Sometimes I Dream in Italian

by Rita Ciresi

  She curled up her lip. “Who cares about him?” she said, and walked out of the crown.

  We began the long, slow walk down to the pedestal. Lina switched on the flashlight and cocked it against the walls, making wild patterns of light fly around the narrow stairwell. We met up with Gigi on the observation balcony. Lina walked right by him, her hair whipping in the wind. Gigi beckoned to me, looked me in the eye, and gave me a nickel to put in one of the big silver machines that you could use, like binoculars, to see things up close. The machine began to click. I pressed my eyes up against the lenses and pointed them toward the water. After a minute of searching through the waves, I located a tugboat. A man was hoisting some barrels along the deck. I spent another minute trying to focus on the bridge over to the right. The cars looked like little Matchbox toys scooting along the span. I wasted the rest of the time focusing on Battery Park, trying to spot Babbo on shore. But the machine was so unwieldy and the lenses so cloudy, I couldn't find him.

  The machine stopped clicking. I put on my mittens and hugged my coat against me. Lina poked me in the arm. “Come on,” she said. “Let's get inside and get warm. We can take the stairs down.”

  “We better tell Gigi,” I said.

  “Forget him,” said Lina.

  We sneaked off the balcony and went through the doorway that was marked for the stairs. After we had gone down two flights, Lina asked, “What'd you see that you liked the best?”

  I thought about it for a minute. “A tugboat out on the water. What'd you see?”

  She smirked and looked down on me, as if I were a crumb she was considering picking up and eating. She brought her lips close to my ear and whispered, “A man's dingdong.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  I got so excited that I spit on Lina's coat sleeve. She coolly wiped it off.

  “Back there,” Lina said. “On the spiral stairs. While you were in the crown.”

  “What color was it?” I asked.

  “Black and blue,” Lina said.

  “How big was it?”

  “At least a foot. Maybe more.”

  “Did the man show it to you on purpose?”

  “It wasn't a man,” Lina said. “It was Gigi!”

  I felt like a balloon that had just been deflated. “You big fat liar,” I said.

  “I swear to God,” Lina said. “It's true. Gigi asked me if I wanted to go up into the torch. He said you had to climb a ladder and that we had to go down the stairs to get to the door. So we went down to the door. It was really dark and Gigi made me shine the flashlight on it. The sign said you weren't allowed up. So I said, Let's go back up into the crown, and Gigi didn't say anything. And then the next thing I knew, he was holding it out at me.”

  “Whatdja do?” I asked.

  “I shined the flashlight on it,” Lina said.

  “You did not.”

  “I did,” Lina insisted. “I wanted to get a good look. But then Gigi made a funny kind of face, like he just got caught telling a lie, and he put it back again.” She smirked. “He had trouble pulling up the zipper. He swore the F word in Italian! He kept on saying, Mannaggia, now I've done it. And he told me not to tell Mama and Babbo.”

  “Are you going to?” I asked.

  “I told him I wouldn't if he gave me a dollar.”

  “Did he?”

  Lina smiled. “What do you think?” She patted her pocket. “I should have asked him for five. He looked like he was going to cry when he gave it to me. He said, Someday you'll find out. Sometimes you can't help yourself.”

  I looked over my shoulder. I felt scared, as if Gigi was lurking at every next turn, waiting to expose himself. But Lina walked on, not bothering to look either ahead or behind for any signs of danger. “You know,” she said, “when you get up close to his face, Gigi isn't very handsome. He looks kind of old and ugly.”

  By the time we got to the bottom, I had gotten over being scared. I felt nothing but pure jealousy of Lina. Zio Gigi had singled her out. He thought she was smarter and liked her better. He was in cahoots with her and not with me. The funny thing was that Lina didn't seem to care about Gigi. She headed straight for the souvenir stand, where she spent ten minutes fingering all the items until she selected a miniature silver replica of the Empire State Building with green felt on the bottom. I chose a replica of the Statue of Liberty. With the dollar Gigi gave her, Lina bought a rhinestone pin similar to Mama's, only it was in the shape of an American flag.

  We found Mama sitting outside on a bench, underneath the poem that talked about giving me your tired, your poor, and your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. We so rarely saw her relax that she hardly looked like our mother as she leaned back on the bench, her hands clutching her gloves and her rhinestone Scottie dog pin drooping. We seemed to wake her up from a dream. “What did you see?” she asked.

  Lina silently handed Mama her flashlight. I reported on the clouds and the skyscrapers, the water and the bridges. “I felt like I was at the top of the world,” I said. Then I bit my lip, remembering I had left Uncle Gigi's clipboard up in the crown.

  “I've been thinking as I sat here,” Mama said. “Remembering things I didn't think I'd ever remember again.” She stood up and pointed across the water. “See that island there, you two, with the big building that looks like a castle? That's where we first landed. It was raining cats and dogs.”

  “You said the sun was shining,” Lina reminded her.

  “You said it was night,” I said.

  Mama gestured with her hand. “Sun, rain, night—what's the difference?” She pointed, once again, at the island. “As the boat came in, they let us all come up onto the deck. People held their breath. Some of the women began to cry. Even some of the men, can you imagine? They had to wipe a tear away. Then suddenly, out of the mist—yes, there was mist, and fog—we saw her, the Statue of Liberty, holding the torch. La Bellissima! my father called her. The most beautiful woman in the world. After the boat docked, we had to go below again. Then they came down and took the sick ones away. In the next room, imagine—a girl my age had died.” Mama crossed herself. “They said she took her last breath just as we came into the harbor, too close to land to bury her at sea.”

  “What'd she die of?” Lina asked.

  “Chi sa?” Mama said. “Who knows? There was so much illness. Some people never had a chance.” She noticed our hands in our pockets. “Come,” she said. “Show me what you got.”

  I held out my replica of the statue. Lina showed her miniature

  Empire State Building. Then she reluctantly took out of her pocket the rhinestone American flag. Mama examined it. “Where did you get the money for that?” she asked.

  “Gigi,” Lina said.

  Mama looked past Lina and located Gigi standing next to Father Angelosi. She pointed to the flag. “You're too good to them,” she called out.

  Gigi looked down at the pin and then over at Lina. I thought his face turned red. He shrugged. “What can I say?”

  Staring at Gigi and Lina, I was suddenly seized with the urge to tell my mother everything. Instead, I whined, “Mama, I'm hungry.”

  Mama went straight into action. She rounded up Father Angelosi and Mrs. Fenilli. She took out her knife and began to skin the pepperoni and slice the cheese. “You see,” she said. “You all had plenty to say at my expense. And now I should let you eat your words instead of sharing the food with you, eh, Father?”

  Father cupped his ear. “What's that?” he said.

  “Madonna.” Mama sighed. “FORGET it. Have a piece of CHEESE.”

  “It gives me the diarrhea,” Father said.

  Mama leaned close to his ear. “I got a BROTHER-IN-LAW who's a PLUMBER,” she shouted. “He says you gotta eat it with BREAD. Soaks up the POISONS.”

  Lina chewed slowly, with a pensive look on her face. I stuffed my cheeks full before I swallowed in one big gulp, practically choking. After a while I dared to go up to Zio Gigi and touch his sleeve. He turned with a startled
look.

  “I left your clipboard upstairs,” I said.

  He waved his hand. “Forget it.”

  Lina was right. He did look old and ugly.

  After a while Gigi began to count heads and round everybody up for the next ferry. To our surprise, Mama let us go up to the top deck. From there we could hear the flag on the top of the boat whipping in the wind and see the boat cut two lines of white spray as it cruised through the water.

  Gigi stood far below us on the bottom deck. Lina made a face at him. Whispering in my ear, she threatened to spit on him and throw the rhinestone pin down into the water so it would drop to the bottom of the ocean. But Mama put a stop to that. She set down the remains of her Railroad Salvage bag, turned up our collars, put her arms around us, and drew us close to her rough wool coat. “When we land,” she promised, “I'll get you something to drink. Lemonade or Kool-Aid. I'm so thirsty I can taste it already.”

  As we drew close, we saw Babbo standing on the dock, watching the boat pitch its way in. Lina raised her hand to wipe the salt spray from her eyes. Then she moved to the edge of the deck, watching the statue fade away. I jumped up and down and waved my hand at my father. Then he began to wave back, widely and with purpose, as if by doing so he could draw the boat toward shore and bring us safely home.

  “STAR WATER” WAS Mama's solution to every mess. No fancy, expensive detergents for her—she dumped a capful of blue bleach into a metal basin full of hot water, watched it burst into small, glistening bubbles, and gave it her own brand name. She used star water to scrub the counters and stove, the tub and tile and toilet. She used it to soak out stubborn stains in anything from a tin pan crusted with burnt macaroni and cheese to a tablecloth spotted with grease. The smell of it—lingering in every room for hours after Saturday morning chore time was over— made Lina and me depressed. With its disgusting stink and beautiful name, star water seemed to epitomize the lack of glamour that pervaded our lives. Just a whiff of it reminded us that we were destined for nothing better than ordinary drudgery and No chapped hands that reeked of ammonia instead of Chanel N. 5, Tabu, or Jean Naté.

  “When I grow up,” Lina vowed, “I'm never going to touch a single rag, sponge, or scrub brush.”

  “I'm going to have a maid,” I said.

  “I'm going to send all my evening gowns to the dry cleaner,”

  Lina said. “I'm going to throw out my underwear after the first time I wear it.”

  That sounded fine by me. I got stuck wearing everything Lina had outgrown, from the holiday dresses with the velvet cummerbunds and satin collars to her yellowed undershirts and underpants. I could hardly bear the shame. Lina's blouses lapped about my wrists, and her knee socks, which had lost all their snap, crept down to my ankles. The clothes that Lina wore became costumes on me.

  I would have given anything for a closet full of brand-new outfits. But when I complained, Mama said, “You can do whatever you want with your cash when you're filthy rich.” She never used the word money—she called it cash or bucks. And she never said rich without putting filthy, stinking, or disgusting in front of it, as if people who had more than a spare dime wallowed like pigs in a perpetual state of sin.

  Because she despised money, Lina and I loved it. We planned on glittering with gold and dripping with diamonds, owning several houses, a stable of racehorses, and a fleet of yachts. I was going to be a famous writer. Lina was going to be a star—not in Hollywood, where most eleven-year-olds longed to be, but in Italy, where an opera singer could reign as queen. She had a clear, beautiful voice that even Mama, who was as parsimonious with her compliments as she was with her purse, called a gift from God. The key word there was gift. “Just remember where that voice of yours came from,” she said, whenever she thought Lina was too full of herself. “And don't be getting too many ideas about where you're going.”

  Mama blamed Nonna for puffing Lina up. Mama's mother lived next door, in a neat little white house with a trellised rose garden in back and overstuffed chintz-covered furniture inside. After school, Lina would report home to Mama and then escape to Nonna's, where she was treated to a Stella d'Oro cookie frosted with vanilla and sprinkled with almonds. She spent the rest of the afternoon there, practicing piano or reading a book on the floor, leaping up and down every twenty minutes to either wind the crank of Nonna's cherry-wood Victrola or change the thick, scratchy 78-rpm records.

  Nonna was what most people called eccentric. She sat perfectly straight, her wrinkled little hands in her lap, her left foot tapping out a tune on the carpet. Her right foot had been amputated, years before, because of gangrene. She hardly ever said anything, but her lips moved silently to the songs she listened to over and over again: Renata Scotto singing “Mi chiamano Mimi,” Beniamino Gigli belting out “Celeste Aida.” Lina loved this music too. On Saturday afternoons she sat faithfully by Nonna's left foot to listen to the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts. But if the opera was in German, Nonna switched it off. One of the few words she said in English was Nazis.

  Nonna subscribed to Il Progresso, but she also had the Register delivered to her door. Lina took it off the front porch and brought it in. She read the headlines to Nonna, then the obituaries, Ann Landers, and the horoscope column, which was called “Omar Says.” Nonna was a Virgo; Lina was a Leo. “A temptation may present itself this afternoon,” Lina read aloud. “Beware of schemes to get rich quick. The evening hours bring unexpected news. A long-lost family member soon may visit!” Because Mama thought astrology was a bunch of baloney, Lina was thrilled with it. To visit Nonna was to embrace the possibility of handsome strangers and sudden turns of fortune. Omar promised her as much passion as the music.

  Although Mama seemed to breathe easier once Lina was out of the house, I got the message, loud and clear, that I wasn't supposed to follow her even if it did hold the promise of a Stella d'Oro. “Those two are two of a kind,” Mama said, as she handed me my consolation prize: half an apple and a couple of stale Ritz crackers spread with a thin layer of peanut butter. “Listening to the same songs over and over again, all about love and killing yourself. Driving yourself matta over nothing, is what I say.” Accepting my silence as a sign that I was on her side, Mama looked out the window and glared at Nonna's house. “Just what we need, another rotten egg in the family.”

  That egg—rarely alluded to—was Lina's namesake, Mama's younger sister, Pat. Both Auntie Pat and Lina had been christened after Nonno Pasquale, ending up with the unwieldy Pasqualina for a name. We knew, from looking at old photo albums, that Lina had been called Patty when she was a baby. Patty's first tooth, the captions written on the white borders of the pictures said. Patty on the potty. Then something mysterious happened. Several photographs—probably of Auntie Pat—were missing from the album, the four dark corners used to mount them left behind. Auntie Pat had done something foul that caused her to be taken out of the book, and Mama and Babbo, anxious to forget the old Pasqualina, began to call the younger one by a different name.

  Lina hated her name. “Sounds like a fat old washerwoman,” she said.

  “It's a nice Italian name,” Mama said.

  “I'm American,” Lina said. When that failed to get a rise out of Mama, she added, “And I'm going to change my name when I grow up.”

  Mama clucked her tongue. “Be satisfied with what you've got.”

  “Why should I be?” Lina said. “You weren't. You were the one who changed it on me. Why'd you switch me, anyway?” When Mama didn't answer, Lina said, “It makes me feel weird. I feel like I'm two people in one, like there's somebody inside of me that wants to come out.”

  Mama pressed her lips together. “Get over here,” she said, “and I'll clean that mouth of yours out with soap. I'll soak your crazy head.”

  Lina ran upstairs. Out of loyalty, I galloped after her. Behind our closed bedroom door, Lina vowed she was going to run away and live with Auntie Pat.

  “But you don't even know her,” I said.

  “She lives in Ne
w York,” Lina said, as if that told all. “On Jane Street. I wrote down the address from the box she sent me.”

  Auntie Pat was Lina's godmother. Every year on Lina's birthday she sent a box of books too educational for Lina's romantic taste. While Lina reveled in stories about young girls, usually orphans, who triumphed over adversity, Auntie Pat sent sturdy volumes that chronicled the true lives of women. Over the years Lina had collected a row of books such as Marie Curie: Pioneer in Science; Clara Barton: Nurse to a Nation; and Maria Mitchell: Girl Astronomer. Mama scoffed at the books and Babbo shook his head. After writing a thank-you note to Aunt Pat, which Mama carefully scrutinized, addressed, and mailed, Lina put the books on her shelf and forgot about them. I was the only one who read them, who was taken in by their tales of undaunted feminine courage. I guessed that Auntie Pat, when she was my age, had aspired to be a heroine. But now, according to Mama, she worked doing God-knows-what for some big-city publishing outfit. Nonna went to visit her in New York, twice a year, to see her favorite operas—La Traviata and La Bohème. Auntie Pat never visited her back.

  “She looks like a racehorse,” Lina said, scrutinizing one of the photos of Auntie Pat left in the album.

  “She looks like Jo in Little Women,” I said, “after she sells her hair.”

  “I hate Little Women,” Lina said. “It's not written right. Jo should have run off with Laurie and been rich and famous instead of marrying that stupid old professor.”

  “I wonder why Auntie Pat never got married.”

  “She looks sort of ugly in the pictures,” Lina admitted. “But I bet she's changed now. After all, she lives in New York. She's probably stunning.”

  “I bet she has a mink coat,” I said. “And diamonds and high heels.”

  “I bet she doesn't go to church on Sunday,” Lina said. She looked closer at the picture. “She probably got into a fight with everybody over a man.”

  I liked that idea. “Maybe she wanted to marry someone they didn't like.”