Oreo (7 page)

By this time both Betty and the doctor were raging beasts. As the doctor ran to the
attack—or, rather, the collaboration—Oreo came out of hiding and gave him a quick
shu-kik
to the groin, then got his jaw in the classic
nek-brāc
position.
With his life but a
blō
away, he promised Oreo he would never again annoy innocent
young women by phone or in person with his snortings and slaverings. With a half-force
bak-bop
she propelled him off Betty’s porch and watched as he shmegeggely fled
the street.

She turned back just in time to hear Betty saying plaintively, “But what about me?”

Oreo realized that it had been very brave and self-sacrificing of Betty to participate in
this little hoax. But her face brightened when she saw what time it was. She gave Betty the
good news. “What about you? It’s five-thirty. Your father will be home any minute now. Do
what you usually do in these circumstances. Fuck
him
.”

James had been immobilized for fifteen years when Louise decided to take
a boyfriend. By this time, she had added drinking to her cooking/eating hobbies and weighed
in at a good two hundred pounds. She had a love-tap on her that could paralyze yeast for
three days. Louise met her boyfriend, Will Farmer, at a pay party given by her club, the
Rainbow Skinners. The Rainbow Skinners got together every Friday night to conduct the
regular club business, which was to eat, drink, and play pitty-pat and Pokeno, and to
conduct the special club business, which was to plan pay parties, which they gave to raise
money to give other pay parties, and so on, unto several generations.

Whenever Louise brought Will home for dinner, she said, “Make yo’seff comf-
tub
ble,
Frank . . . I mean, John . . . I say,
Will
.You jus’ like one de fam’ly.”

After he had eaten one of Louise’s specialties, Will, who was in his eighties (this was a
Platonic relationship—or maybe Hegelian), would creak into the living room to relax. Once
there, he would settle into a chair opposite James and succumb to a myoclonic jerk off to
sleep. With his downcurving nose pincering toward his chin like a chela and a cigar held
fast between clenched gums, he resembled a pegged lobster. His body became as straight and
stiff as a bed slat as he began an inevitable slide to the floor. Just before he clattered
into James, Louise would wake him up, thereby preventing him from making a body-temperature
cancel mark across her husband’s half swastika. It was Louise’s lot to be surrounded—or,
rather, flanked—by rigid but unavailing masculine spare parts—James and Will each in his
own quirky fashion an instance of the-part-for-the-whole, a synecdoche of manhood.

She was listening to Vivaldi’s
Concerto in D Minor for Guitar and Viola d’Amore
. Her head
equation

meant that she thought it was time that she went home to visit her family
and got Oreo started on her journey to learn the secret of her birth. The phone rang,
interrupting the music and breaking off another equation at a crucial operation. It was a
wrong number, a woman selling magazine subscriptions. Helen was annoyed, so she let the
woman go through the whole
megillah
. Finally, she said, “You’ve convinced me that I can’t
beat your low, low prices. I think I’ll take a three-year subscription to
Field and Stream
.”
The vendor was overjoyed (this was her first actual sale in 5,235 calls). Then Helen said,
“That is, of course, if you have a braille edition.” The magazine woman apologized
wholeheartedly for her company’s lack of foresight—a choice of words which Helen pointed
out was particularly unfortunate for a person with her handicap to hear. With further
apologies, muffled sobs, and long-distance groveling over her lack of tact, the woman hung
up.

Someone was obviously circulating a defective telephone-sales list, for a few minutes
later a dance studio called. Helen debated a moment over whether she should be a paraplegic
or an amputee but decided that either would be tasteless and settled for spasticity. Again,
apologies, sobs, and groveling. Helen was able to complete her equation:

C
=
H
—
MB
²

where
C
= catharsis, psf

H
= homesickness, cu ft

M
= meanness, mep

B
= Bell telephone, min

Jimmie C. and Fonzelle Scarsdale had been best friends ever since Oreo
had beat Fonny up during her first practice session of WIT. Fonzelle showed Jimmie C. his
report card. He was a straight-F student. He was not exceptionally stupid but had no time
for studies, preferring to spend most of his free hours perfecting his walk (“I like to walk
heavy
, man,” he had confided to Jimmie C.).

Jimmie C., distressed, said, “What is your mother going to say when she sees this? My heart norblats for you, my hands curbel.”

“Hell, man, she’ll just give me a party.”

“A joyber? What kind of joyber?”

“A do-better-next-time party, jim. What else? But I’m hot, though. That yalla-nigger gym
teacher give me a F in phiz ed. Now, you
know
I’m good in gym, jack. I’d like to
bust that nigger up ’side his head.”

“Who are you talking about? Mr. Ozaka? He’s Japanese.”

“They got you fooled too, huh? Them so-called Japs, Chinks, all them—they
all
niggers. Just trying to chicken out of
all the heavy shit going down on us
black
niggers. But they niggers just the same.
One of these days, Charlie Chalk gon peep their game, then he’ll start treating them just
the way he do us.” He laughed at the prospect.

Fonzelle put his report card back in his wallet and pulled out a celluloid zigzag of
identification cards. Each one showed his picture, but the names on the cards ranged from
toothsome (Vasquez Delacorte, Miguel Salamanca) to bland (Ronald Gray, Dave Johnson). “In
case I ever get picked up, the pigs will be confused, dig?” He compressed the pleats. “My
cousin’s a cop. I went with him when he had to testify in night court the other day. This
foxy chick walks in. Man, she was really together. Legs so big and rounded off. I scrambled
to write that address down. But the judge, he’s keeping it all to hisself. I couldn’t hardly
hear, man. You know what they fined that chick? Ten dollars and costs! If it was some ol’
nappy-head broad, some pepperhead, they woulda thrown her ass
under
the jail.
Gee-me-Christmas, there’s some shit going down, jim!”

Jimmie C. nodded in sympathy.

“Hey man,” Fonzelle said, “I’m looking for a job.”

“Doing what?”

“As a lover, man. That’s what I’m best at. What’s the opposite of red?”

“Bormel?” Jimmie C. offered.

“Yeah, blue. I get me a blue light and put it outside my door. Did I tell you about the
last one I had. I told her, ‘Three dollars! Are you kidding? Where I come from,
you
pay
me
!’ She wasn’t bad, either. Really squared me away. After I came out, I saw
this faggot. I thought it was a chick at first. I said, ‘What you mean you ain’t no girl,
girl?’ I told Doris about that, and she cracked up. Doris is cool, jim. She may be a dyke,
but she one stone
fox
. Wouldn’t mind some of that cat myself.” He giggled. “Know
what she told me the other day? She had to go to the doctor, see? Had a infection in her
cat. So the doctor examines her, does his little number with the slides and things, and
says, ‘Miss Jefferson, I don’t understand this. You a virgin, you still cherry and all, yet
and still you got this infection in your cat. And this ain’t no
ordinary
infection.
This kinda germ, we usually find it in people’s
mouth
. It’s a—whatchacall—a oral
germ. Now, Miss Jefferson, how do you explain that?’ Doris says that without even thinking,
she comes out and says, ‘Well, doctor, I sat on a dirty teaspoon.’” Fonzelle doubled over,
whooping and hollering.

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

funghi marinati

PICKLED HERRING

sashimi

empanadas

vatrushki

Zubrowka

Aquavit

Pepsi

Soupe

stracciatella

MATZO-BALL SOUP

awase miso

canja

rassolnik

Amontillado

Madeira

Poisson

scampi alla griglia

SMOKED SABLE

takara bune

pescado yucateco

osetrina zalivnaya

1961 Montrachet, Chassagne-Montrachet

Entrée

osso bucco

STEAMED CALF'S FOOT

tori mushiyaki

matambre

shashlyk

1953 Château Pétrus, Pomerol

Rôt

pollo al diavolo

ROAST CHICKEN GOLDA MEIR

yakitori

conejo en coco

kotmis satsivi

1947 Château Margaux, Médoc

Entremets

gelato torinese

TSIMMES

kusamochi

leche de coco

kisel

1959 Champagne, Veuve Clicquot

Relevé

fritto misto

SALAMI SURPRISE MOSHE DAYAN

tatsuta age

feijoada

basturma

1964 Chambertin, Gevrey-Chambertin

Salade

insalata di pomodori

COLESLAW MURRAY

horenso hitashi

ensalada de nopalitos

rossolye

Dessert

spumoni

HALVAH

kyogashi

manjar blanco

paskha

1953 Sauternes, Châ Coutet, Barsac

Le thé, Constant Comment

Le café, Chock
f
ull o’Nuts

Cognac

Calvados

.

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.