Fran Ross - Oreo

Well, children, the finish is, I walked out of there cross-eyed. Before I had gone three feet, I had to resist the impulse to color the spots before my eyes. That cleared up after a block or two, but now if I see a white spot on a dog, I want to fill it in.

I saw Sadie Herschberg as I was leaving. She was so fat she could have used a bra on her kneecaps — about a 38D. I mean to tell you, she was 360 degrees fat. Herschberg himself was a beanpole — a loksh . When they went down the street together, one streaking, one shloomping, they looked like a lame number 10 or maybe an 01, depending.

Newark

A few minutes ago, I was listening to the local TV newscast, and the announcer said something like: “Fred Jones of Rahway, New Jersey, has been indicted for milking a bankrupt kosher meat company of thirty-three thousand dollars.” Milchedig and fleishedig ! A frosk in pisk to Fred.

Happiness, Montana

What am I doing in Montana? What am I doing in a town called Happiness? Nothing. So I make long-distance calls to the circulation departments of the New York Review of Books , the Partisan Review , and Commentary . I say, “Hello, [ name of magazine ]? This is Miss Cream at your fulfillment house in Iowa [all fulfillment houses are in Iowa]. Could you please give me a list of your subscribers in Happiness, Montana? Our computer has gone haywire, and we are double-checking our records.” There is a short wait, and I look out the window at the pyorrheic mountains while New York checks its records. New York comes back on the line with a list of two names. In each case, they are the same two names.

Then I call up the local newspaper, the Happiness Chronicle , and speak to the editor-publisher-reporter-layout man. I say, “Hello, Chronicle ? This is Life magazine calling. Miss Sweet here. We are doing a survey on ethnic and religious groups in Montana and want to include your town in the survey. We know you’re on top of things out there, and if you can help us we’d be glad to mention your name in the piece we’re doing. Our question is twofold: (a) How many members of the Jewish faith are there in Happiness? And (b) What are their names?” The editor-publisher-reporter-layout man says, “Well, yes, there’s a Jewish fella out here — Mel Blankenstein. He’s the only one of Jewish persuasion in this town. A real nice fella too. Keeps to himself. Joe Kerry down to the superette does land-office business on farmer’s cheese because of Mel, I hear tell.” Then I say, “Thank you so much for your cooperation, sir. Look for your name and the name of that fine paper you’re running in the pages of Life magazine.”

I hang up and I compare my Partisan Review — New York Review — Commentary list. Yes, Mel Blankenstein, reader of the above-named magazines, is one and the same Mel Blankenstein that is the nice fellow who has a taste for pot cheese. But — wait a minute. There is another name on my magazine list. What of that? I stare at the name. The name is Leonard Birdsong III. Leonard (surely Lenny) Birdsong (Feigelzinger, perhaps, or is the last name simply a flight of Wasp-inspired fantasy?). And III, of course just means third generation on Rivington Street. I now know something that nobody else in town knows — not even Mel. I know that Leonard Birdsong III is a crypto-Jew. My God, he’s passing — the geshmat!

I look at the two-page phone book and, yes, there they both are, the proud Jew and the meshumad . I decide to send Lenny a note before I leave town. My note will say: “Dear Lenny: Can you come over Friday night? My wife will fix you a meal like in the olden days. A little gefilte fish, a little chrain , some nice hot soup, a nice chicken. Who knows? Maybe a kugel even. Come on, Lenny, enough shlepping trayf home from Kerry’s Superette (though the pot cheese is unbeatable — imported from New York). It would be an averah if we Jews didn’t stick together, especially way out here. I am so sick and tired of looking at goyim I could plotz! We’ll expect you early. Best, Mel. P.S.: If you like pepper, please bring your own. We don’t keep it in the house. It’s such a goyische thing, pepper, but to each his own. M.B. P.P.S.: Bring this note with you. I am writing my autobiography and ask all my friends to save any invitations, postcards, etc., I send them. I could have sent you a carbon, but I feel it’s so much nicer to receive an original. So bring it with you and I’ll keep it on file under F for Feigelzinger. You can refer to it whenever you wish to — if you happen to be writing your memoirs also. M.B.”

I feel I have performed a real mitzvah for Lenny, and I look up at the clock and see that if I hurry, I just have time to make it to the local movie house for the cultural event of the season. They are having a John Agar Festival.

Christine and Jimmie C.

From the Jewish side of the family Christine inherited kinky hair and dark, thin skin (she was about a 7 on the color scale and touchy). From the black side of her family she inherited sharp features, rhythm, and thin skin (she was touchy). Two years after this book ends, she would be the ideal beauty of legend and folklore — name the nationality, specify the ethnic group. Whatever your legends and folklore bring to mind for beauty of face and form, she would be it , honey. Christine was no ordinary child. She was born with a caul, which her first lusty cries rent in eight. Aside from her precocity at mirror writing, she had her mother’s love of words, their nuance and cadence, their juice and pith, their variety and precision, their rock and wry. When told at an early age that she would one day have to seek out her father to learn the secret of her birth, she said, “I am going to find that motherfucker.” In her view, the last word was merely le mot juste .

Where Christine was salty, Jimmie C. was sweet. He was a 5 on the color scale and was gentle of countenance and manner. He had inherited his mother’s sweet voice, and he was given to making mysterious, sometimes asinine pronouncements, which he often sang. From Louise he had inherited a tendency to make up words. Thus this exchange between Louise and her grandson:

LOUISE: Dessa cream on your boondoggle? (Trans.: “Condensed milk on your boondoggle?) How ’bout some mo’ ingers on dem dere fish eggs, sweetness? (She points to the onions on the red caviar.)

JIMMIE C. (looking sweetly at his plate) : I have never had such a wonderful dish. It is like biting into tiny orange-colored grapeskins filled with cod-liver oil. (He snaps his fingers.) I know! These wonderful little things here before me in the bowl of my grandmother are like (and he signs in the key of G) tiny little round orange jelly balls. (On a letter scale with legatos indicated by hyphens and rests by commas this phrase would be GG-CC-G, FF, EDC.) From now on I shall call these good things trevels.

Christine loved her younger brother, but often she was exasperated by him. Every day she would sit on the bottom step in the living room and read to Jimmie C. He stopped her gently once and sang, “But nevertheless and winnie-the-pooh”—which was one of his favorite expressions—“I get Christopher Wren and Christopher Robin confused.”

Christine looked at him and, in a rare instance, made up her own word. “You are a stone scrock , boy.” The family liked Christine’s new word and gave it inflections for various occasions: