The Evil Eye by C. Gochis

I cannot say that I do not believe in ghosts.  I will not walk under a ladder, and when a black cat crosses my path, I worry considerably.  I am troubled especially when my left eye twitches.  It is all part of my heritage, and of my childhood in a big house; gas lit with flickering jets that cast playful shadows on spacious walls; where the cellar staircase creaked at the lightest footstep.  Eye twitching was serious business.

Papa expressed it in his own idiom. Papa was a Greek immigrant.  He used to say, "my eye shakes" and his tone was foreboding.  The tic was a very worrisome phenomenon to him.

I did not have to ask which eye.  Everyone knows the left is the sinister side of things.  Everyone, certainly, that is of Mediterranean derivation.  Similarly, it is common knowledge that when your left palm itches, you are in danger of losing money.  I do not know for sure if the converse is true.  In any case itching of the right palm was never, to my recollection, reported.

Papa's left palm always itched and he frequently lost money.

Still, he searched patiently within the lore which was thousands of years old when he was born. Divination, a practice still popular in the small Aegean village from which he came:   Divination, from which he sought some augury of good fortune.

On occasions such as Easter, Thanksgiving or Christmas, when the traditional large bird is sacrificed, Papa would make one of his traditional prophecies. He would examine, with creitical attention, the carcass of the now denuded offering, with stern and serious expression, certainly consonant with that worn by some ancient oracular priest in some Orphic temple, and announce:

"We are going to have a good year!"

We generally did not.

Mama, who stemmed from the sunny Italian south, was concerned with Malocchio. The Evil Eye is not peculiar to Italians.  The Greeks call it Ta Matia, which means simply "the eyes".  Among the Hebrews, the phenomenon is called Kenohoras, for which I have no literal translation.  But it is said to be an equally troublesome force in any language.

In any case, Mother thought this phenomenon to be sinister. She maintained volubly--to Papa's great discomfiture--that the greatest potential source of danger from this malevolence resided in the machinations of her two sisters-in-law.

These ladies were, as Mama phrased it, "imports from Greece".  Both my uncles married natives from their village of origin.  Mama asserted further that the boys were inexpert in their choices.  She said they "picked lemons from the Garden of Eden".

I was present, as a child, when a great ship docked in New York with my arriving aunts.  Mother allowed me to go to greet them with great reluctance, after much ado about the matter with Papa.

"Il Malocchio!" she expostulated.

The cry was reminiscent of the cry of the hunchback courtier of the opera, Rigoletto.

"La maledizzione," in Act I.  The Curse.  This foreboding word is a kind of second cousin to Malocchio, though far more potent.

Papa was obdurate.  His son would accompany him to greet the arriving aunts.  Mama's objections to my going had made his eye shake.

I must admit I as protected with appropriate amulets.  Mama put salt in my pockets and a necklace of garlic around my neck.  These are powerful deterrents to the Malocchio.

They were not.

I developed Scarlet Fever.