The Family Gelb

[Fiction]

My name is Moishe: Male, Caucasian, age 26, five feet seven, circumcised, brown eyes, brown hair with a few strands of white. The guys call me Mo; often times Fat Mo, for the obvious reason. And why would I object? As long as it’s good natured. I was born Moishy, but then, one day, I was Moishe. Just like that. Can’t tell exactly when that happened. Must be somewhere in the higher grades of school, when the letter Yidele became the more matured Yid.

My baptismal name is Moishe Tzvi, but nobody calls me that. (Except for one amicable schnorrer who glanced at the gold embroidered lettering on my talis bag as he made his approach. “Ah, Reb Moishe Tzvi! Our brethren in Jerusalem rely upon you!” “Don’t have?” “Nu, may God bless you with full pockets!” Full pockets I had, talk about God’s imminent help. It was his foul breath I couldn’t bear. Don’t reb me, and don’t pollute me. Never heard of toothpaste? They got one with Bedatz.) Even the prissiest yeshiva counselor ever, Mechel, who made it a point to address his pupils formally, called me Moshe Hersh, Moshe Hersh Gelb. I would’ve given him a thousand Gelbbies to call me Moishe, or even Fat Mo, or not to call me at all. He rolled the R with this guttural gargle like a vacuum cleaner swallowing a sock. It made me want to hit him with a corkscrew; see if I can pull his deep-throated lump out.

Ay, nostalgia. Those nights we spent hunched over a Talmudic sugya. Hey, don’t make that face. Think I don’t know which side a Gemora is opened? Well, breaking news. I was actually one of the most diligent students. I even partnered in chavrusa with Usher Weiss, today a big-shot motz potz in Borough Park. Who does he think he is? I remember him as a boy. I’m no longer good for him, Mr. knee-breeches-and-black-hosiery-feeding-off-welfare. I, on the other hand, met my responsibilities; I work hard and honest to make a living. Yiddishkeit-wise, well, I’m a wreck; a nothing, save for one shiur, one early morning Torah session, which is nothing but a mockery. On the rare mornings I do show up, when I’m not tired like a dog and haven’t had a wedding the night before and don’t have to be early at work, my partner has one of those. And when, once in a blue moon, we do make it both together same-time same-place, we waste the time away gabbling sports, celebrities, and politics.

There is nothing better than my Pilot being the first on the block to pull off into early dawn. I squeeze with ease, pedal to metal, loftily and full of energy, eager to attack the day head on. And there is nothing worse than having all the ardor fizzled out, depleted after a round hour, the most precious hour, gone like a breath in the cool morning air. And I know it. I know it while I crumble Styrofoam off the rim and into the emptied coffee cup blabbering away, but cannot resist it. For the moment, the sweetest thing in the world is to not begin studying. Strange, when you think studying was the reason I rolled my sack-of-bones out of bed.

But then, isn’t this why we got Shabbos? A day consecrated to Torah study? No work, no errand-running, no shopping-wife-chauffeuring, not even newspaper reading. (Nothing in there I haven’t already read on the Internet during the week. And all this reportage of the New York snow-storm, written by New Yorkers, for New Yorkers, you would think we were all up on Mars when it happened. Chassidic tabloids? Let me shoot straight with you: I don’t give a damn, period. The rebbes may quarrel in the courts like their followers wrangling each other for a hot piece of kugel; neither one affecting me in the slightest.) But somehow my Shabbos meals spiral down into a carouse, I get pickled up and sleep through shaleshides with a throbbing headache and nasty hangover lasting until the Motzei-Shabbos pizza. The Shabbos slips past me before I even realized it had started.

I’m not an alcoholic; I’m not addicted to booze. Unlike other folks in shul, who’d drink anything with a label, be it urine or diesel, I’ve an appreciation for fine beverages. I’m a maven, sort of. A bon vivant. I want to arrange a tea party at my house, for an important cause yet to be determined, so I can show my guests around the liquor cabinet. La exquiste! Vodkas. Bourbons. Whiskies. Kosher and non-kosher. Incredible how you can still serve a non-kosher brand at a kiddush and not have chairs thrown at you. Liquor and soap are both commodities appearing as optional on the list for the kosher consumer.

Anyway, I enjoy studying, even though it seems like I can’t find the time to. So many things I would like to know: Rambam. Tanach. Even worldly knowledge, nothing wrong with that. I read the Sunday Times. I read books: 10 Steps to Becoming a Successful Businessman, and Taxing Our Health: Driving the Economy to Infirmary. I’m studying for my GED. My English is pretty polished. Can’t stand it when people around me speak broken English. Like that other foreman, Shulem Moskowitz, amorously dubbed Boskowitz. Bossing people around gratifies some psychotic disorder he suffers from. He would show up on sites every morning, coffee in one hand, Nextel prup-rup in the other, commandeering like a third-world tyrant, before heading off to daven. Somebody report him to Amnesty International. The way he abuses his crew, the condescending attitude towards his subjects, the blacks, the Hispanics.

–“Hey, Obama! Where’d you go? They need some more nails in there.”

–“This shitty work, Amigo. Me tell police send you back Guatemala.”

–“Habla, jabla, me no speak Espaniol. English!”

He would then mutter something about lazy Mexicans reluctant to learn English. As if being a third-generation American makes it all the less important to learn English. Just to hear the guy talk puts your teeth on edge. It’s not the accent, nor the poor choice of words, merely the way he constructs a goddamned sentence.

Glad I know better. Glad Boskowitz is not my capo. Glad to have work, still. With all the stimulus and bailout talk, you would think all the losers landed a decent job. Sorry to disappoint. My sister Roiza Blima is stuffing envelopes for some charity; that’s a job for retards. She is going to climb the hierarchy by getting a raise from being owed 0.1 cents a piece to being owed 0.2 cents. Fingers cut from sharp paper edges, which is more of a nuisance than a wound. She has to pause until the bleeding stops, or prospective donors will receive a blood-stained letter; a bad omen. Most esteemed husband, Kalmen, is tearing his fingertips with bristle-brushes while removing traces of leavened dough under a jet of cold water in the matzo bakery where he took on seasonal work. So much for work-related injuries. He too must wait for the bleeding to subside, lest a blood libel comes true. I imagine them both counting their cuts and bruises every night, and wondering if it exceeds the amount earned. Do I feel guilty for them? It wasn’t my choice not to learn computers. It wasn’t me lecturing about the dangers of an office to a yiddishe daughter. So they toil, eking out a living with blood, sweat, and tears, literally. All of humanity descends from Adam, but some took the curse more seriously then others.

At least they don’t have that many mouths to feed; one Shime’le is all they got, for now. She has had this fertility problem, polycystic ovaries. Had to do with her weight. A fair heir to the Gelb grease gene. That’s when she banded. She still got this plump face on her Non-Driver’s ID; a souvenir from pounds gone. She was blown up and flabby; every curvature smoothened with lard. Shpitzel seemed shrunken against her face, like a beret on a snowman. Even her expression was pathetic. Facial muscles strained into something more like a grimace than a smile, probably fumbling for the normal expressing but couldn’t remember what normal was. Couldn’t grin as in a Chol Hamoed photo at the zoo, but couldn’t pout either.

Anybody foolish enough to believe surgery made her an iota more attractive, wake up and smell the herring. Not her fault she is ugly as a chimp, but why not dab a touch of skin-tone to hide her acne lesions? Pluck her polycystic beard? The rebbetzin must wrap her oh-so-pure flesh in drab shapeless cloths, otherwise men would get aroused. Ironic how Gitty, my own little hussy, rides the subway to the City’s most obscure places, bejeweled and dressed up like on the night of our engagement. But Roiza Blima would roll a thousand times over before crossing past Broadway, out of fear of being raped. Really, even her husband is barely tempted, or so the joke went during their “infertile” years.

They weren’t really infertile. She had PCOS, now how rare is that? Just another obstacle they had to overcome on their path to parenthood; an obstacle blown out of proportion to gain sympathy. It made her feel special. Got her the attention she desired. She drew satisfaction from the pitying, from conversations cut cold-turkey when she stepped into the room, from the self-understood exigency for their Miron pilgrimage. And today, enjoying their status as the erstwhile infertile couple with all privileges entailed: The right to spoil their baby, the right to get a namesake outside the family, the right to a running subscription of A TIME magazine. Kalmen dancing at weddings with Shimel’le perched on his shoulder. Regular parents are not to love their children that much. Regular parents leave their babies with the babysitter. But who can fathom the infinite love binding a once lovelorn father to his oisgebeten child? The rest of us will never understand.

Drawing their dose of attention their peculiar way, and Dovie “Doggie”, the runt of the Gelbs, in his rebellious way. He got himself his moniker from that time a poodle sniffed at his pants on the street. Dovie “Doggie” squatted down to pat it. What bona fide Chasid wouldn’t cringe from a dog? That’s when we noticed he’s glitching, skidding off the trodden path. This, and the patterned boxer shorts. Rashi’s, he called them. Father banished him to a yeshiva out of town. He managed to get expelled by the second week after he called in to a radio show, introducing himself as “Dove from Rockland County.” Preferring Rockland, because Monsey would give him away as a Chasid. Right, that would give him away. It all got him nowhere. Unless being an old bachelor, and being dragooned into the circle at every family wedding, hat swapped for shtreimel to the sound of a raucous crowd cheering as if the governor himself joined in, is some kind of achievement, something to be proud of. His life evolving around drugs, sin, and remorse. No wife, no kids, without a penny to his name. Chock-full of emptiness.

Emptiness.