Only in Naples (5 page)

“
L
et's see if we can catch ourselves a mass,” Raffaella told me one Sunday in October, using the Neapolitan verb
acchiappare.
I was confused since that's the same verb she would use for catching a fish or grabbing a crumb from someone's crotch. I knew she was a practicing Catholic, but I'd never heard of grabbing hold of a church service before it got away.

Masses in Naples are at all hours on Saturday and Sunday and there is at least one church on each street. Raffaella was perennially late, and never remembered which service started when. So catching ourselves a mass consisted of her packing me into her little blue Lancia (Nino drove a larger sedan) and speeding around the city looking for a church where the priest was starting
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
just as we arrived. She would triple-park and run in and out of the medieval churches (always making two signs of the cross, one on the way in and one on the way out) until she found a mass starting at the right time.

The Sunday morning service at Christ Memorial Presbyterian Church in Columbia, Maryland, started at 11:00, and we were never late.

“Giiiiirrrrrllllss! It's time for church!”
my mother would wail, at least an hour before the service started. Our hair curled in ringlets, and our petticoats fitted under our dresses (my mother found us petticoats in 1980s suburban Washington), Anna and I would grab our sheet music and sing our last vocal warm-up. A quick
mee mee mee mee mee
up and down the scale to get rid of morning mucus.

Our grandfather (Mimi, we called him) was the preacher, and when he called us to the pulpit to perform, the congregation thought it was improvised. “Katherine, precious, why don't you come on up here and sing us somethin'?” he would ask, as if it had just occurred to him. Mimi was that good an actor. In fact, the performance was usually a song that we'd rehearsed hundreds of times, or a poem that we'd learned for a fourth-grade recitation contest that just happened to tie in perfectly with his “humdinger” of a sermon. We worked hard with him to get it
juuuuust right
for church on Sunday. The altar was a stage, and the congregation an audience of loving friends.

Anna and I went to an Episcopal elementary school, and my grandparents made sure we knew that “those folks might as well be Catholic.” It wasn't a compliment. Catholic liturgy, Catholic dogma, and Catholic
rules
were something that my grandfather broke free of when he started going to that Presbyterian Sunday school in West Virginia in 1920. He wanted the freedom to emote, to be passionate—to
clap, gosh darn it,
when his granddaughter nailed “
Für Elise”
on the piano before the sermon.

Presbyterians aren't exactly freewheeling, though, and as my grandmother put it, “Your Mimi got himself in the wrong denomination. Shoulda been a Baptist.” Now,
those
were people who knew how to take the stage.

For me, church was a perfectly rehearsed show. The big brown cross, American flag, and stained glass were the set, the hymns with their four-part harmony were the musical score, and my grandfather was the star. Reverend Salango's sermons were so moving that there was never a dry eye in the congregation, and his own handkerchief was always soaked with tears after the service (
Dang, I get myself worked up!
he'd tell us). My sister and I were the guest stars, and lived for the little pat on the shoulder that Mommy would give us in the pew to tell us we'd performed well.

I was thankful for the Reformation. I knew with deep conviction that Martin Luther and John Calvin would've loved hearing me perform
Les Mis.

That first Sunday that I accompanied Raffaella, we sailed into the church of Santo Strato several minutes before mass was to begin. The church was built in the sixteenth century and had recently been repainted in garish Palm Beach colors. I wondered why they couldn't have chosen tones that were more
sobrio,
or subdued, as I followed Raffaella to the front of the church. (Even five hundred years ago, the Neapolitans chose similar hues, I later learned, when seeing the similarly bright frescoes of the churches in the center of town.) A statue of Mary, in an electric blue robe with her arms outstretched, rose above the altar.
Basta
with all that gray and washed-out blue, she seemed to say. We were near the beach, and the bright blue was a good color for her. All she needed was a few rhinestones and some chunky Armani sunglasses to be a true Neapolitan
signora.

Santo Strato smelled of hairspray and incense. It was packed with women of all ages who were dressed and made up like they were going out on the town. Jeans were tight. Foundation was sponged on perfectly, with no caking or lines at the neck. And that eye makeup! Even seventy-year-olds knew how to smudge. Young women showed off their midriffs and new highlights and the older ones showed off their nips and tucks. Like Raffaella, the women sparkled and shimmered and made a lot of noise. Their voices had become deep and husky from calling sons and grandsons off the soccer field.
“A taaavola!”
they had yelled when it was time to eat, their cries filling not only apartments but the surrounding courtyards and piazzas.

In Naples, only the loud and persistent voices are heard. My little American voice peters out when interrupted; theirs get louder and more decisive. Often, when someone is interrupted in the middle of a story or it is clear that the listener has lost interest, the speaker will physically grab the listener's arm, look him or her in the eye with consternation, and start saying,
“Senti! Senti!”
(“Listen! Listen!”) until she is sure that she's gotten their attention.

Many of the women in Santo Strato knew Raffaella, and there were hugs and kisses and very loud cries of
“Raffa!”
and
“Mirella bella!”
Raffaella's friends blatantly checked me out, top to bottom (eyes, boobs, waist, shoes) and then said, to her, Oh, she's American? She's so beautiful! Thanks, thanks, Raffaella answered. After being checked out, I was totally left out of the conversation. I caught the phrases “doe eyes” and “doesn't look American.” One woman who had met me a few weeks before at the Avallones' said, “She's lost so much weight!”

Raffaella maintained physical contact with me always, her arm around my waist or our elbows linked square dance–style, as she talked about me to her friends. Was it protective? Proprietary? It felt awkward to hear these chic ladies talking about
me—
survivor of an eating disorder and wearer of a slightly frayed sweater that I had gotten at Filene's Basement in 1989.

Mary presided over it all, happy in her electric blue.

There was no hope of seeing a man in the congregation, in part because the Naples soccer team was playing the undefeated northern team, the Milan-based Inter. The men were not missed. In fact, I noticed that churchgoers in Naples were predominantly women. This was their realm, just as the stadium of San Paolo, where the Napoli soccer team was playing, was the realm of men. Boundaries were very clearly drawn, and few women tried to persuade their men to engage in activities together. Why on earth would women want men in church? Why on earth would men want women at the stadium?

“Nel nome del Padre, del Figlio e dello Spirito Santo,”
an amplified baritone voice cut through the racket, and I turned from a friend of Raffaella's who was caressing and examining my hair to see the priest, Father Giampietro. The flashy colors behind the altar made a perfect backdrop for Giampietro. He was a gorgeous thirty-five-year-old who wore cowboy boots (complete with spurs) under his robe, and had wavy hair, styled to perfection. One day while driving in central Naples, Salva and I saw him weaving through traffic on his motorbike.

“Giampietro!” Salva yelled out the window, teasing. “You're supposed to have a helmet! You're a priest!”

“But my hair!” the priest joked back. “It ruins my hair!” and he sped off around a curve to visit someone's dying grandmother.