The Patron Saint of Ugly

by Marie Manilla

  Nonna remembers when the neighbors got their first look at me. It was a fall afternoon when she and Mom tried out the new strollers. Mom went first, pushing Nicky, with Nonna and me several paces behind. The hill women had not seen their flaxen-haired boy in months, and they had never seen his cloistered little sister. They raced forward with offerings, their own children toddling beside them. “Where is our beautiful boy?” Nonna sputtering ptt-ptt-ptt. Next they veered toward me; Mom and Nonna hoped decorous manners would prevail.

  They did not. When the women inspected me, their hands flew to their mouths. “What’s wrong with her? Is she contagious?”

  “Of course-a not!” Nonna said.

  But the children bawled at the sight and ran home, chased by their mothers who slammed their doors, windows too, and then the drapes.

  Mom could have run home also, but that brave soul directed Nonna to take Nicky’s stroller. Mom would steer mine and they would continue their walk. Mom held her head high as if I, antithesis of everything about her that was comely, were her Cracker Jack prize, yelling at the top of her lungs, “Behold, cruel hearts, untampered loveliness!”

  Mom might have been content to snub the neighbors for good, but Nonna understood the power behind communal belief.

  She wisely waited until Mom hustled Nicky to the village for a doctor’s appointment, snarling at all the young housewives squealing after my mother, nickels and Walnettos in their outstretched hands once they realized the cursed one was not present.

  During the previous weeks, according to Nonna Moretti, my nonna had been priming all the other hill grandmas over their afternoon Marsala, etching my bedtime story into their Old World brains. When the day arrived, a secret signal went out: white smoke from a chimney, a flapping of venetian blinds. All at once every nonna on the hill funneled into our house and to my drapes-closed bedroom decorated with lit candles, Nonna’s talismans now in plain view along with Grandfather Postscript’s globes. Nonna sat in the rocker and held me in her lap, my face hidden beneath a blanket, as the old women shuffled over, holy flames trembling in their eyes.

  “Here she is,” Nonna whispered. “The descendant of Santa Garnet del Vulcano, born to my son, my son, grazie a Dio!”

  “Grazie a Dio!” the nonnas chanted.

  Nonna peeled back the covering and I grinned at them, red hair shooting up, purple landmasses pulsing.

  The nonnas couldn’t stifle their disgust. “Porca vacca! Santo cielo!”

  Nonna’s eyes teared as her protective fantasy evaporated. She was about to re-cover me when Nonna Petraglia nudged her way forward, parting the other nonnas with her cane.

  “Mi perdoni. Mi scusi,” she mumbled until she got to me. She bent deeply over me, her eyes just inches from mine. The scapulars around her turkey-wattle neck dangled in my face, making me burble.

  “It’s-a her,” Nonna Petraglia declared. “Dere is a painting of Santa Garney in the Museo de Siracusa back in Sicilia. Dis is-a her! Es-atta replica!”

  I’m sure my nonna looked up at her with deep gratitude. She was the only other Sicilian in the room, so I always wondered if there was some complicity. And by the way, I did contact the Museo de Siracusa and they have no record of any such painting, though they say it’s possible it burned up in the wing that caught fire in the 1928 Mount Etna eruption.

  Regardless, Nonna Petraglia’s proclamation was proof enough for the other nonnas, who swallowed their revulsion along with their doubts and chanted, “Santa della Collina”—Saint of the Hill—already conspiring about how they could rub this into the potato heads in the village.

  This time it was Mom who came home early, stumbling in on the bevy of old women slipping coins into my globe piggy bank, draping holy medals over my crib. One by one they left, bowing to my mother, the blessed incubator, kissing the back of her hand. Mom was too bewildered to compose a disjointed limerick. The women scrambled to their homes, and the gossip about Santa Garnet del Vulcano quickly spiraled up and down the hill. The result was more than the assurance that I would not be an outcast (at least not among old women). That evening when Dad stepped onto the front porch for his postsupper White Owl cigar, he found jars of pickled cauliflower, cans of Vienna sausages.

  “Marina!” he called, mystified.

  Mom padded to him, saw the bountiful offerings, clasped his hands, and spilled the Saint Garnet beans about me.

  Whether he believed the story or not, from then on, Dad agreed to give me the occasional bubble bath, the real reason I adore them. One time, Dad filled the bathroom sink with sudsy water, slid in my rubbery body, and then so strategically coated me in bubbles that only my pinkest flesh was visible, and my aquamarine eyes, which reminded him of the woman he loved. He smiled broadly and I giggled at this anomaly he’d kept hidden from me. I pounded my fists in the water, splashing us both, delighting him so much that out of his mouth popped three marvelous words: “I. Love. You.” I pounded my fists even harder, and the geysers rinsed off the sudsy camouflage, reminding him of everything I was not, and his smile vanished.

  Subsequently, even in my baby state, I tried to re-create the bath-time ritual that had produced not only his loving look but those words. Unfortunately, the baths ended shortly thereafter, when I could no longer fit in the sink. That meant I would have to find alternative means to re-create the memory tucked in the heart-shaped box in my chest.

  After witnessing the significant impact Nonna’s Saint Garnet spiel had had on the neighbors and (to a lesser extent) her husband, Mom felt her heart soften. She saw, perhaps, a spark of God in her mother-in-law, and, I confess, so did I. Like youngsters who effortlessly absorb second languages, I learned the language of faith and the malocchio from Nonna. In exchange for Nonna’s beneficent gift, Mom presented one of her own: she allowed Nicky and me to be baptized, a rite she had previously doggedly refused, causing Nonna nightly angina.

  One day when I was playing Pick-Up Sticks in Nonna’s driveway, Celeste Xaviero leaned out her kitchen window and described to me just how tightly Father Luigi closed his eyes when he dribbled those cleansing waters over my stained head, and it wasn’t because he was praying. Afterward, Celeste shadowed him to the parish hall for the reception. “I think we all know whose sin caused that poor child’s deformity,” Father whispered to his altar boys, nodding in my mother’s direction. The impact of Celeste’s gossip was only slightly lessened when she added, “Wonder whose-a sin caused the rutabaga growing out of his face?”

  It’s a good thing Mom didn’t hear Father’s condemnation or she would never have given her second gift: allowing us to attend weekly Mass.

  Dad (sans Mom) proudly displayed his son to Saint Brigid’s parishioners, both Italian and Irish. He was always surrounded by a herd of young women, some married, some single, drawn not only to Nicky, but to Dad’s bounteous hair and enthralling plight of being married to a non-saved wife.

  Nonna came too, and she flaunted me, though she drew a markedly different demographic: the hill nonnas, of course, but also the Saint Brigid nuns, who flocked to me, headgear flapping like ravens’ wings. When I was teething, they let me chew on the oversize rosary beads draped around their necks or waists. I don’t know if at that time they truly believed I was a saint. More likely, they could see into my future school years, when they would be my teachers, so they knew the mean truth wiggling inside most children’s mouths.

  I loved those nuns. Sunday after Sunday I sat behind them in church on Nonna’s lap, a strategic proximity that helped avert rude stares—and there were plenty. When the nuns pressed their hands together, I pressed my pudgy hands together too. When they bowed their heads to murmur Latin prayers, I garbled baby-speak versions of my own. I admired the veils that trailed down their backs like luxurious, holy manes, something my own coils would never do.

  It was during those early treks to church that I was introduced to yet another sound that went on to trail my life: the wails of children. Not only sobs of fright, but a quavery “Mommy! Wha
t’s wrong with—” The question stunted by a hand over the lips, or a nonna’s knuckle to the forehead. “That’s Santa Garney. Shut-a you mouth!”

  I flourished under Nonna’s and Mom’s care, my physique expanding yearly as I went from the crib to the playpen to the highchair to the stack of Sears catalogs piled on a chair when I was finally big enough to sit at the table.

  Nicky was not immune to some envy over my most-favored-nation status with Nonna and Mom, even if he was the pulse that kept my father’s heart beating. He was also the only male heir, the one who would perpetuate the Ferrari name. Not my noncousin Ray-Ray Guttuso, who would always be a Guttuso even if Uncle Dom did adopt him and backhand him with our name.

  Before I was born, Nicky got almost seventeen months of Mom’s gooey-centered love. After I was born, my physical features were the only ones she extolled. “Is she the most beautiful baby you’ve ever seen? I think so! Is she the most flawless baby on the planet? I think so!” No doubt everyone within earshot asked a question about my mother: Is she completely insane? I think so! Mom praised Nicky’s quick potty training and ability to read by age three, but after I was born, she never again commented on the thickness of his hair or the perfection of his smile.

  The payback I suffered was a bruise on my right biceps in the exact shape of Nicky’s fist, a new purple-green continent he dubbed Buttholia. Whenever he walked by, I’d get a jab. I retaliated by ripping pages from his Britannicas so that he would never know the national product of Uruguay or the meaning of the word yashmak.

  Okay, Archibald. My fingers are pruney, and I don’t see Nonna’s eye at the keyhole, so I’m heaving out of the tub and schlepping to my room.

  (Walleye! Getta the tubes!)

  Crap. I forgot to drain the tub. Now Nonna and Betty will lock themselves in the bathroom with the ten thousand vials that Betty mail-ordered. She’ll be on her knees for hours scooping up water, Nonna sitting on the closed toilet with her label gun shooting out St. Garnet H2O tabs. If they were less upstanding, they could make a fortune, but they give all the relics away.

  Two spirals down the hill is another holy relic, the grape arbor in back of our cracker-box house that Dad built years ago. Countless times I had been lured to the basement by the sound of Dad’s sawing, had seen his palm gripping the handle enriched with his curlicues and sweat. The radio beside him crooned the torch songs he loved even if Uncle Dom called them sentimental crap. I loved them too, especially when my E note sounded. I secretly crouched on the steps the day Dad sawed the arbor posts, drawing the blade forward and back, the muscles in his arms flexing. His face bore the same anguished expression as the one Jesus wore on the crucifix over the Saint Brigid altar. I wondered what torment Dad was reliving in his head. Then I burped and he jolted as if he’d been caught shoplifting. His head swung toward me. “Go upstairs. This is private. Private!” I slunk away, stung.

  The day the arbor was finished, Dad gathered us all outside to admire his handiwork. Mom even procured store-bought wine to celebrate. She and Dad set up lawn chairs that scooted closer and closer together as the sun set, Mom twirling Dad’s hair in her fingers. Ah, alcohol. The great height-adding elixir. Nicky and I knew where this was heading, so we went inside, but an hour later I heard Dad bellowing, “I christen thee SS Marina!” after which he smashed the bottle against one of the posts.

  After all the hubbub, Dad didn’t do the actual vine planting. Nonna insisted that in order to ensure a plump harvest, Nicky and I should have the honors since we were Dad’s little saplings. Unfortunately, Ray-Ray was also included.

  The ritual had to occur in the spring just before sundown on the night of a full moon. I was only three. Nicky was four but already quite verbal since he’d spent so much time galloping through Grandfather’s reference books. Nonna ushered us outside with a clothespin bag looped over her wrist. She reached inside and pulled out four sprigs from what I assumed was Grandpa’s grapevine, cuttings she had planted in coffee cans and coddled all winter.

  She also pulled out soupspoons and directed each of us to the base of one of the four arbor posts; she took the last. “Dig-a this high and this-a wide,” she instructed with her hands.

  We hunkered down. I jammed in my spoon, hoisted out my first load, and a porous stone popped out with it. I’d never seen one like it, and when I held it in my hand, it was ludicrously light. I dug my spoon in again, and another one popped out, and another, and another.

  “What are these?” I asked no one in particular.

  My genius brother loped over. “Where’d you get those?”

  Maybe he wasn’t so smart. “From the hole,” I said, pointing.

  “Did not.”

  “Did too.”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Uh-huh!”

  Nonna came over. “What’s all-a the fuss?”

  “Garnet’s filling up her hole with pumice stones!”

  “Am not!” I didn’t even know what a pumice stone was. “They came out of the hole. Look!” I dug my spoon in and out popped another one.

  “That’s not right.” Nicky kicked the pile of stones. “Pumice comes from volcanoes and we don’t live on a volcano. She must have buried them there earlier.”

  “I did not.”

  “Did too.”

  “What’s-a the diff?” Nonna said. “We gotta get-a these in before the sun she goes down.”

  Before Nicky went back to his task he scraped dirt onto my bare foot, coating Antarctica and its glacial ice shelves.

  Soon I heard Nonna mumbling, “Here-a too?”

  She was pulling from her hole not pumice stones, but seashells. I crawled over and picked up a handful of pink scallops. I looked at her; she looked at me; we both looked at Nicky but decided not to call them to his attention. Especially since he was marveling at what he’d unearthed from his hole: a matchbox. He slid it open and discovered a toy station wagon completely demolished by some kid’s rough play.

  Then I looked over at Ray-Ray, who was not lifting an oddity from his hole but putting one in. He’d reached into his pocket and yanked out a dead bird, likely murdered by him. He slipped it into the grave, rammed his sapling on top, and scooped dirt around it.

  Ray-Ray’s clipping withered to a dry twig before morning. Nonna’s and mine flourished and eventually produced the sweetest grapes of all, though they weren’t the same variety as Grandpa’s Gaglioppo. Though Nicky’s vine grew, it was stunted and never yielded any fruit.

  I understand now how bizarre these occurrences were, Padre, but swaddled as I was in Nonna’s Old Religion, I thought everyone’s life was filled with mystery. I often wondered what other children found in the holes they dug. And there were plenty of kids on the hill in those postwar years whose first words were probably “Mommy, what’s wrong with—” I was never invited for birthday parties or sleepovers, and none of them would have had the courage to sleep in my much-talked-about globe room, which is why I never bothered to ask. Things changed when I was four and a little hill girl showed up at my door.

  I was at the living room window watching neighbor girls decorate mud pies with buttercups when Dee Dee Evangelista hiked up my steps holding a baby doll. I instinctively ducked behind the drapes. When the doorbell chimed, Nonna came from the kitchen and answered.

  “My doll needs a miracle,” Dee Dee said.

  Nonna’s eyebrows pinched together. “Huh?”

  “Nonna Lalia said Saint Garney can do miracles.”

  Nonna tugged the white hair on her chin. Finally she turned to me and held out her hand. “Come. It’s-a time.”

  I had no idea what that meant, but I slid out and went to the door. Dee Dee’s eyes rounded, and I could tell she wanted to bolt, but she looked at the sick doll and finally held Betsy Wetsy toward me. “She can’t pee.”

  I had the same doll, Padre, only Mom had painted geographic splotches all over its skin with nail polish. How I loved that doll, and my mother.

  Nonna clamped her hand on my shoulder, and
the warmth from her palm seeped through my shirt and into my skin, where it radiated down my right arm and made my fingertips throb.

  “Miracle her,” Dee Dee whispered, picking at a pronounced sty on her eyelid.

  I looked into Dee Dee’s eyes, and Dee Dee stared back (the flaming sty also staring); her belief was so stern I took the doll, jiggled her, and heard liquid sloshing around in her belly. Even I knew the mechanics of Betsy Wetsy. You fed her a bottle of water and gravity took care of the rest, the water funneling through her and dribbling out a BB-size hole in her asexual mons. I lifted her dress and cringed at the brown streaks running down her legs, a hardened plug of it in her pee hole. I tried not to gag. “What did you feed her?”

  Dee Dee’s head hung low. “Hershey’s syrup.”

  I handed back the doll. “Wait here.” I ran to the kitchen and returned with Betsy’s bottle filled with hot water, plus the dish of toothpicks Dad used to jab salami fat from between his teeth. I again lifted Betsy’s dress to perform a delicate operation: I poked a toothpick in her stoppered pee hole while mumbling a prayer I had heard the Saint Brigid nuns utter countless times: “Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.” I botched the Latin, but I was sure the Virgin Mary applauded my effort, because my body burned with fever at the same time that syrup oozed from Betsy, thick droplets of it. I fed the doll the bottle of hot water and soon Betsy Wetsy was peeing freely once more. Dee Dee’s eyes widened as she took the doll and kissed its face, and that’s when I noticed that Dee Dee’s eye was suddenly sty-less.