TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 171

[Tobie Shapiro]

March 6, 2000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000007


Dear Old Timers,

	In the middle of the night, Meyshe came 
into my room, groaning, then yelling.  He had an 
ear ache.  Oh, he's been through this before.  I 
looked in my cabinet for the magic ear drops that 
would tide him over until I could get him to the 
doctor in the morning.  I had none.  I called the 
doctor's office.  Actually, Meyshe is still 
seeing his pediatrician.  His body is mature but 
his behaviour is often about a decade behind him. 
I thought, as I dialed in the emergency call 
number, that I should find him an adult doctor (a 
doctor who is all grown up).  But I didn't let 
much get in the way of attending to the 
emergency.  He was moaning, curled up on the 
floor in his underwear.  Five foot ten of him, 
hairy legs, growth of beard, fully descended 
testicles.   I told him to get dressed because 
we'd likely be going to the emergency room. We 
got dressed.  Four in the morning.

	The doctor called back in less than ten 
minutes.  My mother answered the phone before I 
could get to it, and I missed the introduction, 
the one where she said which doctor she was.  So 
I spoke to the nameless physician who told me to 
give him Tylenol.  I said that that wouldn't 
touch it.  She agreed.  I told her I didn't have 
the magic ear drops that he had from the last go 
around with ear infections.  She said to warm up 
some olive oil, test it on the inside of my arm, 
and put a little bit of the warmed olive oil into 
the ear.  "That should work as well as the ear 
drops would," she told me.  I doubted it.  "Bring 
him in in the morning at 9:00 to the Berkeley 
office."  That sounded like it would work.  "Poor 
little guy," she said.  I told her he wasn't 
little any more.  Five foot ten, a hundred eighty 
pounds.  "Oh how time flies," she answered.

	I poured some olive oil into a measuring 
cup and heated it up, ten seconds at a time, in 
the microwave.  Then I sucked it up with a 
syringe and had Meyshe lie down with his ear up, 
facing the cure.  I squirted some olive oil into 
his ear.  He said it didn't help.  He kept 
yelling.  He paused to say that he was hungry. 
We poured him some raisin bran.  He sat there, 
pitifully, at the table, spooning it in.  After a 
while he commented that the ear didn't hurt as 
much when he was awake.  It was much worse while 
he was dreaming.  So he didn't want to go back to 
bed.  He said he'd stay up at the computer. 
Which he did.  In the meantime, I got back into 
my jammies and curled up in bed, set the alarm 
for seven, and woke up at 6:30.  I went to check 
on Meyshe.  I heard the computer puttering along 
with internet noise.  I knocked on his door.  He 
didn't answer.  I knocked a little louder.  He 
didn't answer.  I knocked forcefully.  Nothing. 
So I opened the door carefully and found him 
crouched on his desk chair, asleep at the 
computer.  I tiptoed out.

	Now, I'm waiting for the time to pass 
before we have to leave to take him to the 
doctor's office.  I don't want to wake him too 
early if he's going to be suffering.  I feel all 
hollow and there is a scrim between me and the 
real world.  Up half the night.  Here's to 
motherhood.





 
ŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸ
 
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Chicks


	In the Spring, near Easter, when my 
sister and I were very little and my brother had 
not yet been born, you'd start to see these baby 
chicks in the markets, furry little puff balls 
with tiny beaks, all dyed pastel colours.  They'd 
sell them to you by the half dozen, and put them 
all in a cardboard tray.  You'd take the chicks 
home in their tray and give them to your kids who 
would coo and swoon at these cute things.  A pink 
one.  A lavender one.  A yellow one.  A baby blue 
one.  A chartreuse one.  An orange one.  They'd 
run around in their tray doing whatever chicks 
do: peck and hop, and, "cheep cheep cheep".  They 
could fit in the palm of your hand.  You fed them 
grain or bird seed, crumbs, whatever you found 
around the house that seemed bird-like.   But of 
course no city family was well equipped to care 
for half a dozen baby chickens.  Once the city 
kids got used to the colourful chicks, they 
stopped nurturing them, and most of them would 
get discarded.

	These cute chicks were actually a reality 
time bomb.  The dying process that tinted them 
all these pastel colours was eventually lethal to 
them.  The vendors had dissatisfied customers 
with weeping children and dead baby chicks on 
their hands.  A lot of pastel grave mounds for 
burying the deceased babies.  It was guaranteed 
that they would die of this lovely, whimsical 
tinting.  It was just a matter of time.

	How did the parents deal with this?  I 
was just a kid, and didn't see this from the 
parental viewpoint.  I saw it as a tragedy. 
These poor creatures would only live a short time 
before their colouring snuffed them out.  And 
then, what could we do?  Buy more?  They'd only 
die soon, anyway.  A pretty drastic thing to do 
to make a seasonal killing, as it were, on the 
market.  I don't remember how long they lived 
from when we brought them home.  It wasn't 
terribly long.  I have blotted out of my memory 
the death throes of the pastel chicks.  All I 
remember is how sweet they looked, how exotic it 
was to watch these rainbow babies lurching around 
in their tray.  We gave them names, of course, 
and followed the instructions that they came with.

	It made a big noise when the consumers 
started to squawk about the exploding chickens. 
Eventually, they were taken off the market.  I 
think lawsuits were filed.  What kind of monster 
would strike up the plan to dye thousands of 
freshly hatched chicks into sweet pastel colours 
for sale around Easter, knowing that the 
procedure would certainly kill them?  Did they 
think no one would notice that they died an 
unnatural death, that all of them, every last one 
of them, would expire within a few days?  Was it 
the SPCA who filed the first lawsuit against 
them?  Or an irate filthy rich man with a wailing 
young daughter.

	"Daddy, Daddy, the coloured chicks all 
died.  Sue them, Daddy!  Sue them!"

	One year when the practice was still 
legal, our father bought us a tray of rainbow 
chicks.  I looked at them with great curiosity. 
They were like a cartoon, unreal, part of another 
universe.  We took the tray of them out to the 
back yard and let them run around in the grass 
while we watched them.  Dana was barefoot as she 
observed them darting here and there.

	Then something awful happened.  Dana 
stepped on one of the chicks.  It was quite 
unintentional, and the realization horrified her. 
The fuzzy little ball had crunchy bones inside 
it, the soft tissue, muscle and feathers squished 
up between her toes, and there was a terrible 
crackling sound.  Dana screamed when she looked 
down and saw the remains of the little fluffy 
beast.  A bloody mess.  A pastel exterior, but 
the same blood red interior.  She cried and 
cried.  She cried from the shock; she cried from 
the sense of loss.   She cried for having 
accidentally slaughtered the chick who would have 
died a more prolonged death, probably a more 
painful one.

	It was my mother who took Dana off into 
the bathroom to clean between her toes and wash 
her foot under the faucet.  I don't know where my 
father went off to.  Maybe he returned the rest 
of the chicks to the store at which he got them. 
Either way, they were doomed.  Either way our 
consciences would gnaw at us, and give us no rest.



 
ŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸ
 
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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net