Part 24 (2/2)

”Well, I love you, too.”

”I never thought I'd fall in love with a Jewish girl my mother found for me, Joanie.”

”Uh, that's what I mean about outfoxing her. I'm not Jewish.”

”You're not?”

”No, I just had the right amount of soul for your mother and she a.s.sumed.”

”But, Joanie...”

”You can call me Joan.”

But he never called her the Maid of Orleans. And they lived happily ever after, in a castle not all that neat.

A MINI-GLOSSARY OF YIDDISH WORDS USED IN ”MOM”.

b.u.mmerkeh (b.u.m-er-keh) A female b.u.m; generically, a ”loose” lady.

”Eli Eli” (A-lee A-lee) Well-known Hebrew-Yiddish folk song composed in 1896 by Jacob Koppel Sandler. t.i.tle means ”My G.o.d, my G.o.d.” Opens with a poignant cry of perplexity: ”My G.o.d, my G.o.d, why hast thou forsaken me?” from Psalm 22:2 of the Old Testament. Owes its popularity to Cantor Joseph Rosenblatt, who recorded and sang it many times as an encore during concerts in the early 1900s. AI Jolson also did rather well with it. Not the kind of song Perry Como or Bruce Springsteen would record.

fressing (FRESS-ing) To eat quickly, noisily; really stuffing one's face; synonymous with eating mashed potatoes with both hands.

latkes (LOT-kess) Pancakes, usually potato pancakes but could also be made from matzoh meal. When made by my mother, not unlike millstones.

Litvak (LIT-vahk) A Jew from Lithuania; variously erudite but pedantic, thin, dry, humorless, learned but skeptical, shrewd and clever; but used in this context as a derogatory by Lance' s mom, who was a Galitzianer, or Austro-Polish Jew; the antipathy between them is said to go back to Cain and Abel, one of whom was a Litvak, the other a Galitzianer...but that's just foolish. I guess.

momser (muhm-zer) An untrustworthy person; a stubborn, difficult person; a detestable, impudent person; not a nice person.

nafkeh (NAHF'-kuh) a b.u.mmerkeh, a ”lady of easy virtue,” a scarlet woman; what used to be called a ” roundheels”-a ho' or hooer, as it is now commonly known. A hooker, a call girl, a B-girl, a prost.i.tute. Is that clear? Geez Louise!

nuhdzing (NOOOOOD-jing) To pester, to nag, to bore, to drive someone up a wall. The core of the story. Practiced by mothers of all ethnic origins be they Jewish, Italian or WASP. To bore, to ha.s.sle, to be bugged into eating your asparagus, putting on your galoshes, to get up and take her home, etc. Very painful.

pupik (PIP-ik or PUHP-ik) Navel. Belly-b.u.t.ton.

s.h.i.+ksa (s.h.i.+K-suh) A non-Jewish woman, especially a young one.

shmootz (shmootz) Dirt.

shtumie (SHTOOM-ee) Lesser insult-value than calling someone a schlemiel (shleh-MEAL). A foolish person, a simpleton; a consistently unlucky or unfortunate person; a social misfit; a clumsy, gauche, b.u.t.terfingered person; more offhand than schlemiel, less significant; the word you'd use when batting away someone like a gnat.

shtupping (SHTOOOOOP-ing) s.e.xual intercourse.

tante (TAHN-tuh) Aunt.

yenta (YEN-tuh) A woman of low origins or vulgar manners; a shrew; a shallow, coa.r.s.e termagant; tactless; a gossipy woman or scandal-spreader; one unable to keep a secret or respect a confidence; much of the nuhdz in her. If it's a man, it's the same word, a blabbermouth.

Ecowareness Once upon a time-something between 1,800,000,000 and 3,000,000,000 years ago-after the Earth had partly liquefied through loss of heat by radiation from the outside and partly by adiabatic expansion, its Mommy said gaey schluffen, the Earth had a cookie, spit up, and went to bed. It slept soundly (save for a moment in 1755 when a Kraut named Kant made a whole lot of noise trying to figure out how the sun had been created) and didn't wake up till a Tuesday in 1963 at which time-about four in the morning, a s.h.i.+tty hour of the night except for suicides-it realized it was having a hard time breathing.

”Kaff kaff,” it said, wiping out half the Trobriand Islands and whatever lay East of Java.

Casting about to discover what had wakened it, the Earth realized it was the All-Night Movie on Channel 11, snippets of a Maria Montez film (Cobra Woman, 1944) interrupting an aging cruiser king hustling '55 Mercs with pep pills in their gas tanks and lines of weariness in their grilles.

The Earth waited till dawn and began to look around. Everywhere it looked the rivers smelled like the grease traps in Army kitchens, the hills had been sheared away to provide clinging s.p.a.ce for American Plywood cages with indoor plumbing, the watershed had been scorched flat, valleys had been paved over causing a most uncomfortable constriction of the Earth's breathing, the birds sang off-key and the bullfrogs sounded like Eddie Cantor, whom the Earth had never much cared for anyway. And overhead, the light hurt the Earth's eyes.

Everything looked gray and funky.

”Boy,” the Earth said, in its rustic way, ”I don't like this a whole lot,” and so the Earth began taking counter-action.

The first was against a s.h.a.ggy soph.o.m.ore from Michigan State University who, while parading around a Texaco station, carrying a placard that read STOP POLLUTION, ate a Power House bar and threw the wrapper in the gutter.

The Earth opened and swallowed him.

The next step was taken against fifty-six thousand Green Bay Packers fans as they crawled in imitation of a thousand-wheeled worm toward Lambeau Field, where their CroMagnon idols had waiting for them a sound trouncing at the hands and feet of the New Orleans Saints. The Earth, choking on the exhaust fumes of the automobiles, caused a lava flow to erupt from a nearby hillside, boiling down on the lines of traffic, solidifying instantly into a marvelous freeform sculpture of thirty thousand hot-rock-encased autos containing fifty-six thousand fried fans.

The next step was taken against the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, gathered in the Hollywood Bowl before a single-throated horde of Jesus People. They were singing Laura Nyro's ”Save the Children” when the Earth re-channeled seven underground rivers and turned the amphitheater into the thirteenth largest natural lake in the United States.

Then followed in madcap array, a series of forays against prominent individuals. Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, speeding along the Lake Sh.o.r.e Drive, was inundated by seventy thousand tons of garbage from the burning dumps lining the scenic route; Ralph Nader's office in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., was struck by bolts of lightning for twenty minutes. Barbra Streisand's town house in Manhattan suddenly vanished into a bottomless pit that yawned in the middle of the fas.h.i.+onable East Fifties. Her C above high C was heard for hours. Diminis.h.i.+ng.

Volcanos destroyed the refineries, storage depots, administration buildings and Manhattan offices of Standard Oil of Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, California, Texas and Rhode Island. The Earth took along Rhode Island in its entirety, possibly out of pique.

Eventually, when the mene mene tekel was written across the Grand Tetons in letters of burning forest fire, people began to get the idea.

The automobile was banned. All a.s.sembly lines shut down. Preservatives were eliminated from foods. Seals were left alone. A family of auk were discovered in New Zealand, doing rather nicely, thank you. And in Loch Ness, the serpent finally came up and took a deep breath.

And from that day to this, there has never again been a blotch of climatic s.m.e.g.m.a on the horizon, the Earth has settled down knowing the human race has learned its lesson and would never again take a ka-ka in its own nest, and that is why today the National Emphysema Society declared itself out of business.Now isn't that a nice story.And f.u.c.k you, too.

The Outpost Undiscovered By Tourists A tale of three kings and a star for this sacred season They camped just beyond the perimeter of the dream and waited for first light before beginning the siege.

Melchior went to the boot of the Rolls and unlocked it. He rummaged about till he found the air mattress and the inflatable television set, and brought them to the cleared circle. He pulled the cord on the mattress and it hissed and puffed up to its full size, king size. He pulled the plug on the television set and it hissed and firmed up and he snapped his fingers and it turned itself on.

”No,” said Kaspar, ”I will not stand for it! Not another night of roller derby. A King of Orient I are, and I'll be d.a.m.ned if I'll lose another night's sleep listening to those barely primate creatures dropkicking each other!”

Melchior glowed with his own night light. ”So sue me,” he said, settling down on the air mattress, tidying his moleskin cape around him... You know I've got insomnia. You know I've got a strictly awful hiatus hernia. You know those latkes are sitting right here on my chest like millstones. Be a person for a change, a mensch, it couldn't hurt just once.”

Kaspar lifted the chalice of myrrh, the symbol of death, and shook it at Melchior. ”Hypochondriac! That's what you are, a fake, a fraud. You just like watching those honkytonk bimbos punching each other out. Hiatus hernia, my fundament! You'd watch mud wrestling and extol the esthetic virtues of the balletic nuances. Turn it off... or at least, in the name of Jehovah, get the Sermonette.”

”The ribs are almost ready,” Balthazar interrupted. ”You want the mild or the spicy sauce?”

Kaspar raised his eyes to the star far above them, out of reach but maddeningly close. He spoke to Jehovah: ”And this one goes ethnic on us. Wandering Jew over there drives me crazy with the light that never dims, watches inst.i.tutionalized mayhem all night and clanks all day with gold chains... and Black-is-Beautiful over there is determined I'll die of tertiary heartburn before I can even find the Savior. Thanks, Yahweh; thanks a lot. Wait till you need a favor.”

”Mild or spicy?” Balthazar said with resignation.

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