Vico flung a twangy line across the steam.
“Saperelle!”
He cried with glass bottles of wine.
“Do you want pizza, PIZZA, PIZZA MARIA?”
Cheese in strings across the table.
“We are united!” I said. “PAR fromage.”
“Ancay Francay,” he said it again. “Napoli Ancay Francay.”
Now, before we fly off, I’ll hold back the Hoover dam—them. Me. The whole thing. I must. This is a sport, not dinner. Also theater. That’s first. We’re in Naples, Italy, not Florida. We’re on the boot, not the pointed toe. Field, stage, what’s the difference? Tear down the set, charge the field, save the smuggling revolutionary. We will revolt? We will. It’s just like the film Three Men and a Baby, when Selleck reads to the baby in “soothing tones,” that’s all that matters, not the content, well, here, it’s the same only revolution. If you get UPSET, a crowd will BACK YOU UP: We’re talking PIZZA, a RELIGION, not a FOOD. UNDERCUT. We’re speaking to WIN. Not playing footsie. They know that sound is REAL — soundwaves. And it was wonderful. So loud, so free, even tickling, getting FLUNG around. You’ve never seen such footwork, switches in topic, slam. They can take you down. I wasn’t prepared. PIZZA flew like lampoons, hooking onto me, just the word, as these are people who trace their lineage to a siren who destroy a man with just her voice, soundwaves. PIZZA, PIZZA, the PIZZA Maria is…It’s NOT — GOOD.. GOOD, GOOD, BAD, MARIA, PIZZA IS NOT GOOD COLD.
Vico dropped it on the table, just like that, with his hands. “What happened to you?”
I sliced open a calzone as big as your head. A pool of fresh cheese spread across my plate and began to rise. Vico sat at the head of the table next to Giggino. His wife, Diodora was justice beside him. Assutna was amuse, on her own channel.
“Piscine,” I said, or pool in French with a Neapolitan accent.
“Eh brav. Eat, eat, eat.”
I was already full and thrown, packed to the brim. How to eat this thing? With a fork and knife or with bare hands? I picked up the creamy, subtle cheese on a fork, amazed. These people were gifted. GIGGINO was now in the ring, had been alerted by my enthusiasm but they could see, together, the commentators, “si si,” the sparkles around me, yes yes they could. This is what I mean. They could the SPARKLES around me, truly. HELLO? HELLO? CONTINUE. She’s not talking. “You,” enough of that.
“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,” Giggino said, and why would I joke about a disease? I couldn’t say that though. Not at that time. I was stuck on some psychological line. Why is this happening? This was my mother, Joy, lying about diseases, in facing a world that EXPECTS it? I trembled inside…were her stories true? Some.
“You were ten, correct?”
“Ten” flew in from everybody. We were a small party of like 10 people today.
“This is what she said,” Giggino gave me a palm and tapped the table.
“But you were here at this time…”
“I poof no?!”
I called in Carmine forever in front of me because the question as to why I disappeared was disappearing. He adjusted his glasses for our first round of charades. I had to be positive, you see, that was my only direction. Let’s LEARN. And this was a show, also. Carmine and I were the players at this moment as we’re not eating dinner in Naples, look, this is a match, a theater— again, save the smuggling revolutionary. Our moves were evaluated by the commentators who are also the players, the stadium itself.
His father mocked him. “TWEET TWEET.”
I saw explosions in Carmine’s eyes. “What is the…” word for WORD!” I cried. Big hands. Big feelings. “NO POOF!” I cried! Giggino got onto his elbows, coming in, putting his chin into my fight, approvingly, very good. “You see? You see.” Pass — from the judges.
Carmine nuzzled his nose at me.
“How do you say…” I asked…
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 — They’re trying to bring me down, make it more challenging.
“POOF!”
“POOF, Meri?”
The chorus said.
“HOW DO YOU SAY?”
They got the CONCEPT!
Quick foot-change, bam, I needed the word for “word.”
“Disappear,” Carmine snapped.
I dipped my finger into that word. They mirrored it, cute. “BUT WHY? Look at that…”
“Type, teep…grammaria…” I tried. “The structure of the LANGUAGE.” Carmine did not BREAK, he won’t do it. “Grammatica? What is the GRAMMATICA of to disappear?” His brows raised, he looked over at them, voices shooting, enjoying charades. “A verb…” Carmine trailed off…
They disagreed.
“SI,” I scooped up that word and brought it back with my shoulders into a fist.
“BEFORE THIS.”
I continued with air-quotes, pointing at everything. “LIKE CALZONE LIKE TABLE LIKE PAPA LIKE LIKE—A VERB IS?”
“Maria?”
Diodora rang low.
“HE DIDN’T SAY!” I cried. “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.
“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.” “THE DOCTOR SAID!”
The word for angry—I had a fork and knife.
“The dottor was not happy!”
It was I who was not happy.
They even expressed sympathy and understanding.
“SPEAK,” Giggino threw me onto the table 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.
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.
“HE DID NOT SAY?” I began.
“What Meri, SAY WHAT?”
I floated, my pinched fingers remained. “About the MY MOTHER to you? He say,” I opened my hands. “What? About the my mom to you,” nice, curious. “CHE he say CHE he say to you…” A platter of a hand now scanning the way.
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 in, 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,” my Italian pinches in full force, one in each hand, I said “never” with an increasing satisfattivo. Satisfaction, I think. I gave them two 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. But 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?
“She gave me….”
“SHE GAVE YOU? GAVE YOU WHAT?”
“To another person!”
Emma 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…” In short, that wasn’t the topic sentence at all. I couldn’t say she accused him of being a child rapist to some random woman at a dinner party!!!! That she LIED, which is why she gave me away—NONSENSE. Boom— Giggino. He handed a baby to a person as if it were stupid, even, how common it was. “Si, si,” Diordora 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…”
“Isn’t this nice?” Eager, bright, can’t get angry. “NICE. 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 because 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.”
“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. You see. 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, the dog—he barkled what the fuck is going on? I felt terrible. Guilty. “Now who’s this?”
Carmine moved his eyes without 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.
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 CLENCHED MY FISTS. “PAY ATTENTION,” and is this where I lost the reality of it?
From the SECOND I opened my mouth — I got hit with DISBELIEF, and I’m STUCK in some space I don’t need to be in — MEANING JUST LEAVE, MARIA. I don’t have to PUT UP WITH THIS.
For the love of GOD! “I DO NOT SPEAK!”
Giggino didn’t want to accept it. THE MOTHERLESS CHILD SYNDROME STRIKES AGAIN! THE LEAST OF MY ISSUES.
“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. In the end I’m ALWAYS apologizing.
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 full-lived pout—joyful, happy, lively.
I blinked. “Allegra?”
Diodora frowned. “Si, Meri, si,” Giggino ushered me to get off this train of thought. Vico just listened, giving me eyes, a song was coming. “I am coming down,” he showed it, his eyes sparkling, “from the mountain,” he said rhythmically, “with a story of misfortune,” and without words, there were many songs, his eyes becoming distant, misty, so many. He shrugged at my nonverbal reaction as if it were tiny though I didn’t move. “Anche brute,” he said about Napoli. “Belle,” in French, “and anche brute,” he said, even magically. His eyes. To become brute, himself, since he is. Staccato. Eh brav. No one else caught that — this was a siren in action. Eyes sparkling. He got the picture. My performance the whole thing. Nonverbally.
I couldn’t believe these people.
“We wondered where you went…”
Now, I’m recoiling, “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?”
“This is what family is for.”
Right. CONFUSING.