The Possibilities of Sainthood (2 page)

Veronica was at the apartment trying to learn some of the Italian cookie recipes from my mother because
her
mother, my aunt Silvia, was determined that at least one of her three daughters would turn out to be a kitchen natural and grow up to usurp
my
mother at the family store. I'd thought I could successfully avoid Veronica's visit, but I was wrong. My blood began to boil, but I took comfort in the fact that Veronica's outfit was way too tight and her hair was so teased and sprayed that she was the caricature of a Rhode Island Mall Rat. “Remember when you used to be a nice person and people like me could actually stand to be around you?” I asked, once I knew my temper was in check.

“Remember when
you
used to
not
be such a total baby?” Sarcasm oozed from Veronica's voice. Something—maybe almond paste?—was smeared down the side of her face. I bet she squeezed it straight from the tube into her mouth like a greedy glutton. “You and your mother think you're so high and mighty.”

“Veronica . . .” my mother was calling. “Veronica? If
you are not here to watch, you are never going to learn how to fold these egg whites into the batter properly . . . Yoohoo! Where are you?”

“Yeah, yeah, I'm coming, Auntie,” she said, rolling her eyes and disappearing back down the hall. Her footsteps thudded against the wood floor. Thud. Thud.

My cousin, the elephant.

As soon as Veronica was gone, the tension disappeared from my body. I grabbed my Saint Diary from where I'd stashed it and sighed with relief.

My Saint Diaries were also my most
secret
possessions.

Each year on my birthday, February 14, St. Valentine's Day, I began a new volume, fixing different colored pockets onto the pages of a thick book, compiling a section marked “Notes” for my new saint ideas (like a Patron Saint of Homework or a Patron Saint of Notice—as in “Notice me, please, Andy Rotellini!”). Most important of all, I chose which out of the many thousands of official saints to venerate during the year. Tradition,
my
tradition, dictated that St. Anthony of Padua, the Patron Saint for Lost Things, got page number one. Always.

Volume 8, the record of my fifteenth year, was rose red, my favorite color.

In the back was a section for the occasional, precious response letter from the Vatican. (Really they were rejection letters, but I liked to think of them as responses because that sounded less depressing.) I held on to these to remind myself that at least they knew I existed. For the hope that one day, I might just get through to them.

You know,
The Vatican People.

Any day now, the news would arrive. My Patron Saint of Figs proposal was a winner. I could feel it.

“Antonia!
Sbrigati!
” my mother yelled, shattering this moment of hope with her I'm-getting-angry voice and an Italian command that loosely translated as “Get your butt off to bed immediately and don't tell me you're still praying because I won't buy it this time.” Early bedtime somehow applied to me but not my cousin.

I faced Sebastian one last time, the heat of the candle flame warm on my chin. “St. Sebastian,” I whispered, gazing into his blue eyes, “if you can help me figure out the saint thing, I'd really appreciate it. It's already been thirteen days since I sent the last letter.”

“Antonia Lucia Labella!” (That's “lou-chia,” by the way, like the pet.)

“Okay, one
more
last thing,” I said, tempting the full force of Mom's rage, my lips level with Sebastian's now, as if we were about to kiss. “Even though I
know
that
technically
in the Catholic church you have to be dead to be a saint, I really don't want to die if you can help it. Fifteen is too young to die.”

I blew out the candle. A thin stream of smoke drifted up from the blackened wick, reaching toward heaven, and I wondered if I'd soon follow, joining all those who'd gone before me.

In a manner befitting a saint.

“Antonia! You are
not
going out like that!”

“What are you talking about, Mom?” I answered, trying to sound innocent and all. Who me? Have I done something wrong? I was tiptoeing through the front hall hoping to get out the door unnoticed on my way to school.

“Antonia! Don't you dare take another step!”

I looked behind me. Mom was leaning against the doorway between the foyer and the kitchen, staring at my legs, upset as usual about the state of my school uniform. I shoved my hand into my backpack to locate the socks she was going to make me wear despite any protests.

“O
Madonna
! Your bare legs! I can see so much thigh you may as well not be wearing a skirt!” She was using her it's-the-end-of-the-world voice, her left hand moving spastically as she talked. Her dark, roller-filled hair jiggled like a pile of fresh-made gnocchi on its way to the table, as her
head shook with disapproval. “My daughter looks like a
puttana
! What have I done to deserve this?”

 

Important Italian Vocab to Note:

Madonna
refers to
the
Madonna, aka, the
real
virgin, not the “Like a Virgin” Madonna, the famous pop star. It's pronounced “ma-dawn,” heavy on the
n
, drop the last
a
.

Puttana
is Italian for “prostitute” and is known to fly out of my mother's mouth in my direction. I like to think of it as a compliment. You know, my mother's special way of noting out loud that her daughter is looking particularly sexy at the moment.

“Calm down, Ma,” I said, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. Every day on my way to school I'd try to sneak out the door in what my best friend Maria and I regarded as coolness of the uniform, that is, as cool as we could possibly make our yellow, green, and white pleated plaid skirt and matching Catholic schoolgirl gear. And every day Mom would tell me I looked like a streetwalker (her favorite English synonym for
puttana
).

Then we'd argue.

“Are you showing off for the boys, Antonia?” I glanced over my shoulder to find my grandmother in the living room watching me, giggling, swaying in her rocking chair, her tiny body wrapped tight in her old blue bathrobe. Her white frizzed-out hair was styled like she might be auditioning for the part of Einstein's mother.

I felt my face turn red.

“Gram! Sshhh,” I pleaded, giving her a meaningful look. “You're not helping.” Gram had lived with Mom and me in the apartment above the family store since Dad died when I was seven. She was partly to blame for my saint obsessions. Her bedroom was filled with icons, mass cards, and pillar-candle shrines. A glass-domed porcelain baby Jesus dressed as a king with a big fancy crown and flowing red robes—the Infant of Prague—sat center stage on her bureau. Gram's room was like a shrine.

“And after you find those socks you are going to unroll that skirt until I can't see even an inch of thigh!” Mom stepped toward me as if she was going to do the uniform adjustment herself.

“Ma! Seriously. I'll fix everything when I get to school,” I said, but my pleas were futile. She was staring at my waist with the look of a bull about to charge. “Nobody else goes to school in uniform. You should see Veronica and Concetta . . .” Concetta was Veronica's sister, the middle child of my wicked trio of cousins. Francesca was the third and the oldest.

“I don't care about your cousins and that is your aunt Silvia's business if she wants to let her daughters leave the house half-naked.”

My mother had gone to a Catholic girls' school, too—starting in sixth grade, when her family immigrated from Napoli—and in every picture she's in textbook uniform: sensible brown shoes, kneesocks stretched until the threads are about to snap, plaid skirt lengthened to below
the knee, so that bare skin is totally hidden, long-sleeved oxford shirt buttoned up to her chin. My mother always looked perfect and
virginal
. I might be
technically
virginal, but that didn't mean I needed to look that way.

All Normal Catholic Schoolgirls had creative ways of sluttifying our pure-as-the-driven-snow required attire.

 

Catholic Girl's Guide to Uniform Alteration

1. Most important is rolling your skirt so that it is a virtual mini (you keep folding it over at the waistband).

The key to successful skirt rolling is to be sure your Catholic pleated plaid is already hemmed at least two inches above the knee. Otherwise, if you have to fold it over, like, twenty times at the waist, you end up looking as if you've got a serious amount of extra inches around the middle. Not attractive. If you have a mother like mine who insists on skirts at least to the knee, then you have several possible options: get out the ironing board and iron the desired hem, then either tape said hem or carefully safety-pin it all around the bottom, ideally so that none of the pins show through to the front. Why not just pull out a needle and thread and hem it for real? Because you always need to be prepared for emergency hem-letting-down when your mother wonders why your skirt seems so short. If she realizes you illegally hemmed it, getting grounded is almost inevitable.

2. The question of boxer shorts: to wear or not to wear boxer shorts underneath your skirt?

Catholic mothers across the nation hate this trend of girls wearing boxers even more so than the rolling up of the plaid. Preferably, you should buy your own boxers. It's weird to steal from Dad, though some girls do it. I don't know when or who started the boxers craze, but it's been going on for as long as I've been at Catholic school (which is always). To be honest, I don't know why wearing boxers is cool, because sometimes, frankly, it looks kind of bad, but we do it anyway. Still, depending on how much you want the boys to see, boxers are a good preventive measure for the accidental flashing factor.

3. Legs: as bare as possible. Wear socks only when you are made to, and when wearing them, make sure they are scrunched down to the ankles. Never, I repeat,
never
wear tights.

4. Standard white oxford: ideally two buttons undone and never buttoned all the way to the neck. Cute, tight-fitting tank top underneath for before and after school when you are hanging out in the parking lot.

The tank top allows you to remove the required oxford entirely if you so choose and transform yourself into the ideal sexy Catholic schoolgirl that every Catholic schoolboy wants to go out with. Note: Never ever let your mother or teacher/principal
see you in just a tank top or you'll be in trouble for sure.

“In my day, the nuns used to measure our skirts!” My mother waved her right hand as she launched into her familiar uniform lecture. I dropped my backpack onto the dark tile of our foyer. It made a satisfying thump when it hit the floor and I struck my best here-we-go-again pose, which involved some hip-jutting, impatient sighing, and foot-tapping. “We had to kneel down on the floor, and if the hem didn't touch the ground we were sent home.”

Oh, the drama.

“Yeah, Ma. I know. You've told me. Like eighty times.”

“You don't learn to dress like a respectful Labella girl soon and
I'm
going to make you kneel down
every morning
before leaving the house to measure
your
skirt! You just wait.” Her hand buzzed around her like a fly. “If your father were still alive . . .”

“Don't even go there, Ma” I said, interrupting, feeling hurt that she would pull the Dad card. “If Dad were around he'd spend more time telling me to have a good day and less time freaking out over stupid things like whether or not I am wearing socks and the exact length of my uniform skirt.”

“No respect,” she muttered. “You used to be such a nice little girl. What did I do wrong? O
Madonna
!”

I sat down with a huff in an old wooden chair to put on my green socks. Anything to get Mom off my back and myself out the door. I said a quick prayer to St. Denis, the
Patron Saint Against Strife and Headaches, for added assistance (who, incidentally, is usually portrayed holding his head in his hands because he was, well,
beheaded
, and therefore the perfect poster boy for people worrying about headaches).

“St. Agnes, help this child,” my mother rambled on, under her breath. St. Agnes is the Patron Saint of Bodily Purity and Chastity, and one of her favorites.

“Pull. Them. Up. Antonia.” Mom didn't like the fact that I'd squished my kneesocks down to my ankles. She was in front of me now with hands on hips, her “Kiss the Cook” apron tied around her middle. Dad gave it to her for Christmas one year. She always wore it. There was a smear of flour on her face, which meant she'd been making pasta. She got up at ungodly hours to make it from scratch.

Time to raise the white flag, I decided, stretching my socks to my knees. I stood up and marched toward the door, hoping to get out without any further assaults on my attire.

I had to give Mom credit on at least one count: despite the psychotic behavior, no one else could make pasta like she did. A few pinches of this, a little bit of that, some flour, eggs, and poof! It was like magic. The whole state of Rhode Island pretty much agreed with me, or at least our neighborhood did—Federal Hill, where my family opened Labella's Market more than three decades ago. Between the tourists looking for “authentic Italian” and the neighborhood regulars, we almost couldn't keep my mother's pasta in stock. She inherited that amazing Italian cooking
intuition: knowing when whatever you're cooking has “just enough” of this and “just enough” of that. The key to good pasta is “just knowing” the right feel of the dough. There are people in this world who've only had pasta from a cardboard box, who have never felt the warm, soft, floury ball of dough before it is rolled out to be cut. I am sad for these people. When it is made just right, pasta dough is as soft as a down pillow. And despite Mom's constant chastising, I admit that seeing a smear of flour across her forehead gave me a thrill. There was nothing,
nothing
like Mom's fresh homemade pasta.