Mariella Gattini

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Ping-Pong

December 15, 2018

I wrote the following piece on September 6, 2017.

After all these years, and you still don’t know me. I’m competitive, yes, so what? I’m winning this one. Thirty six mistakes versus your sixty three. I know I look unsympathetic to some. As if I didn’t care. But I do, I promise, it’s just that numbers are for me more certain than anything and anyone else. Damn it! Thirty seven, my bad. Now it’s going to be more difficult to concentrate and remember the count at the same time. It’s a secret, you don’t know that I’m counting—your mistakes and mine. That way I have the advantage over you. If you knew I was counting, you would be more aggressive, and the game would become all competition and no fun. The fun to know that I’m better than you at this, that I can beat you all day long, any day.

Every time my mind wanders, I make another mistake. My mind is on the Tenement House Museum, the guide, the hard times of Jewish and Italian families in the Lower East Side of Manhattan—97 Orchard Street. The small two-room apartments, with all the history behind. The sorrow, the poverty, the menial jobs, the abandonment, the solitude. What is the score now? 44 - 71. I can’t take my mind off the photographs in sepia, the photocopies of yellowish hand-written personal documents, and the early twentieth century census. And the sunglasses that I bought at the Museum Store, with the aqua rim, hanging from my blouse, and the fan they gave us that says Fan of the Lower East Side TENEMENT MUSEUM Orchard and Delancey TENEMENT.ORG. They gave us the fan, because it’s late August in New York City, and the apartments have no air conditioning.

Oh, yes, I can win this one. In spite of myself, despite the fact that I can not forget the space, the other people in the group, participating, asking questions, me too, adding to the noise.

I try to divert the attention to another memory and I make even more mistakes, now the score is 55 - 80. We are still in Denver Central Market in Colorado, after a long trip from Amarillo, Texas, on our way to Fort Collins in May of this year. We want to have a light dinner and this place allows us not only that but also to be surrounded by cheerful people. Women with sun dresses and sandals, and men with t-shirts, short chinos and flip-flops. The ambiance is fun and simple. Like most, we choose our food, beverages, and desserts from different vendors, quickly looking for a place to sit.

This is in Amarillo, Texas. Supporting the local brewers, of course!

At Denver Central Market, in Colorado.

I’m getting really mad, making more and more mistakes. I’m hot now, and mad as hell at myself. Why can’t I leave things behind? Why do those images come to my mind over and over again? When I’m having fun, right now!

Numbers are more certain than anything else. I need to focus on the numbers, to forget. Forget that I’m vulnerable, forget that everything I experience stays with me the rest of my life, that for me everything matters, and everybody makes a dent in my mind. Numbers are measurable, like goals, they add reason to my convoluted life and to the intricate life of all of us. After all, we are just numbers for everyone else. A number in a census, a number in our homes, a number of things, a number of years, of days, of minutes, and then, after an entire life lived, we remain a number for others to study and remember.

I can’t make it anymore I want to give up, but I remain stoic and manage to finish the game a winner just before the buzzer announces: Time’s up.

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