ANGIE AND CONCETTA
The brothers were bored. Dad was at work, Mom was out grocery shopping. She left Joe in charge. After Angie, their mother, left, the boys tried to figure out what to do to amuse themselves until she came back. They knew she’d be gone for a few hours.
“Let’s play Angie and Cunjett’,” Joe suggested.
“Yeah!” Michael agreed.
This was a game Joe came up with and that they’d played a couple of times before. They’d go into their mother’s bedroom closet, grab a couple of her house dresses, put them on, and pretend they were their mother and her best friend Concetta, whose name their mother pronounced “Cunjett’.” This time Joe put on the blue and white house dress with the ruffled collar and Michael the pink and blue floral print one. Joe took out two of their mother’s pocketbooks and handed one to his brother. He opened the makeup case their mother kept on her dresser top and grabbed a tube of lipstick. He smeared some on his lips and then tried to dab a little on his brother’s mouth.
“No, cut it out!” Michael protested.
“C’mon, Cunjett’. Doncha wanna look pretty?”
Michael laughed. Then he let his brother smear a little color on his lips.
“Wait a sec’,” Joe said. “I almost forgot!”
Joe grabbed a pillow off the living room sofa and stuffed it inside Michael’s house dress. Cunjett’ was fat, and the pillow made the dress bulge in the middle, just as Cunjett’s belly protruded from her clothing.
They looked at themselves in their mother’s bureau mirror and giggled.
“Ya look beeyootiful Cunjett’.”
“You too, Ange!”
“Whaddya wanna do, Cunjett’?”
“I don’t know, wanna go shopping?”
“Yeah, I need stuff for dinner.”
“Okay, let’s go to the pork store.”
“Wait a sec’.”
Joe ran to the kitchen and took out a couple of the shopping bags their mother kept in a cabinet under the sink.
“Sal, I need some parmajahn and some moozadell.”
(Sal worked in the Italian import store Angie favored. He always was happy to see Angie and paid more attention to her than most of the other women customers, as Joe noticed. One time she asked him for a “nice piece of provolone” and Sal said, “Only the best for you, bella.”)
“And I need stuff for the brah-zhaul. Gimme two pounds chuck. And some pignolees.”
“Madonn’, Ange, it’s too friggin’ hot for brah-zhaul!”
“Cunjett’, Joe likes my brah-zhaul, what am I gonna do?”
“Ang, I need a cigarette.”
“Cunjett’, you smoke too much. It’s bad for ya.”
“Fongool, I wanna smoke!”
The boys crack up laughing.
“Cunjett’, whadddya gonna make for Artie’s dinner?”
“Mannygawt, his favorite.”
“Madonn’, it’s too friggin’ hot for mannygawt!”
“What am I gonna do, give him hot dogs, like Agnes? Can ya believe it, she makes her husband hot dogs for dinner.”
“Ah, he’s Irish, what does he know about good food.”
The boys laugh. Their mother had said exactly that.
“All he likes is meat and potatoes, meat and potatoes.”
More laughter.
“Ah, Cunjett, let’s go home, my feet hurt, I gotta put ‘em in the Epson salts.”
“I keep tellin’ ya, Ange, those high heels are bad for your tootsies.”
The boys were laughing so hard, enjoying their game, that they didn’t hear their mother come in from the front door. They were still laughing when she came into the kitchen with her bags of groceries.
“What the hell!” she exclaimed when she saw her sons in her housedresses, holding her purses, lipstick smeared on their mouths.
“Put that stuff away and wash your faces!”
She sounded angry but Joe could see the amusement in her eyes.
When their father came home from work, Angie told him about the boys’ “antics.” When she saw his expression, she regretted saying anything. I should’ve kept my goddam mouth shut, she told herself.
At dinner, Joe Sr. was quiet. When he wasn’t eating, his lips were pressed together, forming a thin line. Joe knew what that expression meant.
After the table had been cleared and the dishes washed and put away, Joe Sr. called the boys into the TV room.
“Whose idea was this, you gettin’ into Mom’s clothes and makin’ antics?”
“Joe’s!” Michael said.
“I thought so.”
Joe Sr. unbuckled his belt, pulled it from his pants, and folded it in two. Then, grim-faced, he struck both boys on their behinds with it, three or four whacks each.
Angie tried to stop him but he told her, “Don’t interfere.”
“I don’t wanna hear you did somethin’ like this again, you hear? Go ta bed!”
“But it’s only eight o’clock,” Joe protested through his tears.
“I said, go to bed, goddammit.”
In their bedroom, Joe turned on his brother.
“You told on me!”
“It was your idea!”
“Yeah, but we gotta stick together against them.”
They flopped down on their bunkbed, Joe on top, Michael on the bottom.
“Ssshh,” Joe said. In the quiet, they could hear their parents’ voices.
“I don’t know what to do about him,” Joe Sr. said.
“They were just fooling around. What are you so upset about?”
“Dressin’ up like women. I’m tellin’ you, I’m worried about him. He don’t like sports. We go visit the relatives and he’s playin’ with the girls. Vinny noticed it when we there for Easter. He said something to me.”
“Your brother should worry about his own kids. I’m tellin’ you, Joe, don’t make a big deal about it. You’ll give him a complex.”
“You always take his side. And I blame you for this. Remember that Halloween when you dressed him up like a gypsy girl? I never shoulda let you do that.”
“Oh come on. He was so cute. Everybody got a big kick out of it.”
“You put lipstick on him and those earrings. And a dress. I shouldn’ta let you do it.”
“Look, you’re making a big fuss about nothing. One year he was a cowboy. He loved the hat and the guns. He was always goin’ on about Roy Rogers.”
“That was a coupla years ago. Look what he did today. Bad enough he did that but he got Michael to do it too. The two of them, in your house dresses and lipstick and all.”
“So, whaddya wanna do about it?”
“If he does it again he’s gonna get a beatin’. A real one next time.”
“Joe, cut it out. It’s kid stuff, he’s only 11, for chrissakes. He’ll grow out of it.”
“He better. I swear, if he does anything like that again, he’s gettin’ a beatin’.”
“You sound just like your father now.”
“My father? He never woulda put up with this. Never.”
“He was a mean bastard. Why do you wanna be like him?”
“He worked hard. When he came home he didn’t want to put up with any bullshit.”
“Yeah, he worked hard -– when he was around. When he wasn’t with one’a his gumads.”
“Well, that’s true. He liked a lotta women.”
Angie and Joe Sr. laughed. Joe felt relieved. He knew the worst was over. He heard his mother say,
“C’mon, let’s watch TV. Ben Casey’s on in a little while. I’ll make us a snack.”
Joe and Michael fell asleep to the sounds of their parents’ voices.
An hour or so later, Angie got up from the sofa and turned off the television. She glanced at her husband, asleep in his armchair and snoring. It always was like this; he never made it all the way through the medical drama that was Angie’s favorite show. She liked the dark, handsome young doctor who had an Irish last name but she knew was Italian. Ben Casey reminded her of Sal, at the pork store, who sometimes got a little fresh with her. Not that she minded.
Angie left the TV room and went to the boys’ bedroom to check on them. They were both asleep, Michael in his striped PJs and lying on his stomach, Joe in his underwear, lying on his side. Angie watched them for a while, then pulled the tangled sheet and blanket over Joe and tucked him in. She saw that there was a tiny, faint smudge of lipstick at the corner of Joe’s lower lip. She took a tissue out of the pocket of her house dress and gently wiped it off. She stood in the doorway for a few seconds, looking at her older boy, and then quietly closed the door.
Bio:
George De Stefano is a New York-based writer and editor specializing in culture (music, books,and film), politics, and social issues (ethnicity, race, and immigration). He is the author of An Offer We Can’t Refuse: The Mafia in the Mind of America (Farrar, Straus, Giroux) and a contributor to numerous other books, including the Routledge History of Italian Americans, Our Naked Lives: Essays from Gay Italian American Men (Bordighera Press), Mafia Movies (University of Toronto), The Essential Sopranos Reader (University of Kentucky Presses), and Reggae, Rasta, and Revolution (Schirmer). He is working on a book about the Sicilians of New Orleans. His articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Nation, Newsday, Film Comment, The Advocate, The Italian American Review, Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, and the online publications PopMatters, Rootsworld, the New York Journal of Books, La Voce di New York and I-Italy. He also has appeared in the documentary films “Beyond Wiseguys,” “The Godfather Legacy,” and the four-part PBS series, “The Italian Americans.” He has presented his work at conferences and arts festivals in the United States and Europe.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 