Sometimes I Dream in Italian

by Rita Ciresi

  “I ordered most.”

  I could tell Mama was racking up the price of that in her head, adding it to the cost of the fancy coffin Signora had been buried in and the white headstone that had an angel with outstretched wings. “A real tribute to your mother,” she said. “I pray my children do the same for me.”

  “Not too soon, I hope.”

  “You never know, do you. God has His plan.” She scanned the meat case. If she was hoping Ribalta would be running some specials to lure his customers back into the store, she was disappointed. She crossed about half the items off her list. “Start with the hamburger,” she said. “That's fresh, I hope.”

  “I always sell fresh.”

  “Three-quarters of a pound, then.”

  I stood with my back to the front of the store. I felt the cousin's eyes on us. I was embarrassed by my childish red earmuffs and red wool mittens, by Mama's flat black boots and shabby wool coat. The haggling was long and intense that morning. I stood there awkwardly. I blushed when Ribalta called me the Swiss Girl and yodeled at me. I quickly ate the piece of cheese as we followed Ribalta to the front of the store. Mama's undisguised astonishment at what she found on the counter mortified me. Ribalta's cousin stood behind a cash register, a green metal box with smart red buttons.

  “What's this fancy machine doing here?” Mama said.

  “We're joining the modern age,” Ribalta said.

  Mama looked dubious. “Pencil and paper was good enough for Signora,” she said. She watched the cousin carefully as he sorted through the box and rang up the paltry sums scribbled on the packages. When the insubstantial total popped up on little silver tabs in the window of the cash register, I wanted to die of shame.

  Mama regarded the numbers suspiciously. “Is that it?” she said to the boy.

  He pointed to the total. I turned my back as Mama drew the bills out of her Leaning Tower of Pisa wallet. The impatient way she held out her hand for the change annoyed me.

  “Slow as molasses,” Mama said after we left the store. “And sloppy too. Packed the bones on top of the meat.”

  Just as Gelsomina Ribalta became known simply as The Mrs., the boy became known as The Cousin. “So what do you think of Cugino?” my aunts polled one another, with little smiles on their faces. Too many muscles, they decided. Too long nails. He took forever to figure out the total and too long to pack the box back up. He was too handsome for a man. Good looks spelled trouble, you better believe it!

  “Heartbreaker,” my Aunt Fiorella pronounced him, nudging me. “Look out!” Then all my aunts cackled. I turned red, both from the shame of knowing that Cugino would never be interested in a silly girl like me and from fear that Mama and my aunts would guess my secret. I had never been in love before, and I was sure it was written all over my face. But if Mama caught on to it, she said nothing. She was distracted by other things at the market. She made it her business to find out more about Cugino. The more Ribalta refused to be pinned down, the harder she hammered him.

  “So where is this cousin of yours from?” she asked.

  “Calabria.”

  “I thought your family was napoletana.”

  “My mother's side, God rest them, yes.”

  “Oh, so this cugino is from your father's side? But his last name isn't Ribalta? He's your father's sister's son, then?”

  “Second cousin, actually.”

  Mama hesitated, then probed again. “I hear you sing in a band,” she said.

  “That's right.”

  “Your cugino, he's in show business too?”

  “He plays horn, yes.”

  “What sort of music—Sinatra, that kind of stuff?”

  “We'll be giving a concert downtown—”

  “Downtown!” Mama said, as if traveling five miles to the center of New Haven took Ribalta to a distant (and depraved) country. “You go downtown?”

  “Just to Wooster Square. For Carnevale. Come hear us play.”

  Mama was taken aback. No one ever invited her anywhere. She looked down at her list, and for a moment I thought she truly was considering it. I imagined us standing in the square, bundled in our winter coats. Up on stage, Ribalta snapped his chubby fingers and crooned into the microphone. Then Cugino stood up from his folding chair, lifted his gleaming trumpet to his lips, and staring me soulfully in the eyes, played a lilting solo that sent the audience into a frenzy of applause. People hooted and roared, knowing that the next day they would have to don black, go to church, and fast for Ash Wednesday….

  “I don't go to la festa,” Mama said. “Too many people. The whole world is there.” She paused. “Your cugino's parents, they'll be there?”

  “They're dead.”

  “Orphaned so young. How old is he anyway?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “He'll be married soon,” said Mama. “He has a girlfriend, I guess?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “You should fix him up. There are plenty of nice girls in the parish.”

  “We don't go to church.”

  “You should.”

  “What for?”

  “To find God.”

  “God is in our hearts,” Ribalta said.

  “He's at Sunday mass,” said Mama. “And you should be there too, with your cugino. Who knows? You both might meet a nice girl.”

  “We already have our favorite,” Ribalta said, and smiled at me. “She's called the Swiss Girl. Yo-do-lo-do-lo-do-lay!”

  I prayed I would be Cugino's favorite. My mind was always on him. In the middle of a spelling bee at school, or during the Eucharistic prayer at church, I would feel warmth envelop me and suddenly Cugino would be by my side, his thick fingers clasping my upper arms. We were rolling over and over again in a bed of grass, lying together on the beach as the waves lapped in on the sand. We kissed and embraced…

  Then I misspelled sacrifice and Sister Thomas made me sit down. I forgot to say amen after Father said Body of Christ, and he had to repeat it. I didn't care. I loved Cugino so much I hated everybody else: Sister and Father and all nuns and priests, my aunts, my mother and her wallet, even Ribalta. I was sure my heart beat louder and stronger than any of theirs. Only love was real, and mine was all for Cugino.

  I desperately wanted to impress him. On the way to the store I tried to convince Mama to spend more money.

  “Let's get some Swiss cheese today,” I said.

  “You'll get your piece for free.”

  “All my friends bring baloney sandwiches to school.”

  “Peanut butter isn't good enough for you anymore?”

  “It sticks to my mouth,” I said.

  “So put on some jelly.”

  “We're almost out of jelly, I noticed this morning. We'd better get some at Ribalta's.”

  “It's cheaper at the—”

  “Stop talking about the A&P!” I said. “Especially in the store.”

  “Who can hear me?” Mama asked. “Ribalta's blasting the radio in the back and Cugino non capisce.”

  “He understands from the way you say it.”

  Mama sniffed. “I've got nothing to hide from his type.”

  “Why don't you put your wallet in a purse?”

  “Because I've got two hands.”

  “Don't you want a new wallet for your birthday?”

  “This one works just fine.”

  “Aren't you tired of the Leaning Tower of Pisa?”

  “When it falls over, you can buy me a new one.”

  I tried to wean Mama from haggling over the scraps. But the bargaining grew even more intense as the weeks went by. Mama was convinced Ribalta was offering her less of a choice. One minute she wondered if he was holding back on her; the next she was worried some other housewife was beating her to the best of the pickings. She insisted on leaving even earlier for the store to make sure Cugino didn't let anyone in before us. She stood outside the shop door, talking about him loudly as he stacked the bread. “It's that cousin,” she said. “He probably steal
s the scraps and gives them to his friends.”

  “Ssh,” I said. “He does not.”

  “He's taking Ribalta for a ride, believe you me.”

  “He is not.”

  “One of these days he's going to clean out that fancy cash register and be long gone.”

  “He won't leave.”

  Mama snorted. “That would break somebody's heart.”

  “It would not.”

  She looked at me. Then she laughed. “Oh, so you're wild about him too?”

  My face felt warm. “Am not,” I said. I looked down at the dirty sidewalk. The word too resounded disagreeably in my ears. “Who else likes him?”

  Mama snorted again. “Are you thick in the head?” She gestured with a limp wrist toward the store. “Tutti frutti in there,” she said.

  I bit my lip. Tutti frutti was a phrase my father used to describe that strange, grinning man in the sparkling cape who played the white grand piano on Sunday-night T V. I couldn't believe that Ribalta—and Cugino—were of the same ilk as Liberace. But when Cugino came to the door and Mama pushed past him, I noticed he wore something gold and sparkling on his finger—Ribalta's ring.

  I kept my eyes on Mama as she marched down the first aisle, her fingers tightly clasped around her wallet. I hated her. She had killed my dream of being with Cugino as neatly and cleanly as Ribalta chopped the head off a chicken. I'd get her back. My heart pounding, I waited while she made her selections. When she was through, Ribalta folded his arms over his belly.

  “Any scraps today?” Mama asked.

  “For the dog, eh?” Ribalta answered.

  My blood raced. “We don't have a dog,” I announced.

  Mama gave me a murderous look. Ribalta opened his mouth and nothing came out. He swallowed. In a sad voice that showed his disappointment in me, he said, “I know that,” before he disappeared through the swinging door.

  The moment he was gone, Mama smacked me soundly on the back of the head with her wallet. “That'll teach you,” she said. “I'll never take you here again.”

  I turned and walked halfway down the soup aisle. The black letters on the Campbell's cans blurred. I was crying. Mama had put me to shame. I heard Ribalta come back and I walked down the rest of the aisle. Cugino, fortunately, was nowhere in sight. I went out the front door and around to the side of the store. The yard behind the market was blocked off with a high wooden fence. I peered over the gate.

  Through the back window of the shop, I could see into the room where Ribalta did the butchering. It was illuminated with long fluorescent tubes that gave off a bluish hue. A huge refrigerator—five doors long—lined one whole wall. Above the triple sink hung knives as long as swords, cleavers that looked like they would fell a tree, and an assortment of scissors to trim and snip the meat after it had been sliced and gutted. From metal hooks on the ceiling, slabs of meat hung like punching bags waiting for someone to pummel them. On a wire stretched across the room, plucked chickens dangled—long, skinny, and naked as Mama's bras hanging on the clothesline. Radio Italia was playing opera. Cugino moved around the room, then came out the back door carrying a bucket. He held it above his head as he descended the stairs. Then from the back of the yard trotted three lambs, their coats gray and covered with bits of grass. Their hooves sounded sharp on the frozen ground. They nuzzled up against Cugino's white apron, licking him and looking up at him with glassy, expectant eyes. Cugino waited until he had gotten to the center of the yard before he dumped the bucket. There, on the ground, lay beet stalks, shredded turnips, carrot and potato peels—and what little of Mama's coveted scraps Cugino hadn't seen fit to put into a soup or stew. The lambs crowded in to feast on the mess.

  Cugino looked up and saw me. He said something in Italian, broke it off, then beckoned. He came over and unlocked the gate to let me in. Cugino gestured that I should pet one of the lambs. I stroked the matted fur of the smallest, which had a black face and knobby knees.

  Cugino gestured toward the lambs, then smacked his lips and rubbed his stomach. I screwed up my face to show I didn't understand him.

  “Per la Pasqua,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Easter pets.”

  He smacked his lips and rubbed his stomach again, smiling. He kept grinning and gesturing, pointing first to the lambs, then to his belly. I noticed his teeth were crooked and his stomach was a little bit flabby. He looked like an actor in a silent movie trying to get a laugh. I wondered how I ever could have loved such an idiot.

  “Capisci, capisci?” he asked. When I kept on staring at him, obviously not understanding what he was driving at, he grabbed one lamb by the wool on top of its head, held out one finger, brought it up to the lamb's neck, and dragged it across, in the gesture of an executioner.

  I took my hand away from the lamb I was petting. I couldn't decide who was more evil—Ribalta for butchering the lambs, or Cugino for telling me he was going to do it. Tears welled up in my eyes. Cugino looked confused. Then he reached out and took my hand. After all those weeks of dreaming he would touch me, his grasp felt tight and cold. I was about to pull away when Mama appeared at the gate, against the broad white backdrop of Ribalta's figure.

  Mama tried to open the gate, then rattled it. She began to sputter incoherently. What was this? Crazy nut! Drop her hand! Disgraceful! My daughter! He'd go to hell for this! Sick turkey!

  Ribalta's fat seemed to quiver as he gestured at Mama. “Calm down,” he said, reaching over her to fumble with the lock. “Please be calm, Signora.”

  Mama made a fist and shouted something evil-sounding in Italian. Cugino dropped both the bucket and my hand and raised his fists at Mama. The lambs scattered. Mama gazed at the beets and turnips and the last of her scraps on the grass. That was the final straw. When Ribalta finally popped open the gate, she marched in and dragged me out of the yard. “Family business!” she said to Ribalta as she pulled me down the sidewalk. “More like funny business you've got going on here. And you'll pay for it, just you wait and see.”

  On Easter, I refused to come down to dinner. I lay on my bed, trying to recapture the feeling of being in love. I tried to melt into a dreamy state, to smell the meadow and hear the waves. But it was useless. I couldn't get it back, no matter how hard I tried. I had lost Cugino, the same as Ribalta.

  For Cugino was gone. They said Ribalta stuffed his pockets full of money and sent him packing. The butcher had his business to think of. Mama talked loud and word spread fast that something just a little bit fishy was going on over at that meat market, and never you mind what, although you could take a guess.

  Knowing she wouldn't meet up with Cugino at the market ever again, Mama returned to Ribalta's on Holy Saturday and acted as if nothing had happened. She came back with a boxful of packages and reported, with satisfaction, that a very nice older woman—perhaps a relative of Signora's—sat behind the counter. She was quite pleasant and spoke good English too.

  As I lay on my bed, trying to block out the squeak of knives scraping against the plates, I heard Mama telling my aunts, for the umpteenth time, how she had bargained Ribalta rock-bottom low on the lamb. It was such a good deal she even bought some mint jelly. Why not? Life was short. “Try it,” she urged them. “I got it on special. Delicious.”

  BEFORE FIRST GRADE, I never gave much thought to Babbo. He simply was who he was: our father, who was quick to remind us that his hard work was the only thing that kept food on the table, a roof over our heads, and clothes on our backs. The first day of school taught me to look at Babbo differently. Sister Sebastian—a stern black presence in the front of the room, whose tight voice could make even the call to recess seem like a threat— made us stand up one by one and recite our name and address. Then she grilled us about our families. How many brothers and sisters did we have? Did our grandparents live at home? I had no trouble answering until she came to What does your father do for a living?

  I stared straight ahead at the wall, where an illustrated chart of the alphabet reduced the w
orld to twenty-six simple statements: A is for apple, B is for bee, C is for cat. Sister stared at me impatiently. “Don't you know what your father does all day?” she asked. “Or maybe he's out of work, is that it?”

  I shook my head.

  “Has he passed away, then?”

  At that moment I gladly would have sunk Babbo to the bottom of the sea in order to truthfully reply yes, he was dead. I shook my head again. My answer burst forth from my mouth like a cork from a bottle.

  “Soda man!” I said loudly.

  “What?” Sister asked.

  “Delivers soda!” I said, and sat down, defying one of Sister's strictest rules, which was never to resume your seat without her permission. My cheeks and ears blazed as she made me stand up and sit down all over again. Behind me, I heard a girl's nasty little twitter.

  It turned out everyone else in class had a father just like mine. Giuliana Selmone's father wore a powdery white apron and bagged Danish pastries and kaiser rolls for customers at the bakery. Mario Cusini's father worked at the Welling Box Factory, where at 11:55 you could see him clutching his tin lunch box and thermos behind the chain-link fence, waiting for the noon whistle to blow and the gates to open that would release him for exactly half an hour from his hot, stuffy imprisonment. Anna Maria Milletti's father pushed a broom at Saint Raphael's Hospital, and later in the school year the rumor—never substantiated—would surface that on Saturdays he wore a white pointed hat to sell popcorn and peanuts at the Yale football games. Didi Dellavone's father was a plumber, yet she could brag that her family had living-room furniture so nice it was kept under plastic wraps. I thought that was the height of elegance. At the A&P I used to pester Mama to buy Saran Wrap so we, too, could cover our shabby three-cushion couch and stuffed armchair.

  “What are you, nuts?” Mama asked. “Covering perfectly good furniture meant to sit on? That's the limit. How much more pazza can you get?”

  I sulked. I was dissatisfied. I longed to be elegant, but I felt branded for life as a girl whose father was only A Man—an anonymous male who went from store to store and house to house, knocking on doors and sending girls upstairs shrieking with exaggerated fright—silly little girls like my older sister, Lina, and me. “What are you acting so nuts for?” Mama hollered at us when we ran from the sound of the back doorbell. “It's only the oil man.” Or it was the gas man. The furnace man. The milkman. The mailman. Any male who appeared at our door—be he the Fuller Brush man or the paperboy—sent Lina and me flying up to our room, where we pounced on our beds, kicked our legs in the air, and giggled madly until the deep-voiced, loud-mouthed intruder left our house.