Small Potatoes

[I worked in the tony area of Costa Smeralda, Sardegna, for an Italian designer and his family.  I was surprised by the casual, beachy atmosphere here - a total contrast to their sprawling, castle-like villa in Bologna.  See below for my primitive rendering of their living area.]

You say "tomato"
I say "to-mah-to"
You say "potato"
I say "po-tah-to"
Tomato, Tomahto
Potato, Potahto
Let's call the whole thing off!

I only wish I could call this off, or that I had called it off at first inkling that my boss was squishing me under her polished Italian thumb. Which was, I believe, on my second day of work, after her matter-of-fact pronouncement, "Eef-eh the keeds-eh clean up-eh, eh-fine-eh; but eef not-eh, you-eh do eet. Please-eh." I'm not sure what my face looked like during the seconds leading up to and following that sorrily tacked-on pleasantry, but I sorta wish I could go back in time and see it. More than my face, though, I'd really like to know what I was thinking. What I've been thinking. What I am thinking. Yup...for all of my brass and brag-swag, tooth-and-nail tales from the grit-and-grime galleys of my life, all I've got to show is a discombobulating knack for flexibility and a confessionalist, therapy-sesh tone that shames even that of Sylvia Plath. I don't really know what's what, anymore, or whereby, or wherefore.

My i-Dictionary says that 'struggle' is defined as "[making] forceful or violent efforts to get free of constraint or constriction," so it's not exactly fair to say that I struggle with Knowing, because I don't make violent efforts to free myself of murkiness. It's only been very recently that I've outed this secret about myself [to myself] - I'd always pegged Christy Ramon as an indestructible Total Truth Seeker: always pressing on, automatically seeking The Fundamentals, habitually deconstructing. While those things are all true, they've misled me. Out of the absolutist state of Black and White Knowing I have wandered, then, and, like a mildewy trail left on a dirty countertop, I've sponged my brain-train into this relativistic ruckus of Not Ever Being Able to Know or Decide (!). And one thing I can tell ya: it ain't pretty.

All I have are my jumbled up jots and thoughts, which, as you can see in my blogs past, I've held back on lately. And why? Why have I held my tongue and my type-keys from exploring or explaining the conditions of my Italian gig? What is it that has caused me to shrink myself and my stories senseless? I suppose I felt like I'd been merely hot-headed-offended when I, all upper-middle class, edd-oo-kated Americana, realized that I was, by my own careless craft, taking orders from snotty northern Italians. The kind who like to edge into conversations how they met John Kennedy Junior, or how they are personal friends with [my hero] Nina Garcia. The kind who like to talk about Anna Wintour's caricature in The Devil Wears Prada with casual, off-the-cuff command. [With their obvious literacy in American contempo-films, I wonder if they are also hip on The Nanny Diaries, and if so, how their shrewd comparisons from The Devil might translate then. But I digress.]

It's been a little rough. Ashamed, though I may be, to admit that I finally cried over it tonight, especially when I think about the world and famines and floods and adultery and bombs and DDR and wars and slums and rapes and murders and corruption, I am somewhat relieved that I am forcing myself to write it out.

 

So. The crux of my crying is that I finally know that I've been taken advantage of. That I am being taken advantage of. And that I have no way out. I know this because my boss, who has been in Bologna for the week and will not return until Monday, told her mother, who told me (when I asked her) that I am not to have my scheduled day off tomorrow. Which means that she expects me to work 11 consecutive days, for 12-13 consecutive hours apiece. It also means more: it means that I am leaving my Swedish boss (the only one who matters; the real reason I hopped on a trans-Atlantic flight and embarked on this year of glorified babysitting) high and dry, wondering some more about not only when I'll actually arrive, but when they'll hear from me at all. It means that I will not be able to access the internet to write to them or purchase my ferry ride for my last day of work next week, or my plane ticket for Stockholm; it means that I've fallen completely out of the Swedes' good graces and into a new category of "Well, we thought she was a good idea, but she has turned out to be so unreliable." It means that I can relate to those stupid commercials from the States that I always make fun of: the ones with the closed-eyed women and their naughty little paws clenched around some chocolaty or caramelly confection, brown satin ribbons all afloat in the background, during which lofty, whispery, and triumphant chants trill, "Stolen Moments Are So Delicious," or "You Deserve A Stolen Secret Moment." I so wish I had a stolen secret moment of my own! I want my own time! I want time to do whatever the heck I want! I want to sit on my duff and check my Facebook account; I want to exercise; I want languor; I want a cappuccino; I want to take one last walk down the marina or even - gasp! - wrap my little sausagey fingers around a gelato cone!

Yes, you read it and yessiree, I said it: I've been working 12-13 hour days. And that's not an expansive number. It's a real number. The kind which represents an actual measurement. Never mind that the ad I answered read "40-45 hours per week," or that, during my only two phone conversations with this woman, she used general terms like "Don't worry, eet's really seemple." Never mind that I was a total goof and bought it hook, line, and seenker: I thought this was going to be "one last [easy] love affair with the sun before Sweden." Of course, my resentment boiled during my first few days of procuring bottles of water (frizzante? naturale? minerale?), throwing away the trash at the beach, hauling their bags, hanging their laundry, wiping the "potty-trained" kids' little dirty rears, retrieving this-and-that from hither-and-thither, and constantly, constantly picking up after the children. But I was too busy trying to swallow my pulsing, raging pride to really arrive at a tactful way of saying "Listen, I'm a little uncomfortable with the parameters of this situation because the work I'm doing only vaguely resembles with what we discussed." While she had claimed that we'd spend late afternoons on the beach, instead, I found myself boiling, positively boiling, on the sandscape, the usually smooth skin on my shoulders turning into a texture I can only compare to that of stale pork rinds. While I hail from South Padre Island and have always jumped at the chance to tan, I have to say that doing it on someone else's watch bites, and it bites big. My most vivid memory of Sardinia will probably be the orange, freckled asses of my boss and her other 40+, bikini-clad friends, roasting in the sun. I have been constantly pushing my envelope, inventing new deadlines for When to Talk to Her About Her Incessant Insipid Impositions, or praying to God for the Right Moment, the right window of opportunity, a sudden surge in favor with this woman that I might seize with a sudden jolt of courage.

And I think I've been kidding myself all along, just trying to get through it. After the first two weeks, I Skyped one of my best friends, who is a psychologist. "There is no right time," she admonished me. "You just have to tell her, 'I need to speak with you in private, as soon as possible.'" But I didn't heed her advice. I couldn't marshall the right-ness, the self-"R-E-S-P-E-C-T." And with every failed glimpse of opportunity to be straight with my boss, I've felt less and less "Phenomenal Woman" and more and more spineless, rumpled, and useless. It seems that while my peers are busy collecting Bridget Jones moments, a la "Frankly, I'd rather have a job wiping Saddam Hussein's ass," I am the nervous girl in the corner cubicle, peering over my glasses and chewing my nails. "Just "wishin' and hopin' and thinkin' and prayin', plannin' and dreamin'."

. . .

This morning is the perfect example. Duties aside, I approached my boss's mother, the matriarch and obvious power pusher of the family X. [Please indulge in this juicy aside: recently, my fellow servant brought a large book over to me and placed it in my lap. Its red glossy dust jacket and newspapery font blared nineties, with photo shots of Signor X expertly eyeing a patent leather heel, his hand cleverly postured at his chin, and of a washed out blonde traipsing around in Xs. The title reads something like X: THE INDUSTRY'S LEGEND FOR SIXTY YEARS or something of that sort. I'd seen it, front and center of their living room coffee table, but hadn't taken an interest in it because it reminded me of the way senior yearbook editors and their sycophantic staffs publish personal paraphernalia in a sorry attempt to canonize themselves and their limited interests. I flipped through it in about a minute: old shots of celebrities at X boutiques: Sophia Loren, Princess Margaret, an Onassis. The real juice, I think, is the chunk of the book devoted to the X themselves: M, X's nephew, who spearheaded the company after the founders' death, and his wife (the now matriarch) X, a former X model - how appropriate. The spread features many shots of their palatial villa in Bologna, my boss's (their only daughter, X) best shots from her days of horse jumping, and a few Mario Testino shots of their only son, also married to a model: the only woman I've ever met who's half-giraffe, as her legs stretch up to my elbows. The content features poorly translated snippets about their personalities, educations, and elaborates at length on Signora Rita's "high class style that can only come from a certain family of reputation and rank" - or something to that effect. She is a feathery blonde type, not so tall, with bulging, wide-set, bordering on googly, eyes. Said eyes, eyebrows, and lips are tattooed on in a manner so obvious that she almost looks like a plastic doll: weather-beaten and sun-soaked skin pulled taut in the apples of her cheeks, a tawny hue the color of Bambi framing her frosty-blue eyelids in perfectly painted arches. Her lips puzzled me at first sight: I couldn't secret a glance long enough to determine whether they were a collagen wreck or whether indeed, she had hired someone to etch and fill two salmon-colored mountains a few centimeters above her actual top lip.] So. Back to this morning: after learning, to my shock and stupor, that my boss and her mother insist that I work my last 11 days without a day off, I mentioned to Rita, in as even and as careful tone-of-voice as I could, that it is important for me to access the internet today, so might I get a ride or take a car into town so I can access Wi-Fi? The dial-up I've used once or twice from her master bedroom is outta commission right now, since my twisted boss took her laptop with her and my laptop isn't dial-up compatible. "Eet's eempossible," she declared. "I need a car and my husband needs a car-eh, so-eh..." and she sauntered off, children in tow. (To her marginal credit, she has taken the children to the grocery store so that I can take some time for myself.)

Forget that they actually have three cars. Forget that I need to contact the Swedes and buy my tickets both off this damn island and out of this country. Forget all of that. I guess I'll be left to chance on Wednesday when I'm dropped off in Olbia; I'll hope that I can score a ferry ride back to Civitavecchia. And once there, I'll hope that I can find a place to stay - or that my friends are gracious enough to let me stay again. And then, at last, I will hope to score some sympathy points (or at least neutrality) with my Swedish family for standing them up a while because I was being held hostage. That is the thing, isn't it? Essentially, I am being held as some sort of slave; I have not yet been paid, so I am at the mercy of my boss's fancy and favor, the mercy of her word - which, so far, hasn't added up to much. So while I have fantasized and just-about peaced out of this twilight zone by calling a cab and returning their favor by leaving them high and dry, I can't; it'd mean bailing on my very, very very hard-earned cash.

What is clear to me, now, that this woman is a grown-up who rides her parents' luxurious coattails and champions unrealistic expectations. It is clear that she has not viewed this contract as a mutually-beneficial agreement, but more as a sort of bond-servant arrangement that has rendered me pow!-pow!-powerless, on the ground with exhaustion. It is clear to me that it is not simply a "potato, potahto" America versus Italy class issue; it is this particular woman and her narrow context. And it is clear, abundantly clear, that I need to work on my spine. My spit. My spunk.

It is clear to me, too, that it is not the children's fault. They are mere reflections of their parents: unstable, flighty, fanciful, and intensely demanding. Last night, when the model daughter-in-law and her mother came for a visit, I noticed how eager the children are to fit in with their family. Greggorio and Virginia immediately retrieved her make-up kit (thank you, Nona) and smeared it all over Virgie's face. I watched the adults grant the obligatory, fawning Che bellas and then drift back into their conversation, which, naturally (and I'm not faulting them for it, for once) excluded the kids. I watched Greggie start to run around in the backyard, finding a way to occupy himself. And I watched Virgie, sitting next to the three women, all squeezed tight on the loveseat. Virgie, in a nearby chair, staring into space with her rouged cheeks and turquoise eyelids, smiling, as if she were part of their conversation. Greggie, intuitive enough to know that he was not a part of it, out on the green. Searching for something to do.

"Hey, guys!" I offered, hoping I could weasel away their attention. "Secret meeting!" To my surprise, they ran over to me and we barreled down the cellar stairs. "Romi needs help making dinner, guys. I have a job for you!" Shockingly, they took me up on my suggestion and followed me into the kitchen, where I outfitted Virgie with her Nona's pink apron and handed Greggie the vegetable peeler. "Okay, Greggie, peel the potatoes....VeeVee, you wash them. Then, hand them to Romi." Away they scurried, climbing onto their chairs at the sink and getting to work, beaming with delight. "I-eh weel cut-eh the small-eh potatoes, Cteestee-eh, and-eh you-eh weel cut-eh the big-eh ones."

I wanted to run and get my laptop so that I could film it, but I knew I'd never forget it: they just wanted to be needed. They want to be a part of something. Even if it's just small potatoes.

Some images from the family's Porto Cervo estate: