City School Field had a great summer day camp for kids 6 to 12 and all the kids in my neighborhood attended the camp. My brother and I always went home for lunch since we lived just a few houses down the street. “Hey Lou, let’s go home and have some lunch”, I said.
We raced down Hotchkiss Street, up our driveway to the back door……
Locked! Ran around to the front, vaulted up the steps, pushed on the door…………………………………locked! Baffled my brother said, “Where is everyone? I’m starving!”
“Mom took Jeri to Dr. Vinci and she took Lulu with her. They’ll be back in a few minutes.” I was trying my best to be mature but my stomach was rumbling. We sat on the front steps for what seemed to be an eternity and Lou groaned and said, “Do you think something happened to Mom and the girls?”
“Of course not stupid! They’re just late. They’ll be here any minute,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster. Another ten minutes went by, still no sign of them. We were both starting to wilt from heat and hunger. All of a sudden a familiar looking car turned onto our street and pulled up in front of our house.
To this day I don’t know what got into me; maybe the heat and the hunger pangs triggered some kind of aberrant chemical reaction in my brain which activated the synapses that send signals to the rational part of that brain, obliterating the rational thought process. I rose to my feet as my mother was getting out of the car and at the top of my lungs I yelled,
“Ma che cazzo fai!”
My mother froze, put my baby sister down and slowly turned toward me. The expression on her face went from open mouthed incredulity to amused anger to unbridled maternal fury. I was in big trouble! Loosely translated, what I had just yelled at my adorable Italian mother was the equivalent of “What the f__k are you doing?”
I was frozen in place at the top of the front steps. I knew I had to move because she was coming straight for me. My brother was pushing me saying, “Nino she is really mad you better run.” And run I did! The length of the porch to the side of the house where I vaulted the railing and landed in the neighbor’s hedges. (Another big mistake.) I took off for the backyard with my mother screaming, “Nino come back here, you know I’m going to get you one way or another.” I stopped to get my basketball in the shed behind the garage and sprinted all the way up the hill to the basketball court behind the frat house. Once there, I bent over to catch my breath, not from the exertion rather from the fear and excitement. Of course my mother didn’t follow me up there. Eventually I would have to go home, probably sooner rather than later. I was still hungry but I figured the longer I stayed up here the more my mother’s anger would dissipate.
I was sitting with my back resting against the wooden pole to which the backboard and basketball hoop were attached. It was one of those creosote coated telephone poles, but the thousands of backs that had rested there had already rubbed away the nasty, stain producing substance. I shot hoops here, by myself, almost every morning. I was lucky, the frat boys didn’t mind my playing here as long as it wasn’t too early. I looked around and saw there were several very upscale cars parked in the driveway even though school hadn’t started yet, it was only the third week of August and school wasn’t scheduled to start until the end of the month. A brand new Thunderbird, a cherry
Red Corvette, a sleek MG, all very nice but I had to figure out a way of getting back into my mother’s good graces. Ordinarily I wouldn’t worry because I was her “number one son”, her favorite, which under normal circumstances gave me a lot of latitude. This was a little trickier because I had yelled that phrase loud enough that all our neighbors, Italian all, heard what I had said to my mother and were undoubtedly scandalized. My mother had to save face and punish me so they would all see that she was in control.
I knew I should get back home, it was probably after one and I was very hungry and thirsty. Instead, I picked up the basketball and started raining jump shots from wherever I gathered in the rebounds.
I was way off today. I couldn’t get into a rhythm, too much on my mind. I could see the house from up here and I could see my mom’s silhouette at the kitchen window. She was watching and it was time for me to go home and face the music. My brother came out onto the back porch and waved and I started trudging back down the hill.
The minute I walked in the back door I could see that she was still fuming. She started toward me with a dish towel in her hand when my little angel of a baby sister, Jeri, ran right by her and jumped up into my arms. “Ni, Ni, Ni, Nino”, she gurgled and giggled, hugging me around the neck. I hugged her back and tickled her to make her laugh and giggle even more. My mother couldn’t help but smile.
She looked at me and said, “You know that you have to be punished. Everybody heard what you said. Signora Villa was standing on her front porch, Signora Maria was looking out the window and even the Strega was watching. What is wrong with you? Do you even know what you said to me?”
I was blushing and had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach because the last thing I wanted to do was embarrass her and make her life more difficult. It was hard enough raising four kids and working two jobs. She didn’t need the extra “agita”.
“I’m sorry mamma, I didn’t mean to make you mad. What does it mean, anyway?” I asked with a sly smile on my face. She looked at me with an impish grin and said, “It means what the f__k are you doing?”
A sharp intake of breath from me and my brother followed by our nervous laughter.
My mom had just used the F word! Scandalous!
I had used the word twice before and both times sotto voce because I was afraid that an adult might hear me using the word. I was also afraid that I would go straight to Hell each time I said it. This was amazing! I’m sure that my brother was having the same thoughts and emotions. Everything seemed to be suspended in time and we all remained quiet and still, no one seemed to be able to move. Then the pure, sweet voice of my sister Lulu interrupted this tense, uneasy moment,
“What the fug are you doin’?” she said with a squeal and a giggle.
We all reacted with surprise and delight, the laughter bouncing off the walls of our kitchen, releasing the tension that had stopped us all.
Needless to say, my mother did impose a penalty by making me baby-sit my sisters the next three weekends. As my brother and I went through adolescence we always reacted with a wistful smile whenever we heard that vulgar, suggestive word used in almost any context as we relived a singularly sweet moment of our childhood.