Sex, Drugs & Gefilte Fish

by Shana Liebman

  It became clear that Mama Ann and all her friends at the condo were still mad at Obama for beating Hillary Clinton, whom they loved because she was feisty and tough, like a fifth Golden Girl. But it was also because he was young, seen as dovish on Israel and black—which is the Jews’ second least favorite minority after Nazis. If he were an old Asian guy who knew Krav Maga, he’d take Pompano in a landslide. (I think I’ve just pitched the plot to The Karate Kid V.)

  I tried to delicately ask Mama Ann if perhaps her problem was that Obama was African-American, but she told me I was wrong, even when I accused her of being unhappy with the recent influx of blacks into her area. “No. This was their place first. They could take the hot weather. And some of them went far in this world. They’re not lazy.” Jews and blacks, she explained, have gotten along famously for most of her life. “Now there’s some tension on account of the very Orthodox Jews. They’re troublemakers. They don’t get out enough.”

  That afternoon, we took a trip to Wal-Mart, because I can drive. Mama Ann told me she needed some elastic, which was not something I knew you could buy. Her first instinct in looking for the elastic was to grab a phone in the store and ask for help. This was not a good plan since all the phones she picked up were actually credit card machines. Eventually she walked up to the first black woman she saw. This woman, unfortunately, was not an employee at Wal-Mart, which I could tell because she was not wearing a Wal-Mart badge. Also because she kept shaking her head and saying, “I don’t work here,” while Mama Ann explained her elastic-finding problem. Eventually, the woman got her point across and pointed us toward an actual employee. Once we found the elastic, Mama Ann went looking for a battery-operated radio without a clock in it, which, to my horror, required walking through an aisle with the black woman who did not work for Wal-Mart. This was a woman I would have assumed we would have chosen to avoid. Instead, Mama Ann started asking her questions about radios. At this moment, my brain kind of froze in panic and I decided to handle the awkward encounter by smiling broadly and pretending that I was either foreign or mentally challenged and had been hired by an 88-year-old Jewish woman I didn’t know to drive her to Wal-Mart. Looking back, it was a lot to expect to convey through a smile.

  This was not the only racially charged moment of my visit. After eating chicken breasts, Mama Ann told me that her grandfather used to say, “Eat the marrow, you’ll date a black man.” I stood there slack-jawed, having no idea that for so many generations, Jews have hated marrow. And while we were in the pool, she walked up to a couple visiting from Spain and said, “If you were any darker, you’d have to move to the other side of town.” When everyone in the pool laughed loudly at this, I realized my grandmother wasn’t racist. She just says things that are normal for an older person who hates black people.

  The next day, we went to Palm Beach to visit her first cousin, Rochelle Bramsen, because I can drive. When Rochelle’s daughter and son-in-law argued for Obama, she bristled. I joined in, and asked—as suggested by the talking points—if Rochelle thought Obama was a Muslim. Both Rochelle and Mama Ann said yes. When we were all tired of arguing about that, I asked if it would be such a big deal if Obama were a Muslim. “For me, personally, that would be an issue,” said Rochelle. Thinking we’d trapped her in a rhetorical corner, her kids and I asked why Muslims in office would be worse than Christians. To which Rochelle deftly responded, “Who says I’m OK with Christians?”

  After making some progress with Rochelle and Mama Ann, I decided on my last morning to head down to the condo Hadassah meeting. A few people had Obama buttons in Hebrew. One wanted to tell me how Lyndon Johnson helped the Jews more than people know. Seven wanted to set me up with their granddaughters despite the fact that I was wearing my wedding ring. But many more were sure Obama was Muslim and that extremist Arabs “had his ear.”

  As I was leaving, I asked Mama Ann if I had somehow persuaded her to vote for Obama. “Yeah,” she said. I was elated, until she added, “I’m fine. I have to go for blood work again. They keep me waiting for an hour. I’m all sunburned like a berry. I get in the water, and I forget to get out. I get in conversations.” I rephrased my question, this time much more loudly. “Yeah,” she said. I cautiously asked why. “You gave me his good qualities. You ought to run for something as a politician.”

  I left pretty proud of myself, until I started to realize that there was really no great argument I had used, that Mama Ann was changing her mind for no good reason. I started to wonder what my good reasons for supporting Obama were. Did I really think that he’d get us out of Iraq all that much faster, that he could actually deliver health care to everyone or that he’d erase the anger between the parties and races? This is a guy, after all, who is no better than I am at stopping his grandmother from saying racist things. The truth is, I like Obama because he’s young and eats arugula and shops at Whole Foods and knows who Ludacris is. Because he’s the closest thing to the person I’d really like to vote for: me.

  Phone Home

  By Avi Gesser

  IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This story is almost all true. The voice mails referred to herein are actual messages left by my mom on my answering machine. My mom is most definitely not “in” on this. She is not aware of my Heeb Storytelling activities, and I would greatly appreciate it if it stayed that way. So, by reading this story, you agree that if you happen to be talking to a member of my family, you will take all reasonable steps to avoid any mention of this story and instead select another subject to talk about, such as why there is only one seder in Israel, but two seders everywhere else.

  MY NAME IS ABRAHAM (AVI) GESSER, and this is an actual picture of my family:

  We’re Jewish. In the center of the photo is my great-grandfather Abraham, whom I am named after. Apparently we look a lot alike, although it is kind of hard to tell. The baby is my mom. This is not a recent picture.

  My story is about my mom, and there is one thing you need to know about her by way of background: Although she lives in Winnipeg, which is about 5,000 miles away from me, she needs to know where I am at all times. Her day can be divided into two roughly equal parts: those times when she knows exactly where I am and those times when she is actively looking for me.

  I work at a large New York law firm and my days can be pretty hectic. I have almost no time for anything other than work, and all my friends and family know not to try getting ahold of me at the office for nonemergency personal matters… except for my mom, who calls me at work every single day and sometimes several times a day. I will often be in my office with some other lawyers gathered around my desk, discussing some case, and the phone will ring. I see from the display that it is my mom calling, so I don’t answer it. Then my cell phone rings. It’s Mom, so I don’t answer. Then my BlackBerry rings. It’s her. I ignore it. Then there is a pause while she tries me at home. My office phone rings about 45 seconds later as she starts through the cycle again, this time leaving long messages on each device with vital and pressing information, such as the following:

  Avi, it’s Mom dear. We are going to the JCC—Eli Weisel is going to be broadcasting. We’re going at about 5:15. We got to be there at 6:30, but they’re having some food so we want to have something to eat there too. So… call us either before 5:15 or about 9 o’clock in the evening. Talk to you later dear. Bye bye.

  Here is a more recent picture of my family:

  That’s my mom and dad, Esther and Hymie, in the middle. The three kids are Abraham, me, on the left, Isaac and Sarah. As I may have mentioned, we’re Jewish. My parents are observant and being Jewish is pretty important to them. My brother is quite into the Jewish stuff, but me… less so. This is a source of great concern for my mom. As part of her efforts to bring me back into the fold, she calls me to remind me of upcoming Jewish holidays—as if the only reason I never build a sukkah in my apartment is that I keep forgetting when the holiday is. Knowing that my complete adherence to all the requirements of a particular holiday is highly unlikely, Mom always p
rovides me with partial compliance options. So, for example, she knows I won’t fast on Tisha B’av, but maybe I could skip breakfast or have a light dinner? Here is a recent message I received along these lines:

  Avi… don’t forget, don’t eat meat for lunch tomorrow. Happy Shevu’ot. Chag Sameach.

  That was the voice mail I received at the office. At home, I got:

  Avi, it’s Mom… I’m just reminding you to eat dairy tomorrow. OK dear. Bye bye.

  The next day I was in a meeting at my office with several board members of a major client. In the middle of my conclusions regarding the conduct of a senior executive, my administrative assistant knocked on the door and walked over to me with a note. In these circumstances, being handed a note is reserved for very bad news that cannot wait—a family member has just been rushed to the hospital, the FBI is in your office going through your e-mails, there is blood pouring out of your left ear, etc. The note read:

  Don’t eat meat for lunch today.

  Love, Mom

  Although I was initially furious at the completely unnecessary and inappropriate interruption, which she obviously had insisted upon, I could not help but smile at the addition of the “Love, Mom.” As if I may have otherwise been unsure as to who had sent the message.

  My brother and I are not that close. There are several reasons for this. He is eight years older than I am. He lives in California while I live in New York. We don’t have much in common. We don’t share the same interests. When we were kids he tried to kill me on several occasions. And so on. This is also a source of great concern for my mom, mostly because she honesty believes that if we were closer, perhaps some of my brother’s love for Jewish ritual would rub off on me. So, in an effort to build that relationship, every year, beginning about three weeks before my brother’s birthday, I begin to get this kind of voice mail:

  Avi, it’s Mom dear. Listen. Thursday, January 27 is Isaac’s birthday. So don’t forget to send him an e-mail card or whatever you call those things.

  [talking to my dad] Umm, Hymie what do you call those e-mail cards… Blue Mountain, yah.

  OK dear. Bye bye.

  This year, I was very busy at work in January and simply forgot to send my brother an e-mail card. So, on the morning of his birthday, I received this message:

  Hi Avi, it’s Mom. Just wanted to remind you that it’s Isaac’s birthday today and it would be nice if you gave him a call.

  Bye bye.

  That day, I was tied up in court all day, so I didn’t listen to the message and didn’t call my brother. When I finally got around to checking my voice mails at around 11 p.m. that night, I heard that message from my mom, along with the following message from my dad, who absolutely never calls me:

  It’s your dad. You haven’t called Isaac and that’s not nice. If you haven’t… If you haven’t got… he’s home all day because he’s got a cold. Bye.

  At that point it was too late to call either my parents or Isaac and the next day was equally hectic, so I didn’t get around to calling him. When things finally calmed down that next night, I realized that for the first time in as long as I could remember, my mom had not called me. Wow, could my parents really have been that angry about this? Apparently so, because the next day came and went, again without a single call from Mom. I decided that Mom and Dad were overreacting and, as a matter of principle, I was not going to call either them or Isaac to apologize. After a full week of no calls I started to think to myself, “What am I going to do with all this extra time I have? This little family squabble has freed up about five hours a week for me—probably enough time to learn French.” But just as the Berlitz language tapes arrived at my apartment, the quiet ended.

  Unbeknownst to me, an event was about to occur that was so momentous, my mom could no long maintain her silence. That fateful day, this vital message was left on my machine at work:

  Hi Avi. Tomorrow is the holiday of Tu Be’shvat, the birthday of the trees, the beginning of the spring in Israel. Get some figs or dates or pistachio nuts if you can.

  Bye bye.

  Happy holiday.

  And so I did. I called my mom the next day to tell her how tasty the figs were and to thank her for the important reminder.

  Little Isaac’s Nozzle of Love

  By Steve Almond

  I FLEW DOWN TO MIAMI to visit my big brother, Ev, for a week because he and his wife, Carmen, had their first baby a couple of months ago. So I guess, in a sense, I was actually visiting the kid, whose name is—check this out—Isaac Diego Ornstein. Half Jewish, half Cuban. “Our little Jewban,” Ev calls him.

  They’ve got this great house in South Miami, very tropical, overgrown and so forth. The first night, Carmen made us a feast: flank steaks, black bean soup, these fried plantain chips with garlic sauce that are basically crack cocaine, and flan. After dinner, Ev and I headed out to the back porch with the kid to watch the sunset. It was the middle of February and we were in shorts.

  “This is the life,” I said.

  Ev grinned. “I told you.” He’d been trying to convince me to move down from New York for the past year. We were sitting there digesting, when all of sudden, Isaac Diego started making these weird faces.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Little dude’s hanging a grunt,” Ev said. He handed me the baby and went to get the diaper bag. He had this mat, which he laid down on the picnic table, and he set the kid down and took off his diaper. It’s not like I was watching the process that closely, but I couldn’t help but notice that my nephew had—how do I want to say this?—a weird-looking wiener. I sort of drifted over to the table to take a closer look.

  “Is it just me,” I said, “or is that kid a little long in the foreskin department?”

  Ev was wiping the baby’s bum, getting the diaper tabs all lined up. “Yeah,” he said. “Carmen didn’t want to have him circumcised.”

  “But we’re Jewish,” I said. “Did you explain the whole Jew thing to her?”

  “She knows about the Jew thing.”

  “Like, the whole commandment deal.”

  “It’s not a commandment.”

  “Sure, it’s a commandment.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s not one of the Ten Commandments.” Ev taped up the diaper and kissed Isaac’s belly. He was doing this thing where he doesn’t look at me. “To tell you the truth, I never considered it that big a deal,” he said. “We’re just happy the bambino is healthy—ten fingers and toes.”

  He was referring to the fact that Carmen had this condition, I forget the exact name, but basically her placenta got infected and her blood pressure shot up, and for a while the doctors were worried that Isaac might have gotten infected too.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I mean, obviously it’s not the biggest deal in the world. I’m just wondering what she has against circumcision.”

  “She doesn’t like the idea of him being caused any unnecessary pain,” Ev said.

  “He’s just a little schtunk. He’s not going to remember anything. Besides, you’ve seen how these rabbis do it. They get the kid all boozed up. You could even give him a local anesthetic.”

  Ev yawned. He was finishing up his residency in internal medicine at UM, sleeping about four hours a week. “If it was up to me, I’d have done it. But Carmen dug her heels in, and I didn’t feel like arguing with her. You have no idea, bro, how stubborn she can be.”

  We heard the screen door behind us slide open.

  “Did I hear my name?” Carmen asked. “Are you talking about me, sweetie?”

  “Singing your praises,” Ev said.

  Carmen smiled. “You better be, papi.”

  She took Isaac from my brother and walked up to me and stood there, striking this Madonna pose. “Isn’t he the most beautiful baby you’ve ever seen?”

  “Pretty amazing,” I said.

  “But isn’t he the most beautiful baby you’ve ever seen?”

  I didn’t know quite what to say. I mean, the kid was cute
.

  But his head, to be honest, looked sort of hammered-down.

  “I hadn’t really thought about it in terms of a hierarchy,” I said.

  Carmen sighed in a way that made it clear I’d missed the whole point and kissed Isaac on his soft little hammered-down head. “Remember to bring the diaper bag inside,” she said to Ev.

  Ev patted his belly. “That was some meal, huh? I never would have thought I’d be at risk for heart disease. But Carmen’s cooking. Man!”

  “Does Mom know?” I asked.

  “Know what?”

  “About the nozzle.”

  “If you’re referring to my son’s penis,” Ev said, “I’d prefer if you used the term ‘love gun.’ ”

  “Does she?” I repeated.

  Ev paused. “Yeah. She talked it over with Carmen. I didn’t get the details.”

  Our mom wasn’t all that religious, actually. It was our dad who’d been serious about Judaism, but he’d died when we were little.

  “To tell you the truth,” Ev said, “it’s just not a big deal for me. She gave birth to the kid. If she wants him to keep the extra ten percent, that’s cool with me.”