Mi Yiddishe Momma
Mi Yiddishe Mama
Andre Toussaint
Bahamiam Ballads
c. 1955
Naxos World : 2002
[Buy It]
I called my parents on Thanksgiving. They had had a quiet holiday dinner at home.
"Yeah, your father's watching TV and I'm here on the couch resting." My mom is nearly 70. She works two jobs: deli cashier and department store clerk. She's on her feet 18 hours a day, 6 days a week.
"Ma, you didn't go anywhere today?"
"I haven't heard from any of these people. Well, that's okay. I don't need anybody to entertain me on the holidays. Hell, I'm just glad to have the day off."
"These people" were my father's other children, all 8-10 of them. (My mom disputes the paternity of certain siblings.) Technically, I was one of "these people"; my mom is actually my stepmother. Usually, though, I bat for my mom's team.
My mom continued. "I know Johnny was having something cause he asked your sister what her plans were. Well, I didn't want to go. I'm tired. I could have gone to Marilyn's, she called here, but I wasn't doing that. I cooked a turkey. It'll probably get dried up cause who's going to eat it?"
Mom says "your sister" meaning her daughter, the only sibling younger than me and the only other one who's half-white. In unkinder times, we were called "the mongrel children" by the older kids. (Johnny and Marilyn are "these people.")
"Ma, did anybody come by?"
"I invited Carolyn over. She brought macaroni and cheese for like 20 people. I mean, it's good macaroni and cheese, but who can eat all this food?" Carolyn is my oldest sister. She raised a lot of the kids when my dad was between alliances — I'd say wives, but we don't really do marriage. Every few months Carolyn and my mom stop speaking to each other. Apparently, they have negotiated a holiday detente.
I hear the doorbell ring on my mom's end of the phone.
"Hold on. Who is this ringing the bell this time of night?"
My dad opens the door. It's some guy asking for money. He says his car is broken down at the end of the block and he's got two kids to get home. My dad has dementia. He's 82. I'm 600 miles away from my parents, listening on the other end of the phone.
Then the guy is gone. My dad gave him the money.
My mom says, "John, how can you open the door for some guy you don't know, late at night like this?"
"I've been knowing that guy 40 years."
"You don't know that guy. That guy is a bum, a scam artist."
"Everyone's a bum to you. That's that white supremacy in you."
"You know him? So what's his name then? And why is the car parked down the street? You walk down the street and see if there's a car."
"Why don't you walk down the street with me?"
"I'm not walking cause there's no goddam car and no kids neither."
The door slams.
"Look at this! He's gone out and locked me in here. Now if this bum comes sneaking in through the back door my ass is trapped in here."
"Well, Ma, if that happens, go upstairs and lock yourself in the bedroom and call the cops."
"I'm not doing that. I'll take the key out of my coat pocket and get the hell out of here."
Mom is a problem-solver, in her way.
"You see this? What kind of shit is this? If this was a stickup guy, he could push his way in here and I could get killed in the process. It just takes a guy to reach in his pocket, pull out a gun, shoot you in the stomach, and force his way in the house. He could be here waiting for me to come home from work, with the house ransacked, and then the two of us dead up in here. Right?"
Who could deny it? Then my mom surprised me. "I know who that guy is! That's the guy from the roof.”
I'm all ears.
"This is about 4 months ago, in the summer. I must not have worked that night. I'm coming home myself, your father's out walking the streets. All of a sudden, here's this guy putting a ladder up to the roof. I'm thinking, what the fuck is this? I say to him, Excuse me? What are you doing? He says, There's an old man who lives here. I saw him walking down the street this morning and he told me he needs his gutters cleaned. I said, These gutters don't need to be cleaned. You get down off that roof. I mean, what am I going to do if this bum falls off the roof? And it's on my property?"
"He came to the house with a ladder? Did he have a truck?
"No, he didn't have a truck. He told me that day he walked 20 blocks with the ladder."
I'm relieved. The guy doesn't seem very organized.
"He's what you call street slime. He doesn't think I recognize him. These type of people, that do this kind of shit, they think they're smarter than you are. But I'm facially very good with recognizing people."
I tell my mom to go make a police report and call me back. She does. My dad has come home and he's pissed.
"That man is no goddamn stranger to me. I used to do business with him."
My dad was a bookie for decades. He was a badass in his day. He's used to people asking him for money, especially his kids.
"You don't know that guy! Your father thinks he knows everybody. He walks up to people in the grocery store and starts talking to them. They don't know who he is."
"You don't know what the fuck you're talking about, you damn fool."
My mom talks over him, laughing. "He's telling me I can move out tonight. Hey, who's gonna pay the mortgage? I'm not moving out of my house. It's a lot of nerve here, a person tells me to move out of my own house."
The door slams. My dad's locked himself in the bedroom. "Your sister doesn't even tolerate him any more, except just to be nice. I don't blame her. She says, I don't know why you stayed with him. She's probably mad at me about it. She probably has a klupp about it."
My mom is the queen of made-up Yiddish. I haven't heard this one before.
"Ma, what's a klupp?"
"It's a, it's just a thing. It's like something that's bothering you."
I ask her for the police report number. The desk sergeant didn't give her one. She promises she'll call the precinct and ask for the beat cop tomorrow, make sure the report's been taken. I tell her goodnight. For the rest of the night, there's a klupp in my throat.
Megan Matthews lived and worked in Chicago.
We’re on vacation for part of this month, putting up a few old, favorite pieces. This one’s from November 27, 2006.
