The Patron Saint of Ugly

by Marie Manilla

  I should confess that after the publicly botched unhealing of Pippa Fabrini and my inability to heal my own stains, a wiggling seed of doubt had taken root in my soul. Not a doubt in God (yet), but a doubt in my sainted abilities.

  When I questioned Nonna, she said, “God is-a the one Who decides who to heal and who not to heal. And besides, you no need-a the healing. You perfetto. You are Saint Garney. Santa della Collina. My granddaughter. Mine!”

  On that first Corpus Christi day, as the children squirmed in the front pews waiting for Mass to begin, the side door opened three feet from me and in lumbered Mr. Giordano carrying his daughter, Donata, in his arms. Our class had heard about Donata’s broken leg, and there it was, in a gigantic cast from her toes to her kneecap, still as pristine as her Communion dress, which was beautiful. But not nearly as beautiful as the way Donata’s father carried her across the aisle and gently set her on the pew in front of me. Mr. Giordano arranged her veil around her shoulders, and before he left, he leaned down, cupped her face in his hands, stared straight into her eyes, and uttered the words “You look like a princess. I love you so much.”

  I was stunned by this fatherly display to a girl child. I wondered if I was the only one astounded, but when I looked down the pew at my lacy sisters, several seemed as awestruck as I, including the Fabrini twins. I had never felt closer to them in my life.

  Soon Mass began and my thoughts turned toward performing all the nun-drilled stage directions correctly. Then it was time to file up and kneel at the altar rail, where Father Luigi and Abe Lincoln made their way toward me.

  Father’s voice boomed in the distance. “The Body of Christ.”

  “Amen” came the meek reply.

  We had been lectured about transubstantiation, how the bread and wine would change into the body and blood of Christ in our mouths. Classmates debated whether the hosts would turn into Jesus’s fingers or toes, His eyeballs or earlobes, or just a hunk of raw flesh torn from our Savior’s arm. I did not sleep well after that. On the big day I kept watching the girls ahead of me to see if Communion blood dripped down their chins. When Father stood before me, I stifled a gag—but no worse than the gag he stifled as he held the Necco Wafer–size host toward my face. He placed the disc on my tongue and I swallowed fast-fast-fast so that it would shoot past my taste buds before it morphed into Jesus’s palm or upper lip. Imagine my relief when I didn’t have even an aftertaste of blood.

  Afterward the fam-i-ly came to our stifling cracker box on the hill. Before they arrived, Dad prepped the house. Emboldened by the vision of Mr. Giordano and Donata, I shadowed my father as he went from room to room to ensure all the windows were open before setting up the box fan in the kitchen archway. He knelt to plug it in, batting away my lacy veil fluttering in his face. Then we went out back to uncover the grill and fill it with charcoal. I kept fiddling with my hem. “This sure is the prettiest dress I ever wore. I feel like a princess. A regular princess.”

  Dad was having trouble lighting the charcoal, his pressing concern. I changed tactics and elaborately pranced around the yard looking for mole holes to step into and break my foot—well, a sprain would have been sufficient, since I didn’t want to spend my summer in a cast. I couldn’t find a hole so on my third loop around I just sat in the grass and grabbed my ankle. “Ow! My ankle!”

  Dad was still hunkered over the grill, cussing the matches that wouldn’t stay lit.

  “I think I broke my ankle!”

  “Damn charcoal.” Dad finally looked over at me. “Go get my lighter and some newspaper.”

  I got up, shuffled into the house, and stood in front of the box fan to let the breeze billow out my petticoat and cool off the Cannibal Isles dotting my backside.

  Dad yelled from outside, “Nicky! Bring me my lighter and some newspaper! And Marina, pull the meat from the fridge!”

  Ah, meat. For this fam-i-ly meal, my father had procured thick T-bones. When Dad brought the steaks home the night before, he called us together to watch him unwrap them.

  “Holy cow.” Nicky had reached a finger toward the blood pooling on the butcher paper.

  Mom stilled his hand. “They’re beautiful, Angelo.” I’m sure she ate them six times a week back in Charlottesville. “Your father will love them.”

  Dad’s chest jutted out.

  The next afternoon as I stood in front of the fan and waited for the fam-i-ly to arrive, Nicky started reciting information gleaned from his reference books. This tic had recently erupted whenever he was anxious, but it was better than memorizing his reflection or composing doggerel poetry. He sat on the floor behind one of the wingback chairs in the living room and rocked back and forth while recounting the history of the slingshot.

  Uncle Dom’s brood arrived first and he hauled in a grocery sack filled with cantaloupe and prosciutto. Ray-Ray thunked the back of my head. “Saint Varmint makes me want to vomit.” Mom hauled Nicky from behind the chair as Betty entered. “There’s my Nicky, and Garnet, our cherry-pie miracle worker.” She rushed to the kitchen to scoop melon into balls and fasten strips of prosciutto around them with toothpicks. I took a piece of the cured meat when they weren’t looking. Not as gross-looking as the capocollo Dom usually brought, thankfully, but it was extra-chewy and slick and salty. My baby teeth couldn’t pulverize it, so I spit the wad into the trash. I wouldn’t make the mistake of eating that again.

  The potatoes were baking, the green beans were boiling, and Grandpa’s car pulled into the driveway.

  “They’re here!” Nicky called from the front window. I ran to look out and so did Ray-Ray; he angled me out of the way like the pry bar he was. I muscled back to determine what kind of mood Grandpa was in, as if he had more than one.

  Dad and Uncle Dom rushed out to genuflect to their king. Grandpa opened the trunk, and Nonna reached inside for a shirt box filled with her chocolate-dipped, pistachio-crusted cannolis.

  Dad hooked his arm through Nonna’s and she climbed up the stairs stoically. When she entered, she passed the box to my mother. Then her hands opened like rose petals and she looked at all of us lined up for our kisses, even Ray-Ray. She took our faces in her hands and smooched our foreheads. “Such-a homely children. It’s a shame you so ugly.” She slid a quarter into each of our palms, the real reason we lined up. Dad escorted her to the kitchen and settled her in the chair facing the fan, letting hot air blow tendrils of hair from her braid whorled into a bun.

  Dad galloped back out to where Grandpa and Uncle Dom were standing in the street looking up at Dad’s house, sour looks on their faces. Finally Grandpa labored up half the steps, paused, yanked a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the back of his neck, and then forged upward.

  When he opened the screen door I heard him moaning, “You trying to give me a heart attack with those steps, Angelo?”

  Uncle Dom entered on his father’s heels lugging a jug of Grandpa’s homemade wine. “You need an elevator to get up this hill, Pop. It’s even worse in winter, if you can believe it.”

  Dad came in last, glaring at his brother. He didn’t say a word, but I bet he was looking for some excuse to hustle to the basement to saw wood.

  “What I tell you about living up on this-a hill, Angelo?” Grandpa said. “Should-a been smart and bought a level lot you can mow without rolling over your foot.” He walked straight to the kitchen, passing us kids as if we were tree stumps.

  Ray-Ray slipped outside, probably to look for baby turtles to tape firecrackers to. Nicky slunk to his room to crack open the pocket Webster’s he had bought that morning at Flannigan’s Pharmacy. I leaned against the kitchen archway and watched Grandpa sit at the head of the table and demand a juice glass for his wine. Dad obeyed as Betty presented the prosciutto.

  Grandpa again pulled out his handkerchief to swab his neck. That simple gesture made my hands ball into fists. Yes, it was insufferable in that kitchen with the oven pulsing and pots simmering, but the grand production of Grandpa wiping sweat felt like a dig at my father.<
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  Mom pulled the tinfoil from the plattered T-bones. “Take a look at these.” She held them toward Grandpa as if they were manna from heaven, or a stack of nudie pictures.

  Grandpa’s eyes widened and he held his index finger up to one to measure. “That’s a two-inch-thick steak.”

  “Spettacolare,” Nonna said.

  Dad wore a prideful expression I rarely saw, and then Uncle Dom opened his fat cannoli-hole. “Where’d you steal those, little brother? They fall off a truck? You certainly couldn’t afford them on your paycheck.” Uncle Dom would know.

  Grandpa’s eyes narrowed. “You no steal this-a meat, right?”

  “Of course not.” Dad’s face was as red as the T-bones. What I didn’t know at the time was that my father had bartered his labor for those steaks. He worked every night for a week at O’Grady’s Grocery putting in a new floor. I often wondered why Dad didn’t just tell Grandpa the truth.

  Mom rushed to her husband’s defense with a lie. “We used the birthday money my mother sent me.”

  Uncle Dom jabbed, “So the woman of the house puts the meat on the table.”

  I wanted to punch him.

  “No!” Mom’s apologetic eyes bounced over to Dad.

  Dad grabbed the platter of steaks and went outside.

  Uncle Dom followed. “Don’t burn them! Your wife works hard to bring home the bacon.”

  “Shut up,” Betty said, and I was glad.

  The men congregated out back and Mom and Betty set the table. I sat on my stool watching Nonna peel an orange in one continuous spiraling ribbon, our E note drifting from her lips. Grandpa barked from outside, “Stop-a that damn humming!”

  Half an hour later the fam-i-ly was called to the table, all except Dad, still at the grill with his tongs. Ray-Ray, born with some freaky internal alarm clock, returned from his expedition looking rumpled. Uncle Dom didn’t notice the grass stains on his stepson’s dress shirt, the dirt smudges on his cheek. He noticed his hands, though. “Go clean out under those nails. They’re disgusting.”

  By the time Ray-Ray reappeared, the table was crammed with salad plates, dinner plates, bowls of cottage cheese, water glasses. Butter and salt and pepper and a basket of rolls. There was one empty spot at the center of the table, the most sacred space, where the meat would sit when Dad brought it in.

  Uncle Dom aimed his head toward the window. “You’re not overcooking them, are you?”

  “No,” Dad yelled back. “I just don’t want them to be too rare.”

  “There’s no such-a thing,” Grandpa said. “You getta more iron when they are still bloody inside.”

  Bloody inside? The image made my stomach lurch. On the rare occasions when we had some cheap cut of steak or hamburger in patties instead of crumbled in a tomato-macaroni calamity, Dad would cook my meat to well done. The blacker the better. Any pink would send it back to the frying pan before Mom cut it into bite-size pieces for me. Mix that with the bloody clump of Jesus stewing in my belly and you’ll understand my alarm.

  Dad emerged bearing his weighty offering as if he were going through the Stations of the Cross, his first stop in front of Grandpa, who eyed the meat with great approval. Dad’s second stop was Nonna, who pronounced, “Magnifico.”

  When the dish was centered, Grandpa leaned in to claim the choicest one. Dom helped himself next, then plunked one on Betty’s plate and one on Ray-Ray’s. Then it was a mad scramble as hands reached for rolls and potatoes and butter. The steak pile was dwindling and I couldn’t tell which was the well-done one; I kept looking at Dad, wanting to ask: Which one’s mine? Someone tossed a baked potato on my plate, a spoonful of green beans, then a whole steak landed on my split-top roll. I had been gifted not only an entire steak, but a sharp knife as well; it lay atop my folded napkin. I had to kneel on my stool for better leverage, and when I stuck the knife in, blood seeped from the wound. “It’s bleeding!”

  “It’s perfetto.” Grandpa eyed the breathing cow on my plate. “It’ll make you strong like me, see?” He speared a hunk of rare steak and rammed it into his mouth. I didn’t appreciate at the time what a gift this was, Grandpa trying to placate me.

  Still, watching him chew that bleeding bolus made me want to puke. Nearly. What I really wanted was my own well-done steak. “Where’s mine?”

  Mom jumped up and started to lift my plate. “I’ll just throw it on the grill a few minutes.”

  “No!” Grandpa said, the magnanimous moment over. “You don’t make a fuss for this child.” He looked at me. “You eat what’s on-a you plate.”

  “But Dad always cooks one special for me.”

  Grandpa glowered at Dad. “You coddle this child?”

  “No!” Dad said, and that was the truth in everything except how I liked my meat.

  And then I saw it, my nearly burnt offering on Nonna’s plate, half eaten already. “That’s mine! There’s my steak!”

  Everyone looked at Nonna chewing the food that should have been in my mouth. Nonna looked at me in horror as if she’d robbed the globe piggy bank in the back of my closet.

  She lifted her plate and I reached out my hand, but Grandpa slapped it. “Don’t you dare.” He pointed at my plate. “You no take-a the food from your elder’s mouth! Eat!”

  Mom tried to intervene. “It won’t take but a minute—”

  Grandpa slammed his hand on the table, rattling all those glasses. “I said eat! Angelo, this is your house and you are her father. You make this child eat.”

  Dad looked at his father, and then at Uncle Dom, who wore a look not of sympathy but of contempt. Dad’s eyes slowly found their way to me. “Just a couple bites.”

  I looked at Mom, now leaning against the sink, arms crossed over her stomach. She looked disgusted too. And outnumbered. Nicky began listing Neanderthal weaponry.

  I don’t know where the inspiration came from, desperation perhaps, but I pressed one hand over the relic beneath my bodice and the other over the mooing steak, closed my eyes, and recited my Sancta Maria prayer in my head so that Mary would elbow God to cook the steak to at least medium.

  Ray-Ray said, “What the hell is she doing?”

  I heard Uncle Dom smack the back of Ray-Ray’s head. “Don’t cuss!”

  When I opened my eyes and lifted my hand, the steak was still a bloody mess, as was my hand. In desperation I prayed for Jesus to save me, for God to send a hurricane to end this horror, because I figured God owed me twice over: He hadn’t removed my birthmarks and He had made me be born into this fam-i-ly. God did not save me, so I looked at Dad, hoping that whatever paternal drive had kicked in the day Eleanor Sweeney had doused me at the water fountain would again power up. But Dad stared at his lap, and I knew there would be no intervention.

  Cannolis.

  As I cut into that bloody steak, I tried to visualize cannolis. Crunchy tubes stuffed with ricotta. After this torture I would eat five in a row. I sawed at that steak for an interminable length of time until I finally held a hunk to my lips. I closed my eyes and rammed it in fast, tiny chunks of pistachio that would stick in my teeth, but all I could taste, feel, smell was blood. That copper-penny, rusty-nail, corrugated-toolshed smell of blood mixing with the Body and Blood of Christ still undigested in my belly. Jesus’s finger or toe prodding my spleen. It was a sacrilege beyond endurance. I spat the hunk out and it plunked on top of the saltshaker, knocking it over.

  “Dio mio.” Nonna grabbed the shaker, spilled several grains in her hand to toss over her shoulder.

  “I can’t do it,” I said, real tears springing to my eyes.

  Grandpa picked up his knife and fork to resume eating, and I thought, That’s it?

  That wasn’t it.

  He took a forkful of potato and jammed it in his mouth. When he spoke I could see the starchy goo clinging to his teeth, his tongue. “Angelo. You spank this child and send her to her room. That’ll teach her to obey.”

  “What?” Mom and I both said.

  “You heard-a me. She need
a good spank.”

  Nonna leaned back in her chair, shoulders slumped, as if she knew how this would end.

  Dad knew how it had to end too. He stood up and actually came toward me.

  “Angelo,” my mother said in a voice that sounded like rushing wind as Dad shrunk another inch right then and there. “Don’t you dare spank her!”

  Uncle Dom sealed my fate. “Not only does your wife bring home the bacon, but she calls the shots.”

  That was that. Dad swooped over and scooped me up, but not in the tender way Mr. Giordano had held Donata. He sat on my stool and draped me belly-down over his lap, and the heart-shaped box in my chest tipped over too, spilling out the few warm memories of Dad to rattle around in my rib cage. Dad lifted my dress and layers of itchy petticoat, exposing my little-girl underwear and the Cannibal Isles mauling my backside.

  I don’t even recall the spanking, how hard or how many. I just remember the shame, my secret geography revealed to Grandpa, Uncle Dom, and Ray-Ray, who snorted the entire time.

  I darted down the hall to my room when it was over, slammed the door behind me, and yanked that stupid dress over my head, along with the veil, which was tainted by proxy. I wadded up the unholy vestments and shoved them as far under my bed as I could, tangling them up with dust bunnies, stale sandwich crusts, dirty balled-up socks, unspoken I love yous, and my shrinking faith—not in God (yet), but in miracle-worker me.

  TAPE SEVEN

  Electricity

  Son-ama-beetch! I just tried to sneak out to the grocery store, but now reporters from the Sweetwater Herald are camped outside along with the pilgrims. I’m glaring at them from the carcass room surrounded by stuffed bison and elk heads. An entire bear hovering in the corner. A musket hanging over the mantel, which I would love to aim at the press, because someone (a meddlesome priest from Baaston, perhaps?) spilled the baked beans about the Vatican’s interest.