At sixteen, on a sunny summer day, you lay in bed, daydreaming about your future. The image of a shiny linoleum floor with a woman pristinely dressed comes to mind. In her lovely arms, she holds a bottle of Mop and Glo in one hand and a sponge mop in the other. She wears candy apple red high heels, a taffeta evening gown, and a magnificent smile of sparkling white teeth. Her husband enters through the front door in a crisp designer suit and a loosened striped silk tie. It's as if he just walked off the runway for Hugo Boss. This is your paradise: a clean floor, a businessman for a husband, and a homemade banana cream pie in the oven—everything perfect for your male model husband and your ideal life.
But then, you snap out of your daydream and hear your father returning from work. Banging and yelling come from downstairs in the kitchen. It’s as if a storm cloud suddenly came through and burst open all over the household. These are daily occurrences when your father comes home from work, and dinner is not on the table waiting for him.
"Jesus H. Christ, I've been pounding a hammer all day. I need to eat now!" yells your father. Everyone calls him Chick, even though his name is Anthony. Rumor has it that he had skinny chicken legs as a kid. He tells us it means the watch-out person. Your father owns a construction business. Your father frequently yells and threatens clients who owe him money. Your father has bleeding stomach ulcers that sometimes cause him to eat jars of baby food for dinner.
Your mother, who should know better, is notoriously late making dinner. She is late for everything. When you are older, your sisters bet on a racehorse with your mother's name. It has a 50 to 1-chance of winning. You save your money and don't join in the gamble. The horse comes in last— as expected.
"Chick, take it easy. It's almost ready. Take a shower, and dinner will be on the table by the time you are done," your mother says as calmly as she can, but you can hear the stress in her voice. Your father's expectations of dinner being ready when he enters the house where five kids live are just plain delusional. Or, maybe your mother likes his regular outbursts. Maybe it makes her feel wanted and needed.
"A fanabla," says your father as he stomps up the stairs in his construction-dust covered jeans and a white T-shirt.
"A fanabla" is your father's favorite curse whenever he is mad at anything or anyone. You are not quite sure why he is always telling you all to "go to hell" in Italian slang.
Your cursing father yells up the stairs and stops in front of your door. Bang, bang, bang.
Shit, you think. You jump out of bed, pretending you are cleaning your room even though everything is in perfect order. You crack your door open, and there stands a raging bull.
"Oh, hi, Dad, I didn't hear you come home."
"Go downstairs and help your mother with dinner, for Christ's sake," he snorts. "Where is your sister Angela?"
"At softball practice," you say. He doesn't ask where the twins Aimee and Alison are because they are too young to be servants. He also doesn't ask where Tony is because, as a boy, he is never part of the unpaid kitchen help in an Italian family.
Downstairs, you join your mother, who frantically turns meatballs in a cast-iron frying pan. She barks a bunch of orders without looking at you. You could be bleeding from your eyes, and she would still continue her list: Set the table, Get the butter out, Put some grated cheese in a bowl, Start making a salad, Don't forget the black olives, Go call your brother—I think he's at cousin Mark's, Tell Aimee and Alison to wash their hands, and Go next door to see if your grandparents want to eat dinner with us? You want to yell, Yes, Sir! On the double, Sir! Why couldn't she be the Mop and Glo lady, and just have the damn dinner ready? How hard is it to be in a dress with pearls and perfect make-up, holding a big carved roast on a platter at 5 pm on the dot?
You spend five minutes searching for the stupid black olives because the refrigerator is chaotic. No matter how many times you organize, it still looks like items are thrown in without thought. It is if the family plays a game called, Close Your Eyes, Throw Shit in the Fridge, and See if it Lands Right Side Up!"
Once dinner is on the table, your mother calls for your father.
"Chick, dinner is ready!"
You are off collecting all siblings. You find the twins in their room playing Uno for the ten-thousandth time. If there were such a thing as a children's Uno competition, they would be world champs. You then walk over to your cousin's house, who lives next door, and tell Tony to get the hell home for dinner ASAP. When you return home, you run into Angela at the front door.
"Angel, (her nickname), change out of your dirty clothes and get to the table before Dad's head pops off." Angel does not even need to reply. She sprints home.
You all sit at the table, waiting to see if your father's mood has changed. Now that he is showered and eating, you hope the storm has passed. He sits in his usual seat at the head of the table, his black hair wet and slicked back. He wears a clean white T-shirt and jeans that are pressed with crisp seams. Your father never wears wrinkled clothes. Once, you saw your mother ironing his swimming trunks.
Still, no one talks at the table until you have a pulse on your father's state of mind. You pass the steaming bowls to one another and find places to set them back down on the crowded table meant for four. The seven of you begin to eat in silence. Like prey stalked by a dangerous animal, you look out for your father's mood from the corner of my eye. Outside he seems calmer, but inside he is always pissed about whatever he is constantly pissed about. You are in the eye of the storm, but it won't be long before the winds knock you for a loop. Sure enough, a glass of milk is spilled, and off he goes, banging his fists on the table and yelling, "A fanabla!"
"Chick, it's only milk," your mother says as she starts soaking it up with a dishtowel draped over her shoulder.
You stand up from the table and retrieve a roll of paper towels. As you pass by your father, you still expect to be hit in the back of the head for spilling something, even though it has been a few years since he last hit you—not quite sure why he stopped. Maybe he is just too tired.
After dinner, you and Angel do the dishes—it is your long-term job assignment. You switch off from washing to drying. Washing is more laborious— your mother makes a world-class mess when she cooks. Aimee and Alison run upstairs and continue their Uno game, Tony escapes back to cousin Mark's, and your mother finds some reason why she has to go shopping for the third time in one day. Your father turns the TV on in the living room and watches it till he falls asleep. If you drop something in the kitchen, the tiger will wake up and make us all run for cover.
Once the dishes are clean, dry, and back in the cabinets, you go to your room to read whatever romance novel you were lost in. Titles resemble The Pirate and the Princess, The Fire Within, and One Night with a King. Every story has a similar formula—a stubborn woman needs a lesson from an asshole of a man. At first, the female characters hate the male antagonist. Most of the time, she is kidnapped. In the end, she falls in love with the swine, and then he turns tender on her and gives his manhood to her, wanting lady parts.
As a teen in a house of turmoil and unending chores, getting kidnapped by a pirate seems like a nice vacation. You will be alone most of the time. Your meals will be brought to you in the ship's hold, and your new boyfriend has the best taste in jewelry, even though he only has one eye. Once you and the pirate marry, you will return home to collect your belongings. Your family will be wildly jealous that you have an unlimited supply of rubies and a large boat and travel around the world while having great sex with your husband, who, although he has one peg leg, is a magnificent lover. And the best part of having a sea captain husband is his scullery-maid does all the dishes, and no one on the ship cares when someone spills ale at dinner—spilling is expected in the pirate world. It means everyone was having a grand old time.
But the truth is, years later, you marry a non-pirate who calls you Honey. Your life is mostly sunshine inside and out. You choose when and if dinner will be served. When you do decide to make a family dinner, you serve wine. However, your son's small plastic wine glass contains milk, which always stands right side up for some reason. You never make your only child do the dishes—your husband loads the dishwasher while your son does homework or practices Beethoven on his double bass. You must carefully put away the leftovers in glass containers with red lids that match the kitchen color theme. You place the leftovers in the highly organized refrigerator with a specific spot for all items. Sometimes your husband complains about doing the dishes, yelling things like, "Why are there so many damn dishes!?" Translated in Italian, it likely means Ah Fanabla. That's when you escape to your bedroom and read. The books are no longer romance novels but mostly nonfiction and memoirs—stories of how people live, survive, and overcome. Still, if you hear something drop, break, or bang, your shoulders jump to your ears, hoping they can find a safe place to run away and hide from the storm.
Andrea Tate is a writing professor for Antioch University. Some of her essays can be found in The Huffington Post, Hippocampus Literary Magazine, Role/Reboot, Entropy, Funny Pearls, and more. She is currently working on a memoir. Learn more about Andrea at www.andreatate.net.
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