OCTOBER 2005
AGITA OF THE DAY
By Jerry Vilhotti©September 15, 2005
VILHOTTI@peoplepc.com
"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. 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 getting
many base hits sometimes having to slide head first into
bases and catching many fly balls with his back to home
plate near limbs of trees - 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 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 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 violent conniption's.
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. 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, New York.
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
- so becoming a possible 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.
END 9-16-05