She showed her papers to me once. When I brought home a certificate of my own: my grammar school diploma. Now each of us had important papers.
I am a toddler when my grandmother is naturalized, and my father is fighting somewhere in the Pacific. My mother and I live next door to my grandparents in Hoboken. And though I don't remember the event, I know that I attended the ceremony, for there is a picture in our family album commemorating the occasion, and the simple celebration of coffee and Italian pastries (cannoli, my favorite) that followed in my grandparents' apartment.
I am in my good tweed winter coat, leggings, and hat, and I stand next to my grandparents, who are soberly attired in their black winter coats. We stand on the steps of the courthouse; my grandfather holds my hand.
Though I am not aware of it, this is a defining moment in my life. For who I am (not quite Italian, not quite American), and who I will become (a person aware of inequities faced by Italian Americans in a country that has not yet fully equated the Italian American experience with the human experience) begins here.
Naturalization
1. The act of admitting an alien to the position and privileges of a native-born subject or citizen. Well, not really.
2. The act of introducing plants or animals or humans to places where they are not indigenous, but where they can thrive freely under ordinary conditions. This is Charles Darwin's meaning of the term. He said, "I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey . . . as from a savage . . . who knows no decency."
But what are ''ordinary conditions"? And what does it mean to "thrive freely"? According to this definition, everyone in the United States, except Native Americans, is not "native" but "naturalized." But in the United States nonindigenous people are the ones deciding what other categories of nonindigenous people should have a legal right to be "naturalized."
3. The action of making natural. Which means that what you were— Italian— was unnatural.
4. The act of becoming settled or established in a new place. All those Italian Americans who feel settled, established, accepted, and com pletely at home, kindly raise your hands. Or have you ever, like me, been told that you were "an embarrassment," "irrational," "too emotional," "too noisy," "too shiny"— these last words, those of a former employer of mine, and on that day I wasn't even wearing my plaid taffeta blouse, pink stockings, and patent leather shoes.
Once, potential business associates of my husband wanted him to sign a clause permitting them to break the contract if he went crazy or was put in jail. This was the first time they were doing business with an Italian; they had to protect themselves, they said.
5. The act of becoming naturalized, of settling down in a natural manner. If, by "settling down in a natural manner" is meant doing things the way things are supposed to be done in the United States, then neither I nor my parents nor my grandparents ever became naturalized.
I remember reading Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance" in high school, and not understanding why self-reliance was considered a virtue. I remember arguing in college that not wanting to move away from your family was not necessarily neurotic, and neither was calling your family daily. I remember arguing against a twenty-three-minute lunch period when I taught high school.
Recently, in Liguria, my husband and I saw the students of a rural school having a leisurely three-course lunch in a celebrated local restaurant. We learned they ate there three times a week at the government's expense. I am sure this doesn't occur anywhere in the United States. "Now that," I thought, looking at the children eating their pasta, "is civilized."
"Libera Maria Calabrese." My grandmother has signed her name beneath her picture and on the line of the document calling for the "complete and true signature of the holder." She has signed slowly, carefully, for writing her name, I know, took much effort and concentration.
Years later, she watched Sesame Street with my children. She was trying to learn how to write, trying to learn to read English, after years of speaking only dialect. And I remember her signing the back of her Social Security check; this was the only time I saw her write her name.
I wonder, now, what it's like to live a life where you almost never write, almost never sign your name; what it means not to be able to use the act of writing to keep a record— of your feelings and thoughts and who you were and where you came from. Wonder what it means not to be able to participate in the creation of your identity through writing.
I can imagine the clerks waiting impatiently for this small and soberly dressed foreign woman to finish signing her name before they scrawled theirs (illegibly) at the bottom. (Who were these people? And why did they write their names so that I can't read them? But I have noticed this. Poor people, foreign people, people without power, often sign their names carefully, so that we will know who they are.)
No matter how much my grandmother cherished it, this is a strange and terrible document.
The clerk has recorded the petition number. Then typed a "personal description of the holder as of date of naturalization." A verbal portrait of my grandmother by a paid functionary who took my grandmother's testimony (about how much she weighed), but who also wrote down an observation. Much like the secretary who worked in the hospital where my husband was an intern: after listening to discussions among doctors about a potential diagnosis, she preempted their decision by writing hers—" paranoid schizor-phrenic," say— on the form. They who have the power to fill in forms have the power to define us. And so it was with my grandmother.
I make my living reading books, mulling over the nuances of words, teasing out innuendoes, wondering why something is phrased one way and not another. And when I study this document, I realize there is something fishy here. There is what Virginia Woolf would call "an aroma" about the page.
The physical appearance the clerk has recorded reads: ''Age 57 years; sex Female; color White; complexion Dark; color of eyes Brown; color of hair Gr. Black; height 5 feet 0 inches [she was short, my grandmother], weight 120 pounds; visible distinctive marks Mole on forehead; marital status Married; former nationality Italian."
Of course, some of what is recorded is significant— age, color of eyes, hair, height, weight, distinctive marks— so that no one else can use this document. And calling my grandmother's "color" "White" at this time in history meant that she was deemed Caucasian, hence eligible for naturalization. I can understand this, though I do not agree with what it signifies: that race exists; that it can be determined; that those deemed members of certain races should be afforded privileges, while others should not; and so on.
But why was it important to record my grandmother's " complexion" as "Dark"? What was so significant about her complexion that it had to be recorded?
There was, after all, a picture, appended to the document, which clearly showed what she looked like. And, as anyone could see, her complexion was "fair." My grandmother had to sign her name to attest that "The description above given" was accurate. Now what, exactly does "The description above given" mean? "The description given above"? "The description given to the clerk"? Or "The description above given to the person by the clerk"?
I have learned that when things are unclear, they are unclear for a reason. Especially in official pronouncements and on government documents. There is, you see, an advantage in being sixty years old.
That my grandmother testified that she was fifty-seven years old, and a female, and that she was 5' 0" tall, and that she weighed 120 pounds and that she had a mole on her forehead, I can imagine. Although I can also hear her mocking voice later telling my grandfather that this clerk, surely he was a cretino to make her say she had a mole on her forehead, or that she was a woman, when anyone with eyes to see could see these things for themselves.
But that the clerk asked my grandmother the hue of her complex ion and that she answered that her "complexion" was "dark" I am absolutely certain never happened.
In March, in the dead of winter, it is not possible that my grandmother would have
been considered dark by anyone who looked at her. In March, as her photograph attests, my grandmother was fair.
Whatever else my grandmother was— a peasant, poor, irreverent, Pugliese— she was not stupid and she was no liar. My grandmother either spoke the truth or, when the truth could not be told because it was dangerous, she remained silent and shrugged her shoulders. And although she disrespected and distrusted authority, my grandmother would have been scrupulously honest about the answer to any question put to her, for she was wary of the consequences of misrepresenting herself on official sheets of paper with official seals. This was during war, after all.
Had she been asked the question "What is your complexion?" my grandmother would have said, "Sometimes fair; sometimes tanned," and then she would have told a story. She would have told the clerk how she had to tie her scarf in a special way to protect her face from the sun; how she had to cover her arms when she worked in the vegetable garden so her skin wouldn't burn; then she would have digressed and talked about the beauty of vegetables at harvest, but also, of the wrenching pain in the back at day's end; she would have described how, by autumn, if she was careful, she would be a nice shade of bruno, the color of a toasted pignoli.
But my grandmother was not asked. It was the clerk who decided that my grandmother was "dark." My grandmother was Italian, from the South, a peasant, a terrone, a creature of the earth— and so, the color of the earth. "Dark," not fair.
Here on a document that my grandmother kept until she died, that my mother kept until she died, that I will keep until I die, that I will pass on to my granddaughter, is evidence that my people's whiteness was provisional, that government clerks used their power to create rather than record difference in physical appearance.
If my grandmother wanted to become a United States citizen, she had no choice but to sign her name on the line. There was not one white race; there were several, and some not as white as others.
Because my grandmother was not quite white, she was also thought to be not quite smart, not quite reliable, not quite capable of self-government, not quite capable of self-control, not quite capable of manifesting the traits of duty and obligation, not quite capable of adapting to organized and civilized society, not quite clean enough, not quite (or not at all) law-abiding (remember the Mafia).
Still, her people, my people, at this time were thought fit enough to build the nation's railroads, its subways, its buildings; fight its war; mill its fabric; sew its garments; mine its coal; stow its cargo; farm its fruits and vegetables; sell its foods; organize its crime; play its baseball; sing in operas; and, of course, make its pizza, its ravioli, its spaghetti and meatballs.
Notice, please, that the clerk did not write "wretched refuse," "human flotsam." The words "wop," "dago," "greaser," "guinea," "Mafioso" do not appear on the form, either, and for this, I should, perhaps, be grateful, though this is what the clerk might have thought.
There was a woman living in our tenement, my father said, a woman from Scandinavia, who did not believe that any Italian should be superintendent, that any Italian should act as if the building was "hers" to manage. She tried to get my grandmother fired. Started smearing shit on my grandparents' door. My grandmother took her to court. In court, the woman called her names. Argued that no Italian had the right to tell her what to do or to collect rent money from her, because Italians were "below her."
Journalist to construction boss, 1890s: "Is an Italian a white man?"
Construction boss: "No sir, an Italian is a Dago."
On the naturalization form, there is a picture of a man's hand pointing to the line where my grandmother had to sign her name, testifying that what had been written about her was true.
The picture of the hand was completely unnecessary; the blank line would have sufficed. But the hand is there. And it is the hand of authority, and it has dressed itself formally for the occasion, in white shirt and dark suit, and there can be no mistaking that it is a white hand, and that the white hand is a man's hand, and that the complexion of the white man's hand is not dark, like my grandmother's, but fair. It is the fairest hand of all.
PASSING THE SAINT
In all the home movies where my grandfather appears, he is drinking wine. In one image, he stands behind the oilcloth-covered table in his tenement kitchen in Hoboken, and hams it up for my father's motion picture camera.
The food on the table— a huge loaf of my grandmother's homemade bread, the provolone, the mozzarella, the prosciutto, the mortadella, the olives— must be an antipasto for a special occasion. Someone's birthday. Anniversary. Christmas. New Year's. Because otherwise, my grandparents' table bears just enough food to provide nourishment, just enough so that either there are no leftovers, or only leftovers my grandmother plans to use for another meal, in a pasta sauce or in a frittata or in a soup.
In my grandparents' home, as in ours, there is no waste, almost nothing to throw away, for everything is reused. String from packages. Boxes. Grocery bags. Butcher paper. Rubber bands. On garbage day, my grandmother and my mother take down one very small bag each to the bins at the curb.
This is the way it is in my grandparents' household, and this is the way it is in mine, through all the years of my childhood. The legendary abundance of the Italian American table— the antipasto, the pasta, the roasted meats and the side dishes of vegetables and salad, the pastries for dessert— is in evidence, in greatly diminished form, on our table just a few times a year. In our relatives' households, eating much and eating well is the norm. It seems to be a way to put the privations of the past to rest. I am always startled by the excesses of these meals, and the waste. In our family, peasant habits die hard. And making do with less, so necessary in the Old Country, has become a thread that links my family to what was left behind.
In the film my father takes, my grandfather picks up a jug of wine, tilts his head back, pretends to swallow. It is his wine. He makes it in the basement, with my father's help; they stomp the grapes in a barrel to release their juices (only men can tread the grapes, he tells me); he ages the wine in oak until drinking time, then bottles it.
He's doing such a good job of simulation that you can see his Adam's apple moving. Glug, glug, glug. Swallow, swallow, swallow.
He looks at the camera, smiles. Then he puts the jug back on the table next to the bread. Very satisfied with his performance. He seems to expect applause, congratulations.
My grandfather, in his life of servitude, first as a contadino in the South of Italy, then as a laborer on the railroad in America, has always worked hard for someone else, under the control of bosses. He has never been in the spotlight, never been singled out for special attention or favor, never praised for his work.
He has lived his life as a worker. My grandfather has watched someone richer, someone of far higher stature than he, strutting in the piazza of his village, wearing a new set of clothes, as he staggered home from the fields. Watched the owner of the railroad cruising by the gang of workers in a private car as he bent his back to the sun to dig a trench. Watched the well-to-do in Hoboken walking past him on his way home from the docks to their elegant brownstones on the Heights; they made sure they did not come near him, for he was filthy, and he would have soiled their clothes.
My grandfather has been the center of attention so infrequently— at his Confirmation; his coming to America; his weddings; his naturalization— that he wants to repeat the performance. So he begins his playacting again. Picks up the jug again. Sidles into the camera's gaze. Repeats his routine.
My grandmother isn't laughing. She doesn't think my grandfather is funny. She walks back and forth behind him in that jitter walk that you see in old films and home movies. She moves behind him, swipes at the jug of wine, tries to take it away. Tries to stop him from pretending to pour the wine into his mouth. She grabs my grandfather's arm. Says something to my father. Puts a hand out to block the camera's view.
But he evades her.
My grandmother gives up. Takes
her handkerchief from under her sleeve, wipes her brow, puts her handkerchief back, puts her hands on her hips. Frowns.
My mother doesn't think this is funny either. Though she adores her father, forgives him much, while he's pretending to chug the wine she looks away, pretends he's not doing this, pretends he's not there. He turns his back to her.
Glug, glug, glug. Swallow, swallow, swallow.
This time, there is no bravura in the performance. This time, my grandfather looks tired. This time, he looks like what he is: an old man, a tired man, a downtrodden man. A man who drinks too much, too often.
I am old enough to be sitting at the table in a regular chair, not a high chair. My mother is very pregnant with my sister. So this must be Christmas, or New Year's, 1946, a month or so before my sister is born. I am almost four and a half. My grandfather, whom I adore, will be dead in three years. I look at my grandfather and laugh. I think that what he's doing is funny. He's happy he's making me laugh. He looks down at me, ruffles my hair. We have a special bond. His good humor has been an antidote to my mother's gloom, to my grandmother's brusque love, to my father's absence during the war.
My father has been home from the Pacific for about eight months when he takes these pictures. The motion picture camera is an unaccustomed extravagance my father has permitted himself. During the war, he sent home almost all of his salary, never wasting any money on carousing, as many of his friends did. He usually buys himself nothing, not even clothing when he needs it. My mother also buys very little, but what she buys is good. "I'm too poor to buy cheap clothes," she says. But there was one extravagant moment in my father's life, when he outfitted himself with a new suit, a new hat, new shoes, a new bathing suit, new pajamas, and a new bathrobe for his honeymoon with my mother. In general, like my grandfather and grandmother, he makes do with very little.
Crazy in the Kitchen Page 9