The Patron Saint of Ugly Read online

  That day the islanders were edgy because they were expecting a visit from the local duke, or prince, or marquis (the title changing depending on the extent of Nonna’s slur; as it increased, so did her propensity to scramble history).

  (I no drink-a too much!)

  (I really don’t care, Nonna.)

  Whatever his title, Marquis demanded the villagers’ obedience plus their choicest harvest of fruit, grain, and women.

  A trumpet sounded as Marquis approached, the village women wiping their children’s noses and then stuffing kerchiefs into their décolletage. Suddenly, the rumbling of horse hooves, and there he was: an arthritic, liver-spotted old man astride a fiendish black horse. Marquis didn’t bother to dismount. He steered his horse through the merchants’ blankets and stalls, knocking over stacks of brooms and barrels of wine as he collected his monthly tithes. The horse deposited his own stinking loads wherever he wished.

  Suddenly Marquis was struck by a spectacle that warmed his flint-chiseled heart: a budding maiden sitting on the ground humming, a litter of kittens in her lap, climbing up her shoulder, and even nesting in her tousled hair.

  Marquis pulled the steed to a stop in front of Garnet and dismounted, no easy feat given his brittle bones.

  “Who have we here? I thought I knew all the beautiful girls in Sughero. My spies have been neglectful.”

  Garnet knelt before nobility, the kittens tumbling off her and mewling displeasure.

  “Are you married?”

  Garnet looked at Marquis’s feet. “I am married to God.”

  “To God?” The old man gripped Garnet’s chin in his hand. “Such a waste. And you know it’s a sin to be wasteful.” He turned Garnet’s face this way and that. “I shall remedy this.”

  He mounted his horse and galloped away, shouting over his shoulder, “Oh yes! I shall remedy this indeed!”

  Two days later, the family back in their hill cottage, there came a messenger from the marquis requesting Garnet’s hand in marriage. Her parents would be moved into a stone house with valuable pastureland and given a larger herd of goats and two peons to help with the work.

  Father and Mother held their breath.

  “I am married to God,” Garnet said, and her parents exhaled in relief.

  The next day the offering was a larger house with double the servants and a treasury of gold so the family would never again have to labor.

  “I am married to God,” Garnet said.

  The third day it was a villa with even more gold, plus a vineyard and a resident artist (sometimes Michelangelo, sometimes Caravaggio—the wrong century entirely, but hey, it’s Nonna’s fantasy).

  (It’s-a no fantasia!)

  (Anyway.)

  Garnet’s response was the same. “Umm, God.”

  The fourth day there came not a messenger, but a sheriff, who dragged Father away and confiscated the herd of goats.

  God, the girl chose, even in the face of her mother’s streaming tears.

  The fifth day the house was set ablaze, and as Garnet’s mother was lugged off in shackles, she gazed beseechingly at her daughter. “He isn’t so ugly, dear.”

  The sixth day the sheriff heaved Garnet up from her bed of leaves and took her to Marquis’s estate, where a priest was waiting to not only annul Marquis’s current marriage but also pronounce Garnet and the fiend man and wife.

  “No-no-no-no-no! I am married to God!” she said to the priest, who was supposed to be married to God too. But the squirmy toad’s neck was bent under the weight of a leather pouch bulging with coins that would buy his service and silence.

  “No-no-no-no-no!” Garnet wailed for so long that the priest kept losing his place even as Marquis prodded him to hurry up, visions of his wedding bed engorging his lust.

  “Mary, Mother of God, save me!” Garnet cried.

  Finally the priest slammed his prayer book closed. (Apparently even palm-greased Church officials have souls. No offense.) “I can’t do it unless she is willing.”

  “You want her willing? I’ll make her willing.” Just then Marquis looked out a window and saw Mount Etna bubbling. His astronomers had predicted that the volcano would erupt that night, and his black soul devised a black plan.

  “Minions!” he shouted.

  Within seconds, he was surrounded by a band of knee-bending sycophants.

  “Take her to Mount Etna and climb up as high as the heat will allow. Tie her to a stake and let her face the ash and lava. Soon enough she will agree to marry me.”

  “Yes, my lord,” they said, drooling.

  “No!” Garnet howled as they bullied her out and tied her to a mule. They climbed up first through green forest, but soon the soil hardened with pumice stones and dried lava. The volcano belched sulfurous ash and air that singed their eyelashes.

  “Close enough,” one of the minions said.

  They pounded a stake into the scarp and bound Garnet to it. Etna emitted another belch, which sent the minions scrabbling down to safety.

  “Mother of God, save me!” Garnet prayed as the volcano gurgled. Its rumbling resembled the howl of demons; its fiery glow the very furnace of Hell.

  When Etna finally erupted, Garnet closed her eyes. She could feel her body being pelted by lava balls that burned her clothes but, oddly, not her flesh. She prayed to Mary for strength and mercy, even as magma gushed by on both sides.

  And then our heroine fainted and dreamed of twenty-four fat-bellied cherubs fluttering around her, each holding a ladle and a bucket filled with cool spring water, which they doused her with over and over.

  The next morning, under a cloud of ash, the inhabitants of Sughero gathered at the village’s center fountain, now clogged and useless. News spread of Marquis’s meanness, and the villagers trekked to Mount Etna to discover the fate of the girl. All of them went: winemakers; olive-pressers; laundresses; the town harlot; the minions; the sheriff; the neck-bent priest; Garnet’s parents, who had been released from jail, both spilling waterfalls of tears.

  When they reached the base of the smoldering mount, they found it was as devastated as they had feared. Rivulets of lava still glugged down the hillside, incinerating everything in their path. Tree stumps and animal carcasses were reduced to steaming humps. Mother and Father wept at the presumed death of their daughter until one of the minions pointed at something tumbling toward them from high up on the volcano. It wasn’t a giant lava ball; it was a girl, totally nude, sprinting over the red-hot sludge, which did not appear to burn her feet. She tried to cover her nakedness as she neared, and suddenly every male spectator, from the priest to the sheriff to the snarling town mutt, was struck blind. Only the women were left with their vision so they could witness the miracle unfolding: a girl unburned by Mount Etna.

  Which is not to say she was unmarred.

  Her body was speckled with red blotches, but when her mother ran to her, she saw the blotches were not open wounds, neither blistered nor painful. As the women spun Garnet around to study the smooth, odd shapes, the mapmaker’s wife shouted, “She is the world!” For indeed, God had tattooed Garnet with His creation.

  As if that weren’t miracle enough, the town harlot cried, “Hey!”

  Everyone swiveled to watch as she lifted her dress and parted whatever undergarments a harlot wore under her skirt. “Well, what do you know? It’s gone.”

  “What’s gone?” the women asked.

  “My rash. I’ve had this burning and itching for over a month—ruining my trade—and now it’s gone!”

  Just then, half a dozen of the men, including the sheriff, the beer maker, and most of the minions, yelled, “Hey!”

  Though they were still blind idiots, they began rubbing their crotches and doing little jigs. “It’s gone!” Clearly, the harlot had been spreading her glee.

  Mother draped her cloak over her daughter, thus restoring the men’s sight, and just in time, because right before their eyes, the olive-size mole on the broom maker’s nose shriveled to the size of a chickpe
a and fell off. The three-year-old burn on the blacksmith’s face disappeared. The baker’s palm calluses de-callused. Even the mangy town mutt lost his mange.

  The priest fell to his knees before the girl, unlooped the bag of coins around his neck, and pressed it into her palm. “The girl is a holy agent sent from God!”

  The townsfolk fell to their knees in adoration, but Garnet protested. “No! Stand up! I am just a child!” She flung the coins into a huddle of beggars.

  “You are much more than that,” the priest said. “Get thee to a nunnery!” (I know, I know, but nothing else worked.)

  “He’s right,” Mother said, visions of Marquis’s determination whirling in her head. “She will be safe there.” Together, she and Father whisked Garnet toward the convent on an adjacent hill. The residents of Sughero followed, gloating that their village had produced such a miraculous child. Their chests deflated when they saw a black steed racing up to them: Marquis coming to review his handiwork. When he saw the girl, he dismounted and hobbled to her. The townsfolk prayed that his black heart would soften at the miracle standing before him, and his chin did drop, but not for the reason they hoped.

  Marquis leaned in to assess the marks on Garnet’s face. “Away from me! You are too ugly to be in my presence.”

  The townsfolk gasped at his cruel words, but Garnet was not stung. She understood that in order to save her, God had hidden her beauty deep inside, like a pearl in an oyster, or the solid core at the center of the earth.

  Marquis turned to leave.

  “Wait,” Garnet said. “God has a revelation for you.”

  Marquis refused to look at her, as if her face offended him. “And what is that?”

  “Look.”

  Marquis lifted his head just as Garnet unwrapped her cloak so that he could fully view her mottled body.

  “No!” Marquis cried, rending his hair at the defilement of such a beauty.

  Before the townsfolk could blink, they witnessed Marquis’s once-piercing black eyes drain of color and sight, because what good are eyes if they cannot see inner beauty? His bleached irises stared blankly at the girl as he raised his fists to the heavens. He opened his mouth, but before one word slipped out, every inch of skin, from his earlobes to his little toes, was overtaken by oozing rashes and boils. Marquis scratched at his stomach, his legs, his back. He peeled off his tunic and tights and scraped up handfuls of ash to rub into the sores. Nothing would relieve his pain, so he scrabbled like a lunatic up the smoldering volcano, where he lived out his days trembling and itching in the Cyclops’s cave.

  Garnet was saved from a horrible marriage, and because the villagers no longer had to suffer the marquis’s tyranny, they insisted she move into his manor. They hoisted their saint onto their shoulders and carried her to the hilltop mansion, where she lived with her family, doling out Marquis’s fortune to charities. The residents of Sughero reported that when their children were stricken with skin disorders—measles, mumps, roseola, flea bites—if they prayed to Saint Garnet (whom, according to Nonna, they proclaimed a saint, even if the Vatican did not), their children would be healed. And so they were.

  Garnet became the unofficial patron saint of prostitutes, stray dogs, hummers, volcanologists, and, of course, cartographers, who marveled at the map on her body, which spontaneously changed to reflect explorers’ discoveries, environmental upheavals, and the outcomes of wars.

  TAPE TWO

  Mating Habits of the Ferrarus Disgusticus

  Archibald:

  It’s a stormy day in our smudge on the map. I’m impressed you visited, since getting here involves a series of ever-smaller planes—jets, turboprops, hamster-powered Cessnas—topped off with a spiraling drive up to my door. Even you commented on West Virginia’s low status, its reputation maligned thanks in part to industrialists, Johnny Carson, and Virginians—our Siamese twin still fuming over that nervy Civil War split.

  You asked why I stay when I could live anywhere—Neuschwanstein Castle, for example. I stay because it’s home, Archie, a place of both mystery and mayhem that has cast a spell over me. A lesson I learned during my ten-year banishment when all I wanted was to return to this patch of dirt, even with all the horrid memories buried beneath it. Oddly, West Virginia is not present anywhere on my body, and I have searched every inch.

  I also stay for Nonna, who is as devoted to Sweetwater as she is to Sicilia. She’ll be joining me any minute because of this thunder, which, for her, is too reminiscent of Grandpa’s booming tirades. I, however, love a good storm and often hike up to the widow’s walk, which is topped with a lightning-rod-equipped cupola, and hold up my arms begging for a sky-blinding jolt.

  After years of wedded anguish, Nonna finally made it back to higher elevation—not her beloved Nebrodi Mountains, but close enough. For decades she pleaded with Grandpa to buy a house up on Dagowop Hill, but even here in West Virginia, there’s a strain between hill and valley dwellers. Of course he refused, Calabrian shore hugger that he was, and kept his bride chained to a level lot down in Sweetwater Village until the day the hill got its revenge.

  Here comes Nonna with her crochet needles—always with red yarn to ward off evil spirits; a potent color, apparently. I have a hundred-plus crimson afghans, not to mention the hats and scarves and mittens.

  (Another afghan, Nonna?)

  (Sì, but no is for you. For the Padre.)

  Did you hear that, Archie? You will soon be the proud owner of a coverlet sure to keep you safe from the evil eye.

  (Tocca ferro. Ptt-ptt-ptt.)

  There she goes again with the keys, which of course means I have to yank the tangled ring from my own pocket and join her.

  (Jangle-jangle-jangle-jangle-jangle. Better, Nonna?)

  (Sì, much-a much.)

  This morning I read through your reams of questions, the first dozen delving into great-great-great-grandparents and seventh-generation cousins. Archie, most of these people died before I was born or were KIA or MIA, and I refuse to burden others by dredging up memories they want padlocked in the sarcophagi inside their closets. I’ll do my best on my own, but be forewarned: I plan on tumbling related questions together, often out of order, and I am happy to be possessed of an unwieldy imagination—question seventeen on your list, I see.

  Today I’m going to expose the courting rituals of the species Ferrarus disgusticus, which is why I’m tucked in bed in the bridal chamber, now with Nonna beside me. (No, I won’t hold your yarn.) I feel like a bride lying here, the tulle canopy my veil, the flouncy bed skirt my train, though my Frank Zappa T-shirt would be an affront to the previous occupants, whose sheddings still cling to the bed linens.

  So here goes: My grandfather Dominick Antonio Ferrari—

  (Riposi in pace.)

  (Whatever.)

  —entered the world fists-first on April fifth, 1888, in Villa San Giovanni in the province of Reggio Calabria, Italy, at the tip of the boot. His first word was probably Vaffanculo!, and if he owned a dog, I bet he routinely kicked it. If so, I like to think the dog wised up after a spell and sank its teeth into the punk’s hand. “Vaffanculo!” Fuck you!

  Archie, don’t bother raising your hallowed brows at my use of profanity in front of Nonna. She’s used to it, I assure you.

  (That’s a-true.)

  Nicky and I had to invent a childhood for Grandpa Ferrari, because the only pieces of information we possessed were the aforementioned date and place. Plus the fact that he disobeyed his parents’ directive and married that dimwitted Sicilian whore.

  (Bite-a you tongue!)

  (I know you’re not, Nonna.)

  Nonna was neither dimwitted nor a whore (see?), but as my years on the planet have taught me, everyone needs someone to kick. Thus, Northern Italian Tuscans spat upon Neapolitans, who razzed southern Calabrians, who scorned Sicilians. Shit does indeed roll downhill—even in West Virginia, where the northern half of the state thumbs its panhandles at its southern-coalfield kin.

  I have no idea how N
onna and Grandpa met or how he induced her to marry him, and Nonna still won’t confess.

  (None-a you business, wiseacre.)

  I began spinning a fantasy about their first encounter on the day Nicky had his tonsils out and I was left in Nonna’s care. I had been rifling through the junk in their basement, but a siren song lured me to Nonna’s room. I stood outside her door and watched as she hummed a familiar note while sitting on the edge of her bed, head wrapped in a towel, body swaddled in a chenille robe. I’d never seen Nonna in anything but the shapeless jersey dresses she always wore—and still does—so to see her that way was like watching a seraph.

  (So a-sweet.)

  She unwrapped the towel and down tumbled three feet of white tresses. Nonna untangled the locks with a comb and reached for the bottle of Fiore Pergusa water on her nightstand. Countless times I’d watched Nonna pick the red Pergusa flowers from the strip of garden she cultivated in her backyard. In her kitchen, she would pluck the petals that smelled of roasted almonds and nutmeg and drop them one by one into a water-filled perfume bottle. Overnight, the color and scent would leach from the petals and turn the liquid the color of blood. The smell was even more concentrated, and one drop could aromatize the whole room. I didn’t know the perfume’s official use until Nonna poured a puddle into her palm and massaged it into her mane as lovingly as any caress I’d ever seen. I don’t think Mary Magdalene could have anointed Jesus with as much tender care. I wondered if there was ever a time when Grandpa Ferrari hovered outside the door in awe.

  Perhaps that’s how she captivated him. Maybe one day she ambled down from Sughero to spend the day sunning in Messina. Nonna spread out her blanket and lounged on the shore combing her hair, though it would have been red then. Right, Nonna?