Really Italian by Angela Townsend

The uncles, who were not really my uncles, were excited I was learning Italian. Uncle Carmine and Uncle Louie were my great-uncles, so on the cast and credits list you will find them listed as my mother’s uncles. They came from a place called Brooklyn, which I understand is a protectorate of Sicily, at least the neighborhoods where there is a law against using cottage cheese where ricotta belongs.

Uncle Louie bootlegged eggplant rollatini from his plate to mine, and Uncle Carmine said I should spend less time in a capellarehearsal and more time auditioning husbands, and they both fell silent when I said I was going to learn Italian. I could have transferred four years of high school French and paid off my language requirement. But I had my grandmother’s first name and her wooden spoon, which had to mean something, even if I was only second-generation Brooklyn and did not really have any uncles of my own.

Professoressa Buono was Milanese and promised a festa if we attained fluency. She did not specify the parameters, but her hair was one size larger than her head and curled in grey gnocchi, and she said my first name, “Gina,” made up for my last, “Bennett, molto inglese.” She would give us the full voltage of her eighty-eight pounds, and we would give her the first two hours of our weekdays, and we would see if the oregano would stick.

I learned at once that my pre-certifications were void. A name that means “heavenly messenger” will not give you liftoff when verbs come at great velocity. No amount of espresso can hoist you up your double helix fast enough to get your ancestors’ attention when adverbs attack. I did not even have uncles, not exactly. 

But the distant sound of a festa assembles hasty famiglia. Diego came from Peru and was still forgiving English for neutering every noun. He called me el cobayo, “the guinea pig,” and although I was not certain if this was a compliment, Diego’s eyelashes were long enough to braid. My comprehension of conjugations improved sixty percent when he sat next to me.

Greg was forty and a father, and he brought bagels from over the bridge, where flour and water receive respect, and no one waits for a committee to permit a parade. Greg’s children were concerned that he went to college in New Jersey, where the barbarians live, but he promised he would return intact every night.

Rachel was here because she met a guy from Malta, which is next to Sicily, one of the hacky-sack islands with which the Italy boot amuses itself. She met him online, but she scolded us before our eyes could roll because she had seen him dance, and that is proof of life. They ate dinner together over grainy video, and she was going to send him Nutter Butters, and he was going to make her pasta arrabbiata, which means “angry pasta,” which is evidence that Italian is the best way to fulfill your language requirement.

Uncle Carmine and Uncle Louie could not exactly speak Italian. But Uncle Carmine yelled, “Marrone!” when I talked about Diego, and Uncle Louie said my grandmother was the breath of our family, nostra ciada, and now I was the only one with her name. Professoressa had never heard the expression nostra ciada, and she told me to inform my correspondents that the proper way to say “breath” is respiro, but she moved so fast I did not have time to explain.

So, we gnawed bagels from the place where bread has dignity, and we earned the trust of future tenses. Diego pulled my hair while I was conjugating, and Rachel introduced us to Francesco on screen. All evidence indicated that he was an actual person with a pile of laundry on his chair and a little dog who ate well. Professoressa named the dog la salsiccia, the sausage, even though his name was Batman, and I had always heard the Italian word for sausage was saw-seech.

Uncle Carmine and Uncle Louie agreed that Sicily had its own dialect, and so did Brooklyn, and nobody on the mainland or New Jersey should be expected to understand. Uncle Carmine said the Milanese and Napolitani looked down on Sicilians as though we were a raft of greasy mobsters out there polluting the Atlantic. Uncle Louie said that wasn’t fair because the Italian Club of Ho-Ho-Kus had paesani from the whole boot, and they all got out of their chairs when they played Louie Prima because “he goes crazy!”

Someone left a love offering of the complete line of Milano cookies on Professoressa’s desk, which caused her to clap her hands for a solid minute. When we all passed the midterm, Uncle Louie had a courier deliver cheesecakes, and Diego jumped for actual joy, but Greg said he was starting to have lactose issues in his old age. Professoressa gave us each a tiny Italian flag emblazoned with the word, forza!

Professoressa asked us to bring pictures of our families, and we lined them around the classroom like one great sheltering tortellini. Everyone agreed I looked like my mother and grandmother. Diego picked up my picture of Uncle Louie, who I brought even though he was not really my uncle, and asked how he could be Italian since his eyes were as blue as a Swede’s. Rachel said that Sicily is a party island where everyone from everywhere mixes and mingles, so Sicilians are all probably a little Swedish and Bulgarian and everything else you can imagine. Greg raised the specter of Frank Sinatra, who was blue-eyed and Italian and also from New Jersey. Professoressa said you cannot learn Italian if you forget that you are surrounded by famiglia.

But we did learn Italian, and Uncle Carmine said I should bring Diego home for Christmas. My mother gave me a bracelet engraved “ciada mia” that made me cry so hard, I was still as wrinkled as parmigiana on the night of the festa. Professoressa made a rabble of meatballs, bobbing like bocce balls in sauce, too proud to be angry. When it came to her attention that thirty percent of the class was ovo-lacto-vegetarian or worse, she pulled her curls and produced a primal scream that was Milanese and, therefore, dignified. I told her that my grandmother had purchased a second wooden spoon for my humane marinara, and Professoressa said that I had not exactly mastered Italian after all, but it would be alright as long as I ate whatever my blue-eyed uncle put on my plate.

I had consulted Uncle Louie and Uncle Carmine ahead of the festa, for help with our final assignment. Professoressa said you cannot receive credit for Italian 101 unless you have danced, and music is the responsibility of the entire famiglia. Francesco mailed Rachel a stack of CDs. Italian electronica with such lyrics as “Laura non c’e. Laura non c’e. Laura non c’e. Laura non c’e.” Greg asked if, having thoroughly confirmed that Laura is not there, we could jump to the next song. Diego played Andrea Bocelli, ascending his desk to lip-synch into my eyes with a single meatball as his microphone.

Uncle Louie had advocated for Louie Prima, but Uncle Carmine pointed out that it can be difficult to dance when he goes crazy. The people at the Italian club knew how to stomp along, but they’d known that trumpet from their Brooklyn cradles. It might be a little much for kids from Peru and New Jersey. Also, the song about the fireman with the big hose might embarrass the Milanese, even if it wasn’t exactly explicit since people used to keep things classy. Better to go with Dean Martin, our poet laureate, who sounded like us even if he was from Ohio. Uncle Carmine said I should ask Diego to dance and remind him that I was a real Italian.

Professoressa saved my song for last because she knew I was the one who brought her the cookies, she knew I had uncles from the party island curating my playlist, and she knew I was an only child whose mother called her ciada mia. I asked her to play track seven, Volare. By the time Dean Martin got to “nel blu, delpinto di blu,” Professoressa was twitching with seismic activity. She clasped her curls and fought for composure, but it was too late, and she boiled over into laughter.

“VOHHHH-LAHHHH-RAY!” The Milanese sounded like she was from Ohio, which was impressive because I did not realize Ohio made a sound. Tears began splashing down her cheeks. “OH-OH-AHHH-OH!”

Greg got her a glass of water, and Diego brought her a meatball, but Professoressa waved them away. I wondered if I should call Uncle Carmine and Uncle Louie because they were my uncles, and they would know what to do. Just when it appeared she might explode, leaving only a crown of gnocchi curls, Professoressa returned to the festa. “Ascolta!”

She smiled in my eyes, shook her head, and said what only English could bear: “That man is not Italian!”

When I brought this news home, Uncle Carmine and Uncle Louie did not exactly disagree. But Uncle Louie said that no one can prove that everyone isn’t Italian, and Uncle Carmine said that I should marry Diego so he could become Italian, and my mother said that dialect is where language canoodles with poetry. I promised to ask Professoressa how to say “canoodle” in past, present, and future tenses.