Odyssey In A Teacup (27 page)

 Casper’s Barmitzvah (on a Saturday; low key; intimate)

Nothing really wrong with any of these things (except for the dog’s name; I experienced a visceral reaction every time someone called her). The orientation of the timeline was the problem. It was kind of supine. Or maybe prostrate, because I was looking down all the time and my life was flatlinish. Only my kids gave it some real dimension.

I don’t know if time flew or passed slowly for Hannah and Casper, but they were having fun. They remained unstoppable. They were polite, likeable children, though boldly unconventional (watching them was like watching me and Ralph as kids, especially when Casper took to starting his sentences with ‘Hmm ... ’). Their free-spiritedness got them into trouble with their superiors at times, but gained them admiration from their peers. I no longer blamed myself for what I thought was my inadequate parenting and insufficient discipline, and I stopped worrying that they were mixing with inhabitants from the Village of the Damned (or the Village People—same thing). And I finally understood that Hannah and Casper weren’t so much influenced by Joe. Rather, they were like him in that they probably had a strong connection to the primitive part of their psyche. Where Joe had Typhon, I wondered who was calling the shots in Hannah’s and Casper’s subconscious. Then I remembered something.

During one history lesson, Mr Kosta had mentioned
Baubo
, a particularly obscure goddess from ancient mythology. Baubo has remained mostly unrecognised in modern times because she was the goddess of obscenity. In a stuffy social milieu, no one was exactly putting out the welcome mat for her. And Mr Kosta, probably anticipating a parent uprising, didn’t go into detail about her. I didn’t give it much thought back then, but now I was curious and decided to research Baubo.

I felt an instant connection with this little goddess, but shit ... talk about ugly! She actually
looks
obscene. Baubo is depicted as headless. Even so, she has a face with eyes, a nose and a mouth. It’s just that these features are on her belly, and they’re dual-purpose: her eyes are her nipples; her mouth is her vulva; and the jury is still out on what the nose is (at a guess, I’d say her belly button). And Baubo appears to be in dire need of a chin and upper lip wax, but that’s just her pubes. Pictures of other goddesses indicate they’d had Brazilian waxes, and the Sirens, being sea nymphs, would have also invested in hair removal (wouldn’t want to look like bush pigs in their swimmers). But taking in Baubo’s overall appearance, what the hell difference would a wax job make?

Anyway, importantly, Baubo’s more than just about obscenity. She’s about having fun; not taking life or ourselves too seriously. She embodies the healing power of laughter. You could do a whole lot worse than have a bawdy character as a guiding light (it sure beat having Cronus, the child-swallowing-bollocks-lopper running the show).

As I read up on Baubo, it occurred to me that she wasn’t just dominant in Hannah and Casper’s psyche; she’d also played a leading role in mine. Baubo was the one who guided my hand to write ‘fucket’ above the hopscotch squares; the one who put a smile on my face (at inappropriate times) that Sylvia and my teachers often and indignantly told me to wipe off; the one who made me flash my lolly teeth at Miss Parker and directed me to research the etymology of ‘fuck’ in her class. Baubo was also, no doubt, behind every ridiculous interaction and experience. And I discovered that, in French, Baubo’s name is pronounced booboo (the double ‘o’ is said like the short ‘oo’ sound in book). As in, ‘mistake’? Different pronunciation. But Sylvia’s reference to any pain, cut or injury as a boo-boo called attention to the little goddess.

‘Where do you have boo-boo?’ she’d ask.

Everywhere ... you keep telling me I AM one!
A ‘pain’ and a ‘mistake’!

For a brief moment, this didn’t feel so bad. I was the embodiment of Her Holy-Shitness (thank God I didn’t look like her!).

But whichever way you pronounce Baubo’s name—or call her the Belly Goddess (as she’s also known), or an impulse—she’s tenacious. Having my mouth washed out with soap all those years ago didn’t wash her away. She’d just bubbled up in other ways. And now that I’d made her acquaintance, I was happy to let her continue propelling my locker-room patois, but I wasn’t quite ready to give her carte blanche. So, my hearty belly laughs and spontaneous laughter-for-no-good-reason, which had thinned out over the years, remained thin. And having perfected my social roles, I remained the quintessential nobody.

In spite of this, even though Hannah’s actions and Casper’s words often made me want to shudder, I secretly cheered them on ... from the sidelines. I loved that my kids’ zany behaviour felt like an ‘up yours’ to Sylvia. I didn’t love it so much that in the rumour mills, they were known as Joe Blow’s grandchildren. It was a bit like those post-fart feelings at Maxi’s granny’s funeral. I was relieved and off the hook because it didn’t reflect on me. But at the same time, strangely, a little disappointed. Unheard, unseen, it felt like I’d finally disappeared. What did I expect? The
cojones
I discovered on that memorable Seder night at my childhood home, had become like undescended testicles.

This was causing friction in my marriage, and things came to a head one weeknight as I was washing up after dinner. That afternoon, a Batmitzvah invitation had arrived in the mail. I intended to decline, and with good reason.

Hayley, the Batmitzvah girl, was the daughter of Lenny and Meg Schmitt. Ralph and I had been casual friends with Lenny as teenagers, but there was always a level of competitiveness between the two boys. Like Ralph, Lenny was from a working class background. They were in the same class at school, both were at the top, both got scholarships in their final year. Lenny went on to study medicine and he became a plastic surgeon, and although Ralph aspired to be a doctor and had the grades to get into med school, Albie insisted he get a full-time job and contribute to the household income.

With the passage of time, Ralph and I drifted away from Lenny. When I occasionally ran into him, our exchange was pleasant, he always asked after Ralph, and we parted with a promise of getting together. But it never happened. And it had been a few years since I last saw him, so I was surprised that Lenny was requesting the pleasure of the company of ‘Dear Ruth and partner’ at this celebration of a child I’d never met. And Lenny and Reuben had never met.

‘You
always
have a good reason!’ said Reuben when I told him about my decision.

‘But he didn’t even bother to find out your name!’

‘So?’

I didn’t have an answer; he stormed off.

Over the years, I found that big social events had become a nightmare, even more so with the allure of comparisons, judgements and competition. I was no more immune to this than the next person, but the anxiety that arrived with the invitations was hard to handle. And because most of the functions were held on a Sunday, I managed to come up with a whole lot of creative excuses to avoid them. The fear—one I hadn’t shared with Reuben—that every large gathering that fell on a Sunday would be my Armageddon had not abated. But tonight, Reuben was fed up, and I couldn’t I blame him, even though it was probably the best excuse I’d had in a while (I could no longer use the kids as a cop-out because they didn’t need babysitters anymore). He was peeved about my diminishing verve and our diminishing social life.

After cold-shouldering me for an hour—he did this too often, sometimes for days—but then realising it wasn’t going to change things, he came back and tried a different tack. He grabbed me by the shoulders, looked me square in the eyes, and spoke with the utmost conviction.

‘It’s time for you to grab the bull by the balls!’

Personally, I thought it would be much safer to grab it by the horns (unless it also had undescended testicles). But what Reuben said next hit below the belt.

‘You’re becoming like Sylvia.’

Yeow!
This translates to Yeow! in
all
languages. Except in Hebrew, it would start on the right hand side of the page, be read right to left and be more expressive, like so:

!eb dluoc syob yhctib woh fo noitamrifnoc rehtona teY
!woeY

I got steamed up about this comparison between my mother and me, but what Reuben had implied was right. It was time to face my fears.

‘Okay, okay! I’ll accept the invitation.’
How bad could it be? A room full of strangers; who cares what people I don’t know think of me?

Ralph had also received an invitation and was equally surprised. He declined, not least because he’d heard a rumour that Lenny had recently lost the tip of his little finger, which according to Ralph made him an amputee. Nobody seemed to know how it happened. Ralph made it my job to find out.

We didn’t attend the actual ceremony in the morning; I drew the line at sitting inside a synagogue. The reception was an open house afternoon tea from two-thirty to five-thirty.

At two-twenty, Reuben, dressed and ready to go, was standing in the doorway of our bedroom looking at the many clothes strewn all over the bed.

‘Why are there so many clothes strewn all over the bed?’

‘Uh, because I am a woman.’
Duh!

He didn’t get it; just stood there shaking his head like one of Joe’s Bobblehead dolls, and moaned about us being late. Even as a social misfit, I knew that you didn’t actually have to be on time for an open house. I told him so, but he still stood there (as if to apply pressure). I ignored him as I checked myself out in the mirror, which was in a generous mood. ‘You look okay. Mid-forties and you still have a good figure.’ What I’d chosen to wear originally was probably a little offbeat, so I settled for a safe look—clothes that I’d bought a couple of years earlier and had hardly worn: a fitted, white, three-quarter-sleeve shirt, Capri pants with a miniature navy and white hounds-tooth pattern, and slick, navy canvas loafers. I applied the finishing touches to my makeup—glossy Ritzy Red lipstick for a bit of va-va-voom—grabbed my navy clutch, and we were off.

At three o’clock, we were standing in front of a stately looking two-storey Mediterranean-style house with a sloping red tiled roof, white stucco walls, arched windows, and a black wrought iron gate. Already, I felt a little out of my league, but I bit the bullet and elegantly climbed the terracotta-tiled steps that were flanked by red and pink geraniums. Not so elegantly, I slipped on a slimy stray leaf on the top step, landing on all fours.

‘Oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo.’
Reuben made monkey noises and scratched under his armpit.

‘Oh, I can always rely on you for support, can’t I?’

Was I surprised? No. It was Sunday. God and man were off duty; life was unattended. Reuben must have realised I was ready to turn around and go home, so he became solicitous and helped me up. As we crossed the four-columned portico to the double-entry front doors that were open and welcoming, I regained my composure and sashayed in to an imposing foyer.

It had white walls, white polished marble flooring, a small chandelier, a fine gilt-framed mirror on one wall, and on the opposite wall, an odd choice of oil painting of a caricaturised obese woman with three caricaturised obese kids. The kids were dressed colourfully, but she wore a black dress and was holding an obese cat. The signature on the bottom of the painting read ‘Botero’. I recognised the artist’s name. Just that morning, I’d read an article in the paper about Fernando Botero, a Colombian artist who paints people as ‘rotund and swollen to monumental proportions’. I started to hyperventilate a little, but then I reminded myself it was only a
painting
of obese people; it wasn’t even a portrait. Real people did not pose for this; the figures were parodies. Finally, I calmed down, but when I turned and walked into the adjoining lounge room, I started to hyperventilate. A lot.

Fuck me!

And yet ... there was not a single obese person in sight. Just an obese collection of stilettoed, bottle-blonde females. Like the woman in the painting, these women were all dressed in black, but unlike the woman in the painting, they all looked malnourished (and I thought
I
had a dysfunctional relationship with food). These stick figures were hermetically sealed in sateen, sequinned little dresses, tight as chipolata skins clinging to and accentuating the bony outcrops that were their hips. But skinny didn’t cause me to breathe more rapidly—their attire was the problem. The invitation said ‘smart casual’. It looked like dress codes had changed in my social absence and nobody had informed me. I felt underdressed, old, fat and ugly. I shared this with Reuben, who tried to assuage me:

‘You are not fat and ugly.’

I am seriously married to a moron—a bull in a china shop in danger of losing his own testicles.

Later, though. For now, I was rooted to the spot, watching these women waddle in their swaddle. It felt like we’d stumbled upon a penguin colony. Only this particular species was accessorised with obese diamonds and handbag husbands. But what made everything so much worse was that the waiters weaving their way through the crowd were dressed in white shirts, and trousers with a miniature blue and white hounds-tooth pattern.
Oh dear absent God, He who had belatedly granted my wish to fit in somewhere.
I felt like the butt of a cosmic joke.