Golden Yellow Blues

From time to time when the sky is gloomy I gather various textiles that are not happy whites anymore and I turn them into golden days.
I'm told being useful to others, sharing your knowledge is the way to go. Keith Pavia fellow artist reminded me that talents are given to be shared not buried away.
It is still trying for me because I grew up under communism and much was taken from us in the name of altruism.
Yet for many years I went that route only to get burned out.
So: dissatisfying whites get soaked for an hour or so.

I put to boil 4.5 gallons of water  and 13 tablespoons of turmeric and 9 tablespoons of alum. If curious Google as to why.

I pushed the clothes thoroughly under the concoction and made sure it stayed oppressed.

After an hour get them out without burning yourself. 

Rinse. The turmeric powder might create a Milkyway of sorts on the bathtub floor. Get metaphysical.

Take pictures with your phone and not spify camera while rinsing until the water is not yellow anymore.

Put  a second load into the brewing cauldron.  If you get annoyed by the waiting like I do since I equate waiting with terrorising controlling tactics, as experienced under said communism, double task. Repot your plants. Here goes Pandele, my digging assistant:

After rinsing put them in the dryer and get all metaphysical again.

Then fold the fluffy clothes and uuu and aaa about how soft and sunflower fields and daffodils and autumn ginko tree leaves they are. And how you'll never get to be depressed by blahy whites again. It's not your fault the washing cycle is just half an hour here in America and you can't get them be the required white. 

And that how disgustingly patriarchal it is that brides must wear virginal white. And you can't remember the biblical title of a movie in which Betty Davis stubbornly showed up in a red dress she bought of a sexual worker and Jane Fonda's father dumped her. Jezebel the film. 

At my wedding my head looked like a buffalo partition in the middle  teased in two mounds stiff with hair spray. Made my own white dress. God, every year I find more stuff in my younger past to be embarrassed about.

Here are the invigorating results:

Even rust splotches look artsy now:

This flower is my phone screen now to remind me that when in doubt use yellow.

After trimming off the stray strings I made a tassel:

and left the rest to Pandele to play

while I took a hot bath using the brewing. Turmeric and alum is great for you. Google, Google. If you douse your nether parts you can be a virgin all over again. Yep.

New York City 

November 11, 2017

The Olympics Seep In

In the NYC Park and Recreation swimming pool down the block. I swim faster, vigorously, since on my retina the Rio Olympics unfold. I don’t understand the rules of the swimming competitions, or even swimming styles. All I engage in is my frog stroke. It’s an approximation of breast stroke and butterfly, I was told by savvier swimmers at the gym swimming pool in winter. They insisted I should sink my head in the water, but I can’t do that at our neighborhood pool. Swimmers share wide lanes during the early morning lap swim hours. I rotate my head like a periscope. I have to watch out for the careless back-strokers to avoid frontal collision. I surely don’t want to start my day in a Titanic wreck.

During day there are no lap swim lanes, the pool turns into a zoo. Crab hermits congregate on the pool ramp and steps, blocking your access. The floor is dangerous to step on, since queen conch shells covered in barnacles don’t budge, busily working on their pink pearls. Your serene swimming is hindered by papa sea lions dipping their squealing pups in water, majestic whales snorting menacingly at you, their calves frolicking under their protective bellies, or by dazed catfish with their fingerlings pulling at their barbel-moustaches, or alarmed frogs, basking on pool edges, squawking loudly as they dive to rescue their overconfident tadpoles engaged in underwater breath-holding contests, or teenage sea horses clutched amorously, or islands of rapping seagulls, or the occasional mermaid, slaloming through clusters of ponderous pelicans, searching for their mermen, attacked by quarrelsome Medusas, or lazily hanging out with Rastafarian octopuses, anyway, not to belabor my point, playful bathers pop up in front of you from the water, splash, jump, ignoring your ‘efforting’.

So when a teenage girl follows me around and finally asks me smiling what kind of swimming is that, I apologetically say it’s my one of a kind frog style. When she asks me how I move my legs, arms, I realize she wants to learn to swim. I demonstrate. She eagerly imitates my arm moves. She moans she’ll never be able to swim. I encourage her, she will swim in no time, much better than me, if she registers for free swim classes. I want to get on with my ten-lap quota, that is ten pool lengths. In the morning I manage twenty pool widths. I’m a slow poke, but I came a long way.

I grew up in a dusty little town with no river or lake or clean swimming pool, the seaside was 400 kilometers away, and mom was terrified of water, fearful I’d drown or catch diseases. When I swam my first lap a few summers ago I thought I’d die, my heart was pounding out of my chest, my lungs were agonizing, my feet were shackled in cramps. All this in a sad four-feet-deep pool surrounded by eight lifeguards. So to me frogging twenty laps in half an hour is winning gold at the Olympics.

What those swimmers do in Rio is unbelievable. I’m in awe that they manage to jump into the water timely. I’d be still gasping for air on my trampoline, debating if I heard the start signal or not, while they’d be finishing the race, go on the podium, take their medals, travel back to their countries.

But according to my Yoga teacher I’m a gold medalist just for the mere fact that I show up on Thursdays at her Yoga class. As far as she is concerned, I could snooze on the matt in Child’s Pose, well, maybe that would be uncomfortable, but in Corpse Pose, and still win a medal for my ‘efforting’. Well, the municipality pays for this class, so some follow her advice, but were they to pay from their own pockets I bet they’d like to get more bang for their money than a nap on a matt. Anyway, the teacher’s point is that Yoga class is not a competition arena. No judges, no judgment.

If only I could reach that stage of enlightment, life would be so much easier, so much rosier. It’s a daily struggle not to pass judgment. I blame it on being raised during Ceauşescu’s socialism. My theory is that officially we were supposedly all in it together, so everybody goaded everybody, criticized one another. Everybody’s choices and actions affected everybody else. We all had to attain Epoca de Aur/The Golden Age of Communism as a group, not individually, slow pokes and Olympians alike.

We stand tall in Mountain Pose, eyes closed, listening to our teacher about the new women’s gymnastics world champion, a nineteen-year-old that smiles effortlessly and treats herself to pepperoni pizza even when she doesn’t win gold. She is the greatest gymnast of all times ever, the teacher enthuses, she can do poses that even male gymnasts have trouble with, she is so strong, so playful. The best.

I just can’t keep my eyes closed. I squeeze my eyelids, but I just can’t meditate. How could this American girl, the new world champion, be the best ever?! Nadia Comăneci is the best ever. Ever, ever, ever! Without Nadia there’s no modern gymnastics! Plus Nadia was born in Romania, and so was I, and you are now telling me Simone Biles is the greatest ever, ever? No, no, no! Nadia Comăneci is ever, ever, ever! I was a child when I watched wistful Nadia, a child herself, competing in Montreal, making the billboards go 00.00, because the machine had no 10.00 score for her perfection. I watched the world go berserk with wonder.

Then when she competed in Moscow the Russians cheated and stole the gold from her, because Russia’s might would trample us under its boot. I watched in tears her trainers withdrawing the team from the competition. That was the last sports competition I ever watched. It made me sick for decades. Only this summer visiting a dying friend I indulged her and watched together one evening’s broadcast to see if a Hungarian swimmer would make us proud. To my surprise I was so happy to see so many driven youth. Nowadays it’s cool to drift aimlessly, alas. Those swimmers, faces so young. It was endearing to hear their rehearsed speeches of gratitude. If you beat your competitor with just one millisecond you became the winner. Ridiculous. I’d give all finalists medals.

And then, at the gymnastics there was Nadia in the bleachers. And Marta Karolyi. And the American team wins. There’s only one lonely Romanian gymnast competing, not even a team. It was heartbreaking. What happened?! Romania was a powerhouse! We defined modern gymnastics! And now America wins it all?! What happened?!

Well, dear Ella, funny you should ask. Where do you live? In America. Where’s Nadia? In America. Where are the Karolyis? In America. Who wins? America. The safe harbor we all seek.

Simone Biles is a sweet girl, from foster care to gold medal, what an inspiring, from-rags-to-riches story, sure, but don’t tell me she is the greatest of them all. There’s an entire team of Romanians behind her. The Karolyis gave America fifteen world champions, nine Olympic champions, over seventy medals, and on and on the list goes. I don’t know if Nadia had privileges in Romania, if she had enough food to eat or was starving like the rest of us under communism, if she was freezing in her home, like the rest of us, or if she treated herself to pepperoni pizza, but I know that behind her was the sadness and joy, the humiliation and pride of the little country of Romania.

And now they have nothing. That is partly their politicians doing, alright. That is partly our doing, because we ran away for dear life, alright. But it is also part of beloved America’s doing, gulping in everything. Look at the many Easter European names that American champions have.

Sure, it is for the greater good, for humanity’s good.

But, please Yoga teacher, even if you were not born when Nadia was a world champion, you surely have heard of her…

New York City

August 12, 2016

rosamunda

i am startled when i discover that i am loved. it's not that my parents didn't love me, but since my father drank and my mother was exhausted by maintaining the household, raising four children and working full time, there wasn't much left for us children in terms of cuddling, laughter, or soothing tears.
so when my new four-month-old stray kitten rosamunda showed some reciprocity of my love for her i was grateful.
i walked all day buoyant, everything lovely, the snow fall, the parks with the thick coat of pristine white, the trees with the sparkling ice on their branches, topped by onfalling snow, the lamp lights on the alleys.
i wished the past to be like that, suddenly disappear under a thick layer of white new beginnings, covering it like the snow covers all the dirtiness in the city, its littered sidewalks, its mounds of black garbage bags.
and as if such miracle from the spirit of life seemed possible, .
before rosamunda we had an old stray cat. my son brought it home and declared he never had been allowed to have a pet, so now at the tender age of 24 he'd have a pet. the pet looked dismal. her fur all mated, skinny like a death nightmare, her screechy meow so horrid it made me laugh. no cuteness there. but in six months her fur coat was thick and shinny, and i didn't mind when she'd wake me up at dawn trumpeting with her alarmed meow that the end of the world was coming right now and no one believed her. i took it as an anxiety attack.  i related to her. i fed her and soothed her. i'd had anxiety attacks before i asked for pills to pacify the horror of small hours.
i was very proud that the vet i'd taken her to in the summer proved wrong, that our cat was not dying, under our care she recovered from her hard life in the streets. the vet was just a greedy profiteering liar. our cat was not ill. she was just a senior cat, 12 years old.
we were doing great the three of us.
one day a friend who fed stray cats in his neighborhood brought a kitten in a bag. she looked exactly like my senior cat, a gray tabby. the friend of this kitten had been killed by a car. i said i'd take her in, maybe my morose senior cat needed company. but upon introducing the kitten to my cat, my never scratching or biting senior started hissing! the kitten bolted out of my friends' strong hands and hid in a deep corner in the living room behind my paper archive boxes. after much searching, i found her in the evening and placed food near her hideout and was gratified to see her eating ravenously.
the second night i discovered her in the kitchen under the table, on top of my old dowry chest. i put her food there and crouched under the table soothing her with whispers.
my son caught me at it, but he thought it was our old cat that was noisily crunching the dry food under the table. i giggled to myself, because my son works temporarily at a storage facility and he is sure the sixth floor of the building is haunted by a spirit. the elevator often goes up on its own to the sixth floor and no one is there. he declared he can sense spirits. so to me it was hilarious, having smuggled the kitten in the house for two days and he not noticing it.
he asked me why i looked so guilty. i just smiled. but the second time, i don't know why he kept on coming into the kitchen, it was past midnight, but as he went out of the kitchen to his room he saw the old cat on the corridor and said to her, 'oh, you ran from my mom's cuddles,' but then it dawned on him and he pounced on me, 'you have another cat hidden there! how could you! now you'll start hoarding cats, have seven, twenty cats!' 'no,' i said apologetically, 'just this kitten. i won't be able to survive if miso soup dies on me. just this stray kitten. her friend died hit by a car. just this kitten.' he slammed his room's door. fine. in the morning he asked me where was my new friend hiding. that's how he is, hollers, then cools down.
well, on the third morning my senior started coughing. i thought it was a fur ball, so i took her into the bathtub, so she can vomit without me cleaning after her, but she coughed and coughed and nothing came out. i held her, soothed her, she was so weak she tried to stand up, but she'd fall down again, and again. until she didn't get up anymore. i caressed her murmuring soothing words, but then she stopped breathing. i picked her up and she was like a rag doll, never had i held her without some fretting or purring in her lively body. her heart stopped beating. i tried to hear it. it stopped beating. then her eyes turned glassy. her spirit was gone.
i was in shock. i knew death, loved ones died, but never under my very eyes.
to witness life go away, was demonic. how breath and heart beat makes us alive, conscious, and then when they stop it's all gone. how indeed life is a gift, an incomprehensible miracle. what sustains its flicker, where does it go. inconsolably i cried all day.
the next day i listened to other people who lost pets. my neighbor's daughter cried on the floor for a week, her mom divulged, to her daughter's outrage. my therapist when a little girl had a bowl full of golden fish and one day they all died except for one. the next day her father bought new fish to replace the loss, brought new friends for the lonesome fish. when she came from school she found the old fish dead on the floor. he jumped out of the bowl. she ran crying downstairs to her dad, but it was too late.
my physical therapist told me how she had watched powerlessly her dog eating her parrot.
my son said at least we gave miso soup a good home and care for a few months, and she died in peace. the kitten needed us now.
yes, the kitten was less and less in hiding. gradually she moved to my bedroom. first hid under the chest of drawers, but gradually came on my bed and played with the rubber fishes, actually wiggly lizards and balls containing bells i hung for the senior cat on a folding-arm lamp. then i started brushing her fur. she'd not let me do it for long, just a few strokes and then she'd turn her head and try to grab me with her clawed paws and bite me. i'd back off scared. 
see, to me to have a pet it is unbelievable. i come from romania, where packs of stray dogs attack people in the streets. there was a scandal a few years ago, stray dogs ate a baby left unattended for a few minutes in a park.  i'd seen rabid dogs, rabid cats when I was small. i was bitten by dogs and hatefully barked at by those chained in the yards. see, in romania dogs are security guards. cats are the sanitation department workers. they eat mice and rats and table scraps.
my mother gets annoyed and cuts me short when i talk about my cat. her cats would steal schnitzels from the kitchen table if left unattended. she can't conceive i let the cat sleep in my bed, they were never allowed to stay in the house, even in harsh winter.
here pets have coats and shoes. i've seen a dog with orange rubber boots yesterday in the park.
when my kitten looks wistfully out of the window i tell her, 'i know it must be hard to miss your friends and romping outdoors, but think how harsh is this cold winter. and soon spring will be here and we'll go out for walks.' i went with her in the park and she turned into a crouching tiger, sneaking around the park fences  thru the mounds of dry leaves.
two elderly ladies talked to us, both had lost their cats that week. i understood their grief. one was crying, 'my tomcat would kiss me every morning. better than a man he was.' it was a bit creepy, but i understood her pain. years before it was mind boggling to see the petmania here. i'd be sarcastic about it. but i understand it now.
i am lucky to have rosamunda.
she ended up being rosamunda after i tried out various grand names. brumhilda, rosamunda, gertrude, geraldine, wilhelmina. wilhelmina was how the language professor called my mother at the university, her name was actually vilma.  the senior cat i called misu, like my sickling father, but my son insisted she was rico. so i compromised and called her miso. then miso soup.
my rosamunda was to be royal.
only now i realize i wanted to call my mother's name. wilhelmina. but she is rosamunda, the rose of the world to me. so sparkling of life and curiosity. she darts up on my five-shelf rack of clothes, she follows me everywhere i go, from room to room. in the evening she scuttles to my bed and hunts my moving legs and feet covered by my quilt. hunts and battles them.
yesterday morning i was meditating at what i just read in a book about human animal interaction. the author says we are deluded that our pets give us unconditional love. to him it was clear that his cat thought about him as her food dispenser, fur scratcher, play toy, and door opener. there are some who say pet ownership is wrong, like slavery. we keep them hostage for our own enjoyment, we fix them against their will. it's immoral.
yes, i said guiltily to my self, rosamunda hates me, she always turns around to bite me when i brush or pet her back. always. but then why does she follow me around? and why when once i closed my bedroom door she meowed forlorn on the corridor.
so when she wanted to attack my feet, then moved to my hands, i let her have her way with me. if she wants to bite me, let her bite me, i said, masochistically, guiltily. so here she comes! her paws hold my hand, then the open mouth with sharp teeth closer, closer to my flesh, ready to dagger her fangs in it. but she holds my hand gently between her teeth, then she lets go of it! again and again. then, wonder of wonders, she licks my hand! and again! i thank her, grateful and honored, 'thank you, rosamunda, thank you,' each time she gives me her raspy hand kiss.
i am overwhelmed that i misunderstood her wish for rough play. she was reciprocating, showing me her love.  and i'm sad my mom never experienced that. i had a fluffy dog, a puppy when i was small. he got lost and i cried all day until my father brought it back from wherever the puppy went. but then he grew into a monster. a large shepherd dog, furiously barking from his chained powerless.
i told my mom whenever i look at this kitten's large, clear eyes, i remember my young siblings, my sister and brother's blue eyes. i don't ask her if she remembers when i was a teenager and was angry at her, who knows what she had forbidden me again, she was washing the china cabinet window, my little siblings helping her, and in my hatefulness i smeared the clear glass. i am so ashamed i did that, but i don't know how to ask forgiveness for that. my brother died from drinking, my sister is still alive, in the room with mom when i call in on skype.
my sister understands my love for my cat. she loves chicken. mom's three roosters sing together at dawn. 'a choir of roosters,' she laughs.
so all i say is, 'do you remember, dear mother, your beautiful gray, silk dress, with small burgundy flowers? and the pigskin leather bag? i dismantled and ruined them. were you upset about it, mother?' 'oh, no,' she says, 'i wasn't wearing them anymore. and anyhow, i'm not one for fancy dressing, purses and such.'
i tell her i believe my cat has a soul. she scoffs.
i love my mom.
we are from a people that still have ancient purity codes. odd ones, misogynistic ones, and one of them might be that animals are not clean. she always alarms me the cat carries awful diseases.
and so i write this for the goodness in people.
i was walking back thru the slushy melting snow, when at a street corner a guy was texting, waiting to cross the street. there was only a rambling snow-blade truck moving slowly two blocks away, so i told him, 'we can cross safely now,' and i went ahead. i don't know if he heard me or not, i walked fast so he wouldn't think i wanted to accost him, but for a moment there was a 'we'.
for a moment i could share the world in kindness.

new york
february 11, 2015

Serene in a Festival of Lights

It’s been cold on Thursday. I don’t know what possessed me to dress in skinny black jeans, and a light black cloche coat. But by the time I was in the street I realized it was too late to trot back to my apartment. I was on my way to the endocrinologist, eager to see how my thyroid was doing.  What a year was 2014. Last December out of the blue I lost 10 lbs. in 14 days or 14 lbs. in 10 days. My throat was gorged. I could barely talk, the thyroid pressing on my vocal cords. Investigations, blood testing, taking radioactive fluids so they can scan the glands, on and on it went. Medication. At all costs avoid stress. No stress. No stress. How can one live in New York City and have no stress…

But when there’s a will there’s a way. A neighbor took me to her friends’ camp in the Catskills. Deep in the woods. There was a creek whispering no stress no stress no stress. Across from it a field of wild yellow flowers exuding scents of no stress no stress no stress aroma therapy. In the background the old fir trees guarded me no stress no stress no stress shall enter here. Ella is sunbathing on the weathered wooden deck. No stress, no stress, no stress….
A golden summer. But when fall swishes its cold cat-o'-nine-tails whip chasing you back to your cozy New York apartment you wonder how you will keep no stress no stress no stressing on when one must network, attend events, promote, sell, survive, push on her talents applecart.
And I was so tired of if you make it here you make it anywhere. I wished to be a chipmunk dug in a hole for winter. Feel no guilt I don’t press on. But how?
One day I knock at my son’s room door with a bowl of blackberries. He cracks the door open. A horrid meow screeched behind him. My son with a glint in his lovely eyes informs me he brought home a stray cat and he shall keep it no matter what. He always wanted a pet and I never allowed him a pet. So now he has a cat. His cat. Alright. But she stays solely in your room. I’m allergic to cats. Let me see the damn thing!
Oh, Lord, what an unsightly scrawny miserable creature. Fur dangling in thick matted balls. And the meowing most unfortunate. But my son dug his heels. This is his pet. Alright.
The next day when he’s at work, I break into his room and dig the cat out from a dark corner by the bed and start cutting off her matted dangles. She meows pitifully but doesn’t scratch, doesn’t bite, doesn’t hiss, always poops in the litter box. I bathe her. Her voice tells me it’s the end of the world, can’t I understand it’s the end of the world; can’t I stop the water and shampooing? We’re all gonna die in a matter of minutes. But I towel her and blow dry her and when done she scurries back to her dark corner. My son throws a fit that I could have hurt the cat, she’s his pet, I should not sneak into his room!
So of course every day I go in his room to pet the cat and play relaxing cat music and worry she doesn’t eat the dry food my son bought her. I name her Mişu, after my father, who got skinny and frail, but my son calls her Rico. She is not a Spanish cat! On Friday early morning I stay in line at the veterinarian van stationed by the park. The cat perks up when she sees bushes. It’s a long wait, so I take her on the baseball field. I tied a red rickrack lease around her neck and she roams the filed, munches on grass. I scoop her up. She never bites, never scratches, never hisses.
Finally the vet invites us in his mobile clinic. For his $25 fee he declares Mişu/Rico the cat is about to die, she’s dehydrated, she’s at least 12 years old, she needs blood tests and an IV drip, all for a measly $120. They trim her claws for $5.
I can’t afford your neighborly prices. He advises to drop her at the animal shelter.
I push my senior cat in the backpack and leave crying. It sinks in that America is cruel. I am that cat. If I can’t afford medical treatment they let me die.
I stop by the animal shelter to ask them if they could give me a pipeta, whatever you call the thingy with which you put ear drops or eye drops, so I can force water my cat. The boss there goes on that this is not what they ado there. Do I want to leave the cat with the shelter? I do not. This is my cat, my senior cat, and I shall take care of her till she or I die. All I need is a pipeta. Finally one worker gives me the device and we go. My cat walks on the sidewalk, stops and detects scents, scoots under parked cars. I talk to her, holding tight the improvised leash.
For days I’m heartbroken she’s gonna die. I ask advice over Skype from my mom who used to work at a cooperative farm supervising the animal sector. She is disgusted by my cat. One doesn’t keep animals in one’s home. They are dirty. They carry parasites. Contagious diseases. Cats and dogs are utilitarian. They eat mice and rats and chase robbers away. They do not, do not live in the house. I explain to her here they are part of the family.
Each time I talk to her I tell her about my cat’s progress. We discovered she likes tuna, so we feed her tuna. I brush her every evening. I walk her daily. People can’t stop taking pictures of her. They never saw a cat walking on a leash before. My son laughs that I’m like Dali and his ocelot.
My cat, well, our cat, gained 3 lbs., her fur coat is luscious, gray with black stripes, she sleeps at times on my bed, I scratch her head and she purrs, if I stop she meows reminding me I’m her human scratcher and must go on scratching. I got her rubber lizards and hung them on the lamp arm, she battles them fiercely. When she sleeps, flat on one side, legs and paws, her back and head making a circle, my serenity fairy, an innocent being, hurts no one, elbows not for hullabaloo celebrity in the greatest city in the world. When I hold her in my arms and she softly meows I don’t give a fig about what I’m missing by not going out, working the scene, network, promote, sell.
I am the quiet of my cat.
The endocrinologist shouted a big hurray when she saw the blood test results. My thyroid is back to normal levels, true with the help of her meds, but also my Zen cat.
So shivering in my flimsy outfit I hopped on the train to face Brooklyn, be part of an evening of stories curated by my friend Martie at the Branded Saloon on Vanderbilt Avenue. I sat on the A train, swiftly working out the crossword puzzle, when the conductor alerted us there was a fire somewhere along the line, the train goes back to Manhattan.
I won’t go back to Manhattan. I am on a mission. Tonight I shall attend the Festival of Lights at the Branded Saloon. I shall amble on by bus. I got to the surface and realized I’m gonna freeze to death if I didn’t go to the Goodwill around the corner and get a pullover, a cap. So I did that, then found the bus stop and saw I could get off at Vanderbilt Avenue. Bus arrived, I kindly asked the driver to let me know when we reach Vanderbilt Avenue stop. Half an hour later still no Vanderbilt Avenue. I inquire the driver when shall we hit Vanderbilt Avenue? Vanderbilt Avenue?! I announced it 15 minutes ago. Take this transfer and go across the street and go back to Vanderbilt Avenue. So I did. So I did.
Branded Saloon was indeed at the indicated address waiting for me, though an hour late.
The backroom had chandeliers made of intertwined deer horns. On a piano there was a stuffed peacock without its feather tail. Martie opened the second part of the evening introducing a charming lady who told us a story about the Christmas stockings her grandma cross stitched for each of her children and grandchildren. The charming lady is a rare object, antiques appraisal. If I got it right she found somewhere in Florida a small statue she purchased for $5,000 and was auctioned by Sotheby’s for $5 million, the statue being either formerly owned or a representation of Rasputin.
My memory is party inaccurate because I was next to go on stage and was annoyed with myself that I was clad in black like a typical New Yorker. But on stage I went for Martie and her Festival of Lights, and I told the audience how upon arrival in America, I was stationed for three years in Baton Rouge as a graduate student. And Christmas comes, let alone everybody was in shorts and flip flops under the arduous tropical sun, seeking the shade of palm trees, metaphorically speaking since they air-condition themselves, we were taken on neighborhood tours to admire the lawn adornments, electric bulb Nativity scenes and reindeers and Santas and Three Kings, and bales of straw as snow hills. Martie tells me it was a show off contest.
My interpretation was that the poor people were trying to fake it till they make it, but it didn’t quite work out. My childhood Christmas memories have no blinding electric bulbs concoctions, but the fresh air of my village, the crunchy sparkling snow, as I went with my friends caroling from door to door. It wasn’t so much about announcing the birth of Jesus in a manger, but about all the cakes and cookies and walnuts and apples villagers gifted us, and who got the biggest bag full of goodies by the end of the night. We would walk on the path thru snow, at times a misstep would deep you, swallow you, drown you waist high in snow, and as we approached the porch of the house the icicles trimming the roof would sparkle from the oil lamp of the home. That was real wintery Christmas you can’t buy with all the bulbs in America. And the ice flowers on the windows, frost flowers you call them? I haven’t seen any in America. Maybe they have them at Home Depot.
What I also remember were the Christmas tree decorations. We were comrade countries with China, and mom always brought out the boxes with glass balls and velvet figurines. There was a peacock, a green velvet peacock, its wire claws had to be clutched on the tree branch.
I don’t remember much of the Christmas spirit, father being usually plastered, but I do remember a ginger haired teddy bear with an azure bow. So large he was, I could barely hold him in my arms.
And once, we searched thru mom’s boxes and we found some white balloons and we blew them up and stringed them in garlands. Came out they were condoms.
Martie laughs, I was gonna say they were condoms. I was gonna say!
And we laugh, not sure if I already told her this story.
My trip back to Manhattan was a breeze. The train stop was four blocks from the Saloon.
I came home and hugged my soft cat, and I told my son, ‘You know, I still have it in me. My thyroid is at peace now. Maybe, maybe I still have it in me and we didn’t come here for nothing.’
I felt at home back on stage again.

New York
Saturday, December 20, 2014

Geaux Tiger!

I certainly never dreamed for my son to turn into a sports star. Yet by the end of our first summer in Louisiana, he said that he actually would like to be a football player, not an artist. He was bewildered that I could imagine that anything was better than football. Oh, my God! He threatened my dreams of making him an artist of the future, a builder of new worlds! But then I dismissed his foolish idea. What can he say at his tender age? When I was like him I wanted to be a tractor driver. Children. Bubble heads.

We had sportsmen all over in our country. Perhaps I didn’t like them because I liked books and our dictator didn’t. He liked medals. Let us show the world what our muscles can do! Sportsmen were pulled out of schools in order to get us medals. So they graduated automatically. You really didn’t want them to open their mouths and spoil the glamour of victory, so dumb they were! It doesn’t seem that different here. Just turn on your TV, as I briefly did, and get a local sample of brightness. An LSU football player’s declaration, “Man, I feel confident we’ve put a good game plan together, and if we go out there and play hard for 60 minutes, we’re gonna win. It’s fun to be in the hunt,” said Mr. Adrenaline Junky. “It’s fun to have success.”
When I moved on the LSU campus, we passed by the Tiger Stadium, a monster of a building. A gray wasps’ nest. My friend warned me that, “It will be madness when the football season starts. People drive thousands of miles to watch the football games. They come a day in advance and tailgate: settle down on sidewalks or in the parking lots, all around the campus, place their picnic tables, chairs, TV sets and barbecue grills, and talk about football with their friends while eating hot-dogs and fried chicken. The whole place will smell of mustard and barbecue sauce,” she said, smiling disgustedly. It seemed pitiful that one would entertain in such manner. Not much of a life... “Why would Frontiersmen stand a whole day under the hot sun or in foul weather on a gray dreary parking lot?! I thought Americans loved comfort and nature!” “Well, a long time ago they had picnics under the immense oak trees, but they harmed the tree roots, so they were cornered only on the paved areas.”
I saw the football players almost every week-day when I came from school. They were coming out through the stadium gate, inscribed: “THROUGH THIS GATE PASSES THE ALL-AMERICAN GOLDEN BAND FROM TIGERLAND.” Jingoistic.
The All-Americans were walking like cats with their paws glued in nutshells by bad kids. Their bumpy soles made a musical tin roof rain rap. Disheveled, their shoulder pads hanging topsy-turvy, their shoes with hanging tongues and shoe laces, sweaty and dead tired, dragging their helmets and sacks, almost tumbling towards their three TIGER buses, they made a funny sight. I was puzzled to see the mascot of LSU, lazy Mike the Tiger, across from them, always sleeping on his back and exposing his vulnerable white belly. Strange behavior for a predator. On weekends we crossed the campus to my office or to the library, we inched our way through the picturesquely purple and golden dressed crowd in front of the stadium. It was bizarre to bump into a stylish elderly lady in a faded purple silk suit, with a long scarf, smoking graciously in front of the stern English Department building, her aged companions cooking on a smoky barbecue. Perhaps their grandson was in the LSU team, and he fought for loads of money. Covered his tuition fee, perhaps, so they dressed up like that to show the young brave man some support! There were always face painters drawing Tiger Mike’s left or right paw, or his supposedly ferocious grin, plus a quaint “LSU” for two bucks. Once Alex got a paw for free from his teacher, who installed her painting shop in front of the stadium gates. I was embarrassed that a teacher was so underpaid that she worked part time as a paw painter. Faraway, or near us, spontaneous shouts of “LSU! LSU! LSU!” would gain momentum. Serious looking adults would rally and raise their tight fists into the air chanting, “Get Tough! Get Tough! Get Tough!” They would look excitedly into each other’s eyes and head towards the gates in compact platoons.
Some were holding placards asking for two, or four, even six tickets. Scalpers made a fortune, perhaps even $100 apiece. I was surprised to hear that it was illegal here. At home we always had scalpers and it was humiliating to buy from them, but what else could you do, if you wanted to get in?! They were hand in hand with the box office clerks and maybe policemen, so you were at their mercy. One Saturday morning I woke up not knowing where I was: a ubiquitous amplified voice, strong and calm, like a shrink’s or God’s in heavens, was saying rhythmically, “Ladies to the left... Men to the right... Ladies to the left... Men to the right... Ladies to the left...” “So this is how The Resurrection is run,” I thought. “Very methodical. But why would God separate us?! Maybe this is Auschwitz, and we are heading towards the furnaces. Where am I? Oh! No! This is the football game! In the evening cars visibly multiplied around our apartment complex, and tents mushroomed. There must be so many that they needed an organizer to get them in orderly lines in front of the loos!” I got up and asked my neighbor about it. She said that actually it was some warm up athletic contest, running or jumping… For the whole day the loudspeaker kept us informed of everything that happened on the stadium. It was funny to hear the announcer as if he was in my room while I was trying to read my Forms of Fiction theorists, about getting in and out of the story, signs of fictionality, the ontological gap, texture, linearity, periodicity, closure, and spatiality of the short story.
From then on we had the same experience almost every weekend. Still, when friends would say sympathetically, “It must be horrible on game days,” I would answer them, “No, it’s not. It’s overwhelming to hear the roar of the crowd, the voice of the commentator, the music. I’m thrilled when they are elated! Their shouts are like a wave of warm, delicious excitement that engulfs you. At first you don’t want it, but then you regret it goes away.” The joy of the voice in the loudspeaker, trumpeting his well rounded “Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooal!”s. Their savage happiness was ravishing! A friend said this is a marvelous country. He was referring to the football commentator I heard when the game started, saying, “L-S-UU! Are-you-reee-dy?” and the crowd yelled, “Yeeeees!” “L-S-UUU! Are-you-reeeea-dy?” and the crowd yelled, “Yeeeees!” and then he said, “Then let’s roooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool in!” This is all that this gentleman lives on. He patented these lines and intonation and he got rich. All he does now is to fly wherever LSU plays and simply say his, “L!…S!… UUUU!… Are-youuuu-reeeea-dy?”
My friend said I should look closer at myself, maybe patent something about me before it was too late. Because it was unbelievably how Americans see the hidden value, the potential, yes, the po-tential, and turn it into gold. “Maybe someone wants to copy your smile,” he said, “without paying the rights. Your accent. After you patent it you should work on it. Even from now in twenty years when you would have long forgotten Romanian, your cute accent should be brushed upon, because people love it.” “Yeah,” I smirked, “like Chinese girls who incarcerated their feet in tiny wooden shoes in order to keep them girlishly small forever, physically incapacitating themselves, becoming desirably weak.” Anyway, since everybody said that in order to understand America I had to go to a football game, and since my son would be a sports star, I tried to figure out how to get a football ticket honorably. I was told they were sold out one semester in advance. I would have used my Hungarian press pass in the end, hoping it would work, or put an ad at the laundry room billboard, when Alex, the future sports star, found a ticket on the lawn in front of our apartment. Mind you, it was the last home game of the season. Faced with this divine decision, I canceled a meeting and the laundry washing, and was ready to go to see the football game. Then Alex disappeared and came back beamingly with no ticket and one dollar bill in hand. He told me happily that he had sold the ticket for the huge sum of $1 to Mr. Jim. I told him furiously to take me to this cheap cheater, child exploiter.
Mr. Jim was watching TV in front of his apartment while preparing the obligatory barbecue. He was giggling and brought the ticket back under my silent eyes of wrath making cute baby talk with Alex, “I’ve asked you, haven’t I, if you really wanted to sell it, haven’t I?” “You could have offered him the official price, at least!” I said icily. Ticket and umbrella in hand we left him behind. It was almost the intermission. We were walking on the empty, so empty now street. Only a man in front of the stadium was calling loudly, “Tickets for sale! Tickets for sale!” But we already had ours. At the gate we saw there was a sign saying, “No umbrellas! No alcohol!” so we hid the umbrella, made a sheepish face when the ticket inspector told me, “Next time buy a ticket for your son!” and we headed through the long, winding corridors towards the yelling crowd.
When I entered the amphitheater I was stunned. I had reawakened into the Roman Empire! The immensity of the walls, the bustle of thousands of bodies, heads, the waves of shouting were amazing.
Looking at them, I poignantly thought, “Maybe this is my country! How full of life they are! They are alive! They are not trampled upon! They shout! They shout up to the skies! I know why they shout! I lived this before! I’ve yearned for this every day! I miss the theater stage! I miss my Transylvanian hills and forests and wide horizons and valleys and the shouting of my childhood! Of yelling my joy to the huge blue sky! I know you are there! I know you can hear me! I know you love me! Don’t tease me! Show up! Oh! Show up, before I grab you from behind the clouds! Are you behind the sun? That’s not nice of you! Come play with me! Dance with me!” I have been in the crowd of a revolution and I won't ever forget it. It was strangely the same. People were exhilarated. We felt love for each other. We belonged to a community. We were powerful. We were one in all and all in one. I had never been to a Romanian football game. We had a stadium uphill in my hometown and its pagan celebrations on game days reverberated down to our busy home, but we never went because mother said only drunks go there and they always end up beating each other with empty beer bottles. Someone yelled my name, “Smaranda! Smaranda! What on earth are you doing here?!” Here was, unavoidably planted in front of us, my distinguished colleague in fiction writing, Amadeus McAmara, who driven by his sports enthusiasm felt inclined to do the honors of the house. “Damn it! The Fiction Writing Workshop is everywhere!” He insisted, “Stick with me, because up in the G sector,” where my seat was, “You’ll get your heads smashed with beer bottles and anyway the best seats are next to me because they are reserved,” he said conspiratorially. A plastic mug landed in front of me, luckily on an empty chair. “And,” he told me cockily, “You don’t sit at a football game!” “But which are your seats?” “I have none! We snuck in. We’ve been at every single game and we always sneak in from up there, see the top of the stadium? We always come in a hurry and tell the gate-keeper, ‘Oh! My cousin from Chicago arrived before us, and he has the tickets!’ This time we just ran,” and he moved his flexed arms like old train wheel pistons. Red and golden patches made of bodies were waving in front of my amazed eyes, while Amadeus was telling me hurriedly, and I wasn’t sure if not drunkenly, about his new “fucking” love for football, thanks to his moving to Louisiana. “This is what American people love! There are 80,545 people in this stadium! Can you imagine that?” “Okay.” Walls of human bodies. Trepidation. The vanguard brass band and the majorettes minimally dressed like golden gymnasts highlighting their curves. Finally when the musicians, a bunch of pimply kids really, left the field they passed by us, blocking the vendors' retreat, who were hanging their tired arms on the fences in front of us. The trombone funnel was large enough to swallow a fat majorette, head first, and while she would shake becomingly her naked legs in the rhythm of LSU march in the air, the trombonist pulling her out turned into purple and gold sausages through the trombone mouthpiece and rounding them up on a purple and golden tray as Majorette Sausage in Crisp Golden Crust, thus increasing the sale vendors, who instead of selling those dull LSU Tiger T-shirts—the aforementioned lazy Mike Tiger poking his head through a white bed sheet while his master is pulling his tail behind it—and Tiger Tongues sandwiches—made out of two unkempt tiger paws clamped on a sickly green tiger tongue—would make a bundle by selling Majorette Sausage in Crisp Golden Crust. Amadeus, rolling his eyes to the guy behind us, whispered in my ear, “He’s hollered like Tarzan all through the first part, the wilderness yell. During the intermission too!” I was half seated on the back of a chair for the last minutes. Alex was comfortable. Amadeus held him tightly while they made all kinds of male bonding gestures with their hands, like knitting or talking in sign language, together with the entire crowd. A big tough guy dressed in black overalls, displaying a shaved skull and radio reporting paraphernalia was sternly and solitarily measuring the crowd from his privileged spot on the green field.
Two sturdy men carrying huge plastic cups filled with ice cubes and a splash of coke walked by us. They had showy plastic tigers as helmets, something like upside down potties. They didn’t return my amused smile. They were tough. “Being a fool in public is serious business. Don't you forget it!” Never mind. Amadeus was eagerly revealing the secrets of American football rules, but I couldn’t concentrate. There was too much to take in. Airplanes dashed above the stadium, like in a computer game. They crazed Amadeus! He told me they were only four because one of the pilots died. Then the sky was abloom with red and orange and purple balloons advertising the Children's Miracle Network. “Call 1-800-MIRACLE!” The cheerleaders were right in front of us. They were unbelievable. They were chanting, “Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough! Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough! Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough!” and the stadium after them, “Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough! Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough! Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough!” Oh! The joy of professional enthusiasts. Oh, how those girls could smile erratically! Could they make their mouth ends stick up, up, up and the tiny chimpy eyes aglitter, aglitter, more glitter, as if they were amazed by the amazing, most stunning touchdown they ever witnessed and oh! The way they did their little dance of joy, thrusting their doll fingers up in the sky, lightly performing their risky and strenuous little clockwork ballet routine: their small heels were sustained solely by the right palm of their male cheerer who stood upright, arms raised, turned into a carefree smiling, energetic pedestal. “Enjoy our force and pride.” We love chimps and we love chimps! Cheer up!
“Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough! Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough! Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough! Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough!” The girls twirled in the air and landed on the ground with pinned up smiles.
I don’t know what was going on on the green playfield, because most of the time was spent changing their teams’ position, and when the game would warm up a bit, they would again split, and move about and then again a bit of tempo building up, but then again they rearranged their armies. And all thru it the loud advertising blasted in brief hiccup installments as if they feared that a long sequence would exhaust us, make our hearts explode, so they kept it to super short sentences. Don’t put strain on brains! Brains are not made for thinking! Brains are made for spending money. “Go to this restaurant after the game!” “Take this taxi company’s car back home!” “Donate money for the orphans!”
Then between the publicity bursts again, everybody would scream with the cheerleader’s chant coming from loudspeakers, “Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough! Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough! Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough!” and get all worked up by the acrobatics of the cheery-bees. There was no hesitation in their movements, so unlike the exhausted awkwardness of immigrant me. They were steady, strong, firm, self-contained, clean like a sharp etching. These people eat tough pears, apples, cabbage, crisp cereals, rocks, and razor blades. Functioning like perfect machines. They seemed to laugh at my undernourished, jittery, awkward deals with the world, What is that scared trembling? Worrying? Fuzziness? Fear? Say no to jittery jellies! The Tigers were running around amock.
Oh! My God! They’re coming towards us! Oh! My Gooooood! Here they come! They've lost their minds! They forgot where they have to run and now come towards us! Loook! They are coming closer and closer! They will break down the fences! My God! How huge they are! Immense flesh in metallic shining shorts, coming, coming, coming nearer, the others stampeding after them! They don’t know what they are doing! They’ve lost control! Now they’ll tumble on us! They’ll tumble on us! These guys are beasts! The one living in the apartment above us one day will push his woman through the ceiling, tumbling their bed, themselves, ceiling plaster, bricks, cement on me! Earthquake! My God! Earthquake! Gnashing! Gnashing! Cracking! Cracking! Booof! Red broad shoulders fall down in a pile, on the edge of the stadium running tracks. More shoulders! Golden! Red! A huddle of them! Pushing! Crashing the enraged buffalo beneath them! Glad they stopped there. What a relief! “Excuse me,” said one of the plastic mask pot-heads, ready to kill me. “This chair is my girlfriend’s!” So I go two chairs further on.
Alex is having a male bonding experience.
I look at the photographers and TV reporter squads, clad in heavy jackets with several pockets containing cameras, mikes, lenses. They flock from one part of the field to the other, following the lumpy football warriors. Poor beggars… I was like them five years before running around on journalistic gigs… “The beauty of it is that these college kids are doing it for fun!” said Amadeus. “They don’t get paid a penny!” “That is strange! These giants are killing each other for our enjoyment?!” The leader of the cheerleaders had a headset, which I always found sexy like a rock star, like Madonna. His voice boomed happy and steady, “Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough! Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough! Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough!” From time to time everybody looked at the electronic board and when the score red figures appeared they would boo or cheer. One of the cheerleaders ran further away and started waving the enormous LSU flag. Others slung T-shirts into the crowd. Mike the Tiger puppet man whacked the Alabama Elephant mascot with a stick until white lumps of cotton littered the tracks. “Get tough! Deeee-fense! Get tough! Get tough! Deeee-fense! Get tough! Get tough! Deeee-fense! Get tough!” LSU was way ahead of Alabama. Yet it wasn’t that spectacular... The Tarzan yeller was indefatigable! My skull was cracking when he yelled again, “Wha-la-la-la-laaaaaaaa! Yah! Yah! Yah!”
It was getting dark, and we were both cold, so I said good-bye to Amadeus and extricated ourselves from the crowd. We trotted home, chanting, “Get tough! Dee-fense! Get tough! Get tough! Dee-fense! Get tough! Get tough! Dee-fense! Get tough!” Alex told Jade, our block bully, that, “I had a ticket to the football game. I will be a defense player!” Some disappointed mooing came from the stadium, but I wasn’t interested in the football game anymore. Some time after, Amadeus passed by our house to make a phone call, have someone pick him up to a writers’ party to discuss over shrimp étouffée, the problems of getting in and out of the story, signs of fictionality, the ontological gap, texture, linearity, periodicity, closure, and spatiality. And above all how to get published. He told me that surprisingly, LSU lost, playing lamely at the end. “Supporters were disappointed to the extreme. They had no reason to lose! ‘LSU Sssssucks!’ moaned the whole stadium!’ ” “This seems very unsportsmanlike to me. They dump you cruelly if you don’t get them their medal!” “Tarzan was foaming! ‘I'll go and beat someone!’ he yelled! ‘Let's go into town and beat someone. Beat the shit out of them!’ It was scary! My God, I never get worked up enough to beat someone up after a game!” Amadeus said, annoyed and intrigued, with sorrowful and indignant round eyes like a chicken whose neck feathers had been plucked. I called my friend and she told me this was the way they were. “Romans. The crowd wants victory. If not, wants blood. Wants to see the lion eating the prisoner. That’s all they want. “My nephew went dressed up as an LSU fan to New Orleans on Halloween last year: he painted half of his face and chest in purple, the other half in golden yellow and wrote 'LSU' across it in large print. He is not an LSU fan. In fact he hates football. It so happened that that day LSU lost. People came to him and booed him, ‘LSU sssucks!’ Then a weirdo came and beat him black-and-blue! The blood thirsty crowd…” We watched TV with Alex later on. They interviewed an LSU player. He was crying. A mere boy. Such a young face. A very unhappy boy. The reporter asked him, not that sympathetically, “But you did all you could do, didn’t you?” and the boy said sobbing, “I didn’t... We lost. If I didn’t lose, I could say I did all I could. But I lost…” Somehow Alex didn’t mention any football career anymore.
He produces his charming drawings assiduously. 
Touch down, Smaranda, touch down.

Fall 1998 
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Welcome to Our Neighborhood!

FLORINA CERCEL, 35 years old, an impoverished, though overly-educated, freshly-immigrated Romanian, life still in disarray.
Late September, 2001. Evening, around 8:00 P.M.
Bloomfield, New Jersey, a staircase in front of FLORINA's apartment, second floor.
FLORINA has a purple beauty mask on her face and a bandana that makes her hair stick up. She wears an apron and slippers. She's embarrassed by the way she looks, is defensive, scared. A TIRED AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMAN and her four kids stand in front of her on the staircase. FLORINA’s son, MIRCEA, 11 year old, listens quietly to the outpouring of the AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMAN. After listening, FLORINA takes over and becomes unstoppable.

FLORINA
[Starts slowly.] Let me get this straight, please. I am a foreigner and have trouble with New Jersey accents. I'm also dead tired; I've just arrived half an hour ago, I had a hard day and I hoped for a quiet evening, reading beautiful plays, and have funny talks with my son. Instead you've interrupted my dishwashing and radio listening, and this mask itches to death.
Never mind.

[Casual, but speeding up.] So, you were saying that your son who suffers from asthma was almost killed by my son, and you've just come from the emergency room because he had a bump on the back of his neck and he could have been dead by now, killed by my son, an 11-year-old murderer and now you'll have to stay home all week and take care of him. Is that so? Please don't talk, you've talked enough, let me understand, because we won't get anywhere. Just nod. Yes? Yes.

[Lecturing.] Okay, now let me tell you this: I know my son and I have never seen him being unjust to anyone, or hurting anyone. If he hit your son, I am sure that your son hit him first. Yes, you are right, maybe your son could be dead by now but so could my son, both of them lying bleeding on the cement while Mr. San Giovanni, the principal, doesn't give a shit about it. Now, when I came home I saw my son had a scratch on his eyelid, but I thought it was a sty again, because he doesn't have health insurance, so when he had a sty I had to cure him myself, so I thought it's the sty again, but when I asked him, he said he got that scratch from a tree, okay? [To MIRCEA.] But now it comes out it was not a tree, and I don't want this to happen again, do you hear me? Go and switch off the stove. It smells of burnt milk.

[To the AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMAN, smiling.] You know what I think? It was your son, who lies to us both, it was your son, Madam. If my child said that your son took from him the blue plastic knife he found in the school yard, he took it though it was not his, and bullied my child, then my son did the right thing hitting him back! Look, Madam, don't interrupt me, okay!

[Slightly threatening. Faster, building up to a huff.] I am a single mother, so he has to look after himself, no bully will mess with him. My son is an orange belt, if you saw him on Harvest Day Festival demonstrating in front of the Recreational Civic Center and saw his photo in the papers, you'd know he is an athlete, he goes three times a week to Tae Kwon Do training, at the Universal Martial Arts, because he has to learn the art of kicking and punching and self-defense, until he gets a black belt. That's why I pay $75 a month, okay? Master Walter teaches him self-defense and no one will mess with my son, and with me for that matter.

[Relaxing, switching to a nicer tone.] Now, if you came here with kind thoughts, trying to find out the truth and try to make these immature boys understand that now we have to stick together because hard times will come for us people on Orange Street, when we won't have what to eat and whom to marry because men will go to war against terrorists, then I am with you, Madam. But if you came here to make me say I'm sorry that this happened to your son, and then use my words of sympathy to get money out of me, you are very wrong. Therefore, though I am sorry, I can't tell you I'm sorry, because this is not Romania, where kids are kids and people don't sue left and right out of the blue—[In disbelief, shares this small gossip.] I hear you here in Bloomfield have burglars who sue the burglarized victim that they over-waxed their floor and they slipped on it and broke a leg, and the burglar wins. Well, if that's the case with you, I am very sorry to say that I can't shake hands with you, and have no penny to give you. All I can give you is a book about friendship that I got from church. [To MIRCEA.] Go and bring it. From now on, Mircea you won't go outside and play with kids that afterwards come and lie about you, okay?

[To the AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMAN. Earnest.] I am sorry if I sound too harsh, but I am at a loss here. Perhaps you are a nice lady, single mother yourself, regrettably we meet under such circumstances that make me fear you are a sue monger. [Winning smile.] Whichever the case, my landlord is a cop and he said I should tell anyone to [Daintily. Must be a lady!] bugger off.
Good night. Go inside, Mircea.

[She shuts the door gently, as the group of kids and the other mother walk down the squeaking old wooden staircase.]

A Worm Has Wiggled Into People's Souls

[Early Spring, 2004. An apartment on Roosevelt Island, New York City. Thru the window the gray city skyline and glittering water. GRANDMA DIDINA prepares breakfast for IRINA, her daughter’s guest, then lovingly watches her eat.]

GRANDMA DIDINA:
Do you like your eggs scrambled? My son-in-law also likes them that way. Here is some salami. He always eats salami. If we don't have salami he doesn’t feel satisfied! Have some slices of provolone cheese. Here's bread. You have to eat properly. Young people don't eat properly. [Places the plate with eggs on the table. Sits down. Pause.] Look at the geraniums! It's a jungle! They blossomed early this year. Hey, you calico cat! Get back in the armchair! Let Irina eat!
I wanted to go to watch the Passion of Jesus. Imagine! Maia Morgenstein is in it! A Romanian girl! I wanted to go but none of my girls wanted to go. "Girls"! If you add up together their age, they are 200 years old! Is it really anti-Semitic?
America is hard, you have to adapt to its ruthless laws. It's all about money. The rhythms here are mad, hard to adapt to. Some don't. I look at my daughter and my son-in-law, they come home dead tired. Luckily I'm here, I cook and take care of the house. Supervise the kids. I don't like how kids behave here! My grandchildren are polite, but their friends just come and go straight into Sorin's room, without even saying hello! As if I don't exist. They are high school kids! They eat, leave the dishes all over the place and don't even say a thank you! I told them, “This is not a hotel! Wash the dishes after yourselves!”
See how society shapes them? [Pause.]
I've been sitting here, thinking about things. A worm has wiggled into people's souls. Nazism, communism, terrorism, they are all the same! They are all built on lies! Politicians fill their pockets with gold and don't give a hoot about poor people.
We Romanians are a kind, tolerant people. We carried them piggyback for decades. We were stupid, stupid, stupid… We believed in communism, enthusiastically, when it came. Young people went after school on their own volition and built up those mammoth buildings in the Red Star Square. We believed! But when I finally saw how crooked they turned… Why, they built this huge steel factory by the Black Sea, at Năvodari, you know? And we had no iron, no coal! How can you be so megalomaniac, build a factory like that? Even now it's empty! Our industrious comrades came and stole whatever they could, a window here, a door there, and it was with everybody's silent agreement! Come! Come and take whatever you can! In bright daylight! They stole everything. The state took everything from us, so we always stole. And lied. On the radio they said we made 100,000 tons of steel a month! What a lie. We barely made one ton!
When I realized they were lying, I told my brother, "Brother, this system won't last. It's too crooked." But my very own brother, a colonel in the army, said, "Don't you ever let anyone know that you told me this!" I looked at him—my very own brother! If I am your sister and I can't talk to you about my doubts, what is this? He never spoke to me again! If the party said everything was wonderful, he believed it! Well, later on he asked forgiveness, "My dear sister, you were so right. I was a fool."
He can't survive on his pension if we don't send him a hundred dollars every month. In ten years of inflation they increased the pension by 20,000 lei, but nowadays a tram ticket is 20,000! They ruined everything!
Hundreds of people would stand in line for hours and we wouldn't say a word to each other. We were afraid to talk, because informers could tell on us, twist our words and we’d end up in jail.
Before communism—I grew up under capitalism—I was twelve and I remember people were much friendlier then. We talked to our neighbors. My mother once sent me to borrow two eggs from our neighbor. Then she returned them, but the neighbor said she wouldn't take them, because they were smaller than her eggs. "Dear neighbor, this is all I've got! My hens make smaller eggs! I can give you four or six in return!" No, she didn't want more eggs, she wanted just two large ones. "Well, then, here you are!" And my mom smashed the two eggs, one after the other, on our neighbor's forehead! [Laughs.] Oh, dear! She was not a patient one, my mom. When my father came home, he was a quiet guy, Polish nobleman, he asked her, "Why have you done this, Pichi? Why couldn’t you just hand them to her?" She said nothing. Luckily the neighbor didn't sue my mom.
[Pause.] Don't bother with the dishes; just put them into the sink.
[Blackout.]

Death Has Entered Our House

Here in America we have Halloween, but where I was born they have Illumination, perhaps the equivalent of The Day of the Dead, when people go to the cemetery with candles and flowers. 

[IRINA imagines talking on the phone to her MOTHER who is dressed in black sits at a table with her hands straightening the lace tablecloth. She is exhausted and sad, yet full of dignity and relieved.]
MOTHER
Your brother died, on Saturday.
Death has entered our house.
Oh, my daughter, I was so worried about you. How are you? Life can be so hard for some.
Everybody is terribly, terribly sad. He was so young. The phone rings continuously and that’s why, maybe you can’t catch us.
He died next to me. Lord, I don’t know why I’ve been so cruelly punished.
I was never interested in luxury or other comforts of this world, because you are all my joy. God will help us get through all the trials!
Do you remember our neighbor Gyuszi? He died the same way a year ago. Exactly a year ago. His father came and said, “We can only follow His way.” We cannot do anything. [She crosses herself.]
Mihai had a heart attack. But it was because of… you know, alcohol.
He was sick from the last day of drinking and vomited at 6 a.m.
Then he ate a bit, drank the leftover coffee, and made another one and went to the market. He came back fast. It was Saturday morning. We argued and I asked him not to drink anymore. He said he wouldn’t drink until Easter. "But why do you have to drink on Easter?" "I’ll drink a beer because it’s holiday." We said that on Monday we’d go buy him some handsome blue jeans—I couldn’t give him a lot of money in hand, because he’d drink them with his so-called friends. He said he had to fix his teeth to which I told him after Easter. He said he'd go back to bed—he came drunk from the market. Later on people from the pub told me he drank a few shots of brandy and a Turkish coffee. He was very, very sick, Irina. He never ate anything and got drunk morning, noon and evening. And he drank such strong coffee! He had three teaspoons of Turkish coffee to a cup and drank about 2 or 3 a day plus two cigarette packs a day.
It was about 9, 10, I don’t remember exactly. He was on the floor. Adrian saw him falling on the floor, but the little scoundrel jumped on him, poked his nose with his fingers, such a naughty child! Then he came to play out in the yard and didn’t tell me anything! After awhile I went in to check on him and saw him on the floor. The coat he wore in the morning was rolled under his head, his face was turned towards the door. He had a cigarette in hand between his fingers spread on the rug. Maria told me I should take the cigarette from his hand to avoid putting the carpet on fire. I could barely pull the cigarette out, he was clutching the cigarette—probably he was already dead. I covered him with two blankets. It wasn’t the first time he was sleeping in front of the bed on the rug. He couldn’t climb into the bed.
After half an hour I checked on him again. I was surprised to see he was in the same position on the rug. I shouted at him, I shook him up, make him get into the bed! He was not moving! I rubbed his back, but he didn’t react in any way. Again I didn’t realize he was dead. I called the ambulance of course, then a neighbor, then Maria. The two women stated that Mihai was dead. I still didn’t believe it. Meanwhile the ambulance arrived and unfortunately the doctor too confirmed he was dead and there was nothing that could be done. He died in two minutes.
Heart attack. He didn’t suffer.
It’s in God’s hands.
April 12, 2003: The saddest day of my life.
Don’t fear, I'll be alright! You don’t need to come home now. I know it’s hard with the green card papers.
All that money. Of course you can’t come home! Take care of yourselves. Do you have enough food to eat? I pray for you every day. Every single day. You don’t manage too brilliantly in America. You have your own trouble. Please don’t get ill.
He was very, very unhappy! He went through a divorce. Being a handsome boy, the girls loved him, but he fell for those he shouldn’t have.
He never listened to us. We wanted him to go to college to Cluj, close to home, but he went to the Aircraft Institute in Bucharest. He placed 8 out of the 100 seats, regardless of all the connections the other candidates had. In high school he always got prizes in the national math Olympics.
He suffered because of the social injustice. He couldn’t find work. Without money or connections, his intelligence was worth nothing. He had no one to help him go abroad, and we had no money to give him to that end. Without an occupation he drowned his bitterness in alcohol.
After Gyuszi died because of alcohol, he got a bit scared and checked in at the internal ward. They diagnosed him with etilism and recommended him not to drink a drop of alcohol, but he didn’t obey the doctor’s advice. I tried to discuss it with him be it in a peaceful way, be it harshly.
Lord, how fearful I was for him. I saw him walking down the road of ruin and I couldn’t help him with anything.
Most of the time he wouldn’t acknowledge his drinking bouts. Lately he didn’t care about anything. At times he turned violent. He couldn’t control himself. My heart was breaking for him.
Not for a second did I think that he could die of a heart attack. We thought of cirrhosis of the liver, that has a slower evolution and meanwhile we hoped he’d give up drinking.
He was sent to the psychiatry ward at the state hospital, but he would not hear of it. I gave him money to go to a private clinic, but he kept postponing. He had no appetite, no desire to live. "Mother, tell me one single reason to keep on living!" he would say.
He was so kind and loved by everybody. Everybody knew him. Everybody came from all over the town, to tell us how sorry they were. Even the Gypsies came! Everybody loved him. Our townspeople are very kind when it comes to distress. The relatives came from Turda, cousin Nelu and Puiu, and from Braşov, cousin Dorel and uncle Cosmin and Aurica.
The first part of funeral service was in the front yard. It was all black with people, the street too! We had three priests and a deacon. The sermon was two hours. Though it was a sad day, God was kind: it didn’t rain.
The hearse went along with your brother and sister in front, next to your father and a few relatives. I went by car. The cemetery is a bit out of the way.
We cried until we ran out of tears. Our poor son! The pain is killing us. Our relatives comforted us a bit. We are sadder, older and poorer…
The priests said we should focus on Easter and cleanse ourselves from sin. We should not gather riches, because we won’t take them with us. We should think of Jesus Christ.
It was a beautiful sermon.
I can’t remember all of it now. My head is in a fuzzy cloud. I’m tired. Your father hasn’t slept since Mihai died.
[She cries, heartbroken.]
We were very, very ill on Sunday, but your sister gave us pills and checked on our blood pressure. At least your father stopped drinking. He got scared. We told him, "Please, please, tati, don’t drink anymore, don’t drink, please." And he said, "No, no. I haven’t had a drink today. It’s the enemy number one, alcohol. No, no…"
Catrina didn’t go to work since Friday, but today she had to go. All her patients were waiting for her. She had to go.
How is Sorin? Is he tall and handsome like your father? He should take care with the bike, so that he should not get in trouble again. He should ride cautiously!
They did the autopsy and then we brought him home. At dawn I lit the candle for him, and we put him in the earth. The eternal place is a bit out of the way. We took the money that we put aside for our funerals and used it for him. Who would have thought?
Nowadays if you can’t fend for yourself, no one helps you. His wife gave us the place next to her mother, and we are thinking of buying two lots for ourselves there, to be near him. Though it’s a bit out of the way.
Not many came up to the cemetery. We had 45 guests for the memorial dinner. The priests sanctified the house, and his room. They put a crucifix in it.
I’ll start going to church. I’ll go to the little church on Flowers Street.
Oh, they fixed it quite well after the revolution. There are a lot of churches now!
I’m afraid I’ll go crazy, my dear. I was sitting at the table and thinking, I shall tell him when he comes from the pub how wonderful was his funeral! Then I thought, but he won’t come home anymore! Maybe I’m losing my mind, my dear…
I’ll talk to him. People talk to the dead, don’t they? They go to the cemetery and talk to them. Though they’re gone. We don’t know, we don’t know, maybe they are still around.
Such pain I don’t wish to any mother on earth. There is no greater pain in this world than to lose your child, the one you gave birth to, you raised him. I remember his first steps, his first words, his first smile. I loved him with all my being. A piece of my heart was torn away with him. Some console me, "Don’t be desperate because you have other children." But it’s not like that, because in the heart of a mother each child has his own place. Nothing can substitute that loss. I’ll take this pain to the tomb with me, that can’t be far. There we will see each other again. That’s my only hope.
We were like this, around the house, the two of us, all day. He was, you know, a… different kind of child. He didn’t listen to us.
Ever since he was small he was very energetic. When he came to this world he was 4.850 kilos—he was the maternity ward’s star. Each time we changed his diapers he kicked strongly with his little legs. He was a beautiful child, with a sweet smile, loved by everyone. When he was seven, he went with a friend who had a dog and didn’t come home in the afternoon. We looked for him everywhere. Oh, Lord, how I got scared! In the end I called the police and they searched for him and when we were desperate he shows up and climbs into the apricot tree! No matter how much the police or I begged him, he didn’t want to get down from the tree. We were happy that we found him.
We feel so guilty that we were harsh with him, but we thought it was for his own good. We wanted him not to waste himself. For his own good! We would quarrel, the two of us; he’d come and go about business. Now he’s gone.
Oh, there were so many wreaths on his tomb. His wife brought a white one, made of fresh carnations. It was covered with wreathes. I bought one on your behalf too. On the ribbons it was written: From Irina and Sorin. We’ll never forget you.
AUTOMATIC PHONE CARD ANNOUNCEMENT
You have one minute left.
MOTHER
I bought a red one, your color. It was made out of paper, so that it lasts for six weeks. Then we’ll have a memorial service and we’ll clean the tomb.
This is the situation. I’ll open the store tomorrow.
The neighbors come and tell me, "Open the store, stay among people, otherwise you might go nuts or fall sick." Father couldn’t go to the market these days. He felt ill. He talked all night with Dorel, and he stayed in bed today. Catrina takes care of us. Gives us pills.
Today I gave back the extra cooking pots to our neighbors. The guests left in the morning… Hello? Hello?
[The phone line gets cut off. Blackout.]

Written in 2004