Tamar Myers - Batter off Dead

“My name is Sister Disaster,” the homely woman in the religious garb said.

“Ida,” I said, “it is you, and you can’t be a nun, because you’re Jewish!”

“Ma?” I’d told Gabe the night before about Susannah and the Sisters of Perpetual Apathy, but he’d been pretty uninterested in the whole thing. “Sounds just like your sister,” he’d said. Apparently now that the wimple was on a different head, it was another story.

“I think we need to talk,” I said calmly. “Gabe, dear, hoist her up on the bed, so we can at least be eye to collarbone with her.”

Although he doesn’t think well under duress, the Babester can sometimes take direction. Thank heaven he did now. With Ida jammed between the two of us, and three feet off the ground (mine is the SUV of king-size beds), I felt that we had at least some control in what was otherwise a totally insane situation.

“Now, dear,” I began, “you do realize that Susannah-aka Mother Dispirited-is wearing a cross around her neck. I know, it’s just a soap cross, and if she showers with it on, it won’t be long before it’s not a cross at all. But my point is that this mother and sisters gig is a Christian, not a Jewish, thing.”

“Oy gevalt!” Gabe said suddenly and clapped both hands to his head. “Ma, you didn’t convert, did you?”

At that Ida tugged on a cheap chain that disappeared down the neckline of her habit and retrieved a startlingly large wooden star of David. “Dis vas supposed to be on de outside, ya? But I dress in a hurry.”

“So you’re still Jewish?” I said.

“Ya, und I see dat you are still meshugah. Of course I didn’t convert. De Sisters of Apathy dun’t care about your religion; all dey care about is dat you shouldn’t care anymore. Give up, und give in. Dat is our message. Vee vill all lose in de end, so vhy vorry?”

“But, Ma, that’s fatalistic. That’s just giving up. And what is it that makes your life so darn hard that you feel like this?”

“Vhat you say? Look around you, Gabeleh. Vhere are vee? In de shticks, dat’s vhere. Und I am living alone in a big house all de vay across de road. Vhat kind of life is dis, I ask you?”

“What kind of life do you want, Ma?”

“She wants to be living with you in New York City,” I said. “She wants to play mahjong every afternoon and talk about her son the doctor. Oh yes, and she’d like to keep Little Jacob with her and leave me behind.”

Sister Disaster wasn’t so apathetic that she could restrain from punching my ribs with her elbow. “I vould only play mahjong five days a veek!”

“Sorry, hon,” Gabe said, reaching around her to pat my back. “I thought that in time she’d learn to love you as much as I do.”

“Sometimes I think she does,” I said.

The Babester didn’t have the courtesy to respond to that. “Ma, why do you call yourself Sister Disaster? That’s such an awful name.”

“Because I am a disaster, yah? First, I vas unable to make you happy in New York. If I had been, vee vouldn’t be here. Dat is a fact. Und now, I am not able to fit into dis litle family dat you have made.”

“Ma, that’s simply not true; you fit in just fine. Alison utterly adores you. Even Freni has learned to tolerate you.”

“Ya? But vhat about dis von?” The cubically shaped pseudo-nun jabbed a thumb in my direction.

“Hon,” Gabe said, turning to me, “tell Ma that you love her too.”

Even though I heard the pleading in his voice, and I have been known to stretch the truth upon occasion (they were all justified occasions, I assure you), I could not bring myself to flat-out lie this time. And yes, I’m well aware that in Matthew 5:44 Jesus commanded us to love our enemies. I accept that as gospel, but at the same time, may I respectfully submit that the Lord did not have a mother-in-law? There, that’s all I have to say on the subject.

“I’m sure you love her very much, dear,” I said sweetly.

“Dere, you see?”

“Hon,” Gabe said in his most pleading of tones, “you’ve got to help me out here.”

“I love you,” I said. Okay, perhaps I mumbled the words. At any rate, what I didn’t add is that I meant those words in the spiritual, God-wants-me-to-do-it sense, not in the warm, fuzzy sort of way.

“See, Ma?”

Ida shook her head so vigorously that I suffered a wimple burn on my left arm. “Ha! She dun’t mean it. Anyvay, it is too litle, too late. I have decided dat de Sisters of Perpetual Apathy is de only vay for me now. I must renounce all my emotions. Or else I explode, ya?”

Sometimes the Devil, who is always standing just over my left shoulder, and who must have received the wimple burn as well, commandeers my tongue. That’s the only way I can explain what came out of my mouth next.

“Isn’t it curious,” my lips said, “that she was able to pronounce the name of this bogus religious order without the slightest trace of an accent?”

“Mags,” Gabe said sharply, “you’re only making things worse. I’d rather you didn’t say anything at all.”

“You’re telling me to shut up?”

“Your words, not mine.”

“In that case, I’ll hie my heinie out to this bus full of hopeless hinnies and rescue my little one from an imitation Mother in gray gabardine garb-pardon the alliteration.”

It was a bizarre sight to say the least. There truly was a bus full of women dressed in nun’s habits and, judging by the expressions on their faces, they were the most phlegmatic folk I’d seen in a month of Puritan Sundays. They may as well have been carved out of the same soap as their neck ornaments.

Although I don’t watch movies on principle, many years ago, when I was but an errant youth, I did drive all the way into Pittsburgh, where I sneaked into a theater and watched The Sound of Music (just so you know, I have long since repented of that sin). The point I am trying to make is that the pseudo-sisters aboard Susannah’s “vehicle” weren’t anything like Julie Andrews. Even the stern nuns, who disapproved of Maria running in the abbey, would have been more fun than this bunch.

I scanned their bland faces, which, for the most part, looked alike to me. Oh, there were a couple of women young enough to be sort of pretty even under these circumstances, and one was an older lady whose mannish features and coarse skin were somewhat unsettling, but on average it was hard to distinguish one woman from another. No doubt the uniforms-I mean the habits-were partly to blame. Devoid of makeup, and with their hair pulled back and hidden behind gray veils, the women of Hernia were proof positive that we were, at our core, a plain people.

After extracting the fruit of my bloomers from his aunt’s loving arms, I sorrowfully bid her good-bye. I even went so far as to hug her, taking care, of course, to keep both my baby and my bosoms from touching her surplice.

“Is the rat still in there?” I said.

“His name is Shnookums, Mags, and he has a good-bye present for you.”

I reared back like a mare with a burr under her saddle. “No thanks, dear.”

“Please, Mags. If not for him, then do it for me. It will mean so much.” Mother Dispirited was no longer speaking in a monotone, but in her little-girl voice, the one guaranteed to take me back to days when I was her guardian and primary friend.

“All right,” I said.

“Thanks.” Susannah reached under her surplice and, from the surplus room not occupied by Shnookums, removed a small framed picture.

“This is for you to remember us by.”

I stared at a snapshot that had been taken at a Christmas party. And at my sister’s house at that, even though I hadn’t been invited. Susannah was posed in front of her tree, proudly holding the mangy mongrel, which was decked out as an elf, replete with enormous velvet ears and green boots. In the background were the faces of familiar people-folks who obviously rated higher than I did on the invitation scale.