Smell No Evil

From the cramped kitchen, Mom disappointed, shouted like Alice on The Honeymooners, “Oh, Herman, honey, you didn’t get any sable from the deli.” Our Sunday morning extravaganza was her labor of love.

Then Mom called us to assemble, “Come and get it everyone.” Her summons was a ritual. Even Rex ran in and lapped at his water bowl. She signaled us, “Wash your hands before you sit down.” As Mom was getting the meal all set, she pointed to the essential powder room gateway. Clean hands were her passport to sit down to eat. Daddy lifted me to the pink sink to wash with the heavenly, sweet-scented, semi-mushy Ivory bar; its imprinted logo script still intact. I thought, “U-m-m, smooth, 99 and 44/100 % pure.”

Humming like the powder room fan, Mom prepared the Jewish treats. She orchestrated the delicacies in an orderly fashion on big, white ceramic platters. The mixed smoked-fish scents welcomed us to take a seat in the yellow vinyl chairs at our sumptuous Sunday brunch table, a 50s classic Formica and chrome set. A single cut daffodil from the front yard stood on the window sill.

In their socks, Nelson and Donnie pretended to skate on the linoleum floor, rushing in. Mom still scurried, patshking, (busy getting everything ready); Mom always called us in prematurely. “Hold your horses, you Hooligans.” Rex snapped at my brothers’ heels. They neighed.

Near the sink, very carefully, Grandma finished cutting slender slices of beefsteak tomatoes and white onions. She wiped the tears away with her Kleenex, stored in her apron pocket. ”Vey iz mer.” Woe is me. Cleaning the cutting board, suspended over the sink, she continued her tasks. With a long serrated knife, she sawed the bagels back and forth and tore the big boulkie rolls in half. Cut and torn, the baked goods fresh aroma escaped into the room again.

We sniffed like dogs, smiled and laughed with our tongues hanging out, like Goofy, the cartoon hound dog.

Mom arranged the savory, briny, pink, belly-lox, smoked salmon slices in overlapping layers. The edges of each paper thin, grainy, hand-sliced piece were delicate and transparent. On the rim of the platter, she added some decorative radishes, with four cuts on top simulating blooming rosebuds.

As an added extra, she emulated Weinstein’s relish tray; displayed with a single ribbed celery heart, like a chilled baby palm tree, leaves quivering, some sliced Kosher pickles, puckery with warty bumps, with a few seeds, and some dill hairs clinging on, plus big, black olives with the pits still in. Nelson snatched the celery heart. Donnie settled for a tidbit of a single juicy olive, nibbling round the pit. Daddy gobbled a pickle piece. I crunched on a carrot stick. I offered it to my new toy, a stuffed bunny I named Esmerelda; she was fluffy, soft, whiskered, and shocking, neon-bright chartreuse. We occupied ourselves in anticipation.

We inhaled the overpowering odor of the delicatessen’s smelliest, oiliest, smokiest, strongest delicacies. “Holy Mackerel,” Nelson shouted. He wafted his hand through the air as Mom placed the platters on the table.

Mom scolded Donnie, “Take off that Davy Crockett raccoon skunk thing on your head. Mind your manners.”

Donnie responded, “I’ll take it to Beaver Falls. He mocked, “With his friends.” Beaver Falls was the small town Grandma lived in. He pitched away his hat, far away through the doorway into the formal dining room. Rex ran after it. Nelson snickered. Grandma shook her head like a sparrow and chirped.

I moved positions, from kneeling to sitting down, coyly hiding Esmerelda on my lap.



Then, it was Daddy’s turn for the family’s attention. With surgical precision, he prepared the smoked whitefish chubs. We watched with quiet intent and squealed speechlessly. The task required an artistry of exactness like DaVinci’s anatomical dissecting studies. Daddy curled his tongue down to squeeze his lower lip in concentration. Peering above his thick glasses with half circle bi-focal magnification, he inspected his specimens. The nine inch cured fishes’ nickel-sized eyes stared back at us, glazed and flat. Then the deadly blow descended. I gasped. Swiftly, with a saber sharp knife, Daddy chopped off an innocent fish head. It was one of three decapitations, just below the gaping gills. Its head pushed aside to the edge of the platter. The stare was unchanged, still lifeless. I squirmed.

Daddy’s fingers were getting greasier and messier. He dismembered further. Unpeeling the golden, gilded thin, sequined, scaled skins, parting the crisp film from the delicate segmented fattiness, the sweet fish flesh lay beneath. He stripped the skin as far back as the fan-shaped tail, ridged, stiff and amber dark from the smoking process. Daddy put the skin aside on the parchment paper. He concentrated on separating the fish at just the right spot, filleting the thousands of teeniest transparent bones from the wee chub. He extracted the spine skeleton out, held it up; miraculously, it was still intact, like the sea creature fossils in the Carnegie Museum. “Voila. Chevrolet Coupe, et tu-tu vay,(a Jewish expression meaning where does it hurt?)” he laughed, pretending to speak French with an added Jackie Mason touch. To me, Daddy was a magician.

“Who wants what?” Daddy asked.

I pointed, salivating. He piled some bits of fish on my small plate. In anticipation, I curled my upper body in, shoulders to my ears and clapped quickly. Phew-ee-y, the fish smelled bad; I held my nose, like I did under water. I was moving from tadpole to minnow status at camp. The morsels were delectable. I licked my lips. I waited for someone to smear the cream cheese on my bagel.

“A bisel more?” Grandma queried. Abundant food was in our DNA. “Esse, Esse, mamele.”

I picked out the scallions. I licked my fingers. I widened my eyes at Grandma, batting my eyelashes like Esmerelda, with her big, round, plastic eyeballs bulged out.

Grandma pinched my cheek. “What a ponem(face.)” I thought of the beheaded fish’s face.

“See no evil. Speak no evil. Hear No evil.”

What a fate!

You Are There

Every week day, like clock-work, at 6 P.M. sharp, my father flung open the front screen door. “Daddy’s home,” he announced. He put his trench coat and fedora hat in the entry closet. My two older brothers and I jumped up from the pea-green swirly carpet, where we were imitating the stupidity of The Three Stooges or scribbling our schoolwork or just tussling and teasing as kids do. We competed for Daddy’s hugs in the tiny hallway. He bent down for a pucker and barely pecked my lips in a loud smooch. I cooed like a pigeon in Market Square. Daddy mimicked back. I giggled with glee. Donnie taunted me, “You’re a Do-do bird.” Nelson made a nasty face like a fish. Mom screeched, “That’s enough.” Then she commanded, “Wash your hands for dinner, kids.” We vied to be first to the pink and silver, plume-patterned powder room.

Then we raced to be seated round the crowded, rectangular kitchen table. I was lucky and sat snuggled next to Daddy. Mom, with her apron wrapped around her waist, served us her usual fare. Our typical supper started with either Mom’s thick as porridge, mushroom-barley soup or ketchup-colored chunky vegetable soup or wedges of iceberg in her crystal etched bowl, always with sliced surprises and a sprinkling of paprika on top. Her salads were her masterpiece centerpieces, meticulously arranged in the precious bowl. We got to put on our own dressing. My favorite was Kraft’s Catalina. One time I shook it and the top was loose. Like a geyser, an oily mess splashed all the way up to the ceiling in splatters. We giggled with hysteria like hyenas. Mom placed the main course on a platter in the middle of the table. Her specialties were either: aluminum-foil baked, greasy chicken thighs, crispy, broiled lamb chops with the fat part salted and crunchy, foul-smelling, thin poached flounder scattered with dried parsley flakes and paprika again, or sliced cross-grain, melt in your mouth brisket with Mom’s famous mixture of gravy roasted in. The gravy was an orchestral blend of sweet carrot, onion, celery, and garlic goodies a la Grandma Soodik’s family recipe.

After clearing the supper table, Daddy ushered us back to the living room where we gathered to watch Walter Cronkite. His broadcast was a nightly ritual. My father resembled the TV newsman with their angled moustaches, light, bright blue-gray eyes, similar saggy-baggy under-eyes, and melodious, articulate, tenor voices. Daddy was soft-spoken though. Both wore starched shirts and ties under their suit jackets. Mr. Cronkite sold his audience the news live, between pre-recorded commercial breaks. Daddy’s business venture was selling televisions and furniture at his family stores. He was the anchor of our family, dependable, reliable. He said few words. When Daddy spoke, we listened intently, just like we did to the evening news flashes and current event topics. “And that’s the way it was…,” Mr. Cronkite concluded. Then Mom recalled us to the kitchen, “It’s time for dessert.”

The Dawn of Darwin

Evidence of the revolution of evolution
Descendants ascend
Cold-blooded to warm- blooded
Herbivore to carnivore
Genetic knowledge of earth
Never-ending eclipses over eons
Creationism vs. Clarence Darrow
God creates and preserves eternally
Man grows and adapts environmentally
Natural Selection of the Origin of the Species
Extinction-Existence
The iridescent iguana nods in agreement
Inherit the endless wind.

The Iguanas

The ceramic iguana imitates its Galapagos cousin. Camouflaged on my caramel marble table, the creature poses with its head turned; the long un-tapered neck, stripes, scales, irregular layers of fringed collar and ridged back recall its prehistoric ancestry. Its front paws straddle; its upper body lifted proud. The tail is positioned like a turned rudder, ready to paddle. The iguana’s lidless eyes, unblinking survey the landscape of my living room. In contrast in Greynolds Park last week, the species’ real-life counterpart just idled also, blending in and barely seen. An etched, well-tanned, wrinkled-forehead man sauntered near the creek. He squinted with drooping eyes; then raised his head startled. The older man distinguished one of these miniature dinosaur reptiles in the tall grasses at water’s edge. Splash, the creature was gone.