Oreo by Fran Ross Read Free Book Online Page A

keep it in the
     house. It’s such a
goyische
thing, pepper, but to each his own. M.B. P.P.S.: Bring
     this note with you. I am writing my autobiography and ask all my friends to save any
     invitations, postcards, etc., I send them. I could have sent you a carbon, but I feel it’s
     so much nicer to receive an original. So bring it with you and I’ll keep it on file under
F
for Feigelzinger. You can refer to it whenever you wish to—if you happen to
     be writing your memoirs also. M.B.”
    I feel I have performed a real
mitzvah
for Lenny, and I look up at the clock and
     see that if I hurry, I just have time to make it to the local movie house for the cultural
     event of the season. They are having a John Agar Festival.

4    Pets, Playmates, Pedagogues
Christine and Jimmie C.
    From the Jewish side of the family Christine inherited kinky hair and dark, thin skin (she
     was about a 7 on the color scale and touchy). From the black side of her family she
     inherited sharp features, rhythm, and thin skin (she
was
touchy). Two years after
     this book ends, she would be the ideal beauty of legend and folklore—name the nationality,
     specify the ethnic group. Whatever your legends and folklore bring to mind for beauty of
     face and form, she would be
it
, honey. Christine was no ordinary child. She was born
     with a caul, which her first lusty cries rent in eight. Aside from her precocity at mirror
     writing, she had her mother’s love of words, their nuance and cadence, their juice and pith,
     their variety and precision, their rock and wry. When told at an early age that she would
     one day have to seek out her father to learn the secret of her birth, she said, “I am going
     to
find
that motherfucker.” In her view, the last word was merely
le mot juste
.
    Where Christine was salty, Jimmie C. was sweet. He was a 5 on the color scale and was
     gentle of countenance and manner. He had inherited his mother’s sweet voice, and he was
     given to making mysterious, sometimes asinine pronouncements, which he often sang. From
     Louise he had inherited a tendency to make up words. Thus this exchange between Louise and
     her grandson:
    L OUISE : Dessa cream on your boondoggle?
(Trans.:
     “Condensed milk on your boondoggle?)
How ’bout some mo’ ingers on dem dere fish
     eggs, sweetness?
(She points to the onions on the red caviar.)
    J IMMIE C.
(looking sweetly at his plate)
: I have
     never had such a wonderful dish. It is like biting into tiny orange-colored grapeskins
     filled with cod-liver oil.
(He snaps his fingers.)
I know! These wonderful little
     things here before me in the bowl of my grandmother are like
(and he signs in the key
     of G)
tiny little round orange jelly balls.
(On a letter scale with legatos
     indicated by hyphens and rests by commas this phrase would be GG-CC-G, FF, EDC.)
From
     now on I shall call these good things trevels.
    Christine loved her younger brother, but often she was exasperated by him. Every day she
     would sit on the bottom step in the living room and read to Jimmie C. He stopped her gently
     once and sang, “But nevertheless and winnie-the-pooh”—which was one of his favorite
     expressions—“I get Christopher Wren and Christopher Robin confused.”
    Christine looked at him and, in a rare instance, made up her own word. “You are a stone
scrock
, boy.” The family liked Christine’s new word and gave it inflections for
     various occasions:
    L OUISE : Mayhaps if I’m careful, I won’t scrock up dis yere
     recipe. Las’ time, it turned out right scrockified, dey tell me.
I
liked it, though.
     Thought it tayce real good.
    J IMMIE C.
(gently)
: Uncle Herbie can be just a
     tiny bit scrocky sometimes.
    H ELEN
(by letter)
: The TV set in my hotel room
     just scrocked out.
    C HRISTINE : Oh, fuck scrock!
Louise’s dream
    When Christine was about two and a half, she got her nickname. It came to Louise in a
     dream. Louise was walking down a dusty road with Christine on a gray,