Mom's dolls and things

Garth was sitting at the Thanksgiving table. Mom had dressed him for the occasion. He wore a 1920s drop-waist peach colored dress, a strand of faux pearls, a floppy sun hat, and big round sunglasses. But it was the addition of a black and white feather boa that drew the biggest coos from me and my sisters. “Oh, he looks so great,” we beamed as we primped and propped him up. Garth was always the most beautiful attendee at house events. I loved his dress. Mom and I found it at the Mellon Park flea market in the summer. I wanted to wear it. But I was not six feet tall and slender like Garth. I was square, and not even 5 feet. At thirteen I was still waiting for another 8 inches of growth and my first bra. I had to admit it looked better on Garth.

Garth was the third man in our house dominated by women. Mom, me, and my three sisters outnumbered Garth, dad, and my only brother. But all of us were outnumbered by Mom’s dolls and things. There was Garth, the six-foot stuffed rag doll whom Mom dressed, nearly always in drag, and placed at the dinner table, on the front porch, or in the giant round couch that consumed our living room. She featured Garth at Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, and New Year’s, but there were others. There was a life-sized knight in full suit of armor that would startle me every time I walked down the stairs; the puppet made in my Mom’s likeness down to its tiny cigarette; the set of flasher dolls, with furry doll genitals, which would make an unexpected appearance in my father’s TV interview; the kitchen witches over the sink; and the pigs, oh so many pigs, the most prized among them bearing the face of Richard Nixon. This is, in fact, the only item listed in my mother’s living will. The Nixon pig will not go to her daughters or son, but to Shirley. We will merely get every other stuffed, carved, and tin-banged thing. Nearly every corner, every flat service, and every inch of shelf space in our half-duplex was packed with human, animal, or alien form. Thousands of eyes peering out as we stuffed the turkey, frosted the chocolate cake, baked the pumpkin and cranberry breads, tossed the salad, and dropped a plate of sausages down the stairs.

And then, years later, there was Inel.

Inel was not just one of my mom’s things. She was my Mom. A small, plastic faced doll with my mother’s pre-cigarette, pre-five children, pre-divorce baby face on it. It really looks like my mom did when she was young. She will tell you, “ask Zadie. this is how I looked.” And my Zadie will confirm it. “This is how she looked.” It looks like Mom. It is Mom.

“Inel” is my mother’s self given name, “Leni”, spelled backwards. And it was my mother that named her. Inel, the plastic faced, toothy grinned, soft bodied pocket-sized doll. What every Jewish Mom needs for guilt and torment. Well, maybe only our Mom.

I was not there for Inel’s birth, a traumatic night for my siblings that I can never quite put together, but it involved Mexican skeletons, things nailed to door knobs, and Cameron Diaz swallowing Tom Cruise’s cum (see earlier posts). Or maybe that is just how Inel was reborn on this blog. In any case, she was likely born in some Chinese factory and then sold across a Walgreen’s countertop. The point is once Inel was born she became mom’s avatar and her children’s little gnome.

I was sent pictures of Inel drinking Portland coffee, resting in the hands of a Chinese man in Prague, grinning in front of movie posters, and being spanked by a Pee-Wee Herman doll. Naughty doll. I was also sent with Inel to take pictures, in the hands of my relatives at a reunion, or at a dinner, or suckling from my breast. Naughty me.

Yes, at moments Inel was amusing. But mostly I was annoyed with Inel, as I would often get annoyed with Mom. Really, I’m not sure if Inel is ridiculous, tender, or sad. However, I am fairly sure she is my mother’s expression of love, of both giving it and asking for it. Here, she is saying, here is a piece of me. Now deal with it.

Inel was one of the best props for my mother to express her true talent: injecting herself and her love, at a distance. She demands to come along with you, somehow, anyhow. This, I suppose, is what mothers do. But still, with Mom, you never know if it is a true desire, a guilt trip, a command, or a rouse. I remember her helping me get ready to attend my first Bar Mitzvah. It was going to be held at the Le Mont, Pittsburgh’s most fancy restaurant. “Bring me back something,” she asked? Joked? Demanded? After the last dance with Alex Berman, I walked quietly back to the buffet table and shoved a croissant into my Jordache purse.

So yes, we do deal with it. We carried Inel, primped her up like Garth getting ready for a Thanksgiving feast and startled at her like a knight in rusty armor. Yes, we deal. With things. With dolls and things. With Mom and her love. However unwanting or wanting, we carry grinny dolls, shove croissants in our tiny purses, deliver embarrassing sick notes to our teachers, stick rebbe trading cards to our fridges, wear goodwill bin finds and take other prompts or props from mom that always result in both, forwards and backwards, joy and annoyance. Yes we do.

There is a Spoon in the Sink

According to my wife, I am a neat freak who doesn't pay attention to details. I want things put away and hate clutter, yet I often miss spots on pots and pans, miss corners when I am cleaning, and my electric tooth brush has some a disturbing growth at its base. This paradox is a patriarchal. One of my clearest childhood memories involve my dad coming home from work. It was usually a scary experience, because something would inevitably piss him off. Just to give some context, my Dad was a professor, who had five kids, a chain smoking wife, two to three pets and a occasional litter of kitties all crammed into a duplex. We would usually be down in the basement watching TV when he came home. He would bring his bike through the basement door, then start to freak out about the chaos. Usually it was just a small thing like,"who left this fucking sock on the floor?" Our walls were stained with nicotine, animal hair was everywhere, our carpets were filthy, our laundry chute was stuffed three stories high, dirt was caked in our kitchen linoleum, yet my dad would freak about a fucking sock. My dad has passed this curse on to me.

After my parents got divorced, my dad's life became a lot happier and cleaner. The pets, dirt, and chaos were gone, and he seemed to be a lot more chilled, yet I was not free from his curse. When my Dad and step-mom went to South Korea, I was responsible for watching their sprawling suburban abode. I paid their bills, kept the place clean, and spent the six months attending then quitting graduate school. At some point, Nicky, my little sister, came back from her year abroad in France and started messing with my Chi. She would lay on the couch, watch Whose Line is It Anyway, and annoy me. At the time, I had transitioned from graduate school to helping mentally ill people find jobs, it was terrible work and I hated it. The only thing that made working tolerable was the fact that I was living free in a sweet house, but I was always like to find a negative and Nicky felt my wrath. One time a I came home, Nicky was sprawled out on the couch watching comedy and there in the sink was a single spoon. It was too much for me to take and following in my father's foot steps, I freaked about the "fucking spoon in the sink." It was a pretty pathetic, I think Nicky eventually put it in the dishwasher and we established the "don't talk to me for twenty minutes when I get back from work" rule. I still have episodes where the slightest bit of clutter bothers me, but I am getting better.

Thorry, I haven't written in awhile.

Friend or Foe?

I used to watch Tom and Jerry a lot as a kid. And every once in a while, there would be an episode where Tom and Jerry would get along. They would unite against a common enemy and fight their battle together. I always loved those episodes. And I would naively believe that it meant the end to their volatile relationship, that they would still be friends in the next episode. But this never happened and by the next episode they were enemies once again. This pretty much describes my relationship with Max growing up.

While most of my childhood was spent under the torment of my brother, there were shining moments when we would get along. When I look back, I realize that much of the time I spent playing as a kid was with Max. And we would have fun. But somewhere, somehow, things would go awry, and I would find myself running away while my brother shouted behind me "I'm beating the shit out of you." It was always an empty threat, but that didn't make me any less afraid.

We would play Dare Devils, where we were two crime-fighting bad ass detectives named Max Breaker and Brenda. We would run around our neighborhood and use our kung fu karate skills to kill invisible devils and protect the invisible necklace. And even though in each battle we were victorious, it seemed those devils would inevitably return for another beat down. The game would usually end abruptly in the middle of an intense devil attack with Max shouting "I quit" right after I'd just announced that I had to pee.

Abby, Max and I had started a band together at one point. Abby was lead broom, I sat in the back and banged my sparkling baton on the desk, and Max crooned into the vacuum cleaner. Our number one hit was "Let's Fight, You Bitch." The lyrics went like this: Let's Fight. You Bitch.

It was ahead of its time.

Soon Abby moved on from the band, but Max and I broke off and formed "The New Yorkers." Max penned our chart-busting hit "Sparkle in the Night." The chorus always remained the same, the rest of the song changed from concert to concert. But that never seemed to bother our millions of fans. My songs were not as successful, however. Max complained that I was always telling a story and that's not what people wanted in a song. I think it was our artistic differences that eventually dissolved "The New Yorkers."

Each time we got along, I would think to myself that this would be the end to our fighting. That Max finally liked me. I once bought these little Guatemalan trouble dolls and the legend was that you were supposed to place them under your pillow at night and make a wish and all your troubles would disappear. I used to wish my brother would be nice to me.

I know. That sounds so sad.

I think I know where it all went wrong. And I think it was my fault. We were very little - I'm guessing I was about 3 or 4 and Max was 5 or 6 (and yes, I honestly do have memories from that far back.) While some of the details are definitely foggy, I do remember the key components. We were playing in the backyard and either a ball rolled under the car or Max decided to go under the car for no reason, but either way, he crawled under the car. When he came out, his clothes were black with dirt and he told me not to tell Dad. And that is where I made the crucial error that set our relationship spinning into a different dynamic. I told Dad. And even then, I didn't know why. But I think it was because, for once, I had some power. I knew something no one else knew and being the youngest of five kids, that was a rare power to have. But I planted a seed of doubt. And Max never fully trusted me again.

Or the better theory is that Max was just an asshole.