Uproar.
I wriggled and slumped into my knees, which were pretzeled in the tortuous sitting position we called “Indian style.” The sweat from the creases of my palms dampened the edges of the blue-lined paper.
“Victor, why don’t you give me an example of a healthy breakfast food?” said Ms. O’Donnell.
“How about… pancakes and eggs and…” I started.
Before I could finish, Ms. O’Donnell cut me off. “No, no, no. Those aren’t healthy foods. Someone help him out.”
I was mortified. I couldn’t read and I couldn’t name a healthy breakfast food. I didn’t raise my hand for a month.
On Sundays after church we would pile into my father’s wood-paneled station wagon and drive through the sidewalkless streets of Old Short Hills—I felt like a tourist in my own town. My mother would point from the passenger seat and say “Oh, Tony, look at that one. Look at that one,” and “You won’t see people like Mr. Sci-Fi here.” Mr. Sci-Fi was one of our neighbors in our old town who didn’t maintain his property so the government wouldn’t raise his taxes.
Tony was my father’s name and my grandfather’s name, along with my brother’s, of course. But my great-grandfather was Gerry, or Gerrardo, and he came from the old country and settled in West Orange, New Jersey as a barber. He had thirteen children; my grandfather was the youngest. All throughout Essex County there were Ferraros, or Ferraros who married DiLeas or DeMarcos or Cavallos, many of whom I had never met.
“We come from Avellino,” my father would say. “Very poor, from Southern Italy. They look down on us, the Northern Italians do. My grandfather, Gerry the Barber, was at a wedding, and they called it off because the families discovered one side was from the North and the other was from the South. Can you believe that? Don’t forget where you come from, boys,” he would say, looking at us through the rearview mirror for an uncomfortable amount of time. “Brit, how are you doing back there? Do you hear me? Tell us where our family comes from.”
Britney, my younger sister, had autism and barely spoke. She clutched her stuffed horse and didn’t respond. She never left the house without Marlene.
“Brit,” my father said, again adjusting the rearview mirror so he could see us in the infamous third row of the station wagon, where the two benches faced each other and always made me carsick. “Britney, I asked you a question. Where does our family come from?” She clutched Marlene tighter.
“Britney, baby, where does Daddy’s side of the family come from?” attempted my mother.
“Britney, Nana talked to you about this last weekend.”
“Alright, enough, Tony. Oh! Look at that one,” she said, pointing to a new-age Asian-fusion mammoth like it was the Eiffel Tower.
“Do we still have my mother’s sauce from last weekend?” he asked.
“Yes, and your sister Marie dropped off some more yesterday.”
“When was that?”
“You were at soccer or field hockey. I don’t know. I never know where you are.”
My father was the athletic director at Millburn High School. It was why we moved in the first place, so he wouldn’t fall asleep at the wheel on the ride home.
Millburn Township is divided by Short Hills and Millburn itself, and both funnel into the same high school.
“Oh, that’s great. Hear that, Vito?!”—my father frequently Italianized my name—“You can take some of Nana’s sauce with you to school tomorrow. And some sausage or braciole. Do we have any braciole left, hun?”
“I don’t want to take any braciole,” I said.
“What was that?!”
“Tony, turn the radio down.”
“I don’t want to take any braciole to school!”
“What?! Why? You love Nana’s sauce and braciole!”
“I swear I could eat that sauce with a spoon,” she said.
“I just don’t wanna.”
“Victor, what happened at school?” said my mom as she maneuvered her head to get a look at a stucco monstrosity with a terra-cotta roof.
“Italians live there,” said my father.
“How do you know that?”
“The fountain in the front yard is always a giveaway.”
“Huh? Well then, what do you want for lunch? And stop playing with your hair.”
I had developed the habit of curling and swirling any hair that grew behind my ear or sprouted out from my cowlick—surely it would’ve been my tell had I been an escaped and unrecognizable fugitive from the Château d’If. At times it seemed that breaking me of the habit was my parents’ reason for existing, as if they had signed a blood vow to a deity.
“I don’t know… just not braciole.”
“Sheesh, alright, more for me,” my father said as he turned the radio back up to listen to the Giants pregame analysis.
The truth was I loved braciole, but the last Monday I brought in leftovers from Sunday dinner, Pierce Stone said I looked like I was eating a “brown penis” as I bit into the meat. He even got up from the lunch table and counted the red dots of Nana’s sauce lining my Big Dog t-shirt like a Neapolitan constellation. “Five! Wait… six, seven… nine! Nine spots!”
In class, Michaela Silves walked over to me and pulled a tissue out of her backpack. She licked the part that covered her finger and wiped at the sauce stains.
“Thanks,” I said
“It’s hard to be new,” she said as she dabbed more vigorously at the stains.
“It’s okay. My mom will get them out,” I said, slowly sliding back in my chair.
She licked and blotted again, and while looking down at the shirt, said, “Victor, I think that we should have a playdate.”
“A what?”
“A playdate. You can come over to my house.”
I had never heard of such a thing.
“We will be alone… It will be fun!”
“No way!” I kicked back the chair, and it slid across the
