Oreo (3 page)

James grinned. He was thinking now about his childhood. His earliest memory was of the day
his family and the Butlers left the village of Gladstone to go North. The village idiot had
waved at them and smiled his sweet but dumb smile. Little James’s parents never tired of
talking about their adventures in Gladstone.

Gladstone was blessed not only with a village idiot but with a village moron and a village
imbecile. They were brothers. Each day they would go to their jobs on the village green. The
people of Gladstone felt that it was good for the three boys to work outdoors. The fresh air
would do them good. In bad weather, the village moron, with his superior intelligence (IQ
53), could be seen herding his less advantaged brothers and co-workers in out of the rain
and under the lean-to that the village had built for them with the proceeds of the
triquarterly fish fry and census.

The Gladstonites liked to see what—or, rather, who—was new every nine months. The fish
fry was an important part of this head counting, since it was the testing ground for
determining which proportion of which kind of fish would give the greatest boost to the
fertility curve of Gladstone. Some Gladstonites felt that the matter was already settled,
that a 3:1 ratio of porgies to smelts had given sufficient proof of its power back in the
summer of 1906. Others plumped for a 5:4:3½ mixture of mackerel, cod, and striped bass or—six of one, half a dozen of the other—an 8:7 blend of smelts and catfish, pointing to
the fact that census-taking methods in 1906 were somewhat hit-or-miss and that the years
of
their
compounds, 1907 and 1908, had each been only one off the high-water
mark. These latter factions, countered the porgy-smelt bloc, could talk all they wanted, but
they could not argue with the record book. It was infantile to deny the part their formula
had played in the Baby Boom of Aught Six.

By 1919, the total population of Gladstone—not counting the Butlers and the Clarks, who
were leaving and who, technically, lived on the outskirts of the restricted and segregated
village, but counting the three village dogs—was twelve. The nine people included Josh and
Lettie Jones, who were the parents and next-door neighbors of Jed Jones and his wife-sister
Maybelle, who were the parents and next-door neighbors of Jody Jones and his wife-sister
Lulu, who were responsible for the Baby Boom of Aught Six and also the boomlets of 1907 and
1908. It was Jody and Lulu who, in 1906, had produced twins Clyde and Claude, who were,
respectively, the village imbecile and idiot. In 1907, Clarence I was born but succumbed to
the croup at three months. In 1908, Clarence II, the pride and joy of the Jones family, was
born. Although he was the youngest, Clarence II’s natural ability soon evidenced itself. From
shoe tying to vacant staring, he was more adept at age nine than Clyde or Claude would ever
be.

Clarence II led his older brothers to the green each morning, sat them in their spots in
the middle of the sward, made sure they had all their materials, and settled next to Clyde.
The brothers made moccasins, at the rate of one-half a day. They made only one size
(ladies’ 6½B) and for the left foot only. Lulu, their mother-aunt, undid their
output every day, but it kept them off the streets. At first it was thought that Claude, the
idiot, would hold the others back in any joint endeavor, since all he could do well was
drool. But drooling turned out to be an important aspect of moccasin production. While Clyde
and Clarence II stared into space waiting for the production line to gain momentum, Claude
began chewing and drooling on the piece of leather Lulu put in his mouth on the way to the
green each morning. This drooling-chewing process softened the leather, which had become
hard and stiff after drying out from the previous day’s drooling-chewing, so that Claude’s
twin brother could more easily fold and crease it in four places and hand it on to Clarence
II, who would stitch through the holes that his mother-aunt had punched for him, totally
absorbed as he shoved and hauled on the leather thong tied to the small stick.

By the time Clarence II got halfway around with his stitching, the clock in the church
tower, had there been a church with a tower with a clock, would have struck three. As it
was, the only way to tell it was three o’clock was that the town drunk, Jed Jones,
grandfather and great-uncle of the Jones boys, would come stumbling toward the one tree on
the village green, would circle around the two-year-old sapling in confusion, and, thinking
he was lost in the woods, begin sobbing uncontrollably. Whereupon, all the village Joneses
would stop whatever they were doing, look up, and say, “Jed’s lost. Must be nigh onto three
o’clock.” For Lulu, it was time to go pick up her three children-nephews-craftsmen.

James had heard this story about Gladstone and the Jones boys at least one and a half
times. And at least that often he had wondered what had happened to the porgy-smelt bloc.
And the mackerel-cod-bass people—his favorites—what of them? No matter. He would never
forget Claude’s incoherent little wave and smile as the Butlers and the Clarks left town.
Outsiders, numb to nuance, often ascribed more intelligence to Claude’s smile than he was,
by Stanford-Binet standards, entitled to. “Look at that moron grin,” a wagonload of Jukes
once said as they went creaking and kallikaking past the village green. But it could not be
doubted that this scion of Virginia aristocracy had the family smile. It was rumored that
Claude and his brothers were related on both sides—that is to say, on one side—to the
Randolphs. Thinking of little Claude, James daily reproduced the patrician simper of one of
the F.F.V.

“I don’t have
eppes
an idea of how to support my children,” Helen said as she sat
down to assess her situation after the breakup with Samuel. “How long can we go on living on
the proceeds from Daddy’s backlist? It would be an
averah
if I can’t get up off my
rusty-dusty and come up with an idea for making some heavy
gelt
.” Her monologue
over, she listed her talents on a piece of paper:

As far as she knew, there was no great call for black female impressionists. (“And now, my
impression of James Cagney showing Mae West how to do the buck-and-wing.” Cagney:
Tappety-tap, tappety-tap
. Mae West:
Humpety-hump, humpety-hump
. Cagney:
“You, you, you dirty rat—I said the
buck
-and-wing!”) As for her head equations, she
refused to commercialize them. Operating on numbers 3 and 4 were all the pluses and minuses
of cliche, but she picked number 4.

As she began practicing, her head equation was:

88
BW
= ∞ M + R

where
B
= black keys (or Helen’s folly), reminders

W
= white keys (or Samuel’s head), poundings

M
= Money, dollars

R
= road, years

When Christine was a year old and Jimmie C. a baby, Helen began sending
them letters, which Louise read to them. The letters always said the same thing:

Louise sometimes read “∞ love” as “lazy-eight love” and sometimes as “scribble love,” until
Helen, home on one of her rare visits, straightened her out. Then she read it as “infanty
love,” thinking it was a special term for babies.

The children paid no attention to Helen’s letters.

When Christine was three and Jimmie C. two, Helen’s letters read:

One day, Christine looked up from her coloring book (a leftover copy of her grandfather’s
best-selling
Esau Gets a Shave
) and snatched the letter from her grandmother’s
hand. Louise let the child play with the letter and went into the kitchen to prepare
sop
buntut Djakarta
. Christine stared at the letter for some time, then, carefully selecting her
Crayolas (a huge set that boasted exotic colors like red, green, and blue as well as the
standard mauve, puce, chartreuse, and oregano), she composed a reply:

Helen made a moue of wry appreciation when she got her daughter’s letter, wrote her by
return mail that intentional mirror writing had gone out with Leonardo, and began sending
the kids letters about her own childhood remarkable for their Helenic this and that.

Minneapolis

Kindergarten! The smell of finger paints at George Brooks
Elementary School: wet plaster going sour. Every afternoon at two, we would have a container
of piss-warm milk and three graham crackers. Every afternoon at fourteen minutes after two,
Roselle Morgan would spit up. We left a big space around her and went to sleep on our little
rag rugs, our little noses twitching like rabbits’, our tender sinuses cleared.

Des Moines

My first boyfriend was a
nayfish
named Roger. I sat
next to him in Miss Barton’s first-grade class. One day Roger said to me, “Malvina is my
girlfriend. I like Malvina.” I looked at Malvina, the most beautiful first-grader in
America. “Frankly, I don’t see what you see in her,” I lied. “Why don’t you like me
instead?” “Okay,” he agreed, and I took him home with me for lunch. Louise made
coq au
vin
that day, as I recall. Roger asked for a peanut butter sandwich, which he dipped
in that divine sauce. A
chaloshes!
I dropped him at recess the next day and gave
him back to Malvina.

Boston

Time:
World War II.
Place:
Mrs. Dannenbaum’s room,
Shoemaker Junior High School. As the scene opens, the students are singing patriotic
songs.

“We’re the Seabees of the Navy. We can build and we can fight!”

“. . . oh, nothing can stop the Army Air Corps—except the Seabees.”

Mrs. Dannenbaum’s husband was a Seabee.

San Francisco

TV? Feh! In my day we had THE MOVIES! In
our old neighborhood in West Philadelphia, we had the Cross Keys, the Nixon, the State, the
Belmont, the Mayfair, and—bedbuggiest of all—the good old Haverford, affectionately known as
the Dump. At the Dump, we ate until we thought we would
plotz
. Do they still make Grade A’s, Baby
Ruth, Payday, Milk Duds, Rally, Hershey (with and without almonds), Butterfinger, Tootsie
Rolls, Jujyfruits, Mr. Goodbar, Oh Henry, Raisinets, Good and Plenty, Dots, Milk Shake,
Sno-Caps, Goobers, Chuckles, Hershey’s Kisses, Nestlé’s Crunch, and Goldenberg’s Peanut
Chews? Mounds, Almond Joy, polly seeds, candy corn, candy buttons,
candy-in-the-tin-fluted-cups-with-the-little-tin-spoon, Mary Janes? What about jelly apples,
wax lips, fudgicles, ice cream cake?

For eleven cents we could see a double feature, five cartoons, a serial, and a footrace.
We had cowboys like “Wild Bill” Elliott, Johnny Mack Brown, Bob Steele, Don “Red” Barry, Tim
McCoy, Tim Holt. I can’t relate to a generation that thinks that the real Tarzan is Gordon
Scott.
We
had the only real Tarzan—Johnny Weissmuller—and Jane and Cheetah and
Boy. (The guys in the background saying “Ooga-booga” were jazz musicians who didn’t have a
gig that week.) We had Maria Montez and Jon Hall, Sabu and Turhan Bey. We had
Spy
Smasher
. But best of all, we had
Perils of Nyoka
, known to the neighborhood
kids, of course, as
Pearls
.

Every week we’d leave Nyoka, Queen of the Jungle, and her boyfriend Larry in a
mess
, honey—they were sure to die. We’d rush to the Dump the next Saturday—and
the episode would start practically in the middle of the previous week’s chapter. That way,
only half the new chapter was really
new
. As for the “impossible” situation—a
nebbech
would have sneered at it. Something would always be added that hadn’t
been shown the week before. Suppose old Nyoka was in a room with steel spikes sticking out
of the walls. Suppose the room was getting smaller and smaller. Suppose you
knew
she was about to be iron-maidened to death. The next week the spikes would be about as close
as Camden, New Jersey, when Larry, who was supposed to be
in
Camden (or
thereabouts), would rush in, throw a piece of bubble gum into the machinery—and away all
spikes. We fell for this week after week.

Then there was the footrace—a short feature of a
ridiculous
cross-country race
with a lot of wildly dressed, scrocky-looking competitors cheating their way toward the
finish line. When you first went into the Dump, you got a stub with a number on it. If your
number matched the number of the nerd who won the race, you got a prize—a bicycle or
something. Nobody I knew ever won anything. The movie manager’s son opened a bicycle shop on
his fourteenth birthday. He was found Schwinned to death on the day after his fourteenth
birthday.

Aside from the Scheherazade Perplex (Maria-Jon-Turhan-Sabu), over the
years I had two movie idols: Jane Powell and Barbara Stanwyck (weep, Yma Sumac, over the
range of Helen Clark!). I could be as moved by
Song of the Open Road
as by
The
Strange Love of Martha Ivers
; by
Rich, Young, and Pretty
,
A Date with
Judy
,
Luxury Liner
, and
Small Town Girl
as by
Double
Indemnity
and
Sorry, Wrong Number
.
Nu
, what moves you kids? Road Runner and
Coyote!

Wapshot-on-the-Chronicle, Mass.

What ever happened to Toughie Brasuhn?

Baltimore

I wonder if the sign I used to see on Spruce Street is still
there? It read:
LITTLE FRIENDS DAY SCHOOL.
I always expected a bunch of dwarf
Quakers to run out of the building.

Denver

Scene:
Overbrook High School homeroom. Brenda
Schaeffer is telling her classmates Arlene Melnick and Helen Clark about her weekend. How
she and her family were invited for Friday-night dinner to the home of a business
acquaintance of her father. How at this house, a little old lady with the burning eyes of a
fanatic was lighting candles. How this same L.O.L., when she lit the candles, did this also.
(She demonstrates for Arlene and Helen, drawing her arms toward herself over the
imaginary flame of the imaginary candle.)
“Now, what was that all about?” says
Brenda, daughter of the biggest pretzel maker in Wynnefield (it was her sacred duty to
provide free pretzels for all her friends’ pajama parties). Arlene shakes her head like an
ignorant
shiksa
. It is left for Helen the
shvartze
to explain to these
apikorsim
the
tradition of the
shabbes
candles. “Oh,” says Brenda, her curiosity quenched, her religiosity
quashed, “I just thought it was some weird European way of warming your hands.”

Cincinnati

My Worst School Assignment: Mr. Storch, criminally insane
English teacher, told our class that we should get to know our city more intimately. “I
volunteer to fuck Market Street,” whispered Joey Hershkowitz, class clown. This was my
assignment: to do a first-hand report on all the statues in center city, from river to
river, from Vine to Pine. Yes, he did mean first hand. Yes, “river to river” did refer to
our beloved Schuylkill and our renowned Delaware. Yes, Vine Street is not exactly cheek by
jowl with Pine Street. Yes, it was the dead of winter. Yes, I did freeze my
kishkas
. Yes, Storch is probably still at large in the Philadelphia school
system.

New York

Advantages Philadelphia Has Over New York: Fairmount Park (more than four
times bigger and better than Central Park). The park’s colonial houses: Strawberry Mansion,
Lemon Hill, Belmont Mansion. The weeping cherry trees of George’s Hill, the Playhouse in the
Park, Robin Hood Dell. Hoagies (more than four times better than heroes). Steak sandwiches
(they don’t make them here the way they do at home: layers of paper-thin beef smothered in
grilled onions; melted cheese, optional; catsup, yet another option!). People who wait for
you to get off the subway before they try to get on. Smoking on the subway platform. Row
houses. The Philadelphia Orchestra. Mustard pretzels
with
mustard (in New
York—would you believe?—they sell mustard pretzels
plain
). Red and white police
cars so you can shout, “Look out, the red devil’s coming!”

Things I Miss About Philadelphia That Are Long Gone: Woodside Amusement
Park. The Mastbaum movie theater. The Chinese Wall. Schuylkill Punch (no soup in the country
is as chunky, as stick-to-your-ribs as the witches’ brew we called water). The raspy spiel
of a huckster named Jesus.

Detroit

We have had two ashtrays for as long as I can remember. One
says:
Honi soit qui mal y pense
. The other one is my favorite. It says:
De robe
flétrie/nul ne souci
. The
flêtrie
ashtray is off-white ceramic. Two brown
slashes at each of the corners accent the four depressions for cigarettes. Rounded red and
green leaves sprig each of the four rim sections. The message is on the floor of the
ashtray; it is painted in two lines in brown handwriting. Another sprig of rounded red and
green leaves is just under the words. Touch it, children, and think of me.

Chattanooga

A Job I Had Before Going on the Road: I am working in a dry cleaner’s. A member walks in.
She is huge and powerful. She is permanently ready to take offense. Her eyes slit in
indignation, her lips form a sullen pout.

The expression on her back shows that she likes me, else I would now be on the floor with a
broken nose. I close the shop and walk across the street to catch the trolley. I am standing directly opposite the shop when along comes Mr. Johnson with a huge pile of
dirty clothes. I can smell them from where I stand. I stagger and hold on to a telephone
pole for support. Mr. Johnson looks disconcerted. The shop is obviously closed. He stares at
the door. Obviously, the thought of turning around and going back home, a matter of about
fifty feet, does not occur to him in his disoriented condition. Oh-oh. He spots me. A
relieved smile lights up his face. I look down the trolley tracks. I can see the trolley
coming, but I can’t quite hear it. Meanwhile Mr. Johnson has dashed across the street.