Turning the Tables: From Housewife to Inmate and Back Again (3 page)

My brother, Giuseppe, who is two years younger than I am—I call him Joey and he calls me Tre—would only watch some of the programs with us, like
Three’s Company
and
Sanford and Son
. He wasn’t really into the ones where glamorous women in sequined gowns were singing and dancing onstage. He and I were best friends growing up. We rode bikes together, played board games and cards, and loved making forts in the living room with our blankets and pillows. He always had my back, and would kick me under the dinner table to warn me if I was pushing my dad to the limit while asking his permission for something. My parents and brother were my world growing up, and believe me, I could not have asked God for a better family.

Watching Cher onstage took me to a whole other world. She was so glamorous in her long, slinky gowns, with her glittery diamond earrings. I loved her gorgeous makeup, perma-tan, and those loooong eyelashes. (Which I started wearing All. The. Time. on the show . . .) I thought her huge fame, her undeniable glamour, and her devoted fans (I was, of course, one of them, though I never met her or anyone famous when I was little) were so amazing. As I lay there on the floor of my family’s humble little apartment, fantasizing about what it would like to be Cher, I had no idea that one day I would be famous, too. But like Cher and every celebrity out there, I would come to see that fame comes with some of the best things in the world—and some things that threaten to break you.

I wanted to sing and dance like Cher. I thought I was pretty good at it. As a kid, I would put on little shows for my parents all the time in our living room, singing and dancing and pretending I was onstage. As I got older, I wished that my mom had sent me to dancing school or gymnastics class, but she didn’t because she literally couldn’t take me. She didn’t start driving until I was in third grade, when she surprised all of us by getting her license! All on her own! We were all so proud of her. But up until then, when I was seven years old or so, she, Joey and I would walk everywhere, unless our dad drove us. They didn’t trust anyone else to drive us anywhere because they were so protective.

The bigger issue was that as an Italian immigrant, my mom simply didn’t know how to go about finding classes for me and signing me up, even when she did have her license. My mom has since said that she would have taken me to dance or gymnastics if she’d known I wanted to go. But I knew how hard it was for her to get around, even with a car, so I never asked her about it. I didn’t want to burden her with that.

Back then, my parents really didn’t see the point of after-school activities, either. They were like, “You have to be home for dinner at five-thirty. No out and about.” So I would just take part in whatever activities were offered at school. I was a baton twirler in third grade, played softball in elementary school and in junior high, and played the saxophone in the seventh-grade and eighth-grade band. I gave up on my dream of becoming famous when I became a teenager because I thought it was just hopeless, to be honest. My parents had no Hollywood connections and no idea how to even begin to get me into showbiz. But still, I always wanted to become successful and make something of myself one day. I just didn’t know what that would be.

W
hile I love the life my parents gave me and Joey, they definitely didn’t have it easy when they came to America. They had a good life in Italy. There, they were surrounded by family and friends everywhere they turned, because Sala Consilina, the town where they grew up, is so tiny. Everyone looked out for everyone else. They were happy there, for sure, but wanted more than what their little hamlet offered. They left the only place they knew because they thought their children would have a better life in America, where anything was possible. Sala Consilina was beautiful but limited in opportunity, and I could not be more grateful for the life and the love they have given me. I had an amazing childhood, thanks to my parents . . . but in order for me to have that incredible childhood, my parents sacrificed a lot.

My dad, Giacinto, came here first, in the late sixties. He moved in with his sister in Paterson, New Jersey, a small city with lots of tall buildings, row houses, and concrete. It was a far cry from Sala Consilina, a small, medieval-looking town nestled in the rolling green and brown hills of the province of Salerno, about two hours from Naples. When I was little, I could always point to where it was on a map because it’s right at the beginning of the boot in the southwest of Italy.

My mom, Antonia, grew up as an only child and learned about heartbreak at an early age. She had a sister named Carmela, who passed away when she was fifteen days old. Her mother’s (my grandmother’s) name was Rosa, but everyone called her Teresa, which is pronounced Tare-ray-za. That’s really how you say my name in Italian, although everyone here calls me Ter-ee-sah. I am named after my maternal grandmother. In Italian families, the tradition is to name your children after your husband’s parents. But since my mom lost her mother, my dad broke with tradition. He said to my mom, “If we get married and have a daughter, I want to name her after your mother.” It was so loving of my dad to say that. My dad’s mom totally understood, which is another reason why my parents loved her so much.

Speaking of pronunciations of names, people always ask me why I say my last name different ways. Sometimes I pronounce it Joo-dee-chay or Joo-dih-chay, which is the Italian way to say my husband’s last name, which ironically means “judge” in Italian. Other times I will say my last name is Joo-dice, which is the American way to say it. Most people have a hard time pronouncing it the Italian way, so I am sticking with the American way from now on. My husband is fine with that. We had used the Italian pronunciation to make Joe’s dad happy, God rest his soul.

While I can easily pronounce words in Italian, people would always laugh when I mixed up or mispronounced words on the show—like when I called a nor’easter a Norwegian, said the word ingrediences (!), stanima instead of stamina, and semolina instead of salmonella. I’ve read stories that say I am known for my “mixed metaphors and malapropisms.” Mala—what? Oh my God. I have no friggin’ idea how the heck to even begin to pronounce that one! What can I say? (That’s why I had someone help me write this book!) People can laugh all they want. I grew up in a house where my parents spoke Italian all the time, so I spoke two languages, which is why I mix things up sometimes. (I still speak Italian with my parents today . . .) I am blowing all of the haters a big kiss right now. I don’t want to hate. I just want to love, love, love, love! But look—it is what it is. And now I definitely know the difference between a nor’easter and a Norwegian . . . well, sort of.

W
hen my mom was a baby, my grandfather, whose name was Pietro, told my grandmother that he was going to leave Sala Consilina for Venezuela to work—and never returned. No one knew if he never returned by choice, or if he was forced to stay. They didn’t even know if he was alive or dead. My mother doesn’t remember meeting him because he left when she was so young. To this day, my family doesn’t know what happened to him. As the years went on, my grandmother tried to find him. She tried to write to him, but wasn’t even sure he got the letters. He never answered. That broke their hearts.

After her father (my grandfather) left, my mom and her mother (my grandmother) went to live with my grandmother’s parents (my great-grandparents), Rosa and Vincenzo. But my grandmother led a very lonely life. She never left the house, for fear that people would shun her and talk about her because she had no husband. That’s how it was back then. She came from a respectable family but felt ashamed that her husband had left, even though she didn’t do anything wrong. So she never went out with friends, to the many feasts they held in town (it’s the Italian way!), or even to church. She would just stay home and work the land with my great-grandfather and help my great-grandmother cook, sew, make sausages, jar vegetables, and take care of my mom, of course.

Things only got worse for my mom and grandmother as my mom got older. When my mom was nine, my grandmother got very sick. She started to lose a lot of weight and always seemed to have a cold and a cough, so her family took her to see a doctor in Naples. By then it was too late. They told her she was very sick, possibly with lung cancer. They sent her home and she died months later. My mom was an orphan at only ten years old. She was devastated. She and her mother did everything together and were incredibly close. She still had her grandparents, who loved her so much, but said she felt so alone in the world without her mother by her side. Every girl needs her mother, and my mom felt so lost without hers. I can’t even imagine what she went through. That’s what made it so hard for me to be away from my own girls when I went to prison. They needed their mother, too, even if I was only gone for eleven and a half months.

But that wasn’t the end of my mother’s pain. While she was still reeling from my grandmother’s death, my great-grandfather died a month later because he was so heartbroken over losing his daughter. My mother loved my great-grandfather so much because he was the only father figure she ever had. All of this death and sorrow was a lot for a little girl to take. It was a very dark time for my mother. Again, I cannot even fathom what she went through.

But she went on to have a happy life, thank God. My great-grandmother continued to raise her. She had so much strength and was so good to my mother. Since it was just the two of them, my mom had to learn how to do everything around the house, from cooking and making sausages, to tending the garden and making clothes, just like my grandmother did. That’s how she learned to be such an amazing cook and to take care of Joey, my dad, and me so well. What I admire so much about my mom is that while her childhood was filled with such trauma and sadness, she was never bitter or angry over everything that had happened to her. Despite everything she went through, she is one of the kindest people I have ever met. She has a heart of gold (and not one bad bone in her body). She is sweet and loving—and laughs a lot. Even today. I love her so much and am so blessed to have her as my mom.

My dad grew up with his parents, Rosa (yes, another Rosa!) and Giuseppe (whom my brother is named after), two older brothers, Michael and Mario, and two older sisters, Antoinetta and Maria. My dad was the youngest in his family, like Audriana. There was also a brother named Nicola, which means Nicholas in English, who died at six.

They lived in a three-story house made of stone, in the oldest part of Sala Consilina near the main piazza. Underneath the house, which you got to by climbing up a huge flight of stone stairs, were stalls and troughs for the goats, sheep, and pigs they used to keep. They had a huge yard, filled with beautiful fig and cypress trees and an impressive garden, because almost everyone grew their own vegetables. Joe and I visited the house in the show’s second season. That was my favorite episode of all time. I was so happy to go back to Sala Consilina to see the relatives that Joe and I have there, since his family is from the same town. It’s so beautiful and peaceful there. Most of the people there may not have five-carat diamonds, Chanel bags, McMansions, Ferraris, or yachts, but they are happy. Very happy. Because family is really all you need in this life.

M
y dad met my mom when he was twenty and she was just thirteen, when she was on her way to a feast to celebrate the Blessed Virgin. My mother didn’t give him a second thought, but my father couldn’t get her out of his mind. He found out where she lived and began visiting her at her grandmother’s house every week, as long as someone else was there, of course. (Italians were very strict back then and still were when I was growing up!) My dad wanted to propose right away, but his father told him he was too young and needed to have a good job and earn some money before he could get married and start a family. But her family wanted them to either get married or break up, because they didn’t like the idea of a boy coming around if he wasn’t planning to stay forever. So they broke up, but he never forgot about her. (This is my favorite part! It’s so romantic!) Five years later, when he was working in America, he wrote to her, telling her that he still wanted to be with her and asked if she wanted to be with him. She replied, “If you are serious, then come back to Italy so we can discuss it.” He came right back to Italy and married her eighty-seven days later, on December 27, 1969.

I love looking at their wedding album, which reminds me of scenes from
The Godfather
. After my parents exchanged vows in the church, they walked to the reception hall, with dozens of their friends and family following them in the streets—just like in the movie. They have been married for forty-six years now and are still so in love. They still flirt and make each other laugh every day. They both have a great sense of humor—which is where I get it from!

After my parents got married, they decided to come to America in 1971, with just two suitcases. My mom was pregnant with me when they moved to Paterson (but she didn’t know it). Before my mom got here, she said she thought America was paradise. She had seen pictures and fell in love. She said she wanted to explore the world, since she had never set foot outside Sala Consilina in her life. But my dad kept saying to her, “I don’t know if you’ll really like it . . .”

He was right. Living in a new country was very hard for both of them. Neither spoke English. My mom told me she would cry herself to sleep at night, wondering why they had left Italy. She would say, “I don’t have nobody here . . . I don’t understand what people are saying. This is terrible . . .” She didn’t even know how the money worked, but she said nice people at stores would help her count out her change—and that no one ever stole from her. Yes, it was hard, but they had wanted to come to America—the land of opportunity.

My dad needed a job and began working as a dishwasher at an Italian restaurant, but he learned how to repair shoes at the same time. My father worked day and night and saved everything he could so that he could buy a shoe repair business in Butler, New Jersey. Joey and I would go to work with him on Saturdays when we were little. Most of the time, we just stayed in the back room watching cartoons or playing. Sometimes, though, we would help him sweep or clean or find shoes that customers came to pick up. I loved helping him and always felt so grown up working there.