Flash Nonfiction

Americana

by Edvige Giunta

“You are becoming Americanized.” A friend explains my angst prior to the arrival of family from Italy.

I grew up in a world where we ate from each other’s plates, two kids slept together in one twin bed, sometimes one at the head and the other at the foot, sometimes back to back, sometimes spooning like unborn babies inside their mother’s womb. Girls went into the bathroom together, gossiping while one of us sat on the toilet. We walked arm in arm, up and down the Corso, leaning into each other. Now I live in a world where you go untouched for days, and the four floors of my home in New Jersey don’t suffice. Where shall I put all these people? I wander through the rooms, pondering this shift in my body and my psyche, and build walls left and right, proud of self-assertion, still oblivious to its price.

Appeared in Issue Spring '19