The people in our house behaved like characters in an opera or a tragedy (Greek, not Shakespearean).
In our house, a dish broken by accident, an oversalted gravy, some spilled oil, a messy floor, an annoying child, a late library book, a dirty dress, a missed curfew was never a problem or a challenge. In our house, everything was a very big deal, an occasion for high drama.
In our house, no one ever went with the flow. There was no flow. There were only dangerous rapids, huge whirlpools, gigantic waterfalls. In our house, you had to be wary, vigilant. To stop paying attention, even for a moment, was dangerous.
In my house, we gesticulated wildly. We shouted. Threatened harm to others ("I'll kill you"), to ourselves ("I may as well kill myself).
We stood chest-to-chest, shouting, so close to one another that we swallowed each other's saliva. We hurled insults like spears ("you no-good motherfucker"; "you son of a bitch"; "you atrocious bastard"). We threw ourselves down onto our beds, pounding our fists at the mattress when we weren't using them on each other. We menaced each other with whatever we had in our hands (pens, rulers, protractors, forks, scissors, knives). We slammed windows shut, pulled shades down, so that no one could hear what was going on in our house, so that none of our neighbors could see us or hear us. We— my father and I, but never my mother or my sister or my grandmother (and this tells you much about the differences among us)— rushed out of rooms, stormed out of the house. We threw things. We broke things. We destroyed things that had been given to us as presents (framed pictures, portable radios, jewelry), things that we loved (teacups, records, books, dishes, knickknacks), things that we had created (a cake, a pie, a sweater, a beaded necklace, the pages of a story).
My parents fought with my grandmother every day. My father threatened to ship my grandmother back to Hoboken, ship her to her relatives on Long Island, ship her back to Italy. Ship her, as if she were a piece of furniture, as if calling a long distance mover to box her up and relocate her to some place far away would solve all our household problems. My mother fought with my grandmother all the time about foolish things. Flour on the floor. Laundry in the bathtub. Candles burning in my grandmother's room around her statue of Jesus Christ taken down from the cross that my mother insisted were a fire hazard. They fought about foolish things because they couldn't fight about what their fights were really about: how my grandmother depended upon my parents, who despised her; how my grandmother never loved my mother; how my mother had been mistreated by her from the start; how my grandfather preferred my mother to her; how my grandfather brought my grandmother from Italy to care for his daughter and in return gave her very little.
My mother rarely fought with me. Instead, she told my father what I'd done (always, in my mind, a minor infraction— a missed curfew, a lost library book, a curt word) and my father would discipline me, always at the supper table.
After my mother served the meal in silence, he would begin: "I heard from your mother that you gave her a hard time, that you didn't do as you were told."
I'd fight back, present my case. He'd perceive this as insubordination and tell me to shut up. But I wouldn't shut up: I'd fight back even more. Then, he'd begin his litany of threats:
"I'll kill you if you don't shut up."
"I gave you life, I can take it away."
"I'll throw you against the wall/out the window/down the stairs if you don't shut up."
"I'll make you wish you were never born."
"I'll knock some sense into you."
"I'll break your head."
"I'll break your legs."
"I'll break your hands so you'll never be able to eat a decent meal again."
He'd work himself up into a frenzy. Get up from his place at the table. Come at me.
I'd throw whatever I could get my hands on— a knife, a fork, a dish, a glass filled with milk or water. Our table was always set with mismatched plates, with odds and ends, because we were always breaking glasses, smashing dishes to the floor. I'd claw at my father, draw blood, run away, out the door, down the block, to a neighbor's house, to the library. My body and my spirit bore the scars of his rage. But sometimes, when it all got to be too much, instead of fighting, I fainted. Collapsed on the floor. Disappeared.
My parents rarely fought with my sister, though they carped at her: "Clean your room"; "Change your clothes"; "Do your homework"; "Stop biting your nails"; "Stop sitting there; do something productive"; "Go outside and play." Whatever my parents said to my sister, she never fought back. She gave them no trouble. Made no demands. Never raised her voice to argue, to contradict. She tried to make everyone get along, or she sulked, or she tried to pretend that everything that went on in our house was normal, that what was happening wasn't happening.
But often she withdrew. Sat on the bed we shared and stared at the wall; sat in a chair on our back porch, silent, twirling her hair, for hours.
The cost to my sister of being the "good child" was death. In our household, it was fight back or die. Being the child my parents hated was better than being the child they loved. My parents' love erased my sister, erased who she was, who she might have been.
When I was a little girl and I played with my dolls, I made them cry. I reprimanded them, yelled at them, hit them, punished them. I shoved their faces into mattresses to stop their crying, rubbed their cheeks against brick walls to show them who was boss. And I never pretended I was feeding them.
I didn't understand the way my friends played with dolls. All that shoving of little plastic nipples into tiny fake mouths, all that dressing and undressing, burping and diapering, all that trundling dolls around in tiny baby carriages, all that huggy, kissy, googoo nonsense. I didn't let my dolls think the world was one big lovefest. I taught my dolls what the world was like.
When I was a teenager, and the fighting in our house was at its worst, my mother clipped something called "A Kitchen Prayer" from a women's magazine. She backed it, framed it, hung it up in the kitchen over the counter where she organized our meals.
"Dear God," it read, "teach me to worship you each day in the kitchen as I go about my work. With each meal that I make, I will remember that my work is a form of worship, that cutting and chopping the food that I prepare for my loving family can bring me ever closer to You.
"Bless this food, Dear Lord. Bless this family. Keep them from harm so that they may live in your love and in your care.
"In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
"Amen."