Do you drink, Maria, do you drink?

THEIR WORDS FELL like rain. I was visualizing a landscape where their words fell like rain, and when they hit the ground, they transformed into images, objects. I wondered if they might actually correspond with what they were saying. It was a language-learning experiment. It’s always twilight there, a deep purple, a desert.

“Why are you laughing?”

The giant window behind Giggino resembled a two-way at a police station at night. I was in a state of suspension which could be effective as the Neapolitans could change topics. We weren’t though. Not this evening. Oh, I shrugged, pasta boiling, olives out, Carmine cutting bread. Should I take Giggino and Carmine down this road? “I am imagining words as pictures to understand if there’s a connection between them?” It was tempting, especially in broken Italian. I laughed, a little, I had to.

“WHAT HAPPENED TO LA ZIA JOHANNA RAFFAELLE…?”

Carmine brought another bottle of frizzante.

“Maria…”

I didn’t expect them to remember my father’s family.

Giggino raised his voice as people tend to when someone doesn’t speak the language. “Your father’s sister…LA ZIA,” which is a funny sounding word for “aunt.” THE ZIA. “There was a girl…” Giggino was hazy. “You used to play with…” “Another,” I turned the thought with my fingers, which he mirrored, making fun of me, “like a sister.”I shook my head. He defended himself. It’s not why I was shaking my head!

Did my father…tell you?

Not much.

Giggino had some memory, it turned out, his arms folded as if we both knew there were more people watching, listening, behind that two-way, lady. He was the CHIEF of the investigation. This is Naples. “Maria LA ZIA.” He got BACK to the point.“The AUNT,” he said, “what HAPPENED to the AUNT.”

I had no idea what to say. Diodora held a steaming pot of pasta with fagioli. I didn’t want that much. “Look”, she began, Giggino interrupted. She spoke slowly. “Assunta is my sister.” She paused, thinking I didn’t understand, so I arrived at another edge, and the thing is, who doesn’t have edges? I just couldn’t have them, show them, identify, not feel guilty for having. Of course you think I’m stupid, good, I can buy my time, wait, why did I just think what I just thought? 

“Your father, your father had a sister.”

“No,” Diodora held a steaming pot, thinking maybe he didn’t, but Giggino and Carmine called her foul on the radiator. All together now, except Carmine: “Si si, Maria, si. Si si, si — LA ZIA JOHANNA RAFFAELLA…”

My plate steaming and piling up with pasta, I stopped at a small appetizer portion size instead of taking it as a main course because it’s not what pasta is. Their portions confuse me every time.

That’s it?

Well, meat was coming, wasn’t it? I wanted to be able to eat the food without feeling like my guts were splitting on December 13th but I couldn’t say that, so I gave Giggino a casual platter of a hand.

I turned my fork and put it down.

“Eat, please,” Giggino said.

Not until someone else started to eat.

He looked at me. I had some DEEP complex about not eating before OTHERS, and IT DROVE GIGGINO MAD! “Sono,” I said respectfully, proudly, with a pinch, one set of pinched fingers, okay? OKAY SIGN. “From the outside. ME I come from external! I cannot eat until everyone else starts eating…” Maria, please. They were clueless as to where this absurd premise came from. Well, I am from America, you know, you’re not seeing my culture as much as the Brazilians did not see my non-culture, you see? Not to say I’m not Italian, but she was actually from Brazil, so that’s why she didn’t SEE me as Italian. She had an accent, I didn’t. And they didn’t see my American-ness. I couldn’t really place myself, at this point. Anyway, I refused to eat before someone else started. Why I was so proud, so insistent that I could not go first, I cannot, not before, I do not know. I didn’t eat, according to Giggino. 

“That’s not true!” I chewed.

“I do not like this sensazione,” and I was old enough to say it in my opinion. Of my guts splitting in two. They corrected my Neapolitan with the proper Italian pronunciation.

Carmine broke a piece of bread.

“BUT LA ZIA…”

I couldn’t stop laughing at “JOHANNA RAFFAELLE” because she’d BLOW us all to the next township for uttering this name. Another cosmic force, Jane. They didn’t understand.

“Il nome,” I said. “The name is Jane.”

They felt that too — her.

Jane.

Diodora snapped. “COSA?”

Carmine rested his forearms on the table, turning his silverware.

“Who is JAY?” Giggino was amused.

“Well, Johanna Raffaelle being Italian she didn’t like.”

I basically said that. She didn’t like being Italian. Wagging my finger at them, she wanted nothing to do with this name. I slapped the air as she would. “No is Johanna Raffaelle,” I assured them.

Their faces made me laugh. They froze with forks, mid-chew, looking at each other. How could someone not like being where they are from? Or Italian. She really didn’t want to be Italian and got really annoyed at “people” not understanding that. She ripped through you man, like you were made of skin and bones, ripped.

“WE ARE FROM AMERICA,” boom. I gave them a bite of Jane, but she might be too gifted for me to do, might need to be British doing New Jersey, it’s hard to explain, a Shakespearean character 100% New Jersey. It’s very important to understand that — this was high art. Classical. Medea, epic. “Enough of this Italian CRAP,” she’d slam down her “l’aqua calda con ginger,” I pinched it. “Ginger, the thing that is hot, not the temperature, ma, “spicy,” Diodora said, “si si, you put in tea…”

“Ahhhhh….”

“This was like a bon bon MA old.”

“She was old,” Giggino asked paternally, “or the…”

“Ginger…”

“Both…”

He winced — “si si, la grande depression,” I said, “was great. Also epic.” They got that as masters of the form. Giggino made a “ba buh” face, chin, tense about it, and Diodora kept her composure. “Dolci,” I said. “Sweet.”

“In America,” I began, to keep on track, as were about to go off about the old ginger, their concern that no one could bring her a fresh box? Si, is this hard? Um, hmmm, I made it clear with a hand that cut through — Jane would be, didn’t have the word, explosive, if you…

“Why?”

“MOHNEY.”

But then, she might take it, I don’t know, hard to tell there. Fair.

What is the value of this? The point of this? Ginger in the tea— to digest? Their bewilderment made me laugh. Si sisii, ma for the gusto, as I saw it written on a building in Naples, ohhhhh right. Taste. Her ginger candy “epica,” I said, which could be found in the Buick, too, rented, plum, a superior color. “Yes, in the car…explose…” chocolates, toilet paper, lavender spray, “the fiore, the plant that is purple that,” I smelled, “buon.”

“An herb,” he insisted, “an herb?”

“Yes yes, very popular.” As in working class not popular. “Famous.” Jane’s favorite color. She’d apply it across her eyes with her fingers. This color, I said, with a hand of gravity, was…very important. With her hand, superior droopy mask, brows like mountain peaks, “her car was ready for anything,” this puppy was packed, you never knew what you were going to find in this car. I couldn’t stop laughing at Jane. A cosmic force.

“Okay, like my father.”

Carmine mirrored my hand gestures going “underground, oh water, sure, my waves across the universe, right,” he pushed up his glasses. His parents didn’t understand that. I was laughing. “In World WAR II,” I began. They gave me a nudge.

“Si si, WORLD, WAR, WAR…II.”

“Oh,” Carmine said. “He was…”

“Si…”

“Navy?”

“He …”

“No, no.”

He mimed a toy boat sinking into an ocean, little periscope, owl eyes.

Diodora held her frown at Carmine. Giggino was surprised by our exchange.

“Submarines,” Carmine said, miming the periscope.

Yes, that was easy. Su, su, su, su. Su. I blinked. I didn’t want to tell them that he almost beat a man to death, actually, at dinner, because someone called him a ginny, a derogatory name for an Italian, I found out about that once he could no longer hide his “secret illness,” which sounds like a bad joke, and it reveals a violent side of Nick, also. It shocked me considering American history. It’s why they put him in the submarines. I can’t explain that, but that time lingered, he was not the same, according to “the Jane,” after that. Simply put, “it wasn’t always positive to be Italian in America.” Not knowing what to do with it, fluffing this as light, do you know what I mean? Their faces.

“But they have so many Italian things…”

“I know,” I couldn’t do this.

“Restaurants…”

Giggino kept going. Had to turn the wheel…

“Her…”

“Music…”

I slipped a ring on my wedding finger.

“They appreciate…” please.

“Name?”

Carmine said. “Her name…”

“Her married name, she changed it? Really?”

“Also Italian, Sicile.”

Jane married a blond blue-eyed Sicilian immigrant, whose name was evidently Joe, which made me laugh, and then, she changed his last name officially to sound less Italian. Giggino skipped it.

“If you say Johanna Raffaelle,” I pointed, “to her…” with her strong nose, the strongest in the family, “the nose that knows,” as she always said, she would take no prisoners, you’re dead. Pointing at them, “dead.” You dead. Just the name, Johanna Raffaelle.

“Do you speak, speak to Johanna Raffaelle?”

I, um, nervously asked for pepper­––freezing because I couldn’t lie. Like, what difference would it make to them? None. But I couldn’t lie. “Johanna Raffaelle fa,” with hands, “boom, in the real, reale.” I didn’t know what to do; she truly hated this name. I pointed to the muscles in the mouth that they didn’t typically exercise. I blew through my lips. Laughing, I tried to stop Carmine from setting himself up for a round of charades. “Maria,” Giggino got whispery and low. “What is happening?”

I was reaching for the word and settled on a gesture.

“Salt?”

Diodora

“Thank you.”

Carmine took the pepper and put it down beside me. Taking a bite of the pasta, it was very good. Everything had taste here, and I meant it. “Gusto?” Rubbing my fingers. I didn’t want to talk about Aunt Jane. I couldn’t say that. My “wow” attitude was curious to them.

“In America, does food not have taste?”

I thought they knew, Americans come to Italy for the food, was it that unusual? I am FROM America.

“Do you SPEAK, SPEAK to the ZIA JOHANNA RAFFAELLE?”

“No!”

“Why?” 

“The same thing,” I made a burst with my hands, (uh oh, here we go), and the word “happened” splattered in my mind’s eye. “QUANDO, CARMINE,” I landed on a French word, “s’est passé,” closing my eyes. The three of them interpreted my eyes closing. I made no sense to them.

“When you speak a LANGUAGE…” I began.

“It’s okay.”

“Image,” I said.

“French word.”

“I cannot speak Italian.”

Yes, yes you can. No, I can’t.

Pointing to my glass of Saperle, Gigino took the ground out from under me in a surprising move. “Drink, Maria, drink?”

“Obvieux!” I was intense, nice. You “METS” I said in French. “ON ME.”

“What the hell is she saying?”

Carmine didn’t know. “Maria,” he said. I was laughing, and it proved his point.

“Maria, DRINK, DRINK?”

“GIGGINO!” Pinched fingers.

“SI?”

“My mother was an alcohol…”

I didn’t know this word, and I didn’t want to do this at dinner.

“BEVE?” Drink?

I got up with Diodora. “Could I help you prepare the meat?” “Prepare the meat.” Giggino echoed on the grill, outside the patio door. “Alcohol, Maria, your mother, alcohol, alcoholic?” I laughed at his tone, even, facing the door. “GRANDE.” Is that what he wanted to know? It came out like “KNOW, this? Everyone?” Carmine wondered what just happened. “Every night,” this is what he wanted to hear no? “At the police…okay?”

“The my father,” I declared.  

“My father,” Carmine said simply.

“He wrote it…okay…”

I was pointing to my palm and snapping at Carmine and spouting words. “When you want no more marriage ceremony.” He pulled back and looked side to side as Giggno and Diodora interpreted. “Tu make a document to say the marriage is FINITO.”

“Divorce…?” 

“Ahhh.”

“What?”

“Eh?”

“No NOTHING, I mean, no mariage.”

“He wrote questo,” I had evidence. I always had that.

“FOR THIS, the document that does this official.”

I shook “THE PAPER” in French.

“Marriage finito.”

“And then I came here,” I said.

I said everything as if I had evidence.

“Good,” in Giggino’s opinion.

“Good?”

“Here’s a reaction.”

I looked out the door.

“I was,” according to Giggino, a word I didn’t recognize. He thought it was understandable. What was this word that sounded like a pasta…it did. I was being silly, and yes, it was, at times, defensive. I guess. I mean, defense exists for a reason. I didn’t know this word.

Carmine pushed his glasses up. “When your…” He searched so sincerely to phrase it for me, a person, how touching, by pointing, brows raising a little higher. “When someone does something that frustrates you…” He got upset, chill. “It doesn’t make you happy….” he trailed off. How many times have I said this? Peter Park. He looked off to the side and back. I wasn’t “angry.” Yes, I will remember this word with fists. I am not, a little yay, “angry.”

“She was sick.”

“She was…”

I never use this word but I had to because I only had basic language.

“Crazy, she was crazy.” I hated this word. I said to Diodora. She maintained her grounded coolness like Carmine. She’s not emotional like Giggino.

“No, si, no, but yes.”

Giggino cracked me up as I searched for “mind, thinking, mental health, ill, maladia,” si.

“She had grande problems, pathologia.” Was that too big a word dude, coming out of my mouth? Why did they dismiss me? Who is going around using WORDS like this? Do they know people going around using pathologia if the person isn’t pathological?  

Angry that she was an alcoholic? In the words of comedian Mitch Hedberg, “Alcoholism is the only disease that you can get yelled at for having.” It’s a disease. Angry at my mother for being an alcoholic? Taking a seat, I couldn’t imagine where she came from, what happened to her. Anger wasn’t in the equation for a long time to be fair but her alcoholism? Wasn’t so sure there. What made me angry was anger, the word crazy, the expectation that I would have substance abuse issues. They got I was angry, but they thought it was about her alcoholism. I was angry at no one because I couldn’t direct it, like why are you fishing for problems? Meanwhile, Rosa and Emma enjoy their glasses of wine, you know what I mean? But I can’t be. I just, honestly, had enough of this, swallowing it, I can’t fight back, because who gives a shit? Because who cares? Giggino squinted, holding the family back…he believed he could pick out meaning from my discourse. It made me laugh.

“Go on,” Giggino said. “It’s hard to speak about it?”

No, nothing was hard for me. I laughed as if it were a provocation too, a little lit up, now, and the laughter could have a sinister edge, but I didn’t want to direct that towards them, so it was mixed up. You didn’t get it. No one got the edge. I didn’t totally understand them, they didn’t totally understand me. I can’t speak the language, so let’s have some fun with it, since I am here. Conducting visualization experiments. I had to learn. The open door, “close it,” she droned. Now Giggino and Diodora were having a little back and forth. He was rocking up on his heels, the meat sizzling.

“That’s tough,” he had to admit.

They all did.

“It’s not an easy condition,” he said.

I gave that to them, yeah. We appreciated one another. “No,” I laughed, “it’s true.” It had been so many years. I hardly ever spoke to this woman let alone about her alcoholism. Sorry, I was uncomfortable. It was dinner and I was four. I thought I had to bridge a little gap though. Sure, I’ll connect, or accept their support. No one else did this. I pointed to the wine glass.

“Why me?”

I was trying, Giggino and Diodora in parental mode across from one another. I never saw them as parents, but Giggino came after me, man, that’s just what it was. I tried to communicate that his statement affected me, but I acted curious if not fascinated by the way stories seem to haunt you. Look at this. This glass, this story. Not his fault. Not going to direct anger at him. This was my mother’s problem. They didn’t understand. I, um, appreciated…Carmine, but he didn’t defend me. He could let me drown. Yes, I took my meat rare…not well done. He gave me a piece that took up a whole plate. Yes, me strange, the only one in the whole wide world. “Thanks.” They called my foul in sounds — “eh, O-KAY,” Diodora said. Carmine tipped his head. All I say is “PLEASE, THANK YOU, AND SORRY ALL THE TIME”—BOOM, GIGGINO. “Si,” Diodora said. Giggino didn’t like it. Carmine held his face. Awkward. I laughed. “What what what?”

“Eat eat eat eat eat eat…”

“EAT, Maria, eat, please. You don’t have to wait for us.”

Giggino put invisible food in his mouth. “Cold food is not good Maria. You want to eat the food,” he suggested. “Before it gets cold, this is why you should start eating…” I didn’t have to act like this. I was a polite person, and they didn’t appreciate it.

Alright, I thought. In some houses, it would be “police” to wait until everyone starts eating. “Poli,” I cracked up, which I did a lot, because I knew what I sounded like, but I suppose they were unaware that I aware of what I sounded like? “Nice,” I had to, “a person from outside who is here, in the house,” hands opening, shuffling through social customs. They’re straight faces at times — pure comedy. “A good person who does not live in this casa.” I adjusted my seat, cut my meat fresh off the grill. I kept going, wondering, not sure if I flashed any anger. “POLICE.” I could lose it. “The gentilesse,” I reached.

“Did I do something to…make you think this?”

I didn’t want my story to mean, automatically, that I might have problems. 

“It’s something I had to…”

“Pay attention to? Be careful of?”

“NO,” I had to laugh. Giggino made me laugh. He didn’t get it.

“Not this, but these ideas.”

I have seen families that do not understand how they might encourage problems, in that, I interviewed an addiction expert who told me oftentimes you have to treat the entire family. And yet, I was—Carmine pushed up his glasses and came forward. “You looked at a glass of wine and wondered if she had a drinking problem when, uh…” he indicated —with eyes — that it’s not her problem.

Giggino was definitely looking for problems. Hard not to laugh at him. He meant it. Looking over at Diordora. He swashed, chucked, opened his hands. With a story like this, “ma si,” Flora, one would expect to find problems. Right. Do you have any experience with which to anchor your beliefs? How many people “like me” have you met? Where are you getting this knowledge? I mean, the hell with your thoughts, your asssumptions, from WHERE factually are you drawing your conclusions? I want FACTS. WHO do you know? I didn’t say that, not back then, because I was UNAWARE that I did not have to PUT UP WITH THIS. People put this on me, they really did. Couldn’t quite decide if I would have developed problems because of these expectations. I understand how real they are. That made it hard for me to feel. Like I have an addiction, probably? That was part of my mask — against you with a smile, sorry to disappoint you. Oh, right? That would surprise you, wouldn’t it? Disappoint you. Let me bring in some world-famous psychologist to break the concept down for you— Carlos Santana. So, I needed relief, fine. I tried to express myself, at least, take a step, for me, personally— to open up, sure, aswhy that bothered me though it didn’t appear like they did. I had a strong mask. “Why?”

“People say why…are you so normal…”

“Si, si,” they agreed. Hard not to laugh.

You see, people are designed, this is a directional problem. You don’t understand; I’m Dr. J’s daughter, the truth is not the point, I have seen people encourage behavior in the name of truth that doesn’t have to be true, astonishing how “truths” don’t have to be true, you see, and yet you’ll insist even if the outcome is negative and harmful to me. Joy, man, Miracle Mile. And it’s so common, it’s crazy. So I’m going to end up an addict, that’s what you think? Think about Joy. She did, big big addict, whoa, sex, drugs, booze, shopping, fantasy. Would YOU appreciate someone speaking to you like that? Do you have a drinking problem? I can’t be normal? I can’t be okay. I have to not be okay — to fit YOUR narrative… like, I wanted to gift them a history book.

I probably felt a little like I get this game but once it gets real, then you’re out, right? That was a belief I held, knew, even, like, I get the performance, parents, acting all concerned, but this isn’t for keeps, and why do I have to be wrapped up in all this? Just because I opened my mouth. So there was an edge there, trying to get me to unravel, I don’t know why, but I suspect that it was young. I looked at adults as if they were innocent creatures as well, like you’re trying to get underneath my skin. That just felt like tension, mostly. People put this “on her,” Carmine said. I laughed. He held his nose in the air, not quite a smile.

“Si,” to Giggino and Diodora — it was obvious. Not my point though.

“My mother. Her problem…” I might have been funny but that’s her problem.

“Si,” Diodora said.

He gave me a palm.

“She’s saying,” Carmine continued.

“She didn’t give you a reason to say this to her…”

“I really think you need to talk about it.”

-

In the words of Good Will Hunting, “let the healing begin…” let’s sit around the sofa and discuss alcoholism, trips to the police station, her prostitution habit, as she was looking for sex downtown, people, frequently, shall we pass cookies? Sip tea? Like do you THINK I want to DO THIS? WHO would? WHO would want to TALK about this? And it’s not even over. There’s dessert. And of course I’m going to start SPINNING, there’s no limit. What I needed was — rage, fuck off.

I think with this book idea, I can start anywhere for the moment. Maybe these are good as scenes, I have to keep thinking about this one. I’ll post the next scene as is, and maybe skate into the Feast of Santa Lucia as I have the material, it’s solid, but it needs work. I don’t know what to do with this time. I did not read books to place this within a market. MERCATO MARIA— GIGGINO would laugh, at himself. “MER-CATO.” But I’ll start posting my family story, as this time concernes the adopted family story alongside Miracle Mile on my blog. We’re about to go into family II here.