Turning the Tables: From Housewife to Inmate and Back Again (5 page)

We would buy badges for the day at beaches like Sandy Hook or Long Branch, and I would spend the day swimming in the ocean, body surfing (hoping I wouldn’t lose the top to my bathing suit when I was tossed around in the huge waves!), picking seashells off the beach, playing with sand crabs we dug up, and building sand castles with my dad and my brother. My dad loved to dig a deep hole in the sand, put me or my brother in it, and cover us up to our necks, which would make us laugh! (My mother was always like, “Be careful with them, Giagee!”)

My favorite bathing suit back then was a crocheted bikini in rainbow colors. I wish I had a photo of me in that suit, but I don’t. My mom didn’t take a lot of photos of me and Joey, but I wish she had. I want to be able to see what I looked like every year of my life and share those pictures with my children. That’s why I’m now a fanatic when it comes to pictures. I am always taking photos of my daughters doing anything and everything, so they can remember where they come from. What I have learned in this life is that honoring our beginnings—whether they are humble or extravagant—is so important, and I want my girls to be able to look at those photos with my future grandkids!

G
rowing up with strict Italian, Catholic parents, all I heard my parents say was that they wanted to raise me to be a good girl. They wanted me to be a good wife and mother one day. That’s what I wanted to be too. But sometimes it was hard, because the standards they had for my brother, even though he was younger than me, were very different from the standards they held me to because he was a boy, which is typical in Italian families. If my father was king of the house, my brother was the prince. Every night after dinner, I was the one who was expected to help clean up and do the dishes. He would just eat and then take off. I always cleaned my brother’s room for him. I would put away my laundry and then his laundry. Every Saturday I would help my mom clean the house. I would dust, mop the floors, clean the bathroom, and vacuum the whole house. He didn’t have to do any of this. I never questioned it or got angry about it. This was just the way it was. My brother did have his own responsibilities, too. He would help my dad out in the yard and would always take out the garbage.

While I was a daddy’s girl, and still am, my brother was definitely the apple of my mother’s eye. My mother was crazy about my brother. She loved him so much. She couldn’t pronounce Joey right so she would call him
Jovey mio—
“my Jovey.” We both got our love for our own families—and our strength—from our parents, especially my dad. He taught me to stand up for myself and face my challenges head-on, just like he did. I had no idea just how big those challenges would be for me later on in life.

W
hen I was going into fourth grade, we moved from our apartment to a one-family house in a nice neighborhood. I lived in that house with my parents until I was twenty-seven, when I got married. I have a picture of me standing in front of that house on my wedding day. We all spent lots of time in our new yard. My dad would cut the grass, while my mom would be outside every night watering the flowers she loved to plant. My parents had a garden in the backyard, where they grew tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and eggplant, just like their families did in Italy. They also installed a full kitchen in the basement, which is totally an Italian thing. They did that because they wanted to keep the kitchen upstairs spotless. The kitchen downstairs was the workhorse kitchen, where all the heavy lifting would take place when it came to cooking—especially for the holidays. Next to the kitchen downstairs, there was a big room with a living room and an area for the table where we ate dinner every night together.

If you thought my parents were strict when I was little, that was nothing compared to when I was a teenager. We would be sitting at the dinner table and my father would pick up a knife and say to me, “You need to walk a straight line on the knife. If you walk crooked on it, you will cut yourself. But if you walk straight, you will be good.” He was basically telling me that I always needed to avoid sex and drugs, do right in life, and try not to make any stupid mistakes. He told me that all the time—right up until the day I got married.

For as much of a good girl as I prided myself in being, I did make some mistakes. In seventh grade, I cut school one day with my best friend, Maria. We went to her house because her mom worked and no one was home to catch us. I had my period and felt lousy, and just didn’t feel like dragging through the school day. In my house, I had to be dying to stay home from school.

We hung out at Maria’s house all day, talking, putting on makeup, and watching TV. I kept a close eye on the clock. I had to get back to school before the last bell rang because my mother picked me up every day. I have to admit, I loved feeling so free!

When I got back to school, I tried to fly under the radar, but one of my teachers saw me and figured out that I had skipped school. The next day I was called into the principal’s office. I was shaking like a leaf as I walked down the hall. I had never, ever been in trouble like this before in my whole life. I almost died when the principal told me I was suspended from school for two days, because I knew what my parents would say. That’s what scared me the most.

I remember almost wanting to throw up when I told my mom what had happened, because my stomach was in knots. Just as I predicted, she didn’t take it well. At all. After I managed to get the words out, she yelled at me and told me I had to go to school unless I was
really
sick. She said I needed to be a good example for my brother. I felt so bad for letting her down. I cried and went to my room and stayed there until dinner. Despite how upset she was with me, she didn’t tell my father about it. I was beyond relieved. I was a teenager pushing the limits, but I felt so guilty about disappointing my mom that I never missed school again.

I am proud of the fact that I was a good girl growing up. I know I have made some missteps along the way. I’ve also had to deal with the many curveballs life has thrown me. Despite all of that, I have always put my family, my love for them, and my values first. I can only hope that my daughters will walk in the same footsteps that I have when it comes to these kinds of things. My strict upbringing also kept me out of a lot of trouble growing up, which is why I am so strict with my own daughters. I am raising them to be good girls, too.

A
s a teenager, I always wondered what it would be like to date Joe. After all, our families were so close, and even back then, I knew him like the back of my hand. Somehow, though, we knew we had to date others before finding the great love in each other.

In high school, I found myself hanging out with this guy who was the center of a lot of attention. There was another girl who liked him at the same time, and was not happy he liked me so much. She would give me nasty looks—the side eye and the up and down—and would constantly flirt with him. One day, we passed each other in the stairwell between classes and she bumped into me on purpose, making me drop my books. When I stood up, I told her to cut the shit. She started screaming and pushed me, so I pushed her back. I was protecting myself. I had never been in a scuffle like this before, but this girl started it and I reacted to what she did. What did she think I was going to do? Just stand there?

All these people came to watch because they heard we were fighting. When the school officials came, my heart sank. I knew I was going to get in trouble, and I did. Both of us got suspended. I was most terrified of my parents’ reaction. While they weren’t happy that I got suspended, my father told me he knew that I wouldn’t have gotten into it with that girl unless I was defending myself, so he wasn’t mad.

I was upset at the suspension but was proud of myself for standing my ground with her. I remember thinking back to this incident when I flipped that table on the first season of
Real Housewives
, when Danielle Staub pushed me to the limit. I am a pretty laid-back person until you push my buttons and keep going. That’s when I usually lose it.

Things quieted down for a while after that with that girl in high school, but when another girl set her sights on that same guy, we had to go through the whole thing
all over again
. Just like the first girl, this new one was also jealous of our relationship. So one day, she and her friends waited for me and tried to jump me.

School had just ended for the day, and as I headed outside to the bus, I turned a corner and saw that girl and her friends waiting for me. No one else was around, so I was all alone. Just them and me. After they surrounded me, the girl started hurling a lot of ugly words at me, calling me a
puta
and telling me to stay away from him. I basically said that if he wanted to be with her, he would. Even though we were just yelling at each other at this point, I knew what was going to happen next: they were going to pull my hair, scratch me, push me—and punch me. They were trying to scare me because there were so many of them and only one of me. I wasn’t afraid of them. I thought what they were doing was ridiculous. I held my own and stood strong. I didn’t back down. I was one tough Italian cookie and they knew it.

Then, out of nowhere, a friend of mine happened to be passing by and saw that I was in trouble. She pulled out a knife and they scattered like mice. I was shocked. I didn’t even know she carried a knife on her. Thank goodness she did.

Since I went to school with some tough kids, I learned to be tough and stand up for myself. You had to be strong there. If you showed anyone you were weak, you were done. The good thing about going to school there, though, was that I had friends from all walks of life—black, white, Latina—which taught me to be open-minded and nonjudgmental when it comes to other races and cultures. It’s one of the things that helped me in prison, where I also met all kinds of people—and, just like in high school, had friends from all kinds of backgrounds.

In my heart, I think God sent my badass, knife-carrying friend my way that day for a reason. Otherwise, I would have had to defend myself against all of them. I know I could have handled myself and held my own, but still, there were a lot of girls there. Thank God nothing at all happened to me and that my friend was there to back me up. I didn’t want another suspension, or for my parents to get upset again.

One thing I learned from that horrible day was that yes, those girls wanted to scare me, but that will never work with me. Doing something like that will just make me come back even stronger. I didn’t tell my mom that I was almost attacked because I knew she would be worried about me. But I’ve never been afraid to stand up to anyone. I don’t like fighting, but if I need to stand up for myself, I will. I may have a soft and kind heart, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a backbone. Standing strong is just one trait many Italians share, and I’m proud to be able to do that for my family and myself.

P
eople out in the world have said they think I am “pampered and spoiled.” That’s not true at all. I have always been a hard worker. My parents instilled a strong work ethic in Joey and me from a young age. They always told us to work as hard as we could for our money—and to save, save, save, like they did. I have no problem working hard. I actually like to work. All my employers would always say that I hustled. Later on, at book signings for the four cookbooks I wrote, I would never take a break. I wouldn’t stop until everyone waiting in line got an autograph and a picture. I was at one event at a Barnes & Noble until two in the morning, because there were so many people there waiting to meet me! I didn’t mind. I wanted to make sure everyone left happy.

I started working at a young age. When I was ten or so, I got my own paper route after begging my father to let me do it. He finally gave in, thinking I would do it for a few weeks and get it out of my system. But I loved it. Unlike other kids, who delivered the newspapers on their bikes, my father would drive me from house to house because he wanted to make sure I was safe. I prided myself as the papergirl who put the newspaper in the mailbox because that was the right thing to do. I would think to myself, “If I throw the newspaper on the lawn or in the driveway and it rains, how will my customers read it?” I got tipped well for my extra efforts. People would tell me they never had someone put the paper in the mailbox before. I just wanted to do the best job possible, something I have tried to do my whole life.

When I was fourteen, my dad helped me get a job at Shoe Town, a shoe store in Ramsey, New Jersey. Since I only worked on Saturdays, I would drive in to work with my dad. He would drop me off at Shoe Town at 8 a.m. and pick me up at 5:15 p.m., when he was done with work. When I got my driver’s license, I worked more, especially during vacations and when I was off from school. Eventually, I started working at the Shoe Town in the Preakness Shopping Center in Wayne, New Jersey. That Shoe Town closed awhile ago and is now a Trader Joe’s. I smile whenever I drive past there because I loved working there and making my own money. But most of all, I was happy that my parents were so proud of me for being so responsible.

I
n high school, I started thinking about a future career, so I took the business program there and learned how to type on a typewriter—because we didn’t have computers back then—and write shorthand. That kind of thing. I really loved it. After I graduated in 1990, I went to Berkeley College for fashion merchandising and management. I learned so much and graduated two years later with an associate’s degree. In the fall we went on a fashion trip with the school to Paris and London . . . a dream trip! I fell in love with both of those cities—especially Paris. I had a hard time understanding what they were saying to me, even though I speak Italian. I would love to take my girls there one day.

All in all, I had a happy childhood. My parents taught me to love and respect them and my family, to love God, to always try to do the right thing, and to be a good wife and mother—all things I am passing down to my own daughters today.