21st Annual City Paper Writing Contest

Runner-Up: Hindsight

by M.G. Tarquini

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Published: Jan 3, 2007

In this life, I have perfectly pressed panties. I'm thirty-three years old and my mother still irons my underwear.

My sister, Angela, is twenty-seven. My brother, Joey, is thirty-six. Ma irons their underwear, also.

We don't need our underwear ironed. Ma irons it because we live at home. We don't live at home because we want to. We live at home because we have no choice.

We're Italian.

CHAPTER ONE

Italian. Fast cars, designer shoes, Galileo, DaVinci, Guiseppe Verdi. Tuscan landscapes, picturesque islands, earthy foods and ancient stone grottos.

Wrong.

My picturesque island is a two-story row house, fifteen feet wide and thirty-five feet deep, near Twelfth and Shunk Streets in South Philadelphia. I share a bedroom with my sister. We fight over closet space.

My grotto is a front room adorned by brown velvet sofas covered in plastic slipcovers. Jesus hangs over the entrance, his purpose to protect. Cupid lamps arranged on handmade doilies pay homage to the two foot porcelain Blessed Virgin Mary who stands on the sill of our picture window between Ma's prized gold brocade drapes. Mary faces outward, palms extended, our signal to the world that those within are pious, law-abiding and welcoming.

Homemade tomato gravy simmers in a linoleum-tiled kitchen. In summer, oregano-laced steam rises to join humidity too thick for the exhaust fan to disperse. In winter, that same steam fogs the window. Too much of the wine I drink originates in a neighbor's basement. Same with the gin.

I take the bus to work, walking past one faux-plastered rowhouse after another to get to it. Some are fake bricks, others fake boulders, a hodgepodge of bad taste incomprehensible in a people who produced the coliseum, Michaelangelo's David and the Basilica of St. Peter. No matter how early I leave, I have to stop to cross myself out of respect for whatever funeral is clogging traffic on South Broad Street.

Italian-American didn't top my list. Too much like being Greek-American, my lot in my last life, except we cross ourselves in the opposite direction when we pray. Both ethnicities favor big hips, big boobs, grabby men, extra-virgin olive oil and guilt. Lots and lots of guilt.

I longed for something exotic and colorful for my next incarnation. I didn't want a piously productive existence like those depicted in the posters lining the walls at the Central Intake Office. Visions of cockatiels and elephants filled my drinking hours at the Celestial Seasons, one of the Interlife clubs. There, I imagined ginger and champaca flower wreaths wafting intrigue on the evening breeze.

Blame Rudyard. He nursed gin and beer on the stool beside me, called me Best Beloved, muttered lines from Gunga Din at intervals. In my dreams, Rudyard transformed to a sultry, sarong-wrapped young man who draped me across a silk-covered divan. In low, sonorous tones, he elaborated the secrets of the Kama Sutra, point by tender point.

Synchronicity. I'd been mooning over that movie and Cary Grant when I departed my Greek life. I bought my acid from a new dealer that night in '72. It's true you get what you pay for. An unfortunate combination of bad drugs, bad spanikopita and Nixon's landslide reelection caused me to fling myself out the fourth-floor window of my boyfriend's Northeast Philadelphia apartment, my intent to book a passage to India.

I count that one of my more embarrassing exits.

Whatever extra kick can be found in Interlife firewater inspired me to fill out the paperwork. I wrote INDIAN in big block letters. Wrote the word KSHATRIYA beside it, the caste of governors and generals. They have more fun than the Brahmins. I stipulated an upper middle-class income, daily cleaning help, a skinny butt, flat stomach and a wardrobe filled with gold-trimmed purple and red saris.

The closing credits rolled on my Technicolor Bollywood fantasy before I put down the pen. The guy the Interlife Authorities assigned to process my paperwork had it in for me.

I cracked his skull four centuries ago, during the Thirty Years War, when we lived in the little Bavarian town of Oberholt. I found him rooting through the contents of the back room of my father's bookbinding business, his bad foot tracking uneven mud prints across my clean floor.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Looking for Joachim." He riffled through a stack of buckram cotton, used to cover our bindings. "Came to collect my due."

Joachim was my cousin and my guardian.

"Joachim's at church," I lied.

The guy had a name but was known around town as Der Weasel. He came with the Lutherans, a thug in Oberholt's new non-Catholic order. He always demanded his cut, no matter what the action. Joachim gave it. He had no choice.

Der Weasel tossed the buckram aside. He scratched a dirty fingernail beside fresh stitches on his left cheek. "Where will I find the printing press?"

Fuck. He knew about the press. "Joachim sold it long ago."

"So he claims." Der Weasel went back to searching. "Claims he doesn't know anything about the Papist nonsense somebody tacked to the church doorways last night, either."

Oops.

Der Weasel crouched by the hearth and pulled the heavy iron kettle clear of its hiding place, a pile of embers that had also served to cook its contents. He lifted the lid. The scent of meat and sauerkraut filled the room. "Bratwurst?"

"Rabbit. Joachim laid a few snares." Nobody had bratwurst that autumn. I should have cooked it hours before, but Hallowmas had kept everybody up until dawn.

Der Weasel straightened. He pulled a knife from under his shirt, went to work cleaning his fingernails. "Really? Only thing I been snaring lately is rats." He spat into the coals. They hissed.

He stowed the knife, then moved around the room, examining jars, uncovering boxes. He sniffed one. "Cinnamon." He checked another. "And chocolate."

"It's old. I'm saving it for something special."

He ignored me, prying lids off barrels, shoving baskets around. He cleared one corner, opened a cupboard and pulled out a rosary. "This should interest the Freiherr."

"That rosary belonged to my mother. Forgot it was even there." I moved closer, meaning to grab it, but he pushed me away.

He flipped through the pages of a Latin missal, then pointed to the cupboard where a painted wooden icon of the Blessed Mother begged me to keep my cool. He picked up the icon. "I suppose you forgot this was there also?"

Joachim had told me to find a better place to hide those things. Lutherans were in power. Catholic icons were treasonous.

"Joachim's at church," I repeated.

Der Weasel dropped the Blessed Mother on a counter. Wood clunked against wood, then clunked again as Mary toppled to Her side. He backed me to the table's edge, rested a hand on the well-scrubbed top along either side of my skirts. "That makes it convenient, doesn't it?"

The aroma of real cognac couldn't mask the stink of sweat, the fine cut of his linen collar didn't hide the scratches at the base of his neck.

"How'd you get those? Forget to say please?" The words were out before I realized my mistake. The scratches could be blamed on a girl, but a knife was to blame for the slash on Der Weasel's face. The only person I knew who was better with a knife than Der Weasel, was Joachim.

Shit. Why hadn't Joachim warned me?

I slid down, meaning to duck beneath his elbow, a maneuver I'd executed many times before, one Der Weasel had always allowed.

Not this time.

He caught me by the hair, bent me sideways and shoved my skirts up over my hips. Threads popped a staccato report as seams gave way. "I'll give you please." He whipped the knife out again, teased a pattern along my jaw. "Maybe even thank you."

Wooden Mary wouldn't watch. She kept Her head bowed, hands folded in silent prayer, ignoring my predicament. Der Weasel pressed the blade closer. His hands moved under my blouse, his tongue along my ear.

I head-butted him, arms flailing, fingers flexing. They closed on the saltcellar, flung the contents into his eyes, then the container against his temple. He stumbled against the counter, knocking a vial of rose oil, last of a stash Joachim had purchased from the Spaniard, to the floor. It shattered, the scent spread in a stellate pattern across the rough-hewn planks.

Der Weasel convulsed in a fit of sneezing. Allergies from the rose oil. I kneed him. When he straightened, I kneed him harder, grabbed the Blessed Mother and landed Her against the back of his head with as much force as my work-hardened muscles could muster. Der Weasel toppled into the evening stew.

How dare he lay there, backside exposed, bleeding into the bratwurst. I dragged Der Weasel to the root cellar and kicked the bastard down the steps. Let him enter eternity staring at that stupid printing press. Little turd didn't even know how to read.

I've never liked Der Weasel, but that's the only time I killed him. I didn't care. I still don't. Sonovabitch had it coming.

Four hundred years is a long time to hold a grudge. I should have kept better track of Der Weasel. He sent the Assignments Committee goons for me while Rudyard explained the finer points of the mongoose and I tried to convince him to give mortality another go. They barely gave the illustrious Mr. Kipling time to wish me bon voyage before they shoved me down the cattle chute.

My paperwork flashed before my eyes as I tumbled. Der Weasel had substituted Italian for Indian, pudgy for petite, and Philly for Punjab.

How come I know this and ninety-nine point seven percent of the population doesn't?

I have the gift. Born with a caul. That sounds mysterious. It just means the amniotic sac still stuck to me when Ma pushed me out. It's rare, but it happens. Italians think that gives me second sight, the ability to see the future.

It's a load of crap. The caul didn't cover my face, it covered my butt. I see my pasts. I have hindsight.

Cordelia Francis Biddle's Comments

"Hindsight reveals a sly, clever and compelling voice. The premise is wonderfully original: a street-savvy contemporary Italian-American female protagonist confronting her own raucous and ebullient history. No simple time-travel tale, this is a story to sit up and notice. The same should be said about the author."

 

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21st Annual City Paper Writing Contest
21st Annual City Paper Writing Contest