FICTION
The Capo’s Niece
Growing Up with Gangsters
My mother always said that I was a cold baby. In her usual charming twist of a phrase, she told me, “When I was expectin’ you, I didn’t know I had a refrigerator in my oven.”
I don’t understand how one arrives at cold infancy. Was I born chilly or did I gradually develop into a frosty baby? Was I somehow unkissable, unhuggable? Or was I reasonably kissable and huggable, merely a small someone who wouldn’t smile, wouldn’t share, wouldn’t react, wouldn’t return affection?
I don’t get it. Just last month, I scanned some of the old photos and I am convinced that I identically resembled a standard issue facsimile of a normal baby: fat pink cheeks, a hairless Eisenhowerian head and big Ruskie blues.
Maybe she was a frigid mother and perceived me as a cold baby, conceived me as a cold baby. Except for maybe some autistics, I’ve never heard of a cold baby.
Ma’s no longer around so I can’t find out what she meant. I asked Gram what I was like as a tyke and she said I was a brat but she didn’t mention anything about my emitting sangfroid upon all my antecedents. And I don’t think of myself as a cold adult. I believe people who know me may consider me whimsical, iconoclastic, quirky, even weird, but not cold. At least I hope never cold. Let’s…