He thought we were learning how to be good housewives. But I was learning, under the tutelage of this unlikely guru, the wanton pleasure of the sybaritic life.
Part Two
WOUNDS
KEEPSAKES
After my grandfather dies, all his possessions fit into one large cardboard carton. His labor was of the manual, bone-crunching, muscle-aching kind. And though he worked hard from boyhood, these belongings are all he left when he died.
Birth certificate. (Commune di Vieste, Provincia di Foggia. Dated 4 settembre 1881, though when he arrived in America, officials gave him a birthdate in April, because they couldn't understand his reply to the question "When were you born?")
Passport. (Italian.)
Naturalization papers. (Dated 4 March 1944. The handwriting shows he doesn't often sign his name.)
Identification papers, bearing his photograph, for his work on the Lackawanna Railroad. (For the photo, he was docked pay.)
Identification papers, bearing his photograph, for his work on the piers. Occupation: Laborer. Height: 5 feet 3 inches. Weight: 165 pounds (he was a stocky man). Color: White. Hair: Gray Black. Complexion: Ruddy. (For the photo on the papers, he was docked pay.)
Cheap metal pocket watch, neither gold nor silver. (Worn on special occasions. But not to work. Not needed there, for the bosses told him when to begin work, when to eat, when to stop. He was not in control of how he spent his time, so he had no need to know what time it was. The watch, broken, is now in my possession.)
Nightshirts. (Two. Rough material.)
Nightcap. (One. The tenement was unheated.)
Long underwear. (Two sets. One heavy, for winter; one light, for summer. Worn day and night. Removed on Saturday, bathing day. Though there was no bathtub and he washed at the sink, standing on an old towel to catch the drips. The day to switch from the winter set to the summer, determined by a particular saint's holiday— which saint, I do not recall.)
Socks. (Five pairs, worn, darned.)
Workclothes. (Two sets.)
Workboots. (One pair, cracked, worn.)
Workgloves. (One pair, grime-encrusted.)
Gold signet ring. Initials "S" and "C" intertwined. (A rare self-indulgence. Now in my possession, worn every day, in memory.)
A slingshot. (Homemade.)
Lunch pail. (Metal. He ate only food prepared at home or by a relative; the only time he didn't was at his daughter's wedding reception.)
Pinochle cards. (Worn; used nightly in games played during the summer, outside on the sidewalk in front of the tenement, with neighbors, on a collapsible card table, lighted from above by a streetlamp.)
There were, of course, no books, no magazines (he could read neither Italian nor English); no recordings (he had no phonograph); no paintings. Nothing but a very large crucifix and two large photographs adorned their walls.
The photographs. The first, a wedding photograph of my grandfather and my mother's birth mother, the one who died, for whom my mother languished. The second, a wedding photograph of my grandfather and my stepgrandmother, the woman my grandfather brought to the United States for my mother's care, the stepmother my mother detested.
They are gigantic, the photos. As large as movie posters. Backed with cardboard. Crumbling, now. Far too large to display in any modest room (though they were displayed in such a room), or even in a large room, for that matter. I do not understand the reason for their size. Except to indicate the seriousness of marriage.
Today, almost a century after they were taken, they rest on his granddaughter's desk. After his death, they went to my mother. After her death, to my father. After my mother's death, when my father marries a second time, he wants to discard them and he tells me so, tells me to come right away to his house or they'll be gone.He wants to put the past behind him," my husband says. "Wants to start a new life."
Can my mother's family, my family, I ask myself, mean so little to him now?
I imagine the wedding pictures in a garbage bag at the town dump, soiled by coffee grounds, yesterday's leftovers. "I'm coming right away," I tell my father, hating him, thinking he is a mean, coldhearted prick.
When I get them, I clutch at them, as if, in having them, I have resurrected my grandparents. As if, in having them, I have known my grandmother. I think that if I gaze at them long enough, they will yield secrets that will help me become more myself.
On the left of each photo, there is a bride, exhibiting a lavish bouquet of roses, two dozen roses, a bouquet far more sumptuous than my wedding bouquet, far more impressive than any I've seen. My grandmother's flowers are in a formal arrangement, fresh and alive. In a few years, she will be dead from influenza. My step-grandmother's flowers are arranged more loosely. Her name was Libera, and she was a renegade, a breaker of rules, and so it would be like her to ask for an informal arrangement. But her roses are wilted. Was she married on a hot day? Or as an economy did she and my grandfather arrange to have a bouquet made from flowers past their prime? This would be very like them.
My grandfather wears the same suit in each photo (his one good suit), and the same shirt, same tie, same lily-of-the-valley boutonniere, same handkerchief (folded differently— into a large white oblong when he marries my grandmother; into a tiny saillike triangle when he marries my stepgrandmother). His shoes are not new, but polished: the first set, with buttons; the second, with laces.
In each, he strikes a gallant pose: head cocked, dark hair neatly slicked back. The hint of a rakish pompadour when he married my grandmother has disappeared by the time he marries my stepgrandmother.
In each, he seems proud of his bride and of his position as groom. In each, he smiles. In the first, however, you can see the pride in his smile, can feel the sexual tension between this woman and this man, can tell that this was a love match. In the second, his smile seems born of relief that he will no longer have to worry about his daughter's care. In the portrait with my stepgrandmother, he is not wearing a wedding ring. In his heart, he married only once; the second marriage was undertaken from necessity, not choice.
And the backgrounds. In one, my grandfather and his first wife stand in front of a screen portraying the colonnaded great hall of a palazzo; in the other, my grandfather and stepgrandmother stand near one depicting a stone wall and the trellised window of a country estate.
The stone wall of such a place, though was built to keep him out. Yes, he might have worked its land. But he could not walk on its lawns, lounge under its trees, swim in its brooks, eat at its table.
The photographers have done their best to make these folk look accepted, acceptable, well regarded, well respected. The poorer they are, the more recently they have arrived, the photographers have learned, the more elaborate and elegant they want the backdrops in their photographs. But the dresses. Oh, the dresses.
My grandmother's, adorned with tulle rosettes, decorated with a scalloped border trimmed with beads atop an organza underskirt. My stepgrandmother's, layer upon layer of embroidered lace. The neckline of each, proper, decorous. The headdresses, closefitting, with spikes of pearls. The veils, floor-length, embroidered.
My grandmother stands with her feet firmly planted, and she looks bold and sure and proud and determined and purposeful. (My granddaughter Julia's face is very like hers.) And she was, I have been told, willful, like I am. But my grandfather didn't complain, just shook his head and laughed when she stood firm against him, for he loved her and was happy that he was in America, and not in the Old Country, for there, a man who could not control his wife was not a man at all.
My stepgrandmother stands in tiny pointed shoes fastened with satin ribbons, poised daintily. No sign, here, of the hardworking capable woman she was. She looks vexed, uncertain of her future with this man and his child.
If you saw these photographs of these women in these dresses, you would not believe that my grandmother sold vegetables door-to-door and took in washing; that my stepgrandmother would become the superintendent of our teneme
nt, that she would collect rent for the landlord, and shovel snow, and fix things. In their bridal attire (bought? rented?), these women look wealthy, as wealthy as the wives of the latifundisti, the great landholders in Puglia.
On this one day, these poor women can pretend they are wealthy, privileged. Which is why, I think, these portraits are so large— these images are meant to obliterate that they're immigrants, obliterate the poverty of their lives.
Still, each woman seems uncomfortable wearing these clothes. Neither will ever wear finery like this again. But the three-piece suit is my grandfather's, and he wears it throughout his life. A man who works with his hands needs only one suit. To wear to weddings, christenings, funerals (those of others, and his own). More than one suit would be an extravagance.
And this man, who leads a hardscrabble life in this richest of countries (whose streets, he was told, were paved with gold, who tallies at day's end how little he's earned, how much he owes), has no need of more than one suit, carefully purchased, so that it does not look like a wedding suit but like a good suit. A suit a man can wear with pride, though in wearing it, he feels like an imposter. Feels like the bosses he despises, not like the laborer he is and the workers he respects.
My grandfather wears this suit eight times in his lifetime. At his first wedding. My mother's christening. His first wife's funeral. His second wedding. My mother's wedding, when he walks her down the aisle with pride, with joy, for he likes the man she is marrying; he gets drunk at her reception, he is so happy. (Drunk as he is, he is careful of his suit. He is always careful of his suit.) And he wears this suit on the day when he becomes a citizen of the United States.
When his daughter marries, my grandfather tells her that he will wear this suit, though it now looks old-fashioned, when her children are christened, when they graduate from college, when they marry— his grandchildren who will go to college, distinguish themselves, fulfill his dreams, marry well, make his work worthwhile. (He wears his suit to their christenings. But he is dead long before they graduate, long before they marry.)
He wears his suit, too, for his wake and his burial. But this time, it smells of mothballs, for his wife has not had the time to air it.
Because he was buried in his suit, there was no good suit in the box of my grandfather's belongings. No good shirt, good socks, good tie, for he was buried in them as well. Just one pair of everyday trousers. No everyday shirt (he wore the top of his long underwear in the house).
Toward the end of his life, my grandfather would try the suit on to make sure that it still fit (he was not getting fat, but was becoming bloated, retaining water for a reason he never discovered, for he never went to a doctor, not once). He tried the suit on because he didn't want his wife or daughter to waste money on a burial suit, and he didn't want the undertaker to slit the jacket of his suit up the back, slit the trousers to accommodate his girth, the way the undertaker had to for a friend. My grandfather didn't want to imagine himself going to the other side in a damaged suit. That would have made a bad impression, would have brought disgrace to his family. Even in death, la bella figura.
And yes, the suit still fit, he would discover whenever he tried it on, though it was a bit tight, especially in the thighs. And, as he pulled in his stomach and fastened the buttons of his trousers, he relaxed, knowing that this suit could still be put to good use.
If my grandfather had been a nostalgic man, there would have been a small bag of soil in the box, Pugliese soil, stowed in his luggage and brought with him to America so that he could be buried with it. But there was no bag of soil. No nostalgia for the old country. Yes, he missed his parents (dead), his relatives (most of them dead), his friends (because he couldn't write, he had never been in touch with them). But he did not miss the place he left. "I spit on that place," he said. He was better off, he knew, in America.
In that cardboard box of my grandfather's possessions, there was this, too:
One pass, No. E 9155, good for riding any Lackawanna train between all stations, good from January 1st, 1948 through December 31st, 1949 (except for trains 3 and 6), in the name of Mr. S. Calabrese, Retired Laborer, signed on the back, in the hand that showed he did not write his name often.
The pass was useless. By the time this perquisite was issued to him, he was too sick to travel. And by the end of 1949, he was dead.
SLINGSHOT
I am sitting at my grandparents' kitchen table in Hoboken. My grandfather and I are drinking our wine (mine diluted with water) and eating lupini beans for a snack. I love peeling the covering from the bean, love popping the bean into my mouth. I love its salty softness. Love that my grandfather lets me eat as many as I want, as messily as I want; love that he lets me pile my lupini beans in front of me on the oilcloth-covered table without telling me to put them on my plate.
The time is during World War II. My father is in the Pacific. My grandparents take care of me often. They live right next door to my mother and me, our apartments connected by a toilet.
Whenever my grandfather takes care of me, he gives me wine mixed with water. He drinks his wine; I drink mine. (In high school, I will be the girl who drinks too much at parties. The girl who drinks so much that I can't remember who took me home. The girl who drinks so much that I often pass out on the way home— once, in the middle of a four-lane highway.)
My grandfather tells me stories, in dialect. Sometimes he tells me what I think are stories about where he used to live. Sometimes he tells me stories about my mother when she was a child. Sometimes he tells me about what is happening in the world right now. Some of what he says, I understand. Some I don't. Words, phrases, sentences get through to me; then, suddenly, and always when the story gets interesting, I'm lost. But because I can't speak dialect, and he can't understand English, I can't tell him to repeat what he says, to slow down. So I can't be sure, now, if my memories of what he told me are pure, or if they are riddled with my own interpolations, and so part fabrication. I nod to keep him talking, nod as if I understand. I am sleepy from the wine, but not yet sleeping, and I fill in the blanks in my grandfather's stories. Soon, I will want to sleep. And will sleep, until my mother comes back. In the middle of my grandparents' feather bed. Under a giant cross with Jesus bleeding.
During the war, my mother welcomes my grandparents' help raising me. Whatever my stepgrandmother wasn't— warm, tender, congenial— she made up for by her brusque competence in caring for children.
I remember my grandmother's no-nonsense way of washing me, remember how she sang Italian songs as she cared for me, though she was not singing to me. I remember wandering into my grandparents' apartment, where I would be given small treats— a few almonds to nibble, a crust of homemade bread with honey, a hard biscuit. When my grandmother watched me, she sometimes played with me, though never when my mother was around. A game of patty-cake, cat's cradle, peekaboo.
While my father was away, I don't remember my grandmother and my mother fighting. My mother was happy to be near her father, whom she adored. And with my father gone, my mother had less to do, so she tolerated my grandmother's ways— how she ate cockles with a safety pin; how she rarely changed her clothes or washed; how she never combed her hair; how she didn't love my mother (though she seemed to love me).
If my mother came home, and found me drunk, she'd be angry. But my grandfather never stopped giving me watered-down wine. And my mother never stopped leaving me with him.
On this day, my grandfather tells me that I will go to school when I'm older. And that, when I go to school, I should be a good girl.
He looks out the window as he talks. Stops talking. Gestures for me to be quiet. Takes the slingshot he keeps on the windowsill, a stone from the assortment he keeps in a small dish. Slowly, carefully, he leans out the window.
There is a pigeon perched on our neighbor's clothesline, not far from the open window. Many of our neighbors keep pigeons in pigeon coops. My mother thinks they're a nuisance and disease-ridden— flying rats, she calls
them— and can't understand this old-world practice.
My grandfather pulls back the elastic on the slingshot. Takes aim. Lets go.
The pigeon drops to the ground. In my alcohol-induced haze, this happens in slow motion.
My grandfather tells me to stay where I am. He runs downstairs, out the back door, into the courtyard. And though I know I'm not supposed to, because it's dangerous, I lean way out the window to see what happens next.
My grandfather picks up the pigeon, inspects it. The bird doesn't look dead. It looks startled. I think I see it move its wings.
Satisfied, my grandfather tucks the pigeon under his shirt. Back in the kitchen, he wrings its neck. The pigeon's head dangles, like the head of my abused and broken doll.
I have, in my young life, seen many animals brought home live from the market and slaughtered in my grandparents' kitchen. Also, on my grandmother's relatives' farm when we visit. My grandparents won't eat anything that doesn't come into their home alive.
I am curious about, horrified by, how my grandparents wring birds' necks, pluck their feathers, kill eels with sharp blows to the head, kill fish by plunging a knife between their eyes. I watch them strip the skin off animals with pliers, remove entrails, drain animals' blood. I am beginning to wonder when life becomes nonlife; beginning to think about death, beginning to have nightmares in which I, too, am dressed for cooking.
I watch my grandfather's work with the pigeon. He dangles the head before me, teasing me. This, he won't discard, for in this household nothing is wasted. Later, he'll dress it, impale it on a metal skewer, thrust it into the coals of the stove to roast, share it with my grandmother.
The entrails, though, are his alone. These, he chops and fries, dousing them with wine. He toasts a piece of my grandmother's bread, smears it with pigeon guts, pours the juices over, serves himself a little more wine. He is, at this moment, a very happy man.
Crazy in the Kitchen: Food, Feuds, and Forgiveness in an Italian American Family Page 6