THE TOOTHPICK MAN
“There was once a toothpick woman.... I do not know what became of her.”
He’s small, the toothpick man, less than two inches high, his mouth a crater rimmed with uneven teeth, crudely carved. I picture a pocket knife, or more likely a small boning knife, in the gnarly hands of a craftsman from the Alpine Italian village of my family’s origin. There was once a toothpick woman, much like the man except with a dirndl skirt. I do not know what became of her.
The toothpick people stood at attention on the kitchen table in my grandparents’ Long Island bungalow. On summer afternoons, while I pulled new potatoes and carrots from the garden and Nonno stirred polenta in a copper pot over a fire pit, Nonna would bring them outside to the picnic table under the awning. In daylight the wooden figures seemed gentle, but at night, in the shadows, they turned grotesque, becoming goblins, and I imagined them swallowing me with their giant mouths.
My grandparents’ mouths, of course, were normal, except when they opened in ferocious fighting. “Puttana!” Nonno would yell at Nonna, pounding the kitchen table so hard, the toothpick people bounced. “Brutta faccia!” she would shout back, raising her thin bruised arms the better to curse him. I’d escape to the living room to concentrate on Lawrence Welk’s bubbles or wrestling or boxing, Nonna’s favorite shows.
I understood, even as a child, why she drank too much and how badly my grandfather treated her. Whenever she spent a few days at our house, she’d wistfully tell me stories of the old country: the little cutlery shop her parents owned, where she and her sister sold scissors and kitchen knives after school; the boy she loved but wasn’t allowed to marry because he wasn't from their valley; her shock when, as a bride, she moved to a New York City tenement from the tidy village where the mountains were always capped with snow; her mourning for the baby she miscarried before my mother was born.
My parents and I tried many times to convince her to leave and live with us, but she always insisted she had to go back and take care of Nonno.
She was so unlike my dad’s mother, an ordinary wholesome grandmother who had a round smiling face, wore pearls and made me pudding-and-graham-cracker pies. Nonna served me cherries soaked in gin, not knowing children shouldn’t taste such things. Yet I felt closer to her. To me, she was like a loving wounded bird. I adored talking with her, taking her hand and walking into town with her. I loved her very much.
When my mother died, I took the toothpick man from her china cabinet as she had taken him when Nonna died. I’d trade him for the toothpick woman if I had her, but he’s all that’s left. Among the crystal and sterling silver in the lighted cabinet where I keep him, he cuts an odd figure. But not every treasure sparkles.
—Ruth Bonapace
Ruth Bonapace earned an MFA from Stony Brook University, and her debut novel, The Bulgarian Training Manual, will be published in June by Clash Books. She has three children and lives in New Jersey.
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The pickax of the last line. Perfect.
I heard Ruth’s rough rough draft when she first wrote this at a writing retreat we both attended this fall. I remember exactly where we were sitting when she first read it out loud to us. Such a great and memorable piece! She kept true to her original draft that captured the essence of that moment when memories flood our consciousness!