhhh. I could leave out important details.

“Also a baby.”

“WAS THIS A MOVIE FOR BABIES?” Giggino question.

“I do not know.” Here’s a palm. Giving it to him —interesting question. My story had morals, lessons attached. Evidently no, but then, what’s deemed kid-friendly, sometimes, I don’t know how to answer that question.

We congratulated Giggino, appreciated one another. Progress.

“Ma Santa Claus, he thinks,” tapping my temple, “he thinks…”

“Little.”

“Young.”

“AHHH,” Diodora rang, she laughed at Assunta.

“That makes him think…of him…”

Of his childhood, we got there. Team effort.

“La poesia…” I laughed.

“La poesia…”

“Maria, la poesia?” Assunta.

“Um,” I tapped my heart, trying not to laugh.

“She’s laughing, eh eh,” Cristina clapping.

“This monster had this…”

“THIS MONSTER,” Cristina honked at me. “Maria? The monster?”

I tapped my heart. “Freddo but more than freddo.”

“AHHH, more than cold, Maria?”

“When you put the thing in,” I mimed drinking water. “When l’aqua becomes solida and also fredda? The procedure of chemistry…”

“Ice?” Carmine said. “His heart.” “Frozen,” he snapped, languidly. “Bello,” he meant it, sure, his father tipped his head.

“His heart is frozen,” Carmine raised his brows.

I looked at him.

“He starts,” the tears, I showed them. Everyone was touched there.

“Santa Claus gives,” I went to the tree, what’s the thing you put underneath? I unwrapped it, “wow, thank you,” I said, I received the gift. “WHAT IS?” Guesses flew. Carmine—”present.”

“Ah present? Present, ah si si sisisisisi.”

“He gives a present from when he is…small…”

“Ahhhhh,” Diodora got it. “That makes him think about his youth?”

He, I showed the tears.

“He becomes human…” Carmine said. With the larmes. The tears.

They were touched there.

“He thinks,” I thought as the man-eating monster, “I am not terrible…?”

Well, they didn’t know what to say to that.

“The monster,” I acted confused.

“He does not know…” Carmine’s brows.

“If he can be a good person…” I said, “can I be a BUON person?”

“Was this his fault?”

“SCUSA,” they defended him.

“No lo so,” I said, “HE,” short-circuiting, “he does not KNOW. He is SCARED.”

“HOW is HE SUPPOSED TO KNOW??? Scusa, in TIME…”

“A lot happened, no?”

“SI SI, KRIS KRINGLE,” I became chipper as the abandoned baby that he was, as “the bright person” who comes from dark or unfortunate circumstances is not exactly a new archetype since my “jovial” nature at times struck Giggino as…problematic.

“SANTA CLAUS SAYS TO HIM,” needing to fight through their voices, how funny this was, fun, “THIS IS EASY.” Diodora was not so convinced. “THE SAID, NO ME, HE SAID TO THE MONSTER, and this was a criminale, OKAY?”

“OHkay, OHkay, si, si.” They got that part.

“Santa Claus says, the only thing,” delivering it as sincerely as I could because I knew what I sounded like, “the only thing you must DO,” they liked it, “to go from…” blanking, no time, opening myself to — interpretations.

“MARIA?”

Shit.

“Carmine! When you are not good! The word—”

“Bad.”

Pointing to him, “to go from bad to the good, the very…very good things…” I got goofy. I laughed, they didn’t get that I was cracking myself up. I guess they don’t do that. Laugh at themselves. Me as Kris Kringle, it makes sense.

“AHHHH,” Diodora.

“Si si, to change…”

“Sisisisisisisi.”

I took a step. “Brava.”

“This is the way.”

I took another step.

“Brav.”

I took another.

“Brav, Maria, brav.”

And another.

I got nothing but support there.

“Sssss, zzz,” this is what Giggino meant. Bravo.

And then, perking myself up because people normally started shaping this story wanting it to get better, you know? Hence the “she didn’t call?” Um, she didn’t “come over to visit?” So JOLLY me as Kris Kringle, Giggino squinting at the “jolly,” wondering about it, “eventually,” I said, “I arrive at the door.”

“Giusto, Meri, giusto.”

“Leave,” si si, only encouragement here, “the past.”

Which sounded like “LASCHAR the PASSATE,” since I’m basically knocking off the endings of all Italian words, boom, don’t need it, as the Neapolitan dialect has harsh consonants.

“This is the objective.” He smiled like a gator. I’m speaking like this on purpose. It’s fun.

Rosa laughed. “This is so Meri.”

I froze. They froze. “True?”

They swept me off my feet— “si si sisi.”

“You can say ciao ciao to this life as a criminale who eats people…”

“Si si, brav.”

Giggino turned his hands for time. He shrugged. “Normale.”

“Esci, esci,” Assunta said, making a four-year-old finger at me.

“You…EXIT.”

“Maria? WHAT,” Giggino dipped, “does this have to do with anything?”

“This was the my mom.” Just like that.

“You don’t,” Carmine said, also receiving comments. Put the article in front of family members.

“MA PER ME…” no time.

“She was like this monster…”

Pause. God these pauses…

“To me…” She was a kind of monster. Not dropping the container. Picture-perfect grotesque, Dr. J, which I would say unemotionally, and the prestigious “theater-makers” might be nodding at me, “you should develop that performance style.” Simply. No problems there. Especially today. That rings true. Dr. J was so prescient to me. Prodigal? Hmm, not so sure outside a buffoon piece. I used to guard that piece for her. That she was…a genius of some kind. That…given the circumstances is the least of my concerns.

“I watched this film,” squinting like Vico, I turned a flat hand. “Again and again at four.” I looked at the TV. I had to move through long silences regardless of what I said and I got lost there, tangled up. This metaphoric rendering was the least disturbing. I was trying to let the themes of the story speak for themselves: show don’t tell. They didn’t understand the bare bones.

A baby who’s obsessed with this scene? Comparing this cartoon criminal to her mother? What problems does a four-year-old have? The inability to be five, eight, ten. But first, my mother had problems…related to her childhood, I thought about that very young, how we become who we are, criminality, specifically, and that, he gives him a gift rather than meeting him with violence. My mother was a lawyer, truly. Tax attorney, but her first client, interestingly enough, was “typically” she stated in an article, as a fashionista, also, “about to go to jail.”

Criminals, according to my overprotective father, made up the majority of her clientele, another one of these words, you know, because what does that mean? People who haven’t paid their taxes in 30 years? I don’t know, since I just got here, “thank you,” bowing. If you’re that person, however, and I know them, when the IRS caught you, and they can, you went to Dr. J. She slept with her clients upstairs, just to slip that in, the overprotective father talk. My father said it, even, to me, but we both knew.

“She slept with her clients upstairs!” Direct quote. I was in the living room, while the door open and closed all day. I watched this business, like what is it?

Dr. J. The intro. Tea cup sets on pedestals that trailed through this universe. She wore a red wig du jour, the snap of the thread, sewn in daily. Skin whiter than snow, “unusual,” La Brasilane said at the tennis club, as I made sure to ask her, you see, question after question beginning at nine years old, just to make sure I got her story straight. She even complimented the shade, like a Grimm’s Fairytale, “beautiful,” but she was “the whitest woman I have ever seen.” Irish. Descent. Immigrant. Acted like a cartoon.

Now that, that was hard for me to believe, the teacup sets as they existed in her office of mirrors, taxes, as if she were the account in Alice in Wonderland, so the imagination appeared to be a real place, and the Neapolitans agree. She was a real fiction in real life.

They trailed down the corridor in the living room and into the dining room. She played duck duck goose with them instead of playing with me in her haute couture suits tapping them, “China, Japan, Russia, England…only THE WORLD, she’d exclaim, “ONLY THE WORLD! For my baby” framed in the amber panel of waving glass by the front door— like the song about America, it was spiritual.

“Full of shit,” La Brasiliane would slip in, standing there like one heck of a tough coach, arms crossed, a bull, in Adidas sandals. “This sick bitch!” The situation was very real. I do not appreciate, now, being called a liar. Unforgivable even. I can speak like that now, which was a journey, I did not speak emotionally, but still, in my book, in a way, calling me a liar is impossible. It’s not happening.

This scene affected me very young. Like her ice heart might melt if she received kindness? I think it was the fundamental innocence that is innate within us all that moved me the most. That we all start out that way. I don’t know, my mother’s background, the idea of it, scared the living hell out of me. Where did she come from? I thought at four that she was a victim of child abuse, she spoke about it enough. That’s where I was at that age, she was abused, which is going to influence La Brasiliane’s understanding of this situation. It’s going to make sense to her that I was abused. Nodding, gameplan, the terrain.

So here we go, another strange turn, however, as I can’t exactly get past the first two sentences, which interestingly enough, was the first time that I put those two together, side by side. I was still stuck in a story, basically, with the audience, and saying goodbye stirs up feeling, regardless. Even to a story, a way of being, even if it was painful, unsuccessful.

At the time, earlier, I didn’t know whether these years merited a celebratory note, “MY WAY” in this strange universe of mirrors. However, I’m about to seal it with the same binding glue— brava. I was putting one foot in front of the other, soon to be walking out the door. And I shook my palm. “I left! I did this.” Even that. I left.

“From bad to good.”

“Uhhhhh…” the crowd.

My hands turned, “you can leave the bad for the buon.”

The crowd called my foul. “Leave the bad for the good?”

“I did this,” I insisted. Everything’s going to be okay, in other words. The next part.

My flow got skewed, but it’s still true, you see, since you gotta get through it, make meaning, get to the other side regardless of what the story is. So I got here. On the floor, smashing barbie heads together. I had “Barbie number one, Barbie number two,” I had to laugh. This story never made sense in English let alone in Italian, and I acted it out because most people didn’t understand it. It was a fundamental lost in translation.

“We do not know this person, first time,” I walked through the door in the tennis skirt. “From BRAZIL-IA.” I saw “the baby,” as her, made an “uh oh” face. I tried not to laugh. “Not five, twenty minutes,” but the first step into my house, which she relayed back to me at the tennis club four years later, “one foot.” She froze when she saw me. N

“I leave with her that moment for one day and then…four years…” no word for “later…”

“One giornata AND THEN FOUR YEARS.”

“Ma…”

I kicked the ball in another — curious — direction right here — for too many reasons — it took me my life thus far to correct this line of logic.

“No,” I looked up, “no you understand…”

“Fred Astaire,” I pinched my fingers together.

“He ME did not prepare for the lambada…”

“Uhhh…”

“He ME did not prepare me…for the lambada…” sincerely! “He did not prepare me.”

I went from “bad to good.”

Carmine’s eyes.

“Uhhhh….”

“The dance?”

“Si, si,” I impersonated Diodora.

“It was a miracle…”

“Miracolo?”

“Anche brute.” Vico said.

“No.”

Carmine gave me a look. Assunta laughed. “Miracolo…”

“She lived in a zona,” Carmine raised his brows, “called…”

“Miracles.”

Miracle Mile.

They paused collectively, Assunta looking at me—really?

Not so sure there.

“Si!”

Get out of my way? How cute? Same thing. Same day. A triumph? I did not get it. They did not get it. Like mirror images. Yay my way? Oh yes, it was all about the lambada. A miracle.

*

And this occurred on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception — a complicated holiday.

A feast is long.

You can tell many stories with one. It’s all about angle. Anyone will tell you that.

They came at me with CAKES —

And the questions start coming—did she call?

The sun moving through the garden at the end of day cast shadows of leaves against the laundry room door, the painting of the ballerinas above the entrance commode, on the drooling Great Dane’s face, and the sunflower painting in the living room.

In the winter, bare yet green, the citruses at their peak, what a paradise to come back to. A garden outside the glass framing it as if it were the true masterpiece. It was the end of an era for me, bells ringing. Christmas lights pulsed around the tree. You think you know what the story is, but it can travel so far from its origins that you don’t even know what it is anymore or what it was ever.

Legend goes that Parthenope, the siren that tried to lure Odysseus, washed ashore. The commune named after her led by GIGGINO, somehow, as he has been present for all of Neapolitan history, vowed to rise a city of music, which they did, they became Naples. This is their origin story, so old it’s mythological. She’s a university, not a killer here. These people gave gifts to this creature for her song, in no imminent danger. She also invented a ricotta cake. You can get the story wrong. There are so many stories here, it’s funny. But they are the siren people, you understand, at the same time— as in — to them, this is just music maybe at times experimental. To Odysseus, he has to tie himself to a mast for she can break a man with just her voice. Also. Once you dig into it, it’s an interesting story. So many angles. Which one do you take? I had this problem. Some Neapolitans still call themselves Parthenopeans. The siren people.

Formula One on TV, a race car headed too fast around the curve, I had just flown through space making sharp turns around reactions, projections, expectations, and even normalcy without the ability to see, not wanting to hurt anyone, wanting to trust them but not being able to, understandably, to come to a complete halt. A race car crashing into a wall. Nervous. Adrenaline. I don’t know that. I’m charged. I don’t know that. The idea that they affected me, blank. I was in the “I said too much” space now, and I hardly even began, but I also opened up invisible cages and channeled La Brasiliane to be believed. A race car catching flame. Some people care, some people don’t. That’s what family was from day one. Up in smoke.

The front door opened. People were coming back. Time to switch back to normal life. A party. The Brazilian family understood. No matter what was happening, when the beat dropped, it was time to dance. I clapped like she did. What’s another story to Naples? When you’re from a volcano and you’ve been conquered since the time of Odysseus? That’s why they acted like that, right? They’ve been through many traumatic experiences as a people? Were those wires even sensical? Was there sense? People said that I didn’t always make sense. But was there sense? Let me go back to a party now. But then, the Brazilian house was like a dance party 24/7. Joy was the note. Thinking about it.

I “did this,” looking at myself ten years later, saying “haha” to them, pointing to the garden, you cannot loiter here, what a paradise. I turned to them with a smile, my mother’s — Joy. She had a real dazzler. I’m just admiring the garden, to them, needing conversation. “I did this to figure out why my story never ended…” staring out the window. Giggino had found me on Facebook. “Come for Christmas.” I had to think about it. I knew the questions were coming as to what happened to me. I hadn’t seen them in fifteen years.

Giggino is Diodora’s husband, her sister is Assunta. The two sisters from Sant’Anastasia are my second cousins on my father’s side. Vico is Assunta’s husband also named Giggino, so I call him Vico due to where he lives and his personality. Already, the thing that made my story confusing? Lots of people. We’ll start with the parents. I happen to be the same age as their children — fit right in the line-up as I first came to Naples when I was nine, ten years old after these four years — but my father was their parents’ generation, I think, he was born in 1926. I was born in 1985. He was sixty when I was born. Joy, my mother, in 1944, she was forty-two.

I had a lot to work out, in taking my “noble” pursuit to face “this story” in this way. That included the comments of others, some strange logic and takes that others had, and even some bad therapy, even the therapy I did not ask for? I would “go through the story one more time…” I decided with a group of people who aren’t going to get it, but they are going to act like they do. I couldn’t admit that I felt that way, none of that, because “I don’t know” was my basic approach. I did not want to project onto anybody. This was, in a sense, more or less my experience though. I also didn’t make sense in English, the difference between a stranger and a familiar also skewed. This was a goddamn mess. And no, it was not “funny.” Had to correct that one. Sometimes, you just gotta state it for what it is. Joy, my mother, that woman was a challenge, a true challenge, unfortunately. I can say that lineage and family are a real thing, Joy most definitely came from a family, she’s, uh, a bit too off the wall and she said a bit too much about her family beating her when she was two, etc., to not look over at them, “excuse me is there a child molester in your home, was my mother raped?” She accused my father of being a child molester, let’s just get it out of the way, which is why I lived in this house for four years. With a bat, I’m going into her family’s house, “where’s the child molester?” I’ll break something, you see, I’m going straight for the child molester. NAPLES is behind me, throwing me the bat, you see, maybe two, giving me “performance props” when I twirl them around, looking crazy. Applause. In the middle of a revolt or a crowd attack. These are not a people who aren’t not getting involved. Everybody hates a child molester, this is the lowest of the low. As La Brasiliane said, “who gives a shit about a child molester?” So we talked about this situation for years. The IDEA that this didn’t HAPPEN, if someone were to say that to me today, I would blow them to the next county. That took another ten years. So, next step, “Maria, can you talk to these people about this?” In a language I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m such a different person now. I finally worked this out though that was a tough road. But there I was—a bright bulb — positive — I just happened to come from this background, and they pushed every button. I don’t know that, I don’t know that you can hurt me, get to me, offend me. That you can cross a LINE. “How did that make you feel?” That was a journey. The easiest response is— just get angry. But I couldn’t do that.

A feast is long. We were nowhere near the end of the meal, dessert boxes popping open, plastic crinkling to Diodora’s “ah ah, hm hm.” Giggino bumbled about around like a fairy godfather. I could see him in Sleeping Beauty fixing up her dress. He is the GATOR as in an alligator is his spirit animal, so he can look at you from his eye on the side, chomp off all endings of Italian words, smile, surly, tight, real tight too. He’s maternal as a creature, funny enough, as alligators symbolize. He would be the one to come after me about all this. He’s the “normal man” in the “magical universe,” he exists there, but he’s crossing his arms as “the chief” or the “captain” while his middle son, Carmine, attends Hogwarts as the Neapolitan exchange student. Everyone at Hogwarts knows who the Neapolitans are, “the siren people.” It’s funny because Naples is an enchanted land, so it absolutely exists in these sorts of worlds. Cristina’s fun assistant arrived with a diamond earring—boom. Just a thrilling cast of characters. That was my family story as well. He brought a panettone from iMargliano with chestnuts and chocolates. “What are you a princess or something?” “Who can kick your ass,” I said. I had to laugh because I was so tiny, but I had issues with it. I was pretty fit at the time. Joy had that kind of look: fairytale. HEY HEY Maria! Celebration. Yeah. Life goes on. Pasquale posed upon entry with liquor and cakes. “Marrria?” The way they roll their r’s can take the feet out from under you. So I tended to hop.

Their family portrait was on the wall—it pleased me to see it again. That, and the sculpture of the drooling black and white Great Dane. I had to laugh at Vico, his eyes sparkling unbelievably bright with pride, a siren coming forward from his heart in a state of suspension as he’s, funny enough, the family siren. Only their children are looking into the camera. The oldest, Gennaro, I had recognized as a Hades, to be frank with you when I was nine. “Huh.” His green eyes cracking through the muted filter. I saw it in his spaced-out look: a twinkle. Cristina, the sole brunette in flannel, came over her father’s shoulder born on the very same day as baby Rosa eleven years apart. She reminded me of a Demeter, earthy. Rosa was tucked into Assunta’s soft cheek, sleepy. Rosa is a mythic name in Naples, you understand, so she was just Rosa. Eternal. She inherited her father’s sharp features and her mother’s sensual curves, her LIPS the stance. Green eyes like Gennaro. You know that picture of Sophia Loren, as Rosa has a bit of that type of face, judging that unbelievably plunging cleavage? Rosa has a little of that potential within her. Cristina is the mascot, the coach, crying CAFE! Always cafe with their grandmother’s — an heirloom — silver tray. There are pieces of her in both the sister’s houses though it’s discrete. I take in my surroundings. We’re not quite at cafe yet, as a feast in Naples has rounds, but as people were coming back on this day, for whatever reason, the cafe is being made — stat. She’s clapping us along, keeping the energy UP, singing too, she can become the choral leader. Boisterous. She reminded me a bit of the fourth child in the Brazilian household as if I came from the goddamn Sound of Music, this Brazilian woman had SIX children on top of it. Kind. The sole brunette.

Shit, I thought, I didn’t — I forgot myself, headed to the kitchen. I’m not helping. To stop, change thought. Vico even said it: “brutal and beautiful,” that’s how Naples is described, so there was nothing to hold back about, he said. But what did they know, in their house, really? Nothing to hold back about? But I have no time to think here — boom — Naples — GIGGINO SEES MY HESITATION — what’s happening? He’s not happy with my story. I don’t totally get it. EH MARIA EH — look here, there, CAKES. BABA. LOOK MARIA LOOK. EAT. Giggino shook his head at me as I passed, Vico getting set up at the dinner table as the family dealer. YOU SEE? She doesn’t EAT. DAMMIT. EAT. You’re SKINNY, you see? Giggino is the Mama, in this case. The GATOR. His concern over to Diodora, something must be done. She’s just…whatever. I’m making boxing gloves at him, we have an audience, by default, “I do sport.” He judged me. ME, bright, cute, “strong, rapid,” slapping my muscles with an air of “sparkles” around me. Giggino could literally speaking see SPARKLES around me as if I walked out of a fairytale. “You see the sparkles?” Diodora, adjusting her glasses, intellect, she chimed, "si si,” the most superb nasal cavity you have ever heard. Her “si si” can sear cutlets, “un po magical,” she said, no inflection, flat tone, she sees the sparkles too. “Marrria?” She rings a clear strong tone that splits the seas of voices easily — receiving it, knocked off my feet, to the side, you got the message. Where are you going? And they are clocking my physical persona at the same time. They like that. I must, big gestures, as I am in a theater, get to the kitchen. As a character I would put Diodora in an Italian Jetsons, the cartoon, because she’s fit, dry, that’s her quality, her element is wood. So she’s got a gaiety to her, a trickster also. This is how I see people. In a spaceship, hovering above me, almost an The Invisibles character, “Maria?” It shakes the town. I would also insert her character in a mafia flick because she’s conservative, reserved, withheld, not emotional like her husband the GATOR is. So at the head of a mafia family, her character would be quite good in the kitchen, also cruel. She holds her fists as if they were turtledoves, she collects glass menagerie. Adjusting her glasses, she’s “Justice,” that’s what I dubbed her, in the tarot deck, since they like that sort of thing here. That’s her archetype. A woman who sits on a throne.

Stream wafting from the dishwasher, desserts splayed across every surface, pots and pans too, Cristina and Rosa were cleaning up with Assunta, their mother. Now, when I stepped foot onto her property, Vico the siren launching the first line of my name song — SENTO, FEEL — I felt her. “An empath?” It was so specific. She drew out a very particular thread, a deep one, as she’s fair, her temperament in humid, not dry. But she didn’t run to hug me like Diodora did, she kept her distance. Things just happen for her, so she generally doesn’t have to look at you, or she might not even know where you are, you’ll just appear there when she calls you. Aloof. She’s High Priestess, that’s her archetype in the tarot deck. Also she sits on a throne. A queen does not. Vico, the story goes, was on his way out of high school as Assunta was on her way in. They passed each other in the hallway. He took one look with his sparkling blues at her dark dark eyes as the deep sea innocent to their pressure and it was over. It was love at first sight. He protested against her whole family, many times, revolted. They insisted that they wait until she was older. She took off with the budding general practitioner once she graduated. Watching Vico shuffling at the dining table from the kitchen table covered in trays of cookies, liquor bottles going down. THREE, he flashed me THREE fingers, for THREE babies. And we could erupt, bravo. Into song too. YAH! THREE. Her pout is unstoppable, she’s utterly adorable with her cute haircut that she tucks behind her ears. A bit proper, a receiver. Rugged, though, she can diffuse in the chaos as if she becomes little beads, her energy, she’s a feeler. She feels her way through the world. The way she puts down “just a another plate of fruit,” turning it, cutely, her pout, is hilarious. It was the first thing that my father told me about, her cooking. The smells unfold like a story luring you in to find her. Joy, my mother, was a beauty, wondering why I was thinking about it, but it pained me to say it. Why was I thinking this? You see. I would evaluate ‘the empath” apparition as it just came to my head, and I don’t use this word, but I was stirred somewhere that I just did not know.

Rosa disagreed in full, bullish shades taking bottles of chilled liquor out of the refrigerator. Opinionated, Rosa. Studying to be a nutritionist. Shadowing her father. At the time, she was trying to introduce “healthier options” that her mother didn’t know what to do with, and the way she said, “almond milk,” Assunta, so funny, cute, blinking at me, “si,” the nuts in glass jars are along the back wall. Rosa is telling you, exactly, as a hero, what she thinks, what she knows in generous, sort of Jersey or Statin Island, in her color, as she’s a colorful person, big, someone who wears chunky jewelry, but she is from, I believe, a “good family,” type of deal, fashionable. She is. I would put her in Venice, she would bring more personality to that sidewalk — in her white t and levis, since she does that too. She could have her own reality show. Rosa— that’s it. In her fiat. Plays tennis. Her innocent gaze is truly funny especially when she speaks English badly almost as badly as I speak Italian, which I pump up, I’m doing that purposefully, because, quite frankly, I do not give a shit, I do not have that pride. I got inebriated by not speaking the language, this made me BOLDER. In my universe, this is comedic gold in her case. An actor would agree. In a sense, a model would play her with LIPS. She’s gotta be curvy, sensual in her figure, but she’s — the one — if you tell ROSA that a baby is being raped, as my mother did, NOH, she’s taking the BABY — to the doctor immediately. NOH. In the FIAT. NOH. And she’s making you laugh, somehow, along the way, snapping at someone. Has psychology books on her shelf. A nerdy laugh. She’s “my hero,” she’s rising a hero this Christmas, I say it every year. No one can survive Christmas, Carmine wagged his finger, seriously, “this is not the point.” But ROSA — she’s never gone down, everyone has, does, not ROSA. She’s UP. She inherited the cooking gift, so she’s also in pearls and an apron of roses, helping her mother. Dutiful. She calls me “tresoro,” as in treasure. Her girlie sides are fun, scrunching her nose. Her bullish sides are better. Her sassy sides are screen-worthy, drinking her wine at a wedding with slicked back hair. NOH, NOH, the way she says NOH. “Not possible.” Lips the stance. This side, the Sorrento Coast, are the partiers, in a sense, they live in a garden, Vico is always with glass bottles of WINE.

Cristina has a frown line to end your fatigue as a wedding planner on the Amalfi Coast. They are close, as sisters. Her phone was ready— always calling Gennaro. “The BABIES, Maria,” Cristina melted. Very warm, attractive, though she might not totally get that. With her cool rings on her fingers. I’ll give her her space. Big faces. I did the obligatory, babies are cute, in French, adorable, I cracked up. Vico said “OBI LAN.” Stepping forward, so enthused to hear ancient language, “yes!” I needed this. “NOH,” Rosa held two bottles of liquor in her hands, “no ancient language,” whining, “please.” So I became — with a fist — even brighter, I’m Vico’s backup. GIGGINO flashed me a suspicious look. I practiced the phrase, acting normal even impressed because the feast continued; it didn’t wind down. They didn’t exactly respond well to American politeness.

“Can I help?”

They didn’t want my help. It destabilized me. Could I trust what people told me? I was in this space now. Would I find out later that I did something wrong? Great, just be civil, warm, cheery. I tended to freeze, I think. I had to laugh.

Dessert and liquor hour came with storytelling and gambling games for children. The dining table got freshened up with clementines. Little fingers peeling. A neat beside him, Vico was low, his eyes twinkling, telling mythological tales. A crowd had gathered round, somehow, smiling and provoking him as people came over to watch Vico be Vico, a true performer. Showtime. He showed the children a bill. Made sure it appeared real to them. He tossed it in a pile of euros. He shuffled the cards with skill—the family dealer. Of course. A siren. I studied Vico, I really did. I could write a dissertation about sirens based on this person with his mesmerizing blue eyes. They are a magic trick, the sparkles. He’s a retired doctor, a farmer, first, a man who’s already bursting into song at the table, looking at me. “Down from the mountain,” shuffling. He only called me by song, you see, not by name, as a child.

Mythology comes from the soil, music does, too, as his character embodies. The siren. There he is. He can seize you, most definitely, with his voice and body. Carmine, in the crowd, with his longer fingernails on his playing hand would say, “it comes from nature,” cooly. Music. This is their nature. This is a food, to them. If you suggest otherwise, they will not understand you, the whole crowd will back someone up, throw you out, music is really a food to them. We’re singing, we’re always singing, especially when we gather in groups, they become a true Greek chorus, instinctually. It’s even astounding because they ACT and behave as one as well as one body. They speak all at once as if they were the only ones speaking yet they are supporting one another as a theatrical ensemble. It’s genius.

Carmine is the funniest, adjusting his glasses, because he usually hangs there, he’s not going to become an opera for you. He is matter-of-fact and poetic, the master of the “not acting” technique. A guitarist. Long fingernails on his playing hand, which he keeps discrete. He looks the most like Diodora with his dark olive skin and dark eyes. Assunta is fair. He has owl eyes, hilariously, that shift from side to side. That’s his spirit animal. He’s from the Harry Potter universe. As a boy, he attended, with his round glasses and cheeks, looking at the food they serve with his owl eyes in the mess hall, trying to get Harry on board. “If we cannot,” eyes shifting but only his eyes, “say his name, then we should prepare and then say his name so he shows up when we want him to.” He would stand there, looking at “V,” and Carmine knows, with cheeks, that all he has to do is channel the siren, and “V” will be in the throes. That’s the best way to describe him. With his magical guitar. His fingernails long already. “Peter Park,” as in Parker, is what his father barks at him. “Spiderman,” Diodora would drone, flat tone. Carmine has the same flat voice, no inflection. He’s a wizard of some kind, even to his family, standing there like he’s really a superhero with owl eyes, but he can’t say that. He always magically understood what I was saying to the bafflement of his family. We were a “tweet tweet” pair, his father always says, “TWEET TWEET” at us, “this is TWEET TWEET,” pinching his fingers together at US and making like two little birds sweetly chirping with fat fingers, as an GATOR, because we speak a language no one else understands. Twisting his torso, Giggino, suddenly authoritarian, a man of many personalities. He doesn’t like feeling left out, that’s really what this is about. They sent Carmine, adjusting his glasses, to pick me up at the airport, which made me remember that. We’re a duo.

GIGGINO— back in fairy Godfather mode— smiled at babes with their cards and cash. We were back on the subject, rubbing his fingers diagnostically, of ME, at the same time. So he was playing two things at once, which he can do. He’s a urologist. I had to…not laugh. I picked up on his head nod not looking at me. Naples is like that. We can switch back to a line of conversation.

“What?”

What did I do?

Giggino definitely had my number but not like that, not looking at me, rubbing his fingers diagnostically, which he does, when he’s assessing something. “Nervous,” I was nervous to him. “No.” He could see my nerves. Well, after all that, what would he expect? But they didn’t catch that, which confused me, though I wasn’t totally aware of it myself, so did I have a right to be? Wouldn’t I be nervous? I just flew through space. I got accused of lying. That took ten years.

The tricky part for me, is that, I’m programmed to anticipate the questions and comments as if a knee-jerk reaction. I hear them in my mind as I think and type. Would they say, as they didn’t know the details, to offer that up in their defense, as I’m built that way, “we didn’t…….” mean that? That’s what you said. Day one. I lied. Now, in normal relational contexts, that’s an argument, you did this, no, I didn’t, WELL, when YOU SAY, and we hopefully meet, understand one another. I had to learn that. Did they even understand that they accused me of lying about diseases and being given away to a Brazilian family? And that’s not even the topic sentence, the topic sentence is: she wrapped up a Brazilian mother in a protection scheme against my father when I was four because she accused him of child molestation, on the light end. That’s a mouthful. I saw Joy in everyone and everything. Do people mean what they say? Do they know, always, what they are saying? But of course, I’m diplomatic, conceding that disbelief is understandable, but I got it the second I opened my mouth before anyone really knew any details.

I suppose he was right, also, I was, he picked up on my nerves right away, but Naples is also charged, too, remember Odysseus, he had to tie himself to a mast. Lots of energy. Me — I love it. They are from a volcano. I don’t know what to say at this point because I would have left. They would have come after me, maybe, and this would have changed the course of the future. But that was the goal.

Jacopo, Rosa’s new boyfriend, walked into the house in a Christmas sweater.

“Merwee.” 

He drew his thumb across his cheek to ask me if everything went well. I understood that. I liked him immediately. I had met Jacopo back at “My Way” as we sang Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” upon my arrival, a Christmas institution, I learned. The siren people. They were a good match. I guess I was “cute,” Merwee. Jovial, youthful, just thinking about Joy.

Back to GIGGINO — rubbing his fingers together down low in half fairy godfather and half doctor mode, a gifted man, Giggino, can also become a toad. He handles sensitive content. It cracks me up, it does. Babies were learning economics through gambling, excuse me, I gestured. I had never seen this before. It was beautiful. Everything was “wow,” to me, he gave me a little twinkle of his alligator head at me, as I were cute, bright, but like, what’s up with that? Your WOW thing.

“This is bello..” I pointed to the gambling babes. Like I’m okay. I’m happy now. Vico gestured to a world behind him, showed them a card, came forward on his elbows to tell them the story of the card with his eyes in a thousand misty sparkles, now. Taking them back in time. Vico, though he is brute, a farmer, he has a childlike twinkle, wonder, too, which is fun, but he can act like that, but I can’t, but I guess I had to resolve the Joy problem. My cousins call me “Meri,” that’s my nickname that I had totally forgotten, it floored me, because they spoke to me as if they remembered me as a child, and fondly, so that shocked me.

My story wasn’t appropriate for children, and he would dismiss that. I was probably younger than these kids. I had no idea what he was assessing. What was his issue? The confusion I felt. Vico tossed some lines at me since I asked for them upfront. I flicked some ancient French in his direction. “Qu’est-ce-que tu baragouines.” Everyone wanted my attention — baba, cake, try shit. Vico looked at me.

I could feel Diodora coming behind my back…with Assunta. Here we go. I could predict the questions that were coming at this point though I tried to hold the perspective that I didn’t know — a problem — and there it was: “she didn’t call?”

“No,” I laughed. That question. Always. Not their fault. Before I said anything.

Why was I laughing?

Because I heard it so many times! I can’t say that though. “No,” I cracked up, sincerely, through their insistence that was like a knife that I had to refuse because they were basically rubbing it in, and then, I froze —was that anger? I didn’t know. Every time. EVERY time. “Why?” I dangled my head innocently, provocatively except you can’t see it, “why would she do that?” A dumbbell. “Why would she do that?” I don’t come from your world. But I had to take a step forward, had to. Maybe in defense. Maybe not wanting to be. I hadn’t gone here in a long time.

“La Brasiliane, si,”

Oh, their faces bewildered. Confused. I cracked up just remembering the ol’ doctor.  “Every day,” I turned my hand and continued to.

“She didn’t ask for you…”

I laughed, that question, always that question, I understand, a knee-jerk reaction, even. Innocently, once again, I asked, “why?” Looking at them. “Why?”Hard not to laugh. Making a lost face, “why?” Moving my hands around my ears. Why would she do that? Cracking up. We’re in the “unbelievable” space… this “unbelievable space.” Picking her up at the police station, you see, “night after night,” in my father’s words, was normal, not phone calls at women’s houses she disposed me in. How was I supposed to explain this? At a party. Not wanting to refuse them.

Giggino shook his head, and I got light.

“It was just like that.”

He looked at me. I smiled. That’s what I mean. How was I supposed to act?

“Where was your father?”

“Here, probablemente,” I said like Diodora.

“She was crazy…pathologia.”

I might have said, brightly, she was a genius, too. Cracking up, between an old and new framework of understanding, like why am I talking about her stupid genius? That’s ten years later, present time. The allure. A default response, her goddamn genius, oooohh, a woman genius, even, it’s unbelievable, hearing all this for the first time, cracking up. How many shades of laughter there were. I had to take a walk. Oh, the food, that’s why. Of course. Digestion. Ah. Social customs. Excuse me. Giggino eyed my “formal” presentation.

The glass reflected the scene in a blurry Caravaggio. The crowd was peppy in tight, dynamic poses twisting in space. The table turned inside out: children moved out, adults moved in. Suddenly, you’re older. And I was. I didn’t know them though they were family… people who thought that “family” meant safety. Strangers became family, family became stranger. Carmine’s head poked up like a submarine lens in my mind though he did not move. In his words, “don’t you see pictures in your head when people talk to you sometimes?” That’s a Carmine question. “Well, what else do you use your imagination for?” Also a response.

Rosa and Cristina walked by with trays of cookies in the shape of hearts. Mini-white chocolate cakes, in my FACE, ASSUNTA. The Great Dane drooling with its tongue sticking out over there, stationed in the corner, when she said something was good, to try it, I did. It was a smooth white chocolate grenache in between layers of white chocolate cake, the essence of, in perfect harmony. I couldn’t breathe. Surrounded by the whitest, sweetest cakes — Joy. La Brasiliane called her the “whitest woman she had ever seen,” and she meant it, literally, even complimented the tone, “unusual,” she practically glowed. A Grimm’s Fairytale. “Sickening sweet, yuck,” she gagged, stuck her finger in her mouth at me before I had all my teeth, but this was my mother, so. “Touching you,” she cringed, “spreading her sweetness,” she shivered, “all over you.” I had to laugh. I can hear the question, “seriously?” Yes. That’s my mother—Joy, couldn’t be real, that played a factor in all this because there was no way that this Brazilian woman could have seen this coming. She doesn’t fit into this scenario, an automatic, “wait what?” She was sweet. An underworld creature. The brightest thing in the universe. A genius. Whose real nickname is Dr. J. Which is what I call her. Dr. J.

Out the door, I fell over and laughed. Nettuno as in Neptune the puppy barked —HELLO! HELLO HELLO! I’m HERE! He broke the leash. Came flying for my face. The cutest shaggy black puppy with ears — that I’d ever seen. My story was just beginning to dawn on me, that it happened. That’s it. That’s all I had. Nettuno desperate to love me, unaware of himself, claws, FACE, he’s going for your face. I was supposedly a wild puppy, cute too, so when they yelled at him it stunned me a little. Rosa ran to hold Nettuno back. Barking, barking, barking, Nettuno needing her, unable to contain himself, he was the most enthusiastic puppy, a true star, Nettuno. And here came the women. “NE-TTU-NO NETTUNO!” Firing from inside. Women shuffling out from their corners in the warm glow of the house— a chorus, once again. A triplet. Somehow staged. Assunta’s pout, still cute. She was not pleased with Neptune, coming forward at the glass full of dramatic truth, as this little pink and grey house is practically made of glass to gaze upon the garden nestled in the cliffs on the Sorrento Coast. I loved this puppy and these people already. I don’t know, thinking about it, if that would make sense to everyone.

That first scene was so comedic, though, their responses were so funny, GIGGINO giving a baby to a person as if it were common, it was stupid, was hysterical. Joy was, La Brasiliane was, the situation I was in, even, had this quality to it. I didn’t want to disturb the peace suddenly self-conscious as I could switch states as fast as they could. Hesitating, foot. Rosa whined, NOH, bending in her knees, with the God of the SEA in a puppy totally unaware of what a leash is, that’s just some resistance, so I gotta push HARDER, so NETTUNO is pushing harder, excited, too excited. They had to get him a special leash. She needed me to be who I was, free, walk. “Meri please.”

GO, GO, she gave me the signal. So — I went, obviously, not running, to excite him further. There, WHERE? NETTUNO— where are you going?!! BARK BARK. I NEED TO COME TOO! PLEASE! “NETTUNO!” Now the women are outside. I’m wanting to apologize. They don’t care. Assunta is taking over, speaking to him as if he were a person with side conversations. They cheered inside. Bravo! Brav! And they took off in song, again.

My mother wrapped up a stranger in a protection scheme against my father when I was four, and my father was diagnosed secretly with dementia when I was ten

Welcome to Christmas in Naples is a Sport. My book in progress.

Vico flung a twangy line of a song across the table to ERUPT.

“Separelle!”

PIZZA PIZZA PIZZA flew in like lampoons through the steaming cheese, just the word, hooking onto me, all over my body, PIZZA. Vico poured wine from a glass bottle. My plate dropped under the weight of a calzone, as big as a football. That felt like a content block right there in the opening game of the season I didn’t see coming, though “My Way” laid out the terrain, the shoes to fill, as we just sang it, the Frank Sinatra song. If I wanted to be the hero of this epic, I would have to keep up with them. So I started with the calzone; I wanted to take it slow. If there was one thing I couldn’t forget, it was how much they ate. I couldn’t eat pizza and then calzone.

“Calzone primo,” I said.

They called my foul. Ten people. “NOT — GOOD GOOD, BAD, MARIA, PIZZA IS NOT GOOD COLD. NO IS BUONO MARIA.” A burst of green, like magic, from Vico’s hands, I wasn’t expecting it, so I beamed. Vico sprinkled fresh basil onto the pizzas from HIS farm, a bold man. Rosa and Cristina laughed at their father who cried, “splendido!”

Cristina clapped like a coach, made fun of him. “Splendido!”

Rosa smirked.

They piled the pizzas onto my plate. I bought the flavors emanating from the steam into my nose from the pizzas. That’s it. Please. “We are united by fromage!” I was thrilled, shook away the French word, as it was my second language, not Italian. “Ancay Francay,” Vico came in, fast, instructional, I was in the right. Giggino didn’t UNDERSTAND my enthusiasm. He was one to include others in his public discourse—esatto, eh brav. They were a comedic pair, the two Gigginos side by side at the head of the table, but I call one Vico.

Cheese in strings across the table, Naples is almost like a telephone operator game, in that, many lines are happening at once. We can almost plug in and out of a main switchboard to whatever line we wanted. We go in another direction like the winds, but anyone can switch back or start a new line without any warning or hesitation. You’ve never seen such quick footwork, SLAM, BAM, ripping you away, Diodora’s ring vibrating through as she has a superior nasal cavity. Spontaneous doesn’t begin to describe the Neapolitans. To them, I was like that. I appeared to be Neapolitan somehow to Giggino already, which was surprising to him.  

Throwdown, shove, push; this was an aggressive sport all in good fun. They are entertainers; they expect to be entertained. They appreciated someone with grit. They will comment on your play amongst themselves in front of you. My “fantastical hands” had captured their attention, their interest; there was a quality to them. “Abstract,” Diodora said. “Creative.” I was always like this, apparently, which surprised me. “Really?” That’s what Giggino didn’t understand. “Si, si,” Diodora’s famous “si, si.”Vico didn’t care. It was time to move on to the next musical number, feeling the song in the air, feeling it.

It was all about “MOHNEY,” in Giggino’s words, since we could switch. You’ve never seen such footwork. SLAM, BAM. Giggino rubbed his fingers at me because I did that naturally. He caught that: my gesture. “Neapolitan,” again. “Really?” So one line developing between Giggino and me is my Neapolitan-ness, it’s connected to my “strange enthusiasm,” to him, but not necessarily the same conversation. He asked me to break up Carmine’s band from within, no transition, on that note. NO! I cried. He made two little birds “tweet tweeting” on sweet little branches in the trees at his middle child and me.  

We were eternally a pair, Carmine and I. He always sat directly in front of me at the dinner table, his cheeks so cute back then with his owl eyes, to facilitate communication between me and the rest of the table; he could understand me when no one else could. “Tweet tweet, your secret language,” Giggino said, “that no one understands. ARTISTS.” He played a goofy air guitar at him and silly little keys at me, “secret LANGUAGE.” Bringing it before the SENATE. But he could, of course, my proverbial hockey stick slamming on the ice, CHANGE mood. Boom. You gotta come at the Neapolitans with that level of strength, force, and commitment. Hockey stick, on ICE. You gotta be quick, agile. We were cute now. We were two little cute cute birds. That no one else can UNDERSTAND. Now, Diodora could motion, referee. There you saw who was really in charge here.

“IO SONO ARTISTI,” I said, “WHATEVS,” Giggino threw me to the dogs, tapping the table, allowing the WAVES of voices to topple me, no chance. “WHERE’S YOUR MONEY????” Giggino said it again, rubbing his fingers at me with a tight smile. I did it, too. “Brav,” he said. “MOH NEY…” I was talking about Cristina being wedding planner on the Amalfi Coast by the way. Good idea.

Vico dropped it on the table, just like that, with his hands. 

“What happened to you? Where have you been?”

Giggino took the lead. Apparently, my father had Alzheimer’s. He threw it down on the table with his chin.

I stuck my fork in and sliced this belly right open. Fior di latte burst forth and across my plate, rising in a pool, with bits of salami.

“Piscine,” I said.

“Eh brav. Eat, eat, eat.”

“You see she doesn’t eat,” Giggino said.

Quick move.

He mocked the “laser beams” shooting out of my eyes.

Yes. No. This.

He interjected that, apparently, my father had “Alzheimer.”

“Alzheimer?” Vico’s eyes widened.

Everyone said “AlzhEImer,” which was funny.

“What does that mean?” I swallowed. I laughed.

“BUON,” I said.

“You see, she’s joking,” and why would I joke about a disease? I couldn’t say that though. But this was my mother, Joy, always dying of some disease.

“You were ten, correct?”

“Ten” flew in from everybody. 

“This is what she said,” Giggino gave me a palm and tapped the table.

“But you were here at this time…”

“I poof no?!”

They laughed at poof as if I really spoke like that. Quick— Carmine. He was already in position, his nose lifted, an interrogation mark, yes? In other words. I was charged, getting revved up. I had to be positive though, strictly speaking.  

“WHA-AT POOF?”

THEY GOT THE CONCEPT Maria. What an entertainer. Giggino got onto his elbows, coming in, putting his chin into my fight, approvingly, very good. “You see? You see. The poof, there’s something to it.” Pass — from the judges.

“NO POOF!” I cried!

Carmine nuzzled his nose at me.

“How do you say…”

They threw out guesses, amusing themselves. The tension over Carmine and his band reentered the equation, Giggino rooting him on in a state of conflict with a chin. I had to — pointing — “ARTEEST IO— WAIT ME  —”

“POOF, Meri?”

Quick foot-change, bam, I needed the word for “word.”

Vico’s eyes widened. “Alzheimer?”

“TWEET TWEET.”

I saw explosions in Carmine’s eyes.

“What is the…” word for WORD!” Big hands. Big feelings.

“Disappear,” Carmine snapped.  Oh really? Positive, thank you, really? We all huddled in to support one another. I dipped my finger into that word. The crowd liked my gestures, always fantastical. They mirrored it, cute. Not Carmine.

“And what is this?”

I laughed. Why is she laughing?

I tapped the table.

“Neapolitan, how can this be?”

I kept tapping, you have to get strategic in these parts to get to the end of a sentence. Look at the finger, and they did. Tapping large. Decoy.

“BUT WHY? Look at that…”

“Type, teep…grammaria…” I didn’t want to ruin Italian. “The structure of the LANGUAGE.” Carmine did not break. “Grammatica? What is the GRAMMATICA of to disappear?” His brows raised, he looked over at them, voices shooting, enjoying charades.

“WHAT — IS IT?”

“A verb…”

They disagreed.

“SI,” I scooped up that word and brought it back with my shoulders into a fist.

“She has a quality though doesn’t she?”

I continued with air-quotes, pointing at everything. “LIKE CALZONE LIKE TABLE LIKE PAPA LIKE LIKE—A VERB IS?”

“Maria?”

Diodora rang low.

“What is a VERBE COME HERBE…” I SHOT OUT MY HAND — spouting any word that came to mind. Comments. Suggestions. Guesses. Fouls. Carmine shifted his eyes.

“A LANGUAGE is CONSTRUCTED WITH WHAT? CARMINE…”

“Word…?”

“WHAT?”

“YES!”

I pointed.

“The word, Carmine! The word! Thank you!”

“This is what you want to know? WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE? THANK YOU?”

Boom, they took me to the ground. I got up. I made “shush shush” sounds with my finger. “Shush shush.” This was utterly nonsensical, conceptually, to the Neapolitans. “Shoosh shoosh.” What was this? “Shoosh.” I couldn’t help but laugh. They undercut me. I clapped at Carmine. Only compliments. Comments. I had to hold it. Not laugh.

“What is the WORD for the contrary of one person?”

 “AHHH,” Diodora adjusted her glasses like Carmine. She understood what I was doing. Maybe she didn’t. Giggino said something that made Diodora laugh and alerted me.

“The word,” I wagged my finger.

“PER…”

“PER, PER? Meri PER?”

“QUESTO.”

Carmine pulled back.

“No person,” I tried to mime “around” and flashed “one.”

“No one.”

“YES!”

We applauded Carmine.

I boosted him as “my professor” at his father who received it begrudgingly.

“He said nothing to a person!”

“How was he supposed to tell a child? How was…”

“Scouge,” Giggino said, not scusa, even suave.

“No!”

Giggino said that it was I who didn’t want to accept it, heavy in his delivery. I was a child. He couldn’t tell me. “IO,” with hands shooting forward for “live,” a word that was not there, “with HIM.” It didn’t matter. Rosa, Cristina, and Assunta got up because it was just a story to pick up the plates. I shot up.

“HELP?”

Obnoxious move. 

They threw me back in the ring.

“Secret,” Carmine said, looking off, because he kept getting it.

“It’s THE SAME, is it the SAME? THE SAME.”

“And what about it?!”

“NOH, noh, noh…”

They insisted as if they had been there. 

“HEY!”

I started swinging wide with English just to knock them down. 

“THE DOTTOR!”

“Dottore Meri DOTTORE…”

I threw my hands down.

“I speak Neapolitan.”

“Brav.”

Giggino gave the assembly a palm. I had a style.

I slapped across my palm into the great beyond. It was done, I put down my glass.

“Brav.”

I shot out “diagnose” which passed. Giggino and Vico were doctors. Everyone confirmed “the importance of Latin” in how they said “diagnotici…” 

“DIAGNOSED” POW, POW POW. DIAGNOSED.

“HE SAY TO ME —”

INTERRUPTION.

“When I was twenty years old that he…”

“WHO, Maria, who?”

“DOTTOR!”

I gripped my fist for the past participle. I opened myself up for attack. This was a boxing ring. “HAS EU,” it was English and French, “Alzheimer when I was ten.”

“Ancay Francay,” Vico reminded me.

“Alzheimer?”

They said as if they heard it for the first time.

“MA PARKINSONS PRIMO…”

Throwing out three fingers, I tried to say “neurologia.”

THREE FINGERS, what?

Carmine raised his brows.  

“When you were twenty or ten?”

“Ten,” I brought a fist back to me in a large curve on “MA.”

“Told ME when I was TWENTY.”

“Do you want meat,” Assunta came in with a sincere elegance.

I became bright, grateful, and I had never been so full.

“Maria, eat, please.”

“I don’t SPEAK,” I said, “Italian!”

They reassured me that I did.

Giggino gave people “looks.”

How was he supposed to tell a child? About all this?

“THE DOCTOR SAID!”

“Eat, eat, eat…”

“THE DOTTORE MARIA THE DOTTORE!”

“The dottor was not happy!”

It was I who was not happy. Giggino even expressed sympathy and understanding. “SPEAK,” he shoved me with his forehead. “SPEAK to your mother?”

I was wild, in-between states of awareness, frozen with sheets of paper shuffling in my eyes. No one remarked on my state as abnormal or out of control. Chaos, haha, Assunta would later laugh. That’s Naples. Nothing to bat an eye about. Giggino made circles over his eyes and gave them to me as questions.

“What are these eyes for?”

Diodora was deciding how to call it.

Everyone huddled in to participate in charades with Maria and Carmine, throwing their guesses with weight, volume. Hard to keep the thread. I swam. Carmine nuzzled at me. “NO,” he said as I laughed at their picking apart my moves, tempting. I made the universal symbol for talk. “The word,” I said into his owl eyes, we were going down, spiraling.

“He did not TELL…”

“Nothing. He said nothing,” he said. Just the swirl of the crowd. Carmine pulled back, eyes over there. I took the floor. I wiped my mouth, remembering my father, laughing a little. Of course not.

“What Maria, SAY WHAT?”

I floated, my pinched fingers remained. They didn’t know. I had to remind myself.

Giggino pointed. “Neapolitan.”

“About the MY MOTHER to you? He say,” I opened my hands. “What? About the my mom to you,” nice, curious, bright, can’t get ANGRY, can’t get ANGRY. They are innocent, I am not. I hadn’t been back in fifteen years.

“CHE he say CHE he say to you…” A platter of a hand now scanning the way, I said, curious, a little, “what, what he say, to you…”

Giggino took the lead on this one because my father spoke to him the most…

“Cosa?”

I tossed Carmine “what” instead of “how much.”

“La quantità, Carmine…of the WORDS.”

“Not much,” Giggino said.

Others joined, obviously.

“Only that she wasn’t never really in your life.” 

His sincere brow — his sympathy— infuriated me.

Why are they asking me this, then? I looked at them.

They got pushy. “How were they supposed to know?”

I laughed. I had to give that to them, forward, at a breaking point that was unbreakable. 

“No, I do not SPEAK…!”

“Aw, how sad, sorry.” 

“No…”

They searched for a day, any day, that I spoke to my mother.

“No, no, no” not this…

“Weekends? Birthdays, Christmas, holidays…”

“NO!”

“Not even on her name day?”

I had to laugh. “NEVER!”

“But she’s still your mother…”

That was richer than the food.

“Mai, mai, mai,” pinching both sets of fingers together in the Italian, lock and load, I said “never” with an increasing satisfattivo. Satisfaction, I think. I gave them two open hands—the number of times that I saw her let alone spoke to her almost pleading with them, a bit of an act, on an edge.

“Christmas, weekend, name days, you called people…”

I threw my hand—I cast it long and sharp.

“Oilloc,” Vico poured me another glass.

“SHE!”

I held the hand, held it, just trying to find the word for “to give.”

I handed anything and everything to Carmine for the VERB. Time to pump up the play — getting into this game right? How FUN it was FOR ME. RIGHT? This goddamn story. Gotta keep it light, gay, can’t be affected, must understand, no one can affect me. They loved it! Carmine took it, simply, not knowing what this was — brilliantly. His father got it, too, indicating to Diodora—her son.

“When a person does this…the ACTION. VERBE!”

“She’s got a style no?”

“Brava Meri!”

How could I not laugh? They didn’t get how FUNNY they were, but anytime I laughed, they thought I was joking. Quick changes. I felt bad. I was too quick. I couldn’t offend them. They were innocent. I got it.

“She gave me….”

Carmine came in.

“SHE GAVE YOU? GAVE YOU WHAT?”

“To another person!”

Cristina took a deep breath.

In short, my mother gave me away, not gave me, to another person when I was four years old.

“So what, people give their babies to people…”

Boom— Giggino. He handed a baby to a person as if it were stupid, even, how common it was. “Si, si,” Diodora seared, this time, with her frown, right through me. Looking at them, they gestured, indicated, scanned.

“NORMAL, NORMALE.”

This is not a reason not to call someone, your mother. Si, si. Patch things up.

I got up from the table.

Carmine’s head grained back slightly as I threw open an invisible cage in a self-mocking step.

“NORMALE…”

“Normal, Maria, yes, normal.”

They liked my mime, and? I was giving a baby to someone — over there!

Carmine made little wings without changing his face but there was a question beneath it. I opened up a pigeon coup in my mind. He even got the image. His father snapped at him.

“What did this have to do with birds?”

“Tweet tweet!”

“MetaFOR!”

“She’s joking!”

“No!”

“Then why?”

“You.”

“YOU!”

“TELL THEM MERI!” Assunta cried.

I gave the BABY to a woman “over there.”

“BAMBINE.”

“What about the BIRD CAGE Maria?!”

I was putting her, pushing her, over there.

Vico kept saying “OBI LAN.”

I felt terrible for taking up this space but it was over. With a fist to Carmine like we could do this, I fired at him. “WE!” He repeated what I blurted, becoming less and less verbal. He adjusted his glasses. “Confusion,” he could see that. They all did. He asked everyone with a palm to back up. He was in charge. It didn’t work but it did. He got mocked, the crowd got interested, his father came closer, bringing in the people in.

Without inflection, Carmine pushed up his glasses.

“Meri is giving a baby to someone…in confusing circumstances.”

His brows lifting…me up. “A foreigner, Meri, or someone…”

“Or someone you did not know?” 

I snapped at him; I got a word I needed and flashed “TWO.”

“Both,” he confirmed with a peace sign. He left the space between us open; there was a missing piece of information that everyone tackled to fill with his eyes on me and “over there.” I shot four fingers at them, my body surging with electricity.

“FOUR YEARS!”

Yes, that detail. He nodded.

“FOUR YEARS?”

“FOUR YEARS OLD OR YOU LIVED WITH THIS WOMAN FOR FOUR YEARS?”

Two fingers for both—“YES!” It became bigger, happier, and wide-eyed as they hit me with “no, no, that’s not what happened.”

“YES.”

“No, no,” Diodora said with a tone.

“You don’t remember.”

If there was one thing that could have made me blow, it was that. I heard “remember me” in my head when I was four years old, lady, and at four, I had that bite, and I did bite—watch out. I threw punches. My Way. The Christmas carol in these parts. I couldn’t forgive myself for going there in feeling, so I masked that, so none of it was apparent. I had a strong mask. They kept going. No, no. They just didn’t stop. No, no. No, no.

Only one woman — my fire lit — could bring down a team of Neapolitans single-handedly. In this case, she would have been happy to. I channeled her fire—the mother who stepped into my house in a tennis skirt and legs shaped by the Gods and took me home for a day that turned into four years.  I kicked my feet like she did.

“HEY! My Brazilian Mama!!!!”

Their heads sort of flew back.

“TELL YOU—OKAY?”

I set off Nettuno—what the fuck is going on? I felt terrible. Guilty. “Now who’s this?”

Carmine moved his eyes but not his face. 

“O—kay…”

They bounced off my okay, rhythmically.

“O-kay, o—kay.”

I gave them her sassy finger in her Brazilian accent.

“Pay attention.” I remembered that phrase in the moment.

The table paused. They were impressed…by how I became this other person in front of their eyes. Giggino especially. “Si, si,” they all agreed, but why didn’t I do theater anymore? How could I not laugh? “She’s good, not bad. Do it again.” They got that she was real—they felt it. “DO IT, Meri, DO IT AGAIN.”

I laughed.

“She’s joking…”

“Pay attention,” I said, and is this where I lost the reality of it? I didn’t say, why are you doing this? Or, I’m going to have to leave. I had evidence, you see, it’s true. That was my automatic response. “SHE SAID NOT ME, SHE SAID.” I chewed gum like she did, smiling really nice, fake nice, at them. I flashed the four jazzy fingers she gave me at the tennis club which they mirrored. They commented, zoomed in on the gesture, amused.

I began on my pinky! I showed it to them. Held it. They waved their little pinkies at me. I had to PUSH through the laughter. “SHE SAID, no me, SHE said to me,” I said, as her, which they could legitimately see. I counted all the way up to four beginning to say “the bad names” about my mother. Giggino had to laugh. They called my foul.

“The bad things! CARMINE! About the my mom.”

Carmine looked at me with owl eyes so I could follow him. “This woman didn’t like her mother,” reading me, “more…hated, Meri?”

“SHE SAID—FOUR YEARS!”

“It’s not true.”

“SI!”

For the love of GOD. “I DO NOT SPEAK!”

Giggino didn’t want to accept it.

Carmine slipped it in.

“You don’t put the definite article in front of family members…”

“MAYBE,” I blurted in French. “PAR CONTRE.”

They called my fouls. Vico said, gravely, through all this. “Ancay Francay.”

“It is more true,” with shoulders, “PER me.”

The math added up, at least, to Giggino.  

“And then,” I came here for the first time…after these four years.

“Yes.” Coming in fast —

I laughed again, taking that hit. Giggino accepted my statement that he didn’t believe a child, putting his chin into it. “Was this not unbelievable?” He had no clue why was I laughing, “unbelievable,” looking at them, an edge they didn’t notice but I was wrought about it. I didn’t want to do this. I laughed, rinsed. I was coming to my senses. I hated my story. 

“She was Brazilian, this woman?”

“She said that.” We tackled Giggino for fun. “SHE SAID, SCUSA,” Cristina snapped.

Giggino defended himself — right.

“My Way Brasiliane,” Vico said.

“No…” Rosa said. “Baby no…”

“Si,” Vico figured. The whole time. He followed me perfectly. “My way Brasiliane.”

“Was this her? The woman you told to get out of My Way?”

“Her cugine,” I said, and Vico said “esatto,” still grave, looking up at me with his sparkling blues. The siren.

“Sorry…”

Their faces—what word was this?

“SORRY?”

Diodora called my foul in sounds. 

“Why is she apologizing? Carmine?”

He didn’t know. No one did. Well, I sort of flipped out, albeit strangely.

“Um,” trying to bring my voice down, they wouldn’t let me.

Caring Giggino — leading with a sincere brow. “What? What do you want to say? SPEAK!”

“What is stronger than scusa?”

Meri, Carmine got real without words suddenly near me, which made me realize I was standing. Why do you want to know this?

“YO HOO ARTISTS TWEET TWEET YOO HOO.” Giggino dangled his wrist.

I was standing by the Cubist painting of Maria with a veil and two faces. Oh, smile, um, switching feet, haha. “Meri,” there she is, Giggino with a tight alligator smile. We can see her, no? At four. Yes, yes, we can. We can.

“Mi dispiace,” Ivana said.

“NOH,” Rosa said. “Baby NOH.”

Giggino looked at me as if I were a complete alien.

Assunta said “MERI,” so tenderly. She was happy that I was back even elegantly.

Everyone was.

I was “allegra,” according to Assunta’s pout—joyful, happy, lively.

I blinked. “Allegra?” 

Diodora frowned.

“Si,” Giggino ushered me to get off this train of thought. “Of course you’re allegra.”

Vico brought himself forward as if he sensed it. “I am coming down,” he showed it, his eyes sparkling, “from the mountain,” he said rhythmically, “with a story of misfortune.” There were many songs, he said, without words, his eyes becoming distant, misty, so many. He shrugged at my nonverbal reaction as if it were tiny, but I hadn’t moved. “Anche brute,” he said. “Naples is both,” charming now, “brutal and belle,” in French, linking the two words by shaking his index and thumb. The story was unfolding now, he tapped the table, “brutal and beautiful, so anche brute,” he said, magically. His eyes. Tough, Vico, brute, himself, he is. Staccato. Shrug. “Eh brav.” No one else caught that — this was a siren in action. There were many songs. Eyes sparkling. He got the picture. My performance, the whole thing. Nonverbally. “My way Brasiliane.”

I couldn’t believe these people.

“We wondered where you went…”

Now, I recoiled.

“WHAT IS THIS SHYNESS?” Giggino was so funny, receding into himself. “WHO IS THIS?!”

“Si,” Diodora called it.

“Si, scusa.”

“WHY IS SHE SAYING SCUSA?” Giggino.

“This is what family is for.”

Right.