Growing Up Ethnic in America: Contemporary Fiction About Learning to Be American

by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

  “What did he say to her, Mama?” I often wondered.

  “I don’t know. What does a man say? He probably told her she was pretty, or something like that.”

  But she wasn’t pretty. I’ve seen many pictures of her. At seventeen, at twenty-eight, at thirty-five, she looks much the same: a pleasant, vague-faced woman with light hair caught in a thick, frizzy braid. Later, she turned tired, sour, sick. She died at forty, of cancer.

  Married, she had to discover Jake’s anger, his bafflement, his habit of chasing fire trucks. He liked to watch things burn. No one in his family thought this odd. They nicknamed him “Klingele”—fire bell. In one Indiana town, he served on the Volunteer Fire Brigade. Usually, though, he was a free-lance fire buff.

  One night, my mother remembered, Jake took her with him to watch a grocery store burn to the ground. His hand gripping hers was hot, sweating, heavy. As the flames grew large and the walls caved in, he squeezed her fingers. Her hand hurt, but she could not protest. His air of quiet, crushing reverence alarmed her more than his usual outbreaks of temper. Later, he said. “That was a good one.” When Annie told her mother the next morning, Renée smiled her vague smile and flipped back her braid. “Papa can be silly sometimes,” she said.

  Was she sorry she married him? On that day of Jake’s discovery, was she regretting her impulse—her decision? What was she thinking of? If she’s at all like me, her namesake, her thoughts are probably wispy, scattered, ungraspable. I can see her staring out her kitchen window, fumbling for something in her apron pocket. She has forgotten exactly what she is looking for. In any case, the pocket is empty.

  At some point, she decides she can’t remain invisible much longer. After all, she hears her husband bellowing in the garage, she sees two of her children incoherent with tears and the third judging her severely. Upstairs, her cat is passionately nursing a disreputable brood. Perhaps Renée thinks: Who are all these creatures, and what is their relationship to me? Perhaps she is appalled by all these forces she somehow, at seventeen, set in motion.

  Now Jake emerges from the garage, dragging a large washtub. He shoves it under the garden pump, and works the handle furiously. The old pump wheezes. The water, when it arrives, is rusty.

  My ten-year-old mother watches from the edge of an imaginary circle. If she moves no closer, she will be safe. Finally, the tub is filled. Jake yanks it across the yard, sloshing water as he goes. Annie has a sudden, terrible thought: he will demand her help, he will make her his accomplice. He will force her to carry the doomed kittens down from the spare room. If she refuses, he will aim the hose of his anger in her direction. He likes to complicate his furies. Annie retreats to the house.

  Climbing the back-porch steps, Annie thinks hard. She decides to confront her mother. Purposefully, she bangs the door open. Renée is still standing at the window. Her light-brown eyes have darkened, her light-brown hairs are spilling everywhere. She touches her throat, smooths out her apron, which is made of lace-trimmed, rose-sprigged lawn, cut down from an old dress. Renée hates to wear anything ugly.

  “Mama, you’ve got to do something! This is getting serious. Papa’s going to murder the kittens.”

  “Don’t worry, maybe he won’t.” Renée pushes back a strand of hair. “You know how Papa is. Something might happen.”

  Annie is infuriated. She wants to stamp her feet, or scream, or tear her mother’s teacups off their hooks. “What do you mean? What can happen? Nothing will happen if we don’t do something!”

  “Oh, you never know.” Renée starts to untie her apron, smiling her slow smile. “Sometimes things work themselves out. Honey, are those grass stains on your socks?”

  “Mama! Don’t you understand? It’s serious!”

  At this moment, Jake explodes into the house. Ignoring his wife and daughter, he pounds up the stairs. When he returns, his arms are full of kittens. Dinah follows him, mewing.

  “Don’t let that nafka out!” he warns, slamming the screen door.

  Annie and Renée rush after him. Joined by Ruth and David, they trail behind him down to the washtub, a small, silent parade. At the tub, Jake sets the kittens in a row, like toy soldiers. Dinah’s children are soft and gray, fluffy as dust balls. Their eyes are dark-blue slits. Interrupted in the act of nursing, they squeal and suck at the air.

  “Really, Jakie.” Renée touches her husband’s arm, lightly. “I think … do you have to? Can’t we … I mean, Dinah is an unusual cat. Her kittens will be unusual too. I mean, we could find homes for them.”

  “Yes, we could!” Annie’s voice escapes her, higher and louder than she’d intended. “I’ll ask the kids at school. I’ll make Charlie Krantz take one!”

  “Please, Jake, they’re so pretty. Everyone will want one. Their tails are going to be beautiful, like Dinah’s, like plumes.”

  A tactical error! Annie recognizes it at once. It’s a mistake to remind her father of the full-blooded Persians he—Dinah—might have had. Annie glares at her mother. Sometimes Annie thinks she is the only nonstupid person in the world.

  “Pretty? These things? They look like rats!” Jake shakes off Renée’s fingers. “I’ll give you pretty!” He picks up a kitten. He holds it a second, then drops it into the tub. Then he picks up and drops in the others, one by one, just like Renée adds matzoh balls to her chicken soup.

  The family leans forward. At least, that’s how I picture them, a comic-book family, leaning forward in concert, a collective gasp locked in its throat.

  But the kittens do not sink to the bottom of the washtub. Instead, all four strike out, shakily but surely, for its sides. They are determined swimmers.

  Jake is astounded, impressed. Unexplained energies at work never fail to win him over.

  “Gottenyu,” he breathes. “These are not ordinary cats. You were right, Renée. These are talented cats. Already they know how to swim.”

  Wet, sputtering, furious, the kittens try to climb out of the tub. One makes it; he falls headfirst onto the damp, receptive earth. Annie and Renée gently remove the others. They are shivering. They gravitate toward each other on the grass, a puddle of squeaks. Annie runs to liberate Dinah. The mother cat seizes each soaked kitten in turn and firmly scrubs it down with her tongue.

  “Maybe we can sell them all to a circus!” Jake is excited.

  “Yes, dear, maybe,” Renée agrees.

  Annie looks stonily at her father. She has remembered that cats can swim. They hate water, but they can, if they have to, travel through it. In order to drown them, you must put them in a sack weighted down with a rock. Her mother knows this too. Why did she pretend to be dumb? It occurs to Annie, in a sharp but imprecise way, that her mother may have counted on events unfolding exactly as they did. If so, Annie is angry. How can her mother take such chances with the great, stupid, dangerous forces? Annie decides to stay mad at both parents. She will never forget their behavior. She will never let either one off the hook.

  Still, the kittens are safe. Renée and Annie will join forces to find them good homes. Dinah will live to conceive many litters, with mates of her own choosing. She will outlive both David and Renée. She will be buried under a rosebush in Cincinnati by Ruth, a young mother in 1940. Ann will not attend the funeral. She will be too busy driving from Pennsylvania to New York to second a strike vote.

  Last year, I decided to marry. Ann was still alive then, working part-time on the staff of a clerical union. She didn’t approve of my prospective union—“I thought people just lived together nowadays!”—but she showed up the day before the ceremony with three presents. First, officially, was a ten-speed blender, “for the house.” The other two were just for me. One was a savings account, in my name, for $2,000. “Don’t tell him,” she counseled. “Every woman needs a little money of her own.” The other was less useful: a white Persian kitten with round, copper-colored eyes. With him came a shopping bag filled with a sack of kitty litter, a litter box, a metal comb, a plastic dish, and four cans of tuna.


  “I see you came prepared,” I said.

  “Sure, prepared. Preparation, that’s me!” My mother seemed pleased by my comment. We made dinner in my apartment, fed the new cat. Then she gave me another gift: the story of the attempted drowing. She told it rapidly, her back turned to me, while she boiled water and unfolded coffee filters.

  “Mama, why didn’t you ever tell me this one before?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it in years. Maybe because you’re getting married.”

  “But Aaron isn’t like Grandpa. We’re old friends. We’ve known each other for ages.”

  Mama didn’t reply. Instead, she watched the coffee as it dripped to the bottom of the pot. Then, gripping the handle firmly, she poured it into mugs, added milk, and turned to me, a mug in each hand. Her face, under the short, gray, efficiently cut hair, was unwrinkled as ever, but her eyes were tired. I realized she would soon be seventy.

  “Preparation,” she said dreamily. “That’s what I keep telling these little office girls, but they don’t listen. They don’t want to hear.”

  She held out the mugs as if she wanted to offer them to the women she spoke of, young women unsure how to enter their own futures.

  Gently, I took the mugs from her hands, set one down at my place, one at hers. “Here, Mama, we’d better drink it before it gets cold.”

  Mama slowly lowered herself into the chair and tasted the coffee.

  “You know what? This isn’t bad,” she pronounced. She smiled at me. I smiled back, absurdly grateful. Usually, Mama hates my coffee. Of course, this was really her coffee.

  “Not bad at all, Rivka,” Mama continued. “Why don’t you make us another cup?”

  Portrait of the Lone Survivor

  DIANE GLANCY

  I used to throw snowballs at this girl who lived by my Grandmother’s house. I came out in my army surplus parka & cap with ear flaps & waited for her, stomping my feet sometimes while I stood behind the bush. If the dog barked, I dirtclodded him. While I waited sometimes I wrapped a rock in the snowball. Then sometimes the woman across the street would call my Grandmother & tell her I was after Azalea again. Grandma yanked the hood of my parka & shut me in the pantry. When she slept I crawled thru the window that tried to let light into her dark kitchen with its water pump on the sink & the swaying ceiling. I guess it was all her boys that slept upstairs. Herbert & Henry & my father, Roose, all jumping up & down & wrestling each other to the floor & falling out of bed & dive-bombing from the chest of drawers. She cried sometimes & didn’t know what came over me after all she’d done. She sat at the north window in her house with her white cat Georgia & waited for the mailman who never brought her anything. I buttoned the cap with ear flaps & dug in the snow with my stick. I thought of the places I would go. Anywhere but there. Then suddenly Whamm there was Azalea & WHAMM * I hit her. The pink angora hat & her mittens flying!! I sat in the pantry with my finger in the boysenberry jam, Grandma’s canning jars lined up on the shelves like snowballs.

  I try. I am trying. I was trying. I will try. I shall in the meantime try. I sometimes have tried. I shall still by that time be trying.

  My father gets me in the afternoon. We stop at Varnell’s & he jokes with Henry & his friends. I see the dent in the door of his pickup. On the road, he barely makes a curve. The brush jumps above the impact of a rock on the windshield * then the long crack across the glass. On the way to the rodeo, Roose passes a long row of cars. ogi:do:da. He laughs in his Cherokee language when I scream.

  I hope when Paw-naw comes, she crashes & the relish she makes spills on the road, little bits of glass in tires & feet. I hope Paw-naw falls out of bed & the planets wobble in orbit. I hope I get sick & Georgia, the cat, gets in a fight, her ears hanging like flaps on an old pilot’s helmet. I hope Cousin Flunella’s spleen swells again & pouches like the weak place in Grandma’s tire. I hope Henry’s infection keeps him home. All the sweat & vomit & violent fever-dreams, shoes that were all polished shit-on. I hope the house burns down. I’m going to stare into the blueberry eye of the neighbor’s half-blind dog. I hope Paw-naw limps when she gets old & gets Alzheimer’s disease. I hope the Christmas tree falls over this year & the turkey, cranberry jelly & Grandma’s pickles rot before we eat them. I hope someone breaks into Henry’s house again while he’s gone. His car in the yard. I hope someone siphons out the gas.

  She calls my name in class & my heart pumps my throat. I feel Roose pound me under the covers. I feel the heat race thru my hands. My head whacks an ax chopping a totem pole. She calls my name in class & her voice is a rock whamming my head. I feel chained to the backyard like the dog I pass on the way to school. Then Roose’s pickup races at me & I stand in the road watching the headlights swallow me until the fierce roar passes. She calls my name in class & I am a pulsing star. A flag flapping on its pole above the schoolyard. I try to hide behind the desk but she stands over me. I feel the whack of Grandma’s stick. The choke-collar on the dog. She is the bear in my nightmares whose teeth drip with saliva at my flesh. She tears bone & sinew, shredding vocal cords until I can’t talk.

  I see Roose in front of the liquor store. He asks a man for money. I think I will get a grocery cart from Dabner’s & push it down the alley. I’ll rattle thru trash cans for bottles with a 1/2 swallow of gin or whiskey, sleep on the park bench & stumble on the curb when I cross the street. I’ll slobber as we talk about the visions of the Grandfathers, their bravery on the Trail to the New Territory. I will tell him how Grandma survives. We’ll spit & urinate on the town square of Tahlequah, Oklahoma. We’ll dry out gladly in the jail.

  ogi:do:da / galv:la?di / he:hi / galv:ghw(o)di:yu / ge:se:sdi / winiga: / hl(i)sda / hada:n(v)dhesgv:i / e:lohi / galv:la?di / tsiniga:hl(i)sdi:ha / o:gahl(i)sda:y(v)di / dago:dagwisvi:i / sgiyane:hlvsge:sdi / itsv:sganv:tshelv:i / sgi:yago:li:gi / tsideo:tsido:li:gi / dogi:sganv:tshe:hi / a:le / dhle:sdi / udale:na:sdi:yi / widi:sgiya:dhinv:sdanv:gi / tsatse:li:yehno / tsa:hlini:gidi / ge:sv:i / a:le / etsalv:ghw:(o)di:yu / nigo:hilv:i / na:shigwo / winiga:hl(i)sda. Our Father / above / who dwellest / honored / be / thy name. / Let happen / what thou wilt / on earth / above / as does happen. / Our food / day by day / bestow upon us. / In that we have transgressed against thee / pity us / as we pity / those who transgress against us. / & / do not / place of straying / lead us into. / For thine is / thou strong / the being / & / thou honored / forever. This / let be.

  Roose thrashes under the strap that holds him. The medicine men nail a cow-skull over his bed. They burn cedar & chant. I would pack if I could go with him. Unzip my skin from my bones. Wear my powwow buckskin. Leave thru the crack in the ceiling where the soul passes. Roose stops breathing. I stand to my feet & he starts again. That’s how it will be. He’ll stomp out the back door, leaving the screen to bang. It’s not a great journey to the stars. I see the blueness of his feet & fingers. Part of him is gone already. His eyes closed, sometimes he calls her name as if waiting for the lift in the hotel lobby she had just taken. Sometimes he thrashes again as though still war-dancing in the rodeo arena.

  I sit in the grasses at his grave. I name this day Holy. I walk back to the house thru the cockleburs that tear my legs. I will remember ogi:do:da. Who creates unless he has a vacuum to fill? A white crayon on white paper. A snowfleck in the sky. Who thinks of justice unless he knows injustice? Georgia sits on my lap under a corner of the white shawl. Her owl-eye looks from the window at birds in the wisteria. I think what we do matters. I tell her this & her ear flicks the shawl-edge. I stroke her old fur. She holds her paw over my knee. If the house were burning, yes, I’d take the back of her neck in my teeth & climb thru the pantry window.

  Holy Toledo

  JOSEPH GEHA

  Looking for the charm against the Evil Eye, Nadia stretched up on the footstool—a tomboy in her dungarees—and searched the shelves of the bathroom cabinet one by one. The charm was a tiny object, no larger than a rosary bead, and it was forever getting lost. But despite the clutter of this house (her gran
dmother threw nothing away) it was forever turning up again, too.

  Sitti, her grandmother, had had the amulet ever since the old country when she herself was a child. A Lazerine monk claimed he’d found it lying amid the rubble of an ancient excavation and, hoping to gain some favor, he brought it directly to Sitti’s uncle, the district magistrate. When the monk was gone—the favor granted or not, Sitti never said—her uncle simply looked down at the charm in his hand and shrugged. After all, what was this thing to him? Nothing more than a drop of porcelain painted to look like a miniature eyeball. And so the amulet was forgotten, mislaid until after his death when it turned up again among his things. No one claimed it, so Sitti decided to keep the charm for herself. Attaching it to a stiff golden thread, she’d had the amulet ever since, over the years misplacing it, yet always finding it again somewhere.

  But not here. Here on the top shelf there were only razors, old women’s salves, and jars of black ointments meant to be kept out of a child’s reach. Nadia stepped down from the footstool and carried it back into the front room.

  “Achhh….”

  The long, familiar moan floated down the hallway from the kitchen; Sitti must be searching there now. And Mikhail was still in the front room where Nadia had left him, still doing nothing to help.

  “Mikhi,” she said, “it wasn’t in the bathroom either.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. Crossing his legs on the sofa, her brother spoke without turning to look at her.

  “Then it has to be in the cellar. Me and Sitti, we looked everyplace else.” Mikhail said nothing. “I bet I know where in the cellar, too.” She waited for him to ask where. He didn’t. “How much you want to bet,” she went on anyway, “that it’s in one of those boxes Uncle Eddie took down there last spring?”

  Still her brother said nothing. He would not even look at her.

  “Mikhi? You wouldn’t just sit there if Uncle Eddie was here. He’ll give you the belt again for not helping.”