Crazy in the Kitchen (12 page)

"Every time she gets paid for her dogwood branches, my mother gives me a few cents because I help her. This is my first job.
I'm about four years old. I keep a penny for myself, give the rest back to her because she needs it.

"When my mother shops at Mr. Romano's grocery store, I take whatever I've saved. We never get cookies; never get candy. Only
struffoli,
which my mother makes at Christmas. But me, I have a sweet tooth, even when I'm young. At Mr. Romano's store, they sell chocolate-covered
graham crackers. There's a big tin of them. They're a penny apiece. You pay your penny, you take your cracker.

"I wait until Mr. Romano is waiting on my mother, until his back is turned. I put my penny on the counter. I take five or
six crackers, whatever I can fit in my hand, and I shove them up under my shirt and run outside. In summer, by the time I
get home, all the chocolate has melted onto my chest and my shirt's a real mess. But I want to give a cracker to each of my
sisters, and one to my mother. This is when I start stealing."

My father laughs at the memory of himself as a four-year-old thief. He's told me before about how, when things got really
bad, and his mother couldn't find work, he joined a gang that stole copper pipe and wiring from construction sites. Without
her knowledge, of course.

He was still a kid, about nine or ten years old, and his father was away in Italy. His older sisters were working— they had
to quit school to go to work when they were about thirteen or fourteen; they put on a lot of makeup and lied about their age
to get work. But they were just starting out in the garment industry and weren't making much money. So my father had to do
something. Only, he was far too young to work at a legitimate job.

The other gang members, all cousins of his, were older than he was. But they let him join because he was family, and because
he was small enough to sneak through tiny openings at construction sites and hand out whatever materials he found. They also
figured he'd be the one caught with the goods, and that the cops couldn't do anything to him because he was so young.

It was a good racket, for a while, my father said. But once they all got caught, got taken to jail. They lied to the cops;
they gave them false names. One of his uncles found out and bailed them out. Probably paid someone off, my father said, because
the case never came to trial.

His uncle told his mother. Which made her cry. She didn't want him to become a criminal. She told him that one good-for-nothing
son of a bitch ("sonnamabitch" was the way she said it) in a family was enough. That made him stop.

"I had my first real job," my father tells me, "after my mother lost her job making artificial flowers. Soon after, she found
work as a presser in a place that manufactures shirts. At this time, the garment industry is going strong in Hudson County,
and everyone's finding work.

"I'm still too young for school. So when the whistle blows, and all the women crowd into work, my mother pushes me between
her and a big fat friend of hers with huge bosoms, and they kind of push me along into the factory along with them. As soon
as my mother and her friend get to her station, she pushes me under the counter where she does her ironing. That's where I
spend my days, listening to the whoosh of the gas-fired iron, seeing the arms of the shirts dangling off the ironing board,
watching my mother sidestep right, sidestep left, as she irons one shirt after another. Usually I fall asleep. And when I
have to pee, there is a cup on the floor.

"For a long time, nobody notices. They're paying piecework, so whether you work fast or really fast doesn't concern them like
the other sweatshops where women are paid by the hour. As long as you're doing your work, keeping your station clean, not
fighting with anyone, my mother says, no one pays any attention.

"But one day, the floor manager sees me sitting on the floor. My mother thinks she's going to lose her job for bringing me
to work. But instead, the guy pulls me onto my feet and tells me to make myself useful, buttoning the buttons of the shirts
my mother irons.

" 'How much are you going to pay me?' I ask. I already know the value of a dollar. 'Five cents a dozen,' the floor manager
says. From now on, I start helping my mother put food on the table. It doesn't really matter what my father does or doesn't
do; I'm the man of the house now. I'm about five or six years old.

"My father's father always wanted to be a big deal, always wanted to be a
uomo rispettato,
but without doing anything to deserve anyone's respect. He was a barber by trade in Italy and earned enough to get by. And
when he came to America, he earned money cutting the hair of the people he knew. He saved some money; got married so he'd
have someone to cook and clean for him; started having children because that's what men did, not because that's what he wanted;
set himself up in a barbershop with the money he saved. Then he hired some barbers to work for him.

Because he really didn't want to be a barber. He wanted to be known as a man who had other men working for him as barbers.
He wanted to be the barbershop kingpin of Hudson County, just like, back where he came from, there were tomato kingpins, fruit
and vegetable kingpins, citrus kingpins, fish market kingpins, construction kingpins, waterworks kingpins, cattle kingpins.
The way things were done there, he thought, was the way things should be done here.

Only, as soon as he found a shop, bought it, fixed it up, hired a few barbers, started to make a good living, started to save
money, he'd either stop working or go back to Italy, leaving one of the barbers he'd hired in charge of collecting money,
paying salaries, and giving the profits to his family. Which, of course, never happened. The business, my father said, would
go to pot.

When my grandfather was away, my father went to the barbershop on his way home from school or work, to collect money from
the day's work.

Every day, it was the same story.

"Business was bad," they'd say. "As soon as your father left, everyone stopped wanting to have their hair cut. They've all
started going to Luigi's around the corner." The barbers would shrug their shoulders, raise their eyebrows, open their outraised
hands. "What can you do?" It wasn't their fault. Meantime, my father says, they're stuffing their pockets full of money, giving
him a few miserable dollars at the end of each day. But he doesn't blame them; he blames his father. "It's human nature,"
he says.

"And so," my father says, "there wouldn't be enough money to pay the rent. So we leave. My mother finds us another place to
live. But she always finds something a little better. My God, in one of those places we left, you could see through the chinks
in the bricks to the Meadowlands, and the wind would come roaring through the apartment. We'd pack up all our belongings in
bedsheets and pillowcases, hire a cart to take us to our new apartment. Sometimes, we didn't even have the money for a cart,
and we'd walk there, the six of us: my four sisters, my mother and me.

"We moved all the time. We lived on Fourth Street in Union City, on Ninth Street, we lived in North Bergen, and in West New
York, in Brooklyn, and all over Hudson County. I went to so many schools, I stopped counting. I got left back so many times;
I was always the oldest kid in the class. I was sixteen years old in grammar school when I decided to call it quits.

"Of course, my father, the big shot, was always telling his cronies and me that somebody he knew would pull strings and get
me into West Point. West Point? I couldn't even add and subtract without using my fingers. I never got beyond the seventh
grade. I was working all the time after school, before school, so I couldn't do my homework.

"My father's well fed, showing off. I'm skinny as a rail. I'm working for peddlers before and after school, making maybe fifty
cents a day. I'd run up the stairs to the fifth floor of an apartment, take an order, run down, tell the peddler what the
customer wanted, run up the stairs to deliver the fruits and vegetables, take the person's money, run down the stairs to get
change, run up the stairs to give their customer change— those sons of bitches never trusted me with money to make change,
so it was up and down, up and down all the time.

"If my father wanted me to go to West Point, wanted me to make something of myself, he should have stuck around.

"I left home when I couldn't take it anymore. During my first tour of duty, I saved some money, sent most of it home to your
grandmother. Until I left home, I didn't have a bed to sleep in— I slept on the sofa, on two chairs pulled together. When
I came back, my mother said I was too old to sleep on chairs. So she took some money she saved and bought me a folding cot.
But I still didn't have a room. I slept in the living room.

"Just after you were born," my father tells me, "I happened to see your grandfather walking down the street with all his cronies.
Me, I'm hustling back to work after checking on your grandmother during my lunch hour because she's been sick. He's walking
down the street as if he doesn't have a care in the world.

"He waves at me, stops me, calls me over, introduces me to his cronies, none of whom I care to know, because they're all as
worthless as he is, and he tells me, in front of all these men, that he is going to stop working and that, from now on, as
a sign of respect to him, I will have to support him.

"He's at it again. Trying to make an impression. " 'Support you?'" my father says. " 'I have a family to support. Why should
I support you when you never supported me? I helped support Ma when I was a kid because I had to; I help her now.'

" 'You should support me,' your grandfather said, 'because that is the duty you owe your father as a sign of respect.'

" 'Respect, my ass,' " my father says. " 'I spit on your respect.' "

HOLY OIL

When my mother was seven or eight years old, my father told me, she had St. Vitus's Dance. When the symptoms first appeared,
her father and stepmother didn't know what was wrong. My mother had had a bad sore throat some weeks before. After she was
better, when she was walking up the stairs to their apartment after school, she collapsed and fell down the stairs. She wasn't
seriously hurt. But after that, she collapsed a few times on the sidewalk on her way to school. Her parents, both superstitious,
feared she was visited by the devil.

Soon after, her hands started shaking, her body started shaking. Eating became very dangerous for her. Once, she stabbed her
hand with her fork. Another time, she cut herself instead of cutting the food.

Her father started to think she had St. Vitus's Dance, which was not good, but better than being visited by the devil. It
was an affliction well known in the South of Italy.

My grandfather had heard stories of how people afflicted like my mother lost all reason. They stopped eating, and died. Or
they threw themselves into rivers or off precipices. Some believed that the only cure was to dance and gyrate until you lost
consciousness.

My grandfather did not want to lose his daughter. He was not a religious man, but he believed she could be cured if they made
a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Vitus in Eboli. That wasn't possible. Instead, he went to church and lit a candle to St.
Vitus, patron saint of the afflicted, to save his daughter, the only person he loved, from this terrible disease. It was the
fourth time he had been in a church since coming to America, and he went reluctantly, from necessity. He hated the Church
because the clergy in Italy helped the landlords quell rebellions of the poor. So, after his weddings, and the baptism of
his daughter, he vowed never to enter a church again.

My mother's stepmother was more practical. She contacted a doctor who spoke Italian. Paid him with her savings. He prescribed
complete bed rest for six months; there was no known cure for the disease. During this time, my mother was not permitted to
walk or play or feed herself. My grandmother, who had no maternal feelings for my mother, had to watch her continuously, had
to wait on her, feed her, massage her body with olive oil so she wouldn't get bedsores. Knowing my grandmother's attitude
to my mother, I am sure that she performed her duties grudgingly, if not with outright hostility.

When she returned to school, my mother needed to use both hands to bring a glass of milk up to her mouth in the lunchroom.
Careful as she was, she often spilled the liquid, and once she threw it over her shoulder, dousing another student. At her
desk, she would try to shape her letters carefully. But she penned unrecognizable hieroglyphs, for which the teacher chided
her. She was forbidden to run or play, and so the few friends she'd had before her illness abandoned her.

As a child, I wondered whether I could inherit St. Vitus's Dance. I wondered if my fainting spells meant that I had it. I
wondered if I would begin to tremble like my mother, and need to stay home because I would never know when an attack was coming,
never know when I might drop to the ground and bang my head against the sidewalk. Sometimes, alone in my bath, I would fill
a plastic cup with water and practice trembling.

My mother's afflictions— her trembling, which made her drop things (the dropsies, she called it), her depression, her fits
of weeping— made her the center of our attention. They gave her an unfair advantage over the rest of us. We, believed to be
normal, resilient, and capable, were supposed to understand her needs, and care for her, although she seemed not to want our
attention. And she was absolved of responsibility for our care. Given all she endured, how could we ask for help when a teacher
berated us, a friend mistreated us, when our throats or our stomachs ached, when someone touched us where they shouldn't have?

I imagined the child who was not yet my mother spinning, whirling, falling to the ground, jerking like someone taken by the
Holy Spirit. I saw her dancing before St. Vitus. I knew that my mother was marked, different from everyone else's mother,
different from ordinary, competent mothers, who put food on the table at preordained times, who washed clothes without damage
to themselves, who listened to children when they said they were sad.

"Leave your mother alone when she says she wants to be left alone": my father's first commandment. We dared not break it for
fear of the consequences— banishment to our room, the loss of all privileges, bed without supper, a backhand to the face.
But there was no time when my mother did not want to be left alone. "Your mother is a saint because of all she's suffered":
the catechism of our childhood. But regardless of what my father said, I knew my mother was no saint.

Sometimes, my mother went crazy. Not just a little crazy. So crazy that we were sent off to relatives to be cared for. So
crazy that she became a danger to herself.

Once, the day before my mother signed herself into the locked psychiatric ward of our local hospital, she made a menu plan
and a shopping list for a whole month, and posted it on the bulletin board in the kitchen where one of us would find it.

I was married then. My sister had just finished having her latest nervous breakdown. She'd come back to live with my parents
after the man she'd lived with left her.

It was my sister who called to tell me about the menu plan and the shopping list. It was full of stuff my mother never cooked,
full of stuff we never ate.

Barbecued spareribs, roasted corn, green beans

Tacos, sour cream, guacamole, green salad

Roast beef, baked potatoes, peas

Chicken cacciatore, rice, asparagus

Macaroni and cheese, tomato salad

"She's not crazy," my sister says. "She's just pretending to be crazy. No one who's crazy makes out a menu and a shopping
list."

"Oh," I say, noncommittal. I think the fact that my mother made a shopping list and a menu plan of meals my father and sister
were supposed to prepare that she herself would never make, especially given all the crap she fed us while we were growing
up, proves she's crazy. But I'm not going to get into this with my sister.

"It's nuts," my sister says. "What does she think? I'm going to shop for all this shit? Cook it? I think she went crazy just
to spite me because I came back home."

I want to say, "First you say she's not crazy; then you say she is; which is it?," but I don't. I want all this to go away.
My sister and her nervous breakdowns. My mother and her nervous breakdowns. I want to be left alone to raise my family. So
I don't ask my sister why my mother might want to spite her. Instead of asking, I say, "What else did she put on the menu?"

When we were young, my mother never told us about her suffering. But she wore her life like a hair shirt. She lived as if
she had joined a secret cult that practiced the mortification of the flesh, the annihilation of desire.

My mother's ascetic practice included many small, voluntary privations and punishments, ones that did not require a trek to
a distant monastery. Ones she could tuck into the fabric of her ordinary life. Like not going out when it rained, because
she never bought herself an umbrella or rain boots. Like scratching herself until she raised stigmatalike welts on her body.
Like plunging her hands into scalding water while she did the laundry. Like touching the bottom of the iron with a fingertip
to see if it was hot enough and burning herself. Like moving too quickly and bashing a leg into the corner of a chair. Like
tasting boiling liquids without blowing on them and scorching her tongue.

Because my mother and grandmother were always fighting, my mother didn't pay attention when she cooked. And so. She'd slice
a piece off her finger. Peel her hand instead of the vegetables. Stick her head too far into the oven and get a blast of steam
on her face, and it would be red for days.

"Battle scars," my mother called her injuries. And they were. My mother rarely spent money on herself for small luxuries,
even though she could afford them, desired them. She would gaze into the window of a store, and look at something that captured
her fancy— a filmy blouse, a slim skirt, a jaunty hat— knowing that she would never allow herself to buy it. Whatever she
wanted, like the love of a devoted mother, was always beyond her reach.

She diluted dish detergent, laundry detergent, liquid soup, shampoo, with water until they were useless. Still, she used them,
forced us to use them. "A penny saved is a penny earned," she would say. She rarely replaced anything she broke— a hand mirror,
an electric mixer— but made do without it, as if she should be punished for the rest of her life for her transgression.

But mostly, my mother did without food.

She did not put anything on her plate until everyone else had eaten. She ate everyone's leftovers (and called herself "the
garbage pail"). Ate stale bread instead of fresh. Drank cold coffee or coffee dregs instead of making a fresh pot. Ate foods
she detested— fish, liver, eggs— because they were cheap. Didn't stop for lunch but made do with a leftover crust of toast
from breakfast, which she ate standing by the counter.

When I was a girl, my mother never made enough food. It wasn't that we were poor, for she always managed to save money. It
seemed like she wanted to starve us. Like she wanted to starve us because she wanted us dead, because she didn't know what
to do with us, how to care for us.

When I was an infant, my father said, I'd cry, but my mother wouldn't nurse me. I'd cry so loud that the neighbors would knock
on the apartment door to see if something was wrong. But still she wouldn't feed me.

If I started crying because I was hungry at four, my mother would wait until five to feed me. If I started crying at five,
my mother would wait until six to feed me.

By the time I fed, I was so exhausted from crying that I would suckle for a few minutes, then fall asleep. My mother, assuming
I'd had my fill, would put me back into my bassinet. But I would soon awaken, howling. By now, it was past feeding time, so
my mother wouldn't feed me. And I would cry until she decided it was time for me to eat.

She was breast-feeding, so throughout this time she wasn't feeding me, she had my father yelling at her to feed me, and her
breasts were leaking milk into the protective pads she put into her nursing bras, because her breasts would start to drip
milk when I cried. (After my mother died, I found a supply of these pads and the nursing bras in her bureau. My mother never
threw anything away.)

My father thought this was crazy. Me crying. My mother not feeding me. "Why don't you feed her, for Christ's sake?" my father
would say.

"Why didn't you feed me yourself?" I ask my father.

"You know your mother," he says. "There was no arguing with her."

Still, my father insists that my mother was a good mother. She didn't throw us out the window, or against the wall, or drown
us in a bathtub, or strap us into car seats and drive a car into a lake. My mother was too good a mother to do any of that.

When we were still children, my sister told me she had seen my mother naked, and that my mother had an extra set of nipples
on her body. Maybe the extra set of nipples was the reason my mother was so uncomfortable feeding me. Maybe my mother couldn't
figure out which nipple to use. Maybe my mother wanted to feed me; maybe she just didn't know how.

There we all were, in our dimly lit kitchen painted a garish shade of yellow, at the Formica table set with our "everyday"
chipped dishes and mismatched glasses and flatware, waiting to see how big our portions would be, hoping that the food at
this meal would be edible, and would be enough.

Breakfast.
Burned toast, and watered down canned orange juice.

Lunch.
A small plate of instant mashed potatoes and instant gravy.

Or a can of Campbell's soup diluted with an extra can of water to "stretch" it. Or a hard-boiled egg sliced with a rusty egg
slicer (an extravagance my mother bought on impulse at a garage sale).

Supper.
Two burnt toasted cheeses for the four of us, or three sausages, or three pieces of chicken, or an omelet made with three
eggs.

Sometimes my father doused his food with my grandmother's
olio
santo,
holy oil, olive oil steeped with fiery chile peppers, to make my mother's food palatable. "Devil's oil," my mother called
it.

My mother had absolute control over what was put on our plates. No bowls of food served family style for this family. No popping
up out of your chair to look into the refrigerator for something else. No cooking your own food if you didn't like hers. No
happy Italian family gathered around the table stuffing themselves with meatballs and spaghetti, sausage and peppers, everyone
talking at the same time.

Our meals were like those in a badly run prison where someone is putting the food money in their pockets instead of on the
table. My sister and I waited through meals like two inmates watching the guards through half-closed lids, to see whether
they were dangerous.

But at the end of what passed for supper, my mother would go over to the cupboard and pull out one of her Dugan's desserts—
seven-layer cake, pumpkin pie, lemon meringue. These kept my father from getting after her to make her own.

She always offered dessert to my father, never to me or my sister, though we knew that if we pestered her for something we
could have it. Although my mother was abstemious, she indulged herself in a few bites of dessert.

During the meal, all I wanted was to head up to my room, bury my head in a book, and imagine I was someplace else. After supper,
my father wanted us to stay at the table for some conversation, which really meant that he wanted to yell at us for everything
my mother told him we'd done wrong that day. But I tried not to linger and left the table as fast as I could.

Although my mother wanted to eat like an American, her food habits recreated the privations experienced by her people in the
South of Italy, though I am certain she did not realize this. For the families of many immigrants, living in America meant
that you would no longer be hungry, that you could eat as much as the rich ate in the Old World. But in our house, there was
no culture of abundance to erase our family's history: there had never been enough food to eat, and my people had never been
able to control how much food was given to them.