I guess this goes on in other cultures, which is why Bobby Kennedy named his first son Joe, after his father, and his second son Bobby Jr. But the tradition doesn’t fly with Jewish families, where you absolutely do not name your kids after anyone who is living. I’m sure my Jewish mother never confronted my Catholic dad with that fact, because she probably wasn’t eager for another beating.
My pop, Mike Coletti, was sadly just an Italian gangster-wannabe with a bad gambling problem and a worse temper. He and my mother, Deanna, married very young, before they were fitted with brains. A short time after they wed, he became verbally abusive with her, and it just kept getting worse. In fact, the last time my parents were together was the day he beat the hell out of my mom and left her bloody and unconscious on the front lawn of my grandmother’s house.
Now, I know I was too young to remember that day. And most doctors would probably agree that such behavior wouldn’t leave any lasting psychological scars on a newborn. But Mom said that unlike my older brother, I used to cry all the time, day and night. Even that used to piss off my dad, who was too cheap to pay the $30-a-week child support ordered by the judge after they split up. We never saw Dad again. My older brother did a Web search for him recently, finding out that he passed away in 2004. I honestly believe that I sensed there was no love between my mom and dad right out of the womb.
ONE STEP AHEAD OF HITLER
So Mom left Dad and now, twenty-four, with two little kids, realized she had nowhere to go. She was in desperate need of help. Her relationship with her mother was nonexistent, but with absolutely no alternative, she asked her parents for assistance.
My grandmother, “Big Lilly,” as I knew her, came to America from Warsaw in late 1939. She arrived in the United States just three days before Hitler’s armies invaded Poland. Big Lilly lost her entire family to Nazi butchers during the Holocaust. This experience forged her into a fiercely independent woman. Our Jewish heritage was her raison d’être. It formed the basis for everything she held sacred in life. My grandmother’s faith ran so deeply, it was the foundation of her very existence. And Judaism was the one solid rock my grandmother and grandfather could stand on when everything else was threatened. If they ran out of money, if their little bakery business failed, if they were sick, cold, or hungry, they were still the Chosen People with God on their side. They had the Jewish faith and that would get them through anything.
My mom pretty much pissed on that whole belief system. Screw the Jews, I’m marrying a capicola Catholic. I’m in love outside the faith, and to hell with everything you’ve tried to beat into me over the past twenty years. When Mom did this, the family’s rabbi interpreted it as the most vicious attack on everything the Jews stood for and everything they sacrificed during the Holocaust. Big Lilly thought this could not be her child, because no one she raised could be that irreverent, that disrespectful. Imagine how humiliating it was for my grandmother to face the other Jews in her neighborhood, particularly at synagogue.
So Big Lilly believed she had no choice but to disown her daughter. I am torn because my mother was very young and married out of love, which is often so blind. But I guess if love is blind then marriage is an eye-opener.
CLASH OF CULTURES
After such banishment, what could possibly send Mom crawling back to my grandmother? It’s simple: she had no other choice. We were freezing and starving. We needed to eat, and we needed someone to clothe us and keep us warm.
Now, Grandma wasn’t totally heartless, but before she agreed to help my mom, she made it clear that certain conditions must be met. First, my brother and I had to change our names to adhere to the strict Jewish custom that I mentioned that allows no newborns to be named after living people. So to please Big Lilly, my mother renamed us. I was now Steven, and my brother was Kenny.
Grandma Lilly’s second condition was pretty radical: Mom had to give me up. I was to live with and be raised by Big Lilly and my grandpa “Stormin’ Norman.” I literally became their son and spent most of my childhood under their care. Mom couldn’t believe her son was being stolen away from her by her parents. I remember my mother’s constant sobbing during this time when she’d be allowed to visit me. With an innocent child’s perception I’d be thinking, “Ma, what’s wrong? Ain’t you happy to see me?”
My mom was completely crushed. It wasn’t that I was her favorite or anything like that, it was just that I was her darling tow-headed son, and that was enough. Now, I don’t know about you, but that rates right up there for all-time fuck-yous. It was payback time, and Big Lilly wanted to show my mom that Italians aren’t the only masters of revenge.
WILD CHILD
At this point in my life, I was pretty much like the free spirit in that song by the Doors, “Wild Child.”
NOT YOUR MOT HER’S OR YOUR FAT HER’S CHILD
YOU’RE OUR CHILD, SCREAMIN’ WILD…
I was one wild, crazy, fucked-up kid, a born contrarian. Anything, and I mean anything, I was told to do, I would instantly do the opposite or just completely reject it.
My earliest memories are of my getting into trouble. I was kicked out of school during the first week. I gathered up and threw wooden blocks as hard as I could at the window. I still remember the sound it made. At any moment the glass could have shattered. I kept laughing at the way the other kids would wince at the sound. Fuck ’em.
As soon as the teacher stopped me from doing that, I tricked some kid into helping me get something out of a closet filled with board games and toys. As soon as he stepped in front of me, I backed off and slammed the door, locking him in.
He immediately had some severe claustrophobic episode. He started screaming at the top of his lungs and pounding on the door. To compound things, the teacher couldn’t find the key to the door right away, and the whole class became freaked out listening to this kid lose his shit.
When the teacher tried to discipline me, I threw a temper tantrum and pushed her as hard as I could. It seemed like I was locked into this other world and every time teachers told me to do something, they threatened the universe I lived in, and I had to fight them with all my might to defend my world. How dare they be a menace to the galaxies I ruled?
To their credit, the school principal and the teachers believed I had a likable side but had some control issues. They put up with an awful lot for a little time, and then they expelled me from preschool.
SPOILED EGG
Regardless of my behavior, Big Lilly was determined to spoil me. She really did everything for her little bratty, impulsive grandson. But sometimes I’d go too far even for her and she would ship me downstairs to be with Kenny and Mom. This was when the whole family lived in the same claustrophobic complex in Cleveland. Of course it took only a day before I would get on Mom’s nerves and she would send me to my room. Now, that’s not going to work, Mom.
I would just open the window and scream out, “Grandma. Grandma!” We lived on the fifth floor and my grandma lived on the ninth. She’d come down, forgetting all about the terror I had been the previous day, and run to my defense. She always stuck up for me. She seemed to take pleasure in ordering my mom around and demanding I not be punished because I was “a very sweet boy.”
She delighted in seeing Mom squirm. Mom was livid with the way Grandma Lilly and I would