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Agita
"André lost his right eye!" Johnny's mother informed the three of them
while eating their Savoy cabbage, potatoes and sausages floating in their created
juices along with partially burnt crusted bread that only she was allowed to
cut no matter how often Johnny's maternal grandmother asked to do it for Johnny's
father thought the old lady - who seldom washed - was the carrier of diseases
not yet invented. He would never tell her this to her face; saying instead euphemistically,
she was their "guest" and he would not have her doing any kind of work for her
whole stay.
Johnny's father became nervously subdued fearing God was finally beginning
to heap down bad things on his friends and maybe even entertaining the idea
of heaping down debris of his past on his head as well; that is, if he stood
too close.
Johnny wondered who this André with a missing right eye was but his
shout was ignored. Days later his grandmother would tell him André the
bigamist was his godfather and she added in a certain teasing way she had of
bestowing upon the son the sins of the father that very often a godson took
on many aspects of his godfather. That whole summer playing baseball Johnny
feared losing an eye too.
"So what do you expect? Didn't he leave his poor wife behind in the old country
- making her become a white widow and then marrying Francey? And I don't blame
her either. I liked her. Don't get me wrong. She never missed church and she
smiled nice and her weak eye was always winking so it wasn't her fault she attracted
such a scoundrel! Oh, how God looks down upon the adulterer!" Johnny's father
said righteously; hoping God had totally forgotten about some of his little
indiscretions that had him falling deeply into the smiles of many domestic and
foreign born women.
His wife shook her head trying to recall words never said. Her nickname for
him was "Seven Faces" so easily he could agree with everyone - especially if
they weren't all in the same place at the same time.
"It was me who told him it was wrong and that he should have brought his wife
and their three daughters here," she said; believing she had the upper hand
since she had taught André to read while he worked part time on her father's
farm that was eventually eaten away by stones in a place know as "The Town of
Stairs" so I high on a mountain it was perched.
"Look! Remember I said André a tongue has no bones but it can break
bones"-
"You're so full of shit - it's not even funny. You couldn't tell anyone right
from wrong because you couldn't tell which was laying on which!" his mother-in-law,
who was straddling her eighty-first year, said in her most shrill voice that
could go through nerves and come out like a shaft through a bone. She was forced
to live summers with them by her two sons who resided in a places called The
Bronx and Brooklyn who insisted they needed rest from her tormenting ways and
this woman, who had refused to give consent for her daughter to marry Johnny's
father and did only after their third daughter was born, would live with them
from June to September and then go back south to have her fun in the large city
where the rattle of subway trains and the all day shouts and all night noises
were so soothing to her nerves.
It was Johnny's father who gave her the name "Mamasu" telling all his five
children it was an affectionate term for Grandmother; leaving the truth unsaid
that the word meant "her mother". A word when said would throw the woman into
conniptions.
Johnny's father stuffed a whole large piece of bread into his mouth; attempting
to eat his anger away in a huge mouthful - rather than tell her that she should
smell her grave that was just a couple of years away. He would find out the
old lady would last until her ninety-first year and then die only because she
willed it - to pay back her sons and daughter for putting her into a home for
the aged somewhere in a Newburgh.
Sensing the hostility permeating the silence that was lasting for three minutes
or so with the clashes of forks against dishes signaling the end of an eating,
Johnny decided what with sharp things becoming unfettered with no foods dangling
from their sharp points - becoming a target - to drop his need to know and to
begin a dribble of his rubber ball from the kitchen to outdoors; far far away
from all the tenseness that could be measured in pounds on the stomach.
Jerry Vilhotti
Email: Jerry Vilhotti
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