by Ross, Fran
That evening
Oreo was exhausted. None of the S.’s or Sams belonged to her, but they had been diverting. There was the Sam on Eighty-ninth Street who wanted to adopt her; the Samuel on Columbus Avenue who saw voices (“Stick your fingers in your nose,” Oreo advised him, “and they’ll go away”); the S. on Cathedral Parkway who refused to say what the S. stood for (when Oreo guessed Snicklefritz on her second try, he turned blue, and she had to call an ambulance); the S. on Seventy-fifth Street who turned out to be a Shirley who had changed the name to an initial in the directory listing because of obscene phone calls (“My wife was very put off, psychologically and actually speaking, by heavy breathers who asked for me,” he explained). There was the Samuel on Broadway who, along with his wife, was in jail awaiting trial for the murder of his son Melvin. Mr. and Mrs. Schwartz had learned of their son’s plot to smother them in their beds and throw himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan, so they got him first. A neighbor told Oreo what the accused couple had said as they were dragged away: “Imagine the chutzpah on that kid—to think of a plot like that!” Sympathy in the building was running heavily in favor of the alleged murderers. Melvin had been known on the block as Smart Ass.
Because of these and other Schwartzes, Oreo had decided to call it a day. She had gone crazy at a delicatessen on Broadway called Zabar’s and had bought a lot of goodies to eat, the gourmet in her temporarily winning out over the stingy person. To compensate for her lack of control around good food, she was going to save money by sleeping overnight in the park instead of checking into a hotel. She had found that Riverside Park’s major drawback as a campsite was that it was long and narrow. It was flanked on the west by the Hudson River and the West Side Highway. Because of its narrowness, it had been difficult for Oreo to find a secluded spot, away from children, dogs, bicycle riders, tennis players, joggers, lovers. The place she had chosen for her picnic dinner she thought would be ideal for her overnight bivouac. It was hidden by trees and a huge rock, was near a water fountain and a park john, and was, for the moment, clear of people. She shoved her orange and white Zabar’s shopping bag under a natural shelf in the rock and went to the john.
As she sat there, she noticed a hole about the size of a half dollar in the door that would provide a midget’s-eye view of the toilet. Sure enough, a few moments later a midget’s eye appeared at the hole. Oreo could recognize one anywhere. The midget giggled, and Oreo picked up an empty cigarette pack that someone had dropped on the floor and slammed it against the hole.
“It’s giving me Marlboros,” said a high-pitched voice.
Oreo got tired of stretching from the toilet seat to the door and dropped the pack. The hole was clear for a few moments. Then the eye came back. A few seconds later, wiggling fingers replaced the eye. Oreo grabbed the fingers and twisted them with a gentle but persuasive torque. The fingers were withdrawn from the hole hastily. “Yah, yah, that didn’t hurt,” said the voice.
“It will the next time,” Oreo warned. She finished quickly and moved silently to the door. When she yanked it open and looked down, she was disappointed in herself. It wasn’t a midget, just a normal-sized redheaded shifty-eyed kid of about eight. “It’s a gypsy!” the boy howled when he saw Oreo, and he ran off.
What kind of dumb kid thinks I’m a gypsy? Oreo thought. A Canadian dumb kid, she found out a few minutes later, when he came back with his parents. Oreo smiled. The boy’s parents were midgets. She hadn’t lost her eye for spotting midget blood after all.
“I’m Moe,” the man said.
“And I’m Flo,” said the woman.
“And we’re here to say hello,” they said together.
Oreo was about to introduce herself, but she thought that more than three rhymes in one chorus would be too Cole Porter. Instead, she leaned down and said, “And what’s your name, little boy?”
“Look into your crystal ball, gypsy.”
Scrock, thought Oreo.
His parents apologized for his bad manners. “Joe’s his name,” said his father.
“And we came,” said his mother, who obviously leaned toward internal rhymes, “heigh-ho-the-derry-o . . .”
“. . . from Ontario.”
Moe and Flo Doe explained, in maddening doggerel, that they sold dog whistles and had been traveling all over so that Joe, who would inherit the business, would really get to know his territory—North America.
“Yep, we came from way out yonda,” said Moe.
“On a Honda,” Oreo put in before Flo could open her mouth.
“Yes, yes, yes. How’d you guess?” Moe said, grabbing the whole couplet for himself and thus revealing a selfish streak that Flo would doubtless have to contend with in their later, choliambic years as they went scazoning toward life’s dead end.
How many caesuras would a rhymester as undisciplined as Moe not hesitate to rush into? Oreo wondered. How many catalectics make acatalectic, spondees amphimacerize in his mad rush to complete rhymes all by himself, without the help and support of the musette he loved? True, Oreo had been guilty of infringement when she snatched—nay, usurped—Flo’s Honda line, but she had just met the midget woman and could hardly be accused of disloyalty.
The twice-deprived Flo raised a determined chin and said, “Why pay the rent? Pitch a tent,” leaving Moe with his mouth open.
Oreo saw that Flo could take care of herself and stopped worrying about her. The couple explained that although three Does could ride with comfort on one motor scooter, they always traveled with two, so that either Flo or Moe was riding with Joe while either Flo or Moe rode the scooter with the family camping gear. They saved on hotel bills by camping, usually illegally, in parks and any other wide spots in the road they could find.
Oreo admired their thrift. She went back to her rock, a stone’s throw away, and took out her buffet of noshes. Since the odds were that the Does could not eat much (a nanonosh), she offered to share her food with them. They declined with a klutzy quatrain (prose version: they were looking forward to the menu they had planned and wanted to get their camp set up before they prepared their evening meal). Oreo sat on her rock ledge and watched them. While she munched on smoked sable, chopped liver, and scallioned cream cheese, the munchkins pitched a hop-o’-my-thumb tent, then scurried to and fro with their dollhouse equipment.
Flo motioned Oreo over to ask that she watch the charcoal fire they had just started in the grill while she and Moe went to the bathroom. They didn’t want little Joe poking at it.
“Whatever you do . . . ,” said Moe.
“I beg of you . . . ,” said Flo.
“. . . don’t let the flame go out . . .”
“. . . scout.”
Moe had obviously learned his lesson. He had left long pauses for Flo’s lines.
Oreo turned to the fire as they walked off. Groovy, she thought, a sacred flame to tend. She noticed that the Does’ charcoal briquettes were about the size of Chiclets.
“It’s starting to go out,” Joe complained. He was staring at the flames with pyromaniacal intensity.
“Oh, shut up. It is not.”
“Boy, will they be mad when they come back and see that you let the fire go out. It has to be a certain heat for what we’re cooking.”
Oreo looked at the fire. It was dying down. She had never tended a charcoal grill before. She couldn’t let the flame go out and scrock up her sacred trust. A failed fire tender? Never! Now, what had Flo done to get the fire going? Oreo had seen her pour some stuff from a red can over the black Chiclets. Oreo took the can and gave the dying flames a generous dousing. With a phoenix tune, the flames sprang back to life and shot up the side of the can, just in front of Oreo’s hand. Whoosh, whoosh! flapped the wings of the phoenix as the flames soared several feet straight up from the nozzle of the can. With unseemly haste, Oreo set the can shakily on the ground. It teetered and finally fell, sending a weed of flame scuttering through the dry grass. Oreo started for the can, hesitated, started again, and finally
dashed forward to right it on a flat rock. Flames thrummed merrily from the nozzle.
Oreo backed off to survey the situation. “Oi vei, you mothers,” she said to the scampering flames. She turned quickly. Joe was a safe distance away behind a tree, his shifty eyes wide with excitement and glee. He was laughing at Oreo. Oreo ran first to the weed of flame and danced on it. Her sandal caught fire. She slipped it off her heel and flung it away. It hit a scabby sycamore and fell into some grass beckoning from a fork of the tree. The grass caught fire. Joe was in a pyrophilous frenzy over Oreo’s concatenating combustions. As she hopped about putting them out one by one, she knew that she was avoiding the main problem. She could hear the murmurs of the unsuspecting recreators—who might soon be piecemeal all over the foliage because Oreo was chicken shit!
She was stamping out the last small fire when she forced herself to face the red can with its high-powered Whoosh whoosh! She calculated her chances. “If it hasn’t exploded yet, it probably won’t explode. On the other hand, since it hasn’t exploded yet, it’s probably ready to explode. If I blow, who knows how wide an area might go if it should blow? On the other hand, it certainly would be dumb if I were to go over there and do the heroine bit, save everybody in the park, and get blown up myself. I mean, I don’t even know these people.”
In the time it took to read all that, Oreo had run over to the Does’ camping equipment, picked up a wee potholder in the shape of a wee mitt, shoved it on her index and middle fingers, flung herself at the can, and cut off its thrum in flagrante. Oreo smiled. Chicken shit my Aunt Minnie!
Joe looked disgusted. The only flames he had going for him now were the ones on the charcoal grill, the original sacred flame. He ran over to the grill hungrily.
Just then, Flo and Moe came back. They thanked Oreo for keeping the fire going.
“Heh, heh,” Joe snickered.
“Before we sup . . . ,” said Flo.
“. . . please fill this cup,” Moe told Joe. He was stretching a point to make the rhyme. The “cup” was a bucket.
“It’s what we need—don’t you feel?” he said to his wife.
“Oh, yes, indeed—to make our meal.”
“We almost needed some water for this whole place,” Joe said, smiling nastily at Oreo. He went off swinging his bucket and whistling a medley of gypsy tunes.
Oreo asked the couple what they were fixing that required the special temperature that Joe had mentioned. But of course: braised dog biscuits. The Does said that dog biscuits were the perfect food for small campers. They had all the vitamins and minerals for the adult midget minimum daily requirement, they were lightweight, easy to pack and carry, and they were tasty. Braising over a hot charcoal fire brought out their subtle flavor.
Oreo made a mental note to tell Louise. But why this preoccupation with dogs? she wondered. Dog whistles, dog biscuits.
“You see things from their point of view . . . ,” said Flo.
“. . . down amidst all this do-do,” said Moe, lifting his leg high as he walked over the grass.
That night
On her afternoon walk, Oreo had discovered the Seventy-ninth Street Boat Basin, where private yachts, speedboats, and houseboats were moored. She thought it would look pretty at night and was headed there when she heard music. Somewhere near the boat basin a rock group was working out. As she walked along the esplanade toward the boats, the music seemed to come from above her. Several people were going up the steps that led from the esplanade to an undomed rotunda, the upper perimeter of which served as a traffic circle for cars entering or leaving the West Side Highway at Seventy-ninth Street. The rotunda itself was a pedestrian underpass of the highway exit; its archways encircled a large central fountain. Earlier that day, Oreo had watched children and dogs playing in the fountain under black and white signs that read:
NO
PERSONS
ANIMALS
PERMITTED
IN WATER
That afternoon, strollers had sauntered coolly through the frescade of overlapping shadows cast by the archways. Now, for some reason, no one was allowed access to the rotunda from the esplanade.
Oreo and several other people backtracked through the park and went to the upper perimeter of the rotunda, darting through the circling traffic to get to the narrow ledge that formed the base of the waist-high upper wall. They looked down on a rothschild of rich people (dancing), round tables (sprouting beach umbrellas), and rock groups (playing at opposite arcs of the stone circle).
None of the onlookers seemed to know what was going on, so Oreo crossed the traffic circle, ducked under the chain draped across the steps leading to the rotunda, and joined the party. No one questioned her as she wandered around tasting canapés and reading place cards. A few movie and television personalities walked by and pretended to know her when she pretended to know them.
She was about to leave when a boy of about eighteen—tall, thin, and supercilious in his black tie and white dinner jacket, with a nose as pointy and put-upon as an ice cream cone—asked her to dance. They were essentially dancing by themselves, one occasionally glancing at the other to see whether the other saw what a good dancer the glancer was.
Finally Oreo said, “I've been to so many benefits lately, I can’t keep track.”
“Tay-Sachs.”
“Christine Clark.”
“No, dear, that’s the name of the disease this little party’s in aid of.”
“Never heard of it,” said Oreo.
“Of course not. It’s virtually exclusive to Jews—Ashkenazim.”
“Nu, I’m half Jewish.”
“Half a loaf is better than none.”
“And sickle-cell anemia to you.”
“Never heard of it,” he said.
“Of course not. It’s virtually exclusive to blacks—gesundheit.”
“Some people have all the luck.”
“Well, mine has obviously run out—I met you. But half a wit is better than none.”
They stopped dancing and got down to the real business of seeing who could top whom. It went on for about fifteen minutes, his tit for her tat, and vice-verbal, until they both got tired and conceded the match was a draw.
Oreo never discovered her opponent’s name, but she was happy for the chance she’d had to flex her snot-nosed-kid muscles. She headed back to the campsite, comforted by the knowledge that the Jewish half of her had kept her from getting sickle-cell anemia and the black half had warded off Tay-Sachs disease.
Back at the campsite
Oreo said good night to the Does, fifty baby steps away, and snuggled under her rock ledge on newspapers she had chosen for the purpose. She had picked ad pages with a high percentage of white space, not only because their good-taste quotient was likely to be high, but also because it would cut down on the amount of newsprint that could come off on her dress.
She slept fitfully, awakened during the wee hours by the cat-purrs that the Does affected for snores, the thuds and howls of muggers and muggees, the simpering of police in drag. Some time later, Oreo heard what must have been the reputedly beauteous band of female rapists who, according to the underside of Oreo’s bottom sheet, had been terrorizing Riverside Park for three weeks. At about 4 A.M. they dragged yet another victim into some nearby bushes (“If you can’t get it up, we take it off”). Before the ravishingly ravishing ravishers ravished him, the man offered several limp excuses. It was all Oreo could do to keep from cracking up over his piteous protests that he was too afraid that he would not be able to get a hard-on to get a hard-on, that he wasn’t usually like this, and could he come back on Tuesday instead. “Now, let’s not run off half-cocked,” said the obvious leader of the band. The man offered to substitute sucking for fucking. The leader castigated him. “Hell, no! My dog could do that. Besides; we’re not in this for pleasure. We’re out to teach you fathering mother-jumpers a lesson. Now, which is it—up or off?” Oreo turned over and went back to sleep.
The next morning
> Oreo washed, brushed her teeth, and fluffed out her afro in the park john, then ate the delicatessen leftovers. Moe and Flo were still sleeping. Three minikin feet were sticking through the flap of their teeny tent. Oreo assumed that the other foot was inside. Joe’s feet were nowhere to be seen. He must be off playing somewhere, she guessed.
Oreo picked up her walking stick and went for a stroll to wake herself up and prepare for the new day. She had been walking for only a few minutes, when she heard yelps and whimpering in the bushes to her right. She thought at first that it might be the rape victim of the night before, but these noises were less animalistic than his had been. She crept silently in the direction of the sounds of distress. She parted the bushes. Her irises contracted in disbelief. There was little Joe Doe, laughing and playing happily with a dog. He had an eccentric sense of humor. The human-sounding yelps and whimpers came from a sad-faced Chihuahua. Joe had tied the dog to two sprung saplings and was about to chop the retaining rope with his boy scout ax. Oreo rushed over and grabbed the ax from him. She hated to see the little brat having fun. She untied the grateful Chihuahua, who went nickering away on spidery legs, making a detour around—or, rather, through—the two halves of the corpse of a Pekingese. Oreo thought it was a Pekingese. It was either that or oat smut. Without a word, Oreo grabbed Joe by the wrist and dragged him after her.
“Where are we going, gypsy?”
Oreo did not answer.
“I hate dogs. And dog whistles. And dog biscuits.”
Oreo did not answer.
“Why do I have to have midgets for parents? Even if they were regular-size short people, it would be okay. But, no, they have to go and be midgets—and short midgets at that! I’m only eight and already I’m taller than they are. It’s not fair!”
Oreo did not answer.
“They make me sick with their rhymes. I have to have some fun!”