Crazy in the Kitchen (10 page)

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.

My father has allowed himself this camera because he wants to memorialize the family he has returned to. The family he yearned
for while he was away. The wife he loves, whom he feared he'd never see again. The daughter who was just a baby when he left.
The father-in-law who was more father to him than his own father. The mother-in-law who helped his wife take care of his child
when he was gone.

So many people in my father's life have slipped away from him— his Italian grandparents, whom he loved as a boy, then never
saw again; his Italian friends; the friends he saw killed. And he lost himself to war, too. He is not the man he was, and
he knows it, and there is no way to explain what happened. No way to tell what burning bodies jumping from torpedoed ships
look like; no way to speak of the men who killed themselves in gruesome ways rather than face battle; no way to describe the
sound of bombardment; the sound of airplanes strafing a beach, the sight of men's backs ripped open; no way to say what it
felt like to pry a wounded man from a plane that crashed into the deck of an aircraft carrier; no way to tell what it was
like to pick up the remains of the dead after a battle (one bucket of remains equaled one body).

He is unused to small children, to a wife, and to civilian life. A man whose life now runs in slow motion, or in quickstep,
but never in ordinary time. A man who wants to run for cover when trucks backfire; who wants to attack and kill anyone who
disagrees with him, even his daughter; who wants to make love to his sometimes unwilling wife whenever he can, for making
love helps as nothing else does; who wants to weep for what he has seen and what he has lost, but who cannot weep.

And so, he takes motion pictures of his family. For by taking pictures, he can be with his family, yet apart.

His father-in-law he loves, as he never loved his own, that reprobate, who escaped to Italy whenever he could (to a
comare
and to another family in Italy, my father sometimes thought), leaving his wife and five children to fend for themselves.
He doesn't think that there is anything wrong with his father-in-law's antics. He doesn't turn the camera away; he even eggs
the old man on, although he sees his wife's and his mother-in-law's disapproval. But they are women, after all, and their
job is to criticize. There's not enough pleasure in this world, he thinks. Let the old man have his fun.

"They gave them wine to drink," my father tells me. "All the wine they could drink. Not water. Not very much food. But a lot
of wine."

My father is telling me about my grandfather's life. About his work on the railroad.

"Why did they do that?" I ask, though I think I know the answer. Alcohol: antidote to rebellion.

"To keep them quiet," my father says. "To keep them working." But he tells me that in the South of Italy, it wasn't always
that simple. There, water was scarce, and safe water, scarcer still. He was lucky, he said. There was a good well in Scafati,
where he lived when he was a little boy, a communal well close to the church in his neighborhood. Contaminated water could
kill you. And one of the lessons your mother taught you as a child was not to drink any water, no matter how thirsty you were,
unless she gave it to you.

Water was scarce. Water was dangerous. Wine was plentiful and safe. It wouldn't kill you, at least not right away. When my
father lived in Scafati, he watched workers in the fields stop to eat their small meals— a piece of bread and a slice of onion—
always washing their food down with wine. Between meals, they drank wine when they were thirsty. "Passing the saint," they
called it.

I imagine what it must have been like for my grandfather to work in scorching fields in summer with no water to drink, only
wine. Now, there is an aqueduct that brings water into Puglia. But when he lived there, there was no aqueduct. Always, the
people of the South were promised water. And they knew that, for centuries, aqueducts brought water into Rome. Why water for
Rome? And no water for them?

When my grandfather retired from the railroad, he was an alcoholic. But that clinical word cannot describe the man he had
become.

By the time I was born, the man who had stood so tall and proud beside two wives in his wedding photographs had lost his pride,
his strength, his steely-eyed determination. Wine, antidote to his pain, his sorrow, his loss, his rage.

Anger was an extravagance. An emotion a peasant couldn't afford. Anger wasted energy. Anger changed nothing. Anger singled
you out, anger made you a target.

Unless you used that anger, channeled it into political action. As the anarchists in his family had; as the labor organizers
had; as the farm laborers who demanded a living wage had. But by the time my grandfather left Puglia, whatever his people
had gained through work stoppages, strikes, land seizures had been taken away from them. They fought; many people were killed;
they lost. Nothing changed until after the Great War.

So it was inside the house where anger appeared. Anger against the
padrone
who held you captive. Against the landowner who didn't pay you enough money to feed yourself. Anger that, no matter how hard
you worked, you had little or nothing to show for it. Anger that you couldn't feed your family. Anger that you weren't treated
like a man. Since you couldn't show your anger to the
padrone,
the landowner, it was your wife and children who saw the rage, who felt it.

My grandfather never hit his wives, never hit his daughter in anger. But you could see the rage. In his eyes when he talked
about his days on the railroad. See it, when he pounded his fist on the table as he talked about how a man he worked with
died because of a worn cable. Hear it, when he raised his voice about how you could expect nothing from politicians, how they
were all corrupt.

He'd take a glass, pour himself some wine, and then some more. After his third glass, he couldn't remember why he was angry.
After his fourth glass, he'd become sentimental, teary-eyed. That's when he missed his mother, his father, his
paisani,
his dead wife.

My grandfather dies at home, in his kitchen. On the day he dies, my mother, my sister, and I come home from shopping. We don't
buy much; we buy every day. Still, wrestling two children, a stroller, and a bag of groceries up the steep tenement stairs
is difficult. By the time we get to the fourth floor, my mother is sweating, she's dropped a few things on the stairs, and
she's yelled at us to move along. My mother knocks on my grandparents' door to tell her father we're home, to get some help.
She'll settle my sister and me in his apartment for a snack while she unpacks, tidies up her kitchen. But there's no answer.
My grandfather is supposed to be home. My mother knocks again. Still no answer.

"Maybe," my mother says, "he's in the toilet. Maybe he's gone out."

But my mother sounds worried. No one in our family goes anywhere without telling everyone where they're going, when they'll
come back. Everyone always knows where everyone else is. My mother bangs on the door. She yells, "Papa!" Still no answer.
Something is wrong. We go into our apartment. My mother drops her package on the kitchen table, puts my sister in her high
chair. She tells me to crawl out the kitchen window, across the fire escape, through my grand parents' kitchen window, into
their apartment. The window should be open; it's a warm September day. I've done this before, my mother watching. It's safe;
still, it's a great adventure.

When my grandfather is taking care of me, he lets me sit outside, on the fire escape. He ties a rope around my waist, ties
the other end to a chair. He lets me have a treat there— some bread brushed with olive oil. Lets me water my grandmother's
plants. This is another of our secrets.

I look into the open window. See my grandfather on the floor. I crawl over the table, onto the chair, onto the floor. Rush
to my grandfather.

He's on his side; his eyes are open; his mouth is open. In his hand, he holds a pencil. On the floor, there is a piece of
paper.