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 —