In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [60]
“Now wait a minute. Do you know what this word means?” And she says this word, which, by the way, to this day I have never again heard my mother use.
“Yeah, yeah, I know … ah.…” Long pause.
“What does it mean?”
“Ah … well, it’s about a Hockey thing there!”
“Oh. I see.” And there is another long pause.
“Go back out and listen to the radio, will you.”
Well, I went out and sat on the ottoman next to my kid brother. The radio is playing. He knows something has gone wrong, and I know something has gone wrong, but I can’t figure it out. I had no idea what it was about. Both of us are sitting there, and it’s going back and forth between us.
My mother goes back out in the kitchen, and she’s stirring away at the red cabbage. The hamburger is on. Supper is being made.
About half an hour later I hear her out in the back, talking over the fence to Mrs. Wocznowski. And I am frantically trying to hear what she is saying. I’m out in the kitchen, next to the icebox. This is terrible, because I know I have done something awful, and yet I don’t really know. You know what I mean? You don’t really know, you just know that what you have done is unspeakable. Unspeakable! You not only feel that it was unspeakable, you feel untouchable. I mean, you’re just really rotten! To the core. You are never going to make it up the ladder of human virtues. You are never again going to be accepted into the race. Ever. You know that sickening feeling? It takes a hundred years to grow out of that one, if ever!
So I am crouched next to the icebox, sweating. And listening. I catch one line, and it came winging through the screen door like a shot.
“I don’t think either of them know what it means.”
Mrs. Wocznowski is struggling in broken Polish, and she has been crying. My mother is struggling along in broken South Chicago-ese, and she has not been crying; she has been laughing. Which is the difference between the types of family, and the whole Ethnic business that they both came from. I did not know ‘til some time later that my mother was a retired Flapper.
Between the two of them they somehow got it all straightened out. All I know is that Casmir had trouble sitting down for a month. Apparently he had gone home and told Uncle Ben’s story to his kid brother. Loudly.
We’re sitting around the supper table that night when it began to dawn on me the enormity of what I had perpetuated. My mother all the while has not said anything to me. I have not been given the business, I have not been hollered at. I would have felt better somehow if I had been given the treatment. So, naturally, I can’t eat.
One of my great favorite delicacies at the time was mashed potatoes thoroughly mixed with red cabbage. Oh boy! It looks terrible, I have to warn you. It looks like the worst glop, but it’s great. Tonight, however, I was just fiddling with my fork.
“Why aren’t you eating your red cabbage?”
“Ah … I’m not very hungry.”
And then, of course, she knew that it was really biting me, down where it counts. She turns to my father and says:
“Look, the next time we see Ben, I want you to talk to him.”
When she called Ben “Ben” it was Ben. Whenever she thought he was all right, she called him “Uncle Ben.” Now it was just straight Ben.
“I want you to talk to Ben.”
My father looks up from the Sport page.
“What about?”
“You know what about. You know very well what about.”
My Old Man started to laugh, and she says:
“Yeah. Him. Today. Casmir.”
“Well, what did he say?”
“Ouyay owknay utway.”
“Oh no!”
They’re both laughing, and that made it even worse. I had no conception, and that made it even worse, to have two grownups laughing at something I did. I mean, they’re really laughing. All I knew was that it had something to do with Uncle Ben’s joke. And Hockey.
XIX WE HAVE TWO SMALL VISITORS
“You know, this isn’t a bad drink,” said Flick.
“Indeed it isn’t. You maybe could sell a few here.”
“The only thing is, we might have trouble with the ladies around here if I told ’em why I put the olives in it.”
Flick,