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.