TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 92

[Tobie Shapiro]

December 17, 2000000000006


Dear Thronglike Masses,

	Today is the day the whole family gets 
together for the Channukah Potlatch.  I call it a 
potlatch because it does seem that we are giving 
away all our earthly means and goods.  The pile 
under the piano is obscenely large.  My brother 
will wade into it and hand out presents.  This 
year due to financial circumstances beyond my 
control, I had to pare down my gift giving.  This 
felt bad.  Bad.  But I'm satisfied that I've 
chosen, scouted out, discovered, come across the 
right presents.

	I splurged on three people: Meyshe, 
Feyna, and my mother.  I got Meyshe a 33 CD-Rom 
World Languages course.  Among the CDs  (one for 
every language) are Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, 
Hebrew, Arabic, Korean, Swedish.  These are some 
of the languages he's shown interest in in the 
past.  Right now he's on a Tibetan jag.  He says 
good morning to me in Tibetan: Tashi Delek, which 
means, literally translated, "Good fortune".  So 
he'll be thrilled.  I got Feyna an iPod with her 
engraved message on it: "*anonymous sound* 
feyna at shpilchas.net".  She has been moaning about 
an iPod for ages.  So here it is.  I will lose my 
daughter to her headphones.  For my mother, I 
contracted a book search company and had them 
locate two books that my mother remembers from 
her childhood, "Nize Baby", and, "Hiawatta Wit No 
Odder Poems.," both by Milt Gross.  And then I 
got her several computer games, notably solitaire 
and shanghai, because she suffered a recent total 
melt down crash of her hard disk, and none of the 
games she was used to playing were retrievable. 
She lost it all.  So now she can waste time in 
the manner and quantity of how I waste time.

	I know one thing I'm getting from my 
mother: six pairs of socks.  All my socks have 
holes in them, and I was desperately looking for 
socks when we were out shopping together.  So my 
mother said, "See the wall of socks?  Pick some 
out."  I picked out four.  She said, "Make it 
six".  I did as told.  She asked, "Should I give 
them to you now, or wrap them up for Channukah?" 
I said, "Wrap them up."  By now I've forgotten 
exactly what they looked like so it will be a 
surprise.   If only someone has found some good 
serviceable underwear for me, I'll be happy.



 
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Snipped

	Once, I was on a local bay area morning 
television show.  You know, one of those typical, 
"Good Morning, Secaucus", types of shows, where 
there is usually a male host with a female 
sidekick who does the flirting, and a live 
audience.  They bring in guests who are pushing a 
book or workshops, or have some sort of something 
to sell.  And in this particular instance, I was 
on as a handwriting analyst.  They thought it 
would be good if they had the audience write 
things down on three by five cards and then they 
would hand the stack to me.  I could leaf through 
them, select a few and shoot out of my ex tempora 
mouth a few surprising things about these people. 
Well, I told them that a three by five card is 
one of the worst ways to get a sample of 
handwriting because you have to alter your 
writing to fit something on the card.  The people 
in the audience would not be seated comfortably 
at a table with a solid surface on which to 
write, and they wouldn't be proffering any 
sizeable sample but just a snippet, not a 
representative chunk of writing.  The host asked 
me if I could get anything at all out of the 
three by fives, and I said that I could, but it 
wouldn't be startling.  He said, "We'll do it," 
and I inhaled swiftly through my front teeth, the 
cold air hitting the enamel.

	My husband, Bernie, (this was number two 
husband) was there with me.  He went on all the 
outings for my public appearances.  He'd stand 
there in the background, shuffling about and 
being depressed and overweight.  Plus, he was a 
weight on me, around my neck, pulling down - 
someone more to take care of besides myself, in a 
public situation.  Nevertheless, he did provide a 
back drop.  (Say!  This woman has a 
manager/husband!  Neat trick!)  That is how he 
would introduce himself, as my manager and 
husband,  even though he never did a single jot 
of managing me, and was pretty damn shy on the 
husband part, too.  He even chafed at his 
position of, the-man-behind-the-woman.  But that 
was his chosen role.

	When they set me up on a stool and handed 
me the three by fives, I took a look through to 
select some outstanding traits.  I found one 
person who was a sentimental romantic, a sucker 
for roses and I love you, no matter who was 
issuing the statement.  Then I found someone very 
physical, a real jock, someone into pumping iron 
or lifting cars by their bumpers.  And I found 
someone with a hot temper.  These were easy 
things to find - obvious signs in handwriting. 
Child's play.  As I spouted about the people on 
the cards, they would stand up, and I'd address 
them.  Then they would invariably look 
astonished.  "How can you tell that?!  That is 
spooky!"  But when I got to the man with the 
temper, it went a little differently.  He stood 
up in the second row, smiling at me.

	"You have a slow burning temper.  It 
causes quite a bit of trouble for you.  You get 
mad a lot.  You carry it around with you."

	He sneered, "I don't get mad; I get even!"

	And I laughed, "That's 'mad' in my book."

	The host clapped his hands, said, "We're batting a thousand."

	"How would you like me to do yours?" I asked him.

	"Oh no!" he refused soundly.  "I can see 
that this stuff really works.  Let's do the 
audience."

	"You are a man with much to hide," I 
quipped, and smiled a large friendly grin.  "See, 
I didn't even need your handwriting."

	Getting mad is something that I do as 
much as anyone.  I swear at myself when I drop 
something.  I seethe at being ignored.  But it 
takes quite a lot to unpeel me, and make me 
spring.  I don't get even.  I wondered about this 
man from the audience.  What would it be like 
going around getting even all the time?  I never 
even tried to get even with my father.  I'd just 
go off licking my wounds, sit in my room with 
tears streaming down my face, shaking with rage 
and humiliation.  But it never occurred to me to 
get even.  What could I do?

	Then, one evening, I was sitting in the 
kitchen preparing to do my bulimic thing.  I had 
a big salad bowl full of thick salad, with 
greens, corn, avocado, onion, olives, cheese and 
a good creamy dressing.  I'd cooked some soup and 
had that on to boil.  There may have been bread 
and leftover dinner.  I'd set out a groaning 
board before me.  I'd set aside time after 
everyone had gone to bed, pull the accordion 
doors to the kitchen shut, wait until I figured 
everyone was asleep, then I'd go through the 
piles of food, load at a time.  I'd eat until I 
was bursting, then rush off to the bathroom and 
throw it all up.  Go back to the kitchen and 
start all over again.  It was my addiction, and 
the only way I knew how to lavish something upon 
myself.  Hours could go by.  Me and my fork and 
spoon, maybe a knife to spread butter on the 
bread.  Sometimes, I kept my treats in my car, 
outside, and didn't bring them in until the house 
was asleep.  Then I'd go out to the car in 
secret, wheel barrow all the food inside and cook 
it all up for my nightly ritual.  It seemed that 
I'd never get tired of eating.  The taste, the 
indulgence, the time wasted while it kept me from 
contemplating reality.

	On this occasion, I'd prepared my feast 
and was just about to put my fork into it, when 
the accordion door to the kitchen opened up, and 
my father walked through.  He busied himself in 
the next room, collecting a book to read, or 
doing something fairly innocent, and then passed 
through again on his way back upstairs to bed. 
My heart raced, and my sense of balance was 
challenged.  No one was supposed to know what I 
did downstairs after everyone was in bed.  The 
order for the evening was to eat everything in 
sight and throw it up, then clean up so there 
wasn't a trace of evidence of my behaviour.  Then 
I'd go get out the cocaine, and spend the rest of 
the night rattling around with art work, or 
writing, composing, going back to the little 
white piles of coke whenever the effect of the 
coke drooped somewhat.  I'd finally turn in with 
a good dose of tranquilizers and get to bed 
around four in the morning.  That was the plan. 
But my father walked through the kitchen, 
exposing me.  He seemed oblivious to the scene, 
oblivious to the significance of his daughter 
standing in the middle of several troughs of 
food, with a fork in her hand and the television 
wheeled in to face the table.  He kept his eyes 
on his own private mission and disappeared 
upstairs again.

	This set something off in my head.  He 
had trespassed on my solitude, on my very vital 
privacy.  It was as if he'd walked in on me while 
I had the tourniquet on my arm and a needle in my 
vein.  It was as if he'd violated me once again. 
This was not to be seen by anyone, and the fact 
that it was he, my enemy, the scourge of my life, 
the villain in the works, triggered a burning 
rage inside me.  After he left the room, I paced 
back and forth, not knowing what to do.  I had to 
do something.

	The next day, in the morning, he was 
scheduled to get on a plane and go to a 
conference on the east coast.  He was packed and 
ready to go to the early morning limousine that 
would take  him to the airport.  He took his 
violin with him all the time, so he could play 
chamber music with the other registered 
conferees.  That Amatius Albanis violin had been 
all over the world.  He took his International 
Amateur Chamber Music Society's membership book 
with him and would call other amateur musicians 
in the city where the convention was being held. 
He'd go out in the evening and play his violin. 
Poorly.  Well.  It didn't matter.

	I crept upstairs to his den, the room 
where he practiced.  I opened his violin case, 
took out the scissors that I'd brought from 
downstairs and I cut through all four of his 
strings.  Just snipped the strings straight 
through, from E to G, a clean cut.  Then I closed 
the case and went back downstairs, replaced the 
scissors and went about my bulimic business.  I 
knew that the moment of discovery would be one 
hell of a surprise.  What could have caused this? 
It could have been the air pressure in the 
airplane.  It could have been sabotage.  It would 
be a mystery.  This was the one time in my life 
that I ever acted out against my father.  For the 
decades of abuse, both psychological and 
physical, this was my revenge.  This was my 
getting even.

	I never heard a word about the violin 
strings, not from my father, not from my mother. 
It was as if he knew he'd done enough wrong that 
he couldn't get angry at me.  What would he 
accuse me of?  How could he prove it?  I stopped 
quaking with fear, when he'd been back home a 
whole day and nothing had been said.  The revenge 
was sweet.  It was heady.  It was even poetic. 
But I didn't push my luck and try anything ever 
again.  Once was enough.



 
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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net