Authors: Mari SanGiovanni
Uncle Freddie put both hands out to show me how wide his father was. “I was always on his left shoulder and my two smaller brothers rode together on his right. We thought if we stayed still he would forget we were up there and ride on his shoulders all day, and a few times we did.”
I sat on Aunt Aggie’s chair, as we watched the crew, and like clockwork, seconds later, Aunt Aggie buzzed by on her scooter, yelling over her shoulder to me, “Don’t get too comfortable in my fucking chair!” Then she beeped and was gone, a blur of red scooter and flapping floral housecoat, no doubt off to harass my mother at the camp store.
Erica was working side by side with the crew now, pulling up the rotted roof tiles and hacking away at the soft beams underneath to see what needed to be replaced. She looked over at us once, and surprised me by refraining from asking for a report on the dumpster.
Uncle Freddie said, “My papa always said, ‘In life there are only two things:
In o fuori?
Are you in or are you out? Because in life, either you’re in—or you’re out.” I’d heard Uncle Freddie say this a million times, but I loved hearing it every time.
“My father never did anything halfway, always he made beautiful work. The most beautiful stone walkways and walls, and entire
houses, all from stone, and his work was so fine that wherever he went, he was treated as a fine artist.”
I had often thought Erica’s work was that of an artist. Though the flying shards of rotted roof lacked the beauty of the interior work we had done in the multi-million dollar houses in LA, there was still finesse to the way she did everything. She used the back of her hammer to gouge the underside of the tiles and pry them up and pitchfork them in one motion, spearing them, and spewing them over the side of the roof in a flow that for some of the men took two, sometimes three moves.
Uncle Freddie continued, “You know, in Italy you’re an artist if you do something very, very well. There was no such thing as blue-collar workers out in the country; because we all had blue collars, most times we had no collars at all. What do you kids call those white T-shirts with no sleeves, housemaker slappers?”
“Wife beaters,” I said.
“That’s mainly what we wore, still wear them as my skivvies, but as far as wife beaters go, I don’t kid myself. Your Aunt Aggie could kick my ass.” I laughed with him and he was quiet for a while before he continued.
“I loved working with my dad, and because he was a stonemason, this meant me and my brothers were apprentices from the day I could walk. Some people said I became an artist, too, but I was never as good as my Papa. Everyday I tried to get up before him, but no matter how early I was, he was already up, eating his bread and cheese for breakfast in the dark kitchen, waiting for me. On the day of my birthday it was the one day I got up before him and beat him to the kitchen. I was so excited to be the one to put out the bread and cheese on the table. I was so excited to do it that my hands were trembling. I knew he would be so proud of me. I had just turned twelve years old . . . and that was the morning he passed on.”
There was a painful lump in my throat as I pictured Uncle Freddie as a little Italian boy, sitting at a dark breakfast table, bread and cheese laid out, trying not to eat a tiny bite before his papa got up. I wondered how long he’d waited, and if he’d got dressed to go out to work with his shock of curly black hair tucked under the tiny wool
cap, a smaller version of the cap he still wore today, holding down his thick, gray hair. I had never heard this story, and I wondered, since he said it was a secret, if he had ever told it. Uncle Freddie was silent now, the corner of his eyes glinting with tears, but he was still smiling when he finally spoke again.
“It was good that I was a skilled stonemason by then, so I could help take care of my family. My brothers tried to help, but they were younger than me, and they needed to go to school. Do you know your dad’s sister didn’t go to high school?”
I nodded. I knew that about Aunt Aggie. She was much older than her brother, my father, and my dad had told me the girls needed to stay at home. Such a different world now, I thought, as Erica scolded a worker for something she deemed careless.
After a long pause, Uncle Freddie said, “When I grew up, I wondered if my Papa had known he was sick and maybe this was why he taught me everything so young. Later, after helping to support my mother and brothers, I was able to make a life for your Aunt Aggie and your cousin Frederica, who still lives in Italy. My father had saved two families by teaching me everything he knew.” He gave a little chuckle. “Your Aunt Aggie never considered me an artist. She mostly complained about how my clothes were always dirty and my hands were the same sandpaper as my chin, but she always cleaned my clothes for me, and always packed me a homemade lunch so I had good food at work.”
He watched as Erica’s men moved swiftly along the top of the rec hall, hurling boards over the edge of the roof. I wondered if he was thinking about how it looked like they worked with wild abandon, not like artists at all. I also remembered the time Erica confessed to me how different her family was from mine, that it was only her and her parents. I couldn’t imagine not growing up with a brother, a sister, an eccentric grandmother, two sweet uncles, and our lunatic Aunt Aggie.
I was still watching Erica as I said to him, “Your secret was that nobody knew you had been up waiting for your papa the day he died.”
He smiled, watching the crew, as he said, “No. My secret was nobody ever knew what I really wanted was to be a carpenter.”
Unlike my Uncle Freddie, nobody ever had to guess about what my sister wanted in life. Anyone who knew her for longer than a few minutes sensed that the best approach with this woman was to step back, smile, and do things her way.
When Lisa became enthralled with an Emmy-winning soap actress, she decided she would go to NYC to meet her, and she did. She had dragged me with her, and the three of us ended up talking the actress into going to a lesbian bar (the actress was straight, married, mother of twin girls), drinking vodka shots until we were kicked out at two-thirty in the morning. How does a gorgeous soap actress get kicked out of a lesbian bar, you might ask? This happens after Lisa coached the actress on all the best moves a pole dancer should treat the crowd to, improvising a stripper pole with a hallway coat rack.
All was well at first, and there was a brief and riotous show, right up until we learned the coat rack had also been a load-bearing structure, and half the hallway collapsed because Lisa yanked the pole out of the wall. The collapsing took place during Lisa’s somewhat graphic demo of the next move she wanted the actress to do for the crowd. The bar owner was pissed, but the lesbian crowd cheered in protest (except for the bar people still trapped in the hallway) as the three of us were escorted to the door.
The bouncer wasn’t as big as my sister, so Lisa got the idea to whip out a Sharpie marker (from God knows where) so the gay-friendly actress could cheerfully sign breast autographs on her slow parade out the door. The soap actress said it was the best night out
she could remember in years and when she finally parted ways with us on the street corner, she gave my sister a steamy kiss in front of the screaming crowd. Lisa says they still chat often.
What was it with the Santora girls and actresses?
I had been anxious to see how Erica would work with Lisa since, next to my sister, Erica was second on my list of most strong-willed people, worldwide. They proved to be a good team, since their paths didn’t cross often, except when Erica wanted to up the budget for one reason or another. Camptown Ladies was her baby, so, for the first time in my life, I watched as Lisa said yes to everything suggested to her.
Erica and I worked together almost everyday and I noticed she was less prone to yell when I was around, and the workers noticed it too. If I left to make a homo-depo run for Erica, the workers would ask me to hurry back. “She thinks we’re much more stupid when you aren’t here,” one of them said. I didn’t understand this, but I did notice she yelled at them more when I was not on the project. As I approached or left on a mission, I’d hear her barking orders, insults flying like a drill sergeant as I headed out to grab more supplies or came back with lunch for Erica and me if Lisa wasn’t whipping up an Italian treat for all the camp workers to enjoy.
On this day, Erica and I’d worked for hours non-stop, and the smell of doughboys wafted up to the roof, paralyzing all the workers. Even Erica stopped her signature hammering bang-bang-tap rhythm as she checked, re-checked all the beams herself. They were all to be replaced.
“What the hell is that?” she said, sniffing the air.
“Dad and Lisa are making doughboys,” I said.
“Whatever the hell that it is, I have to have two,” she said.
“Fried homemade pizza dough, usually with powdered sugar.”
Erica said, “Let’s go, before these animals beat us to the line.”
We hustled to the ladder. With every step the smell got stronger, and without even looking I knew Lisa and Dad had two stations to pick from, one for powered sugar, and one for eating the doughboy in a bowl with Lisa’s mouthwatering tomato sauce drizzled all over it. I waited for Erica at the bottom of the ladder, planning to convince
her that she needed to try a sauce-topped one for lunch, then split a powder sugar doughboy with me for dessert. I was at the bottom of the ladder, looking up, licking my lips at the thought.
Lisa yelled out from the rec hall, “That must be some hot ass coming down that ladder with you looking up and drooling like that!” I glared at her, but she had already walked away to taunt Vince about the sugar all over his face.
Erica had skipped the ladder and hopped down from the roof to the porch rail, in her gymnast move, so it was a male worker who was next down the ladder. Of course he heard my sister. He gave me a cocky smile and brushed his beginner beer gut a bit too close as he confidently swaggered passed me. He turned back to give me a wink, in case the gut was not encouragement enough to keep on admiring the big, dusty ass butt crack showing from the weight of his tool belt. Erica was laughing at the scene as she hopped down off the porch rail. The difference between the vision of his hairy body and hers, made my stomach jolt. (It could also have been the guy’s greasy smell, which lingered and competed nastily with the doughboys, temporarily ruining my appetite.) I got in line behind Erica anyway, noticing the guy waited off to the side so he could get in line behind me.
Erica pushed me ahead of her so she was between the guy and me and said, “You show me how to assemble this thing. I’m not a damned wop like the rest of you.”
The way my sister’s mouth still could throw me after so many years of being victim to it, was a tribute to her craft. All of my most embarrassing moments have been by my sister’s side. Occasionally my screw-ups were caused by my paranoia of future ball-busting, so it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, most of the time Lisa could take full credit for the trouble her mouth got her into—or us.
I cringed as I remembered a trip to the mall my sister and I took (even though Lisa was missing some girl DNA and hated to shop). Everything was going fine, aside from her leering at any attractive woman that passed, and we were both getting into the spirit of window shopping when I spotted a woman ahead of us, walking her toddler on a leash.
“Holy shit,” I muttered under my breath, instantly regretted calling Lisa’s attention to it.
“Holy shit,” she said back, not in a whisper.
We were at least thirty paces behind the woman, but I opted to start my begging early. “Please, Lisa . . . Please. Just let it go.”
My warning did nothing to stop Lisa’s inevitable rant; in fact, it encouraged it. She started the rant quietly, at first. “Is that really necessary? That kid seems perfectly well behaved. For fuck’s sake, he’s just learning to walk.”
“Lisa, please. Don’t.” I said.
The flow of the mall crowd kept us moving toward the woman and her leashed child. I started taking baby steps, hoping we wouldn’t catch up, but changed my strategy to quicken my pace so Lisa and I might pass by her quickly, limiting the damage to more of a drive-by assault.
Lisa was getting louder. “I don’t understand parents today. Mom and Dad would never have to worry about us kids being out of control.”
“You’re out of control right now.” I said.
“Seriously, if your kid needs extreme discipline, it’s better to give a spank on the bottom like in the old days, than to do this,” Lisa said.
I tired distracting her again. “Not everyone likes to give spankings, you should leave your personal kicks aside.”
She ignored me, “And that kid is behaving just fine! Why the fuck would you treat any child like a dog?”