Odyssey In A Teacup (18 page)

And five months after my twenty-fifth/twenty-first birthday weekend away, it was same old same old. The only difference was that this year, for the first time, Sylvia and Joe would be holding the Seder, the ceremonial Passover dinner that commemorates the Jews’ exodus and liberation from slavery in Egypt. Isaac and Miri usually hosted it because they had the biggest house, but they were away (they’d taken the whole family to Hawaii). A warm night was predicted so Joe decided a Seder barbecue would be in order. Not exactly tradition, but who doesn’t like a barbecue?

Reuben and I were now a solid item, so he was invited. All up, there would be sixteen of us, including Albie, Norma, Ralph, george and Stella, simon and Miranda, Louwhiney and her husband, Jimmy (these two had married a year earlier). Louwhiney was pregnant with her first child. george and simon had no children. Apparently, simon and Miranda decided they didn’t want any, and george and Stella were having trouble conceiving. That neither of his brothers had children pleased Ralph no end.

‘We’re here to make a difference and leave this world a better place.’ He felt that george and simon were making a most significant contribution to this cause by
not
breeding.

Reuben’s sister, Iris, was also invited because their parents were overseas. Iris is the same age as me and I just love her. Just shy of six foot tall, this warrior woman (no doubt descended from the Amazons) is a kick-arse kind of gal and just the person you’d want to go to bat for you. And if I were to bat for the other team, I would probably go for Iris (rather than Maxi, who’s more like a sister to me. It would be morally wrong to go for someone you feel related to).

Also included in our Seder was Myron’s girlfriend, Tammy. They had only been together for a couple of months, but things looked serious, so Sylvia thought she should be at the family Seder. A tall, voluptuous girl with a pretty face and long blonde hair, Tammy sounded like the staccato yip of a Tommy gun when she laughed: ‘A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a’.

And Tammy was a ‘nice’ girl in her youth. Rumour had it that her name, phone number, and ‘good root’ were rag-rolled on the back of the boys’ toilet doors at school (Joe would have been impressed with the texture).

I shared this little titbit with Sylvia after Myron confided in us that he thought Tammy was ‘The One’ and that he’d probably propose once they’d been together for a year.

‘See? Even “nice” girls get married. Looks like your theory’s been blown out of the water,’ I added smugly. I got a dirty, filthy look for that one. But because Tammy is Jewish, Sylvia was prepared to overlook the girl’s reputation.

Tammy came across as gullible. I sensed otherwise. She played the damsel in distress, which is undoubtedly what hooked Myron, because then he could play at being her white knight. Personally, I thought Tammy was foxy, and managed to outwit my family; Ralph just thought she was a foxy mama, but a halfwit.

Ralph turned up early on Seder night under the guise of wanting to help, but he just wanted to get away from home.

‘Why don’t you just move out? Why do you stay?’

The fact we were both still living at home was something we hadn’t yet talked about.

‘Because my mother thinks the sun shines out of my backside. She’s good to me.’

This seemed like a strange reason to stay, particularly seeing as Albie was so bad to him. There had to be more to it than that. Before I could ask him, he asked me, ‘Why are you still here?’

Why was I still here? I had a job and could afford to move out. From the other side of the lounge, Tammy’s voice drowned out my thoughts. She had also arrived early to help out.

‘Here ya go, Sylvia.’ As (non)observantly Jewish as my family, Tammy handed Sylvia a tray of rissoles. ‘Mince, egg, breadcrumbs, parsley. But nooooo milk!’ Tammy said proudly.

Ralph shook his head and whispered,
‘Intellectual giant.’

Meat and milk aren’t eaten together according to Jewish dietary law. That Tammy had kept to this was neither here nor there, because we don’t follow these laws. Her inclusion of breadcrumbs as a binder presented a problem, though. Bread is a no go zone at Passover, as is anything that is leaven. The reason for this is that because the Jews had to leave Egypt in a hurry, there was no time to let the bread rise before baking it. So, Passover became a feast without yeast, and the bread we eat is unleavened (we still eat bread, but certainly not at the Seder).

‘Maybe she got kicked out of Sunday school classes, too,’
I whispered to Ralph, trying to justify why Tammy wouldn’t know this.

‘I’d say not. Even with your limited time in the classroom, you know that leavened stuff is forbidden. Personally, I think it’s because
she’s
half-baked.’
Maybe Ralph was right about her.

Sylvia—she who cooked pork—wasn’t in a position to pass judgement. She smiled indulgently at Tammy. ‘Let’s just keep the addition of breadcrumbs between us.’

‘We heard it.’

Sylvia silenced me with a dirty look.

Tammy had also volunteered to put together the Seder plate, which contains six symbolic foods. Each of these has special significance to the retelling of the story of the Exodus. Although there are various interpretations, from that limited time I’d spent in the classroom, I learned that parsley represents the coming of spring; the egg is a symbol of life; bitter herbs are a reminder of the bitterness of slavery and suffering in Egypt; the roasted shank bone is a reminder of the sacrificial lamb that was offered at the temple in Jerusalem before its destruction; and charoset—a mixture of grated apple, nuts, cinnamon and red wine—represents the mortar the Israelites used to bond bricks when they were enslaved in Egypt (odds on
that
bloody brickwork wasn’t varnished with Estapol).

Tammy realised too late she had forgotten to buy a shank bone. The butchers were closed, so she’d substituted with a bone-shaped dog biscuit. Crafty.
Maybe I was right about her.

Everyone else arrived on time, each bearing gifts of flowers or chocolates. Iris, on the other hand, came bearing a remote-controlled whoopee cushion that she’d picked up in the States. Joe loved Reuben’s sister as much as I did.

Joe and Myron had butted together two large, flat, solid pieces of timber, six and a half feet long by three and a half feet wide, to form a tabletop resting on trestles—like the makeshift table at Albie’s birthday celebration ten years earlier. (Hopefully, this would be the only similarity to that fateful afternoon.) Set up in the back yard, this ran perpendicular to the varnished red brick and black grouted back wall of the house, and parallel with the side paling fence, which was lined with a profusion of star jasmine and pink ivy geraniums in full bloom (Joe had recently taken to gardening).

We all took our seats around the table. This was going to be interesting because nobody really knew what to do. Years of Seders had not made us any the wiser. Fortunately, though, Reuben’s family is semi-observant, so he offered to conduct the Seder. Joe took his seat at the head of the table with his back to the wall, and indicated that Reuben should sit at the opposite end. Sylvia normally sat across from Joe; the matriarch had lost some ground. It was the patriarch’s turn to get the dirty look. Ralph and I sat on either side of Reuben, with Ralph facing the fence.

The table was covered with three large tablecloths. In the centre was the Seder plate, a bowl of salt water for dipping the parsley, and a plate containing matza. The salt water symbolises the tears shed by our ancestors during their slavery. In front of each guest there was a wine glass (which gets refilled several times during the course of the Seder), and a Haggadah, the book that contains the story of the Exodus. It sets out the order of the Seder, which is structured around four questions, although it’s really one question asked four times with four different answers. Each of the four answers explains why something is done differently during Passover. The question is, ‘Why is this night different from all other nights?’ The youngest person present at the Seder asks it.

So, we got started. Reuben began reading, guiding us through the Seder. One of the early directives, shortly before the questions are asked, is that we lean to the left and drink the first cup of wine. So, sixteen bodies leaned to the left. On cue, and predictably, Joe activated the whoopee remote (at least that’s what he would have us believe, but I knew better). Everyone except Sylvia laughed. After the third ‘activation’, she petulantly ripped it out of his hand and made a production of taking the batteries out. Just when she thought she was back in control, the old man then farted (again).
Ha!

‘Far out!’ shrilled Tammy. ‘It
still
works even without the batteries! A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a.’

Maybe Ralph was right about her.

A few minutes later, when it was time to ask the central question, all eyes were riveted on Louwhiney, the youngest at the Seder table. But she falsettoed, ‘I don’t wanna read, don’t wanna read, don’t wanna read!’ After the third intolerable high-pitched Louwhine, Ralph, as the second youngest, was left to take up the slack. He glared at his sister.

‘You know, you’ll never run out of dummies when your baby’s born. You just have to spit one.’

I giggled. Louwhiney flipped the bird. Albie shot Ralph d-d-d-daggers (he even stuttered his non-verbal communication).

Ralph then focused on the task at hand.

‘Why is this night different from all other nights?’ he dutifully asked.

But before proceeding to read the answers set out in the Haggadah, he paused and slowly scanned the table, eyes lingering on each guest. Everyone squirmed. Albie was seething. This was not looking good. So typical of Ralph, though. I could hardly wait for what was to come. Then it came.

‘Can I give you
my
take on this?’

Iris, Reuben and I laughed out loud but everyone else chorused, ‘NO!’

Albie glowered. simon and george glowed—this sorry pair took some sort of perverse pleasure in knowing that Ralph would likely be Albie’s punching bag when they got home. But I loved it when Ralph ruffled feathers in the family setting. After years of beatings, he had developed a high pain threshold and as he often said, ‘If I’m g-g-g-going to get slapped around, I may as well do something p-p-p-provocative to earn it.’

Thankfully, the rest of the Seder continued without incident. Twenty-five minutes later—record time—when the formalities were over and done with, and as we helped ourselves to the mashed egg, gefilte fish and chopped liver entrée, Ralph was at it again.

‘Oh, Aunt Sylvia, are you serving bumya tonight?’

Go Ralph go!

Myron started gagging on whatever he was eating, and the mouthful of drink I’d just swigged came squirting out of my nose. Sylvia glared at Ralph disapprovingly. Albie’s jugular vein bulged and throbbed ferociously. Ralph was in deep shit. He knew it, but just shrugged it off. The way Albie treated him seemed to be more of an issue for me than for Ralph.

‘Ralph’s staying over at our place tonight,’ I announced without thinking.

No one asked why. It may not have been talked about openly, but Albie’s brutish behaviour was no secret. The heavy silence that followed was broken when Norma and I helped Sylvia clear the entrée plates from the table. Ten minutes later, we came out of the kitchen, each one carrying a large dish—mashed potato kugel (a kind of potato pudding), tsimmes (a kind of sweetened vegetable stew) and salad (a kind of salad). The delicious aroma of meat barbecuing filled the air, but Myron was sitting at the table.

Shit!

Why was this night different from all other nights?

Joe was cooking.

I saw him standing at the barbecue talking to Reuben, with one hand wrapped around a bottle of beer (from the little bar fridge in the garage), the other one holding a meat-flipping spatula. I could forgive the beer (did he seriously not know beer has yeast in it? Reuben would have been too polite to point it out, or maybe he didn’t know, either), but I couldn’t forgive Myron for letting Joe cook. Myron saw me glaring at him and gave me a what-was-I-supposed-to-do? look. I walked over to Joe.

‘Why are you cooking? You know you always burn the meat!’

‘You’re meant to
singe
the meat. That’s what a barbecue is all about. And top chefs cook this way.’

Flambé is not the same as burning the bloody meat, but you can’t argue with a know-all. And we didn’t. We just never let him cook. Ever. But Joe Blow was also a blowhard. There’s nothing Myron could have done to stop him showing off in front of Reuben, Iris, and Tammy tonight. And true to form, seven minutes later there was a thick pall of smoke as the meat spontaneously flambéed itself. Joe proudly served each one of us an almost incinerated steak and a couple of almost incinerated rissoles.

Bon appétit.

No one complained. Not even Iris. (
‘She likes it well-done,’
whispered Reuben.) A table full of loudmouths, yet nobody opened theirs. Nobody talked. It wasn’t possible. They were like a herd of hoofed ruminants chewing the cud. And unless you’re Muriel the goat in Animal Farm, or Bambi, no way could you speak under those circumstances.

Everyone chomped away at their leathery fare. Except for me. I finished eating the vegetables and salad, and then sat unmoving, staring at the cindery beef on my plate in the same manner as those bumya nights. Feeling Sylvia’s eyes on me, I turned to face her. She was transmitting.

‘EAT!’

‘Piss off!’

She flinched. Yeah, baby! My ability to broadcast telepathically must have strengthened.

Ralph had also finished his salad and vegies. He was staring at me, one cheek bulging with meat. I sensed the cogs in his brain turning, like a three-drummed poker machine spinning, then coming to rest.