Fran Ross - Oreo

Jimmie C. smiled gently, not wanting to offend his friend by telling him he didn’t know what the varnok he was talking about.

“You got a telephone book?” Fonzelle asked.

Jimmie C. handed it to him, and Fonzelle dialed a number. “Hello, Alcoholic Anonymous? Please listen careful, now. Scotch on the rocks, gin and tonic, screwdriver, bloody Mary, muscatel, martini, sneaky Pete—” He doubled up again. “They hung up. I can usually get in about ten of them before they see where I’m coming from.”

Jimmie C. was just about to tell him never to use his phone again for such aglug purposes, when his mother, whom he had not seen for almost a year, walked in.

“ Nu , how’s my baby?” Helen said, embracing him.

Jimmie C. could not even sing, his small body was curbeling so with joy. Such was his curbelation that he did not notice that Fonzelle had said good-bye and was executing a heavy walk, its choreography a combination of Motown and early Clara Ward, out the door.

When Oreo saw her mother, she said, “Later, Mamanyu ,” and went out into the back yard to cry.

When Louise saw her daughter, she said, “Well, I be John Brown! Look who’s yere!” She kissed Helen, pulled her over to James, who grinned and seemed about to get up, and went straight to the kitchen to begin preparing a nice little homecoming meal.

La Carte du Dîner

d'Hélène

Allow 40 min for AMERICAN AND/OR JEWISH dishes.

(Choice of six in each course. No subsitutions.)

Hors d'Oeuvre

halibut imojo

funghi marinati

CHEESE AND CRACKERS

PICKLED HERRING

Leberknödel

sashimi

dim sum

empanadas

pâté maison

vatrushki

Zubrowka

Aquavit

Pepsi

Soupe

mtori

stracciatella

NEW ENGLAND CLAM CHOWDER

MATZO-BALL SOUP

Hühner Suppe

awase miso

yen-wo-t'ang

canja

petite marmite

rassolnik

Amontillado

Madeira

Poisson

samaki kavu

scampi alla griglia

FRIED SMELTS

SMOKED SABLE

Forelle blau mit Kapern

takara bune

hung-shao-yü

pescado yucateco

saumon poché à la Louise

osetrina zalivnaya

1961 Montrachet, Chassagne-Montrachet

Entrée

zilzil alecha

osso bucco

BRAISED SHORT RIBS OF BEEF

STEAMED CALF'S FOOT

Kalbshaxen

tori mushiyaki

fu-chu-jou-pien

matambre

côtes de veau en papillote

shashlyk

1953 Château Pétrus, Pomerol

Rôt

frangainho piripiri

pollo al diavolo

ROAST TURKEY WITH CORNBREAD STUFFING

ROAST CHICKEN GOLDA MEIR

Wiener Gans

yakitori

Pei-ching-k'ao-ya

conejo en coco

faison Souvaroff

kotmis satsivi

1947 Château Margaux, Médoc

Entremets

ovos moles de papaia

gelato torinese

LEMON SHERBET

TSIMMES

Gefülte Melonen

kusamochi

shin-chin-kuo-pin

leche de coco

soufflé glacé Hélène

kisel

1959 Champagne, Veuve Clicquot

Relevé

mokoto

fritto misto

GLAZED HAM

SALAMI SURPRISE MOSHE DAYAN

Sardellenschnitzel

tatsuta age

hao-shih-niu-jou

feijoada

noisettes d’agneau Christine

basturma

1964 Chambertin, Gevrey-Chambertin

Salade

yegomen kitfo

insalata di pomodori

POTATO SALAD

COLESLAW MURRAY

Roter Rübenkren

horenso hitashi

liang-pan-huang-kua

ensalada de nopalitos

salade russe

rossolye

Dessert

cocada amarela

spumoni

APPLE PIE WITH OREO CRUST

HALVAH

Sachertorte

kyogashi

hsing-jen-ping

manjar blanco

Mont Blanc au chocolat du deux Jameses

paskha

1953 Sauternes, Châ Coutet, Barsac

Le thé, Constant Comment

Le café, Chock f ull o’Nuts

Cognac

Calvados

.

What happened while Louise was cooking

Five people in the neighborhood went insane from the bouquets that wafted to them from Louise’s kitchen. The tongues of two men macerated in the overload from their salivary glands. Three men and a woman had to be chained up by their families when they began gnawing at a quincaillerie of substances that wiser heads have found to be inedible. These substances — which blind chance had put within the compass of snatchability of the unfortunate four — ranged from butterfly nuts to galoshes, with a catalog of intervening items that good taste precludes mention of here. In a section of West Philadelphia referred to as “down the Bottom,” at some remove from the Clarks’ neighborhood, a woman who had never laid eyes on Oreo’s family was heard to remark, “That Louise cooking again. Helen must be home. I wish that woman would send out a warning when she gon do this.” And she adjusted her husband’s chains so that they would not rattle against the hot-water pipes and keep her awake all night.

Helen entertains

Helen told the family stories of her life on the road. She acted out all the parts, animate and inanimate (one of her best bits was a bowl of mashed potatoes being covered with gravy). The family favorite that night was the story she told about playing at a house party in the all-black suburb of Whitehall, so much in the news when low-income whites were making their first pitiful attempts to get in. The upper-middle-class blacks of Whitehall objected to the palefaces, not because they were poor (“The poor we have with us always,” said town spokesman, the Reverend Cotton Smith-Jones, rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church), but because they were white (“We just do not want whitey, with his honky ways, around us,” said Reverend Smith-Jones to a chorus of genteel Episcopalian “Amens”). As Smith-Jones pointed out, whitey was beyond help. Chuck did not groove on crime in the streets, the way black people did; he did not dig getting his head whipped, his house robbed, his wife raped, the way black people did; he was not really into getting his jollies over his youngsters’ popping pills, tripping out, or shooting up, the way black people did. Such uptight, constipated people should not be allowed to mingle with decent, pleasure-loving black folk. That was the true story, but officially Whitehall had to be against the would-be intruders on the basis of poverty.

The town adopted a strict housing code, which was automatically rescinded for blacks and reinstated whenever whites appeared. (The code was shredded, its particles sprinkled into confiscated timed-release capsules, and is now part of the consciousness of millions of cold sufferers.) “Keep Whitehall black,” the townspeople chanted in their characteristically rich baritones and basses. “If you’re black, you’re all right, jack; if you’re white, get out of my sight,” said others in aberrant Butterfly McQueen falsettos. These and other racist slogans were heard as the social, moral, economic, and political life of the town was threatened.

The white blue-collar workers who labored so faithfully at the Smith-Jones Afro Wig and Dashiki Co., Inc., were welcome to earn their daily bread in the town, but they were not welcome to bring their low-cholesterol foods, their derivative folk-rock music, and their sentimental craxploitation films to Whitehall. The poor, the white, and the disadvantaged could go jump.