whispered to each other dirty stories they had heard at school. My grandfather’s children, all of them presumably born when he was twenty-four, had come in fairly rapid succession, or at least as rapid as one could expect, given the nine-month pregnancy span of the human female. Teresa had given birth to Stella (October 1, 1902), Luca (August 24, 1903), Cristina (January 29, 1905), and Domenico (May 17, 1907), and while she was producing all these new Americans, my grandfather was learning how to hold a pair of scissors, thread a needle, and make stitches that looked like those of a true tailor. He was twenty-four years old and he still wanted to go home to Fiormonte. But each time he was ready to make the trip, another baby arrived. And more expenses. And more ties to this country that was not his — by the time Domenico was born, for example, Stella was in kindergarten at the school on Pleasant Avenue and speaking English like President Teddy Roosevelt himself. And then one morning, Francesco looked into the mirror as usual, and began lathering his face preparatory to shaving, and the person who looked back at him was no longer twenty-four. He was
thirty
-four, and the year was 1914, and Francesco put down his shaving brush and leaned closer to the mirror and looked into his own eyes for a very long time, staring, staring, afraid that if he so much as blinked, another ten years would go by and he would not know where they’d gone or how he had missed their passing.
In July of the year 1914 (modulation all finished), my mother Stella, Italian for star, Stella my mother, Stella the All-American Girl (“I’m American, don’t forget”), Stella by starlight, or sunlight, or the light of the silvery moon, Stella nonetheless, my mother (take a bow, Mom) Stella (enough already) was not quite twelve years old when two events of particular significance happened one after the other. Now I really don’t know whether either of those events was traumatic, and caused her to become the kind of woman she grew up to be. (Rebecca hated her, and always described her as “a paranoid nut.”) I can only surmise that they must have been terrifying to an eleven-year-old girl who, by all accounts (her own and my grandfather’s), was imaginative, sensitive, inquisitive, extremely intelligent (
and
American, don’t forget).
For an American, who had learned to recite the Pledge of Allegiance proudly every weekday morning at school, Stella was surrounded by more Italians than she could shake a stick at. Her classmates, of course, were all Italians, except for two Irish girls and a Jewish boy who had somehow wandered into the wrong ghetto. But in addition to her daily encounters with children who, like herself, were the sons and daughters of immigrants who could barely speak English, there was the family as well. The family was (in Stella’s own words, oft-repeated) “a bunch of real ginzoes.” She was living with her parents and her brothers and sisters on 118th Street and First Avenue, above the grocery store on the corner, just three doors away from the tailor shop. Within a six-block radius, north or south, east or west, there were perhaps four dozen aunts, uncles, cousins, goombahs and goomahs who were considered part of “the family,” the family being her mother’s since Francesco’s relatives were all on the other side. I don’t think my mother quite appreciated their proximity, or the fact that she was eagerly welcomed into their homes.
When
I
was growing up, I looked forward to each loving pat or hug, knowing that I could walk four blocks to my Aunt Cristina’s, where she would offer me some fresh-squeezed lemonade, or turn the corner to my Aunt Bianca’s corset shop, where she would tell me all about dainty ladies’ under things. Bianca was a great-aunt, actually my grandmother’s sister; her shop was on 116th Street, between First and Second Avenues, and she was known in the neighborhood as “The Corset Lady.” My
thirty
-four, and the year was 1914, and Francesco put down his shaving brush and leaned closer to the mirror and looked into his own eyes for a very long time, staring, staring, afraid that if he so much as blinked, another ten years would go by and he would not know where they’d gone or how he had missed their passing.
In July of the year 1914 (modulation all finished), my mother Stella, Italian for star, Stella my mother, Stella the All-American Girl (“I’m American, don’t forget”), Stella by starlight, or sunlight, or the light of the silvery moon, Stella nonetheless, my mother (take a bow, Mom) Stella (enough already) was not quite twelve years old when two events of particular significance happened one after the other. Now I really don’t know whether either of those events was traumatic, and caused her to become the kind of woman she grew up to be. (Rebecca hated her, and always described her as “a paranoid nut.”) I can only surmise that they must have been terrifying to an eleven-year-old girl who, by all accounts (her own and my grandfather’s), was imaginative, sensitive, inquisitive, extremely intelligent (
and
American, don’t forget).
For an American, who had learned to recite the Pledge of Allegiance proudly every weekday morning at school, Stella was surrounded by more Italians than she could shake a stick at. Her classmates, of course, were all Italians, except for two Irish girls and a Jewish boy who had somehow wandered into the wrong ghetto. But in addition to her daily encounters with children who, like herself, were the sons and daughters of immigrants who could barely speak English, there was the family as well. The family was (in Stella’s own words, oft-repeated) “a bunch of real ginzoes.” She was living with her parents and her brothers and sisters on 118th Street and First Avenue, above the grocery store on the corner, just three doors away from the tailor shop. Within a six-block radius, north or south, east or west, there were perhaps four dozen aunts, uncles, cousins, goombahs and goomahs who were considered part of “the family,” the family being her mother’s since Francesco’s relatives were all on the other side. I don’t think my mother quite appreciated their proximity, or the fact that she was eagerly welcomed into their homes.
When
I
was growing up, I looked forward to each loving pat or hug, knowing that I could walk four blocks to my Aunt Cristina’s, where she would offer me some fresh-squeezed lemonade, or turn the corner to my Aunt Bianca’s corset shop, where she would tell me all about dainty ladies’ under things. Bianca was a great-aunt, actually my grandmother’s sister; her shop was on 116th Street, between First and Second Avenues, and she was known in the neighborhood as “The Corset Lady.” My
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