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“Can we stop for ice cream?” Why did the name Bobby Bilancia make me hungry?

“I made lasagna for dinner.”

“I can’t wait until then. I might faint.” I leaned against the door and put my face in my hand.

My brother, Joe, fourteen years old, climbed into the minivan and closed the door. He wore a pressed baseball uniform; his black hair was neatly parted on the side. He placed his backpack on the seat. It didn’t have a scuff on it; it looked as new as the day Mom bought it at Target.

“How was your day, Joe?” Mom said pleasantly.

“Okay. Ma, can you drop me at the practice field?”

“I live to serve.” She smiled. “How was your day, Connie?”

“Annoying. They were making fun of Jess’s name.”

My mother’s dark eyes darted between Connie’s in the rearview mirror and mine in the front seat. “What do you mean ‘making fun’?”

“Some of the girls tease her,” Connie said.

“They call me Giuseppina-colada.”

“After the cocktail?” Mom frowns.

“Sometimes worse, Ma,” Connie said. “They call her Jooz-uh-penis.”

“Idiots,” Joe muttered. Joe was already above the antics of grade school even though he was still technically in it. He was more like a father to me than a brother.

“Who teased you?” Mom wanted to know. She glared at my sister in the rearview mirror. “Connie, what did you do to defend your sister?”

“I can’t be creeping around the halls of Saint Rose taking on the mean girls who pick on Jess.”

“And why not?” my mother yelled. “You only have one sister!” She turned to me. “Giuseppina, you have to get tough!”

I felt my throat constrict. I put my hands on my neck and tried to inhale air, but I couldn’t get enough in. The panic attacks were usually triggered by a series of challenges I couldn’t meet. That day had been particularly brutal; I couldn’t do anything right, and then there was the teasing. It was too much.

“Connie! The paper bag!” my mother shrieked. Connie handed a bag to Mom calmly from the back seat. My sister knew the routine. Mom snapped the bag open and gave it to me. “Breathe into the bag, Giuseppina! Into the bag!”

My panic attacks began in kindergarten. Our pediatrician taught me the paper bag trick. Whenever I couldn’t breathe, Iwould place a paper bag over my mouth, force air into it, then suck the same air back into my lungs. As the bag shrank, I refilled it with my breath. I learned to like the crinkle sound the bag made when I filled it with air. Soon, the thoughts in my head matched the rhythm of my breathing. I repeatedBobby Bilancia Breathe,Bobby Bilancia Breathein my mind, until my heart stopped racing and my lungs opened up.

“When am I gonna grow out of this?” I looked at my mother and wiped away a tear on my sleeve.

“The doctor said it could happen anytime. You have to be patient.”

Mom pulled off the road to drop Joe at the field. He reached forward and squeezed my hand before jumping out of the car. He slammed the door and ran to join the team. Soon, he was engulfed in a sea of red-and-white-striped uniforms as though he had dived into Grandma Cap’s candy dish filled with peppermint wheels.

Mom pulled out into traffic and looked for the Mr. Twisty ice cream truck. I felt better after I took the first bite of the cone, through the hard shell of the chocolate dip to the cool vanilla custard underneath.

Stuck in atraffic jam, Uncle Louie observes the school bus as it empties into the courtyard. The students split into two lines, forming a river of blue that flows past the statue of Saint Rose of Lima and into the school foyer. “Can you believe you were ever that small?”

“I was the shortest girl with the longest name.” I close out of the notes app.

“I told my sister to name you something normal. She had to name you after that maiden aunt of ours because no one else would saddle their kids with that honker. Zia Giuseppina was a bruiser.” Uncle Louie holds up his index finger to prove his point. “At five foot eleven she was the tallest person in the Capodimonte family, man or woman.”

I never met my great-aunt—she died before I was born—but by all accounts, Zia Giuseppina was a force on North Boulevard.

“She was built like an ice truck,” Uncle Louie explains. “She had a voice so loud it echoed across the lake when it wasn’t peeling paint. She did not so much move as reverberate.”

I have neither the stature nor the gravitas to carry a big name; from the start, it was too much. It was like asking an eight-year-old girl to wear her father’s shoes to school or operate a cement mixer. “Why was she the maiden aunt?”