Three of my Favorite Stories

My favorite story about my family is the one where we learn where we came from. I’m not going to tell it here, but the broad outlines of it are that five-hundred-odd years ago some people came to Italy from someplace else, very probably Spain, and as soon as they got to Italy they joined the Church. My favorite story is the one that lets me think I am still a tiny bit Jewish.

I like this story because it gives me something to say when other Jews assume that I am one of them, as is happening more and more frequently. I can smile, and say, no, Italian actually, mostly, but there’s a funny story about that. And then — oh hell — I tell the story.

The first thing you must know about my relatives is that they are not racist, but they have a pride in being Italian that sometimes can sound like racism. They don’t really care whether you are Irish, or Greek, or Hispanic, or Black. You’re not Italian. It’s not your fault. You’re just not.

And this is the way it has been, where we come from; this is the way it had been since that part of the world used to have Italian neighborhoods. My grandfather, on the one side, used to have an Italian grocery in one of those neighborhoods, the sort of grocery you would give your list to the grocer and he would go in the back and sort things out for you like a pharmacist. It was a chicken market, that grocery, and the Italian women would come by in their dark dresses and their hats, loose of cheek and squinty of eye, and would point to a pollastrella or a cappone and my grandfather would take the bird into the back and wring its neck. Then they would take the bird home, and they would use every damn bit of it.

But the neighborhoods grew outward, and with that, the culture thinned. My parents on both sides knew nothing of the old country save how to cook, how to throw their hands in the air when speaking, how to argue sullenly for years. By the time of my generation, the heyday of Italian-Americans had passed, and we were just another bunch of white people. There was a while when you’d see Italians in film, our funny-sounding last names that ended in “izzo” or “oli”. As late as 1982 and we still had Jeff Spicoli. But in a few more years … anyone? Bueller?

My grandmother on my mother’s side was one of nine children. Each of her siblings had at least two children, and on average three. At my mother’s generation, I think the average again was three. Add in the husbands and wives and you’re pushing a hundred people in three generations. That was our community. We were guinea wops, we were loud, we talked past one another at the top of our lungs, and we would feed you until you were tired from eating.

(My favorite story about my grandmother is this: you would walk into her house any time of the day or night and she would be standing over a big pot on the stove, chain-smoking and preparing something wonderful. It would smell like garlic and onions and tomato puree in which the starches had just started to carmelize. She would smile when she saw you and she would say, “Here. Sit down. Let me fix you something to eat. You want peppers stuffed with lamb? I made ravioli; you want ravioli?”

You would say, “no thank you. I’ve already eaten.”

She would frown a little, the lines on her cheek turned down. She had deep deep lines in her skin: her mouth was forever curled around a cigarette. She would frown and she would say, “not hungry? Are you sick? I have chicken soup. Let me fix you some soup.”)

Sometimes, one of my cousins would bring a boyfriend over. It was always the third or fourth question asked — “are you Italian?” It was important to know, somehow. Not all of the in-laws are, and as we get further away from it fewer and fewer. My mother’s generation mostly married Italians. My grandmother’s generation exclusively married Italians. My generation doesn’t have an axe to grind. I think it is a shame, sometimes, although I am not planning to marry an Italian.

My grandfather, on my mother’s side, his brother Joseph moved back to Italy years and years ago, taking his daughters with him. He split up what was apparently an unbreakable trio, my mother, her cousin Joy, and her cousin Francesca, who were all the same age and thick as thieves. They moved away to Italy and returned only once in a while, very fashionable when they did. He was a good man, my uncle Joe; he epitomized Italian gentility. Very measured. Before he passed, he determined he would have a look backwards, he would trace the name of his father back as far as it would go. It had to start someplace.

So he did. We were all very excited, because it turned out that there were doctors and lawyers and professors and priests going back generations¹. Two of the worser, more short-lived popes were cousins. We were a respectable family of intellectuals. It was all very exciting.

Finally, he got to the 1490s, when he discovered that we had moved to Italy from someplace else, most likely Spain, and we had changed our name and our religion. And that was where the trail went cold. Not only did it go cold, it looked like it was meant to have gone cold.

Someone didn’t want us to be traced back any farther than that. The likely conclusion is that we fled the Spanish inquisition a short distance, and set up shop in Italy, making sure the inquisition’s fires could not follow us over the sea. This doesn’t prove we are, or were, Jewish. It’s just a story. But I like to think it does, and I like to think it explains why other Jews occasionally have assumed I understand a yiddishism. I like to think that it explains why my mother used to insist that we would have seder every couple of years and build a sukkot tabernacle in the woods at harvest. My uncle delivered this information over the transatlantic telephone, to my grandfather, and to their sister.

They all let it out in pieces over the next few months. It takes time to deal with not being Italian, not really Italian, after eighty years of knowing that Italians were God’s real chosen people. I think they had to process it, come to terms with it by letting it out slowly to their children and their nieces and nephews. I think they wanted to see if the gossip trail would put all the hints together the same way. If, collectively, their children could put the same two and two together and get the same answer.

It was Easter Sunday — of course it was — and someone who didn’t know, one of my cousins, asked how Uncle Joe’s genealogy project was proceeding. My grandfather is a quiet man. His sister just tightened her lips. You could have heard a pin drop.

¹ My favorite story about how we came to this country is this: for generations there were four sons: a doctor, a lawyer, a professor, and a priest. That was how it went. My great grandfather was the youngest son. His older brothers were a doctor, a lawyer, and a professor. My great grandfather was not going to become a priest. He simply wasn’t. No amount of pressure his mother could put on him would persuade him. He was not going to become a priest. Finally she threw up her arms in exasperation and said, “if you’re not going to be a priest, you might as well go to America!” So he did. Years later, he returned to visit her. She was very old by then, and he brought his children with him. He went to her and she said, “you go away for years and years and don’t ever come back to your mother?” He said, “You didn’t want me. I wasn’t going to become a priest so you told me to go to America.” She said, “for a visit. To get your head on straight. I didn’t mean to banish you, just to send you on vacation. You went away on vacation and never came back.” And that is how my family came to be in America.

gauche
09 Oct 09