The Shameless Shiksa

The Shiksa is very psychological, I notice. I am cutting off the carrot tops in the back of the store, but I see she has come in and is talking to my father. My mother does not like the shiksa and always goes out front and acts busy when she comes in. The shiksa is the prettiest customer, I think, and she is wearing today one of those little hats like in the movie Bonnie and Clyde and my father is saying to her, "Hah. A yarmulke you're wearing. You think you can sneak in with that?"

And Louie, the butcher, who shares the store with us, says to her, "You look good with the hat, Miz Paul. Reminds me a little French girlfriend I use have." Louie always has the cigar in, so he slurs a lot. Anyway, the shiksa is telling my father about De Gaulle.

"You see," and she is very serious, "that's because he has something of a negative transference with the French people. It's a love-hate relationship."

"A what?" my father asks as he weighs out two pounds of onions.

"A love-hate relationship. That's when you both love and hate. It's a special psychological thing," the shiksa explains.

"So what's so special? With everybody, you got a love-hate relationship with everybody else. You love, you hate," my father shrugs, "sometimes both. Right?"

The shiksa puzzles this over. "No. It's something different." She bites her lip, thinking of the word, "A cathexis you call it."

"A what?" Louie leans over now; he wants to hear this, too.

"A cathexis. That's a transference."

"A cathexis is a transference," my father says, "so you know all these words? You know the important words yet? You know what a mohel is?"

The shiksa says, "Yes. A mohel is the rabbi who cuts the foreskin from the penis." Louie turns red and starts cutting the meat very fast. That word penis I think is a dirty one and so I start cutting more carrot tops. Some people in the store turn around to look at this shiksa who is now reviewing the Boston lettuce.

My father laughs, "Circumcise. That's all you gotta say. You don't got to go into an explanation."

The shiksa shrugs. "This had a worm in it last time," she complains.

"So, did I give it to ya?" my father says. "Did I? No, you take it yourself you get worms. I never give you anything but the best."

The shiksa smiles, "You pick it out." My father goes to the back and comes out with the two my mother is saving from this morning. I pretend not to notice.

My father says at dinner that night he thinks the shiksa must be very smart. "Smart, you call that smart?" my mother says. "For two years," my mother is passionate, "for two years she's been coming into the store, and still when you say, 'Vos machst du,' she says, 'Eighty-eighth Street.' Smart, he tells me," my mother clucks as she removes the dishes from the table.

"She acts like she don't know," my father says, "but she knows."

"Ech," my mother argues, "she's a cold woman."

"Cold? How, cold?"

"She don't want children." This is like a stab in my father's heart.

"She told you?"

My mother nods gravely. "She don't believe in it."

My father considers this for a moment. "So, maybe he don't want."

"Ah," my mother says, "she's a cold woman. You'll see."

The next day, my father starts something. "I hear," my father says, nodding toward my mother, "you don't want kids?"

She shakes her head no.

"So how come?"

The shiksa goes on about overpopulation and other words and then she says, "Besides, the family structure is very neurotic. Everyone growing up with an Oedipus complex. Spending your whole life getting rid of an Oedipus complex. It's ridiculous."

"A what?"

"An Oedipus complex." This is another of the shiksa's words, and by now the store is quiet. "You know, the son wants to marry the mother, the daughter wants to marry the father."

I blanch and look at my feet. I do not want to marry my mother. She is OK most of the time, but I would not want to be married to her.

"Bah," my father says.

"Well, it's true," the shiksa insists. "Haven't you ever heard of a psychological complex? Oedipus, it's a fact. The son's sexual love."

The store has fallen quiet. A new word from the shiksa, the son's sexual love for the mother. My father doesn't say anything and begins to put the tomatoes in her bag. She crosses the store and asks Louie to cut her some lamb chops. Louie is red in the face this time.

"Why, Louis, you're blushing. Now, really, there's no reason to be embarrassed. Everyone has one."

"Please, Miz Paul," Louie rolls his eyes and goes into the refrigerator. When he comes out, the shiksa is still at it.

"Well, it's true. Every child goes through it. In fact, if you don't have it or it turns out wrong, you come out queer."

Louie holds the knife. Two words shock his dear Italian heart and she has uttered them both within the last minute: queer and mother.

"Really, Louis," the shiksa explains, "you must learn there is nothing to be embarrassed about in discussing sexual matters. One should be able to talk about anything and everything. Louis," the shiksa leans over the counter boldly, capturing the meat, "you have never learned to be free."

At dinner that evening, my mother says, "There's something wrong with her she reads all those dirty sex books."

"Not dirty," my father says uneasily, glancing in my direction. "It's some kinda science she studies."

"Hah," my mother says, "some science. I tell you, Hymie," she is fierce, "that woman has no shame."

My father looks at his plate.

• • •

The unspoken question in the store, and even Louie participates in this unspoken question, is, Can it be true that the shiksa is a shameless woman? "She pretends, talkin' like that," Louie says, the cigar rolling around. My mother folds her arms and says nothing.

Two weeks later, the shiksa comes in with a book. "Here, Hymie," she says to my father, "here's a book I wrote."

Silence.

My mother comes in from outside. "You wrote a book?" (You shiksa, you.)

"Yes," the shiksa says, "it's a children's book." In one swoop, she has established the possibility of her innocence and convinced my mother she is not too smart, after all. Only a children's book. The book is called Martin Goes to the Movies and inside the flap it says, ages ten up.

Hah, I see in my mother's eye. She says, "Oh, it's a children's book."

"Yes," the shiksa says. Then she turns to me. "I hope you read it, David." Me, read it? I am insulted. I have been bar mitzvahed. Ages ten up. I say nothing.

At dinner, my mother says, "So for children. So you don't have to be smart to write for children."

"Ages ten up," my father says, "ages ten and up."

"And up?"

"Up. That means could be for adults, too." There is quiet for some time. I dream of the shiksa. The lure of the shiksa is lore I know and I give a start when my mother suddenly adds to it. "They go without underwear."

The next day is Saturday and the shiksa comes in for mushrooms with her husband. My father orders these special for her. My mother right away talks to her husband, whom my father talks Yiddish with and kids him, calling him the shagitz.

"So whadya cookin', Miz Paul?" Louie asks.

She says beef something and Louie shrugs and says, "Me, I wouldn't put mushrooms in a stew." The shiksa says nothing.

My mother has gone to the back and returns to court the shiksa's husband. She brings him something. She offers it to him and says, "You ever spread chicken fat on a piece of rye bread with salt? Take."

"Please," the shiksa turns to her and says, "he can't have that. The cholesterol."

"The what?" my mother says.

"Cholesterol. It's bad for your arteries."

"Not this chicken fat. This is good for the arteries. Here."

The shagitz reaches eagerly, but the shiksa stops him with a look. "Remember those pictures in Life of the big clogging things. That's what it comes from. Chicken fat."

The shagitz shrugs and says no. My mother says "Hah" and eats it herself. My father gives the shiksa a grape. Peace has been established. I pray.

• • •

She has not been in for several days now and I miss her. There is a little lift in the afternoon when she comes in. A kind of anticipation. Louie always moves down to the other end of the counter, so he can wait on her. Well, it is true that something usually happens. All day long, when you hear nothing but a pound of round, two lamb chops, a chicken, Louis, please, half a pound of onions, two pounds potatoes, you look forward to a break. But the shiksa usually gives us more than that.

Today especially. She is carrying a big book.

I wait to see who will ask the question. It is Louie.

"What's that book about?" he says, his eyes darting around the store.

"Human sexual response," the shiksa says. Bingo.

"You read too many books," (concluded on page 176)The Shameless Shiksa(continual from page 174) Louie says, weighing the chopped meat.

"Actually, it's a very important book. It makes a significant contribution to an understanding of the female orgasm."

"What?" Louie looks up from under his cap, puzzled. I know him. He figures he has lost out on something. The lady next to the shiksa turns purple and grabs her meat and runs. The shiksa smiles.

"Oh, never mind," she says. "It's very complicated. They get people in these laboratories and put machines on them to stimulate the genitalia to see what kinds of sexual response they get."

There is silence. In the name of science, machines, genitalia?

Louie chews on his cigar, saying nothing. "I dunno, " he mumbles, for he does not wish to be called a prude again today, "sounds like a crazy idea to me." He wraps the meat.

"Well, it is mechanistic," the shiksa acknowledges as three pairs of eyes follow her from the store.

"What was that she said?" my mother asks, arms spread, but my father and Louie shrug and do not say anything.

• • •

By now it has become an adventure when the shiksa comes in. She is the new priestess: She knows something they do not know, and she got it from a book. Moreover, it is something that all of us, especially me, I think, are curious about.

A week goes by and nothing further is said. Then the shiksa says, "They think there is no such thing as a sexually satisfied female. After orgasms and everything, it's just one great big driving libido throbbing around."

"Hah," Louie says, "you never meet any Italian women with that."

"Tell me, they tell you where babies come from in that book?" It is Larry and we sigh at his crudeness and then brace ourselves. It is the kind of vagary that will lead the shiksa to be explicit.

"Of course," she says, and Louie rushes back to her end of the counter with the salami. "The sperm is deposited in the female vagina, where it unites with an egg and a fetus grows. That's how." Nobody says too much about this, although they are all, I can tell, made a little nervous about "deposited"; the shiksa is hitting loose with this, but they also sigh with relief that it wasn't worse. I sigh in wonder. Me, I know everything. I am in the eighth grade. But the shiksa, she knows more.

She leaves the store and my mother says, "A shameless woman."

"Talk, just talk," my father says.

"Yeah, all talk." My mother is clever. "Science. She's cold. A shameless woman." My mother is conclusive.

I wonder. Since the shiksa is mine in everything but reality (an area of small circumference and for my purposes generally unimportant), I am curious to know. Harold, who is 15 and my friend, considers the question and agrees to come and see.

My father is surprised when Harold arrives and offers to help unload the grapefruits the following afternoon. At first I think maybe she isn't coming; and then, finally, at 5:30 she comes running in. Right away it starts. I am glad she is looking her best today, because Harold has had to wait an extra hour and somehow I think the shiksa must know this, because she drops her keys right in front of Harold's feet. I am stilled with envy as he leans down slowly and picks them up. He has had a chance to look, so I ask him, as I frantically rearrange the apples, did you see?

But Harold is sly; he says, "Shhh."

I am sorry now I let him into the store, for I should have saved the shiksa for myself. Then, suddenly, my chance. She is in a hurry and drops the grapefruits as she takes them off the shelf. I run and pick them up and hand them to her and she smiles, takes them, and then leans down, leans down and puts them in her shopping bag. Her blouse falls from her chest and I seem to have stopped breathing. There, wondrously, is not only yellow lace. I think of leaping down and putting my bare feet all over the soft curving skin that rises up. It is over in a minute; she has stood up. I think it must be clear to her that I was paralyzed where I was looking. But to the shiksa, who glances my way, this is nothing. I am for reading Martin Goes to the Movies.

My tossing and turning, made worse two weeks earlier by my mother's sharp pronouncement about shiksa underwear, is especially bad tonight. Ever since, I have strained to imagine a wide variety of degrees of "withoutness"; and it is with some concentration now that I review the yellow lace. Such a top. That is for sure. The lace even, I conclude, makes it more wonderful. And tonight I wonder especially about the amazing little dark crack between the shiksa's ... what shall I call them? These are not breasts; other women have breasts. Even my mother has breasts. But these? Those! Ah, I sigh. It is a miracle. That they should curve like that, and just for me, for I have seen.... I sit up with a start. I discover suddenly I am full of hate for this shiksa. For weeks now, I have struggled, I have planned. I have plotted mightily to see. For weeks now, my father has not talked to his clumsy son who starts an avalanche among the onions to land him on the floor, who drops change in order to crawl devotedly along the sawdust, who has sacrificed even his father's broom, the handle of which he broke off to get down lower. And today, finally today, when I see something, she does not care. She is shameless, this shiksa bitch. I do not think I can live.

• • •

It is several days later and I am following a girl down the street. She has long blonde hair and is pretty from the back. She is wearing a light-blue dress and white shoes and as she walks, the skirt flits out and swings a little from side to side. It's nice to watch. So I watch. I usually walk this way with Harold, who is not with me today, but I am brave and whistle. She does not turn around, of course, but I keep following, although as I do so, I am not sure, but is it not, yes, yes, the skirt is swinging a little more now, a little more from side to side and I hurry up, I do not know what for. I am not going to talk to her. Two blocks later I decide it is time to try again, so I whistle again, and again the skirt swings a little more. The head moves and the ponytail flips up and flies back again and rests on the shoulders. I am brave. I walk faster. I know now I am dangerously close, but she is turning down the block, swing, swing, and so I put both fingers in my mouth and give a loud one. I am safe; after all, Harold says the law of the land is they don't turn around. She turns. And—not to whistle, not to turn—we are both caught. Not to whistle, not to turn. It is the shiksa.

I pretend I do not see her. I run across the street. She pretends she does not see me and turns back and keeps on walking. From where I am, I can see that the skirt does not move so much now.

The next day it rains very hard. About two o'clock the shiksa comes in. "How come so early?" my father says. "You get off early?"

"No, I stayed home today," she says.

"How come? You sick?"

"No," the shiksa smiles, "I just felt like staying home."

She goes over to Louie and I do not dare look up. She has not seen me. I busy myself behind the counter on the floor, sweeping.

"Two lamb chops, double cut, Louis," she says and she is humming. She is not talking loo much today.

"What you doin' out in this weather?" Louie asks, weighing the chops.

"I like to walk in the rain."

"You do?" Louie looks at her like she is crazy. "Tell' you, Miz Paul, this weather's only good for doin' one thing."

"What's that?" she says vaguely, and then knows. At this moment, I am forced to get up from behind the counter. My knees are giving out, but I manage to rise. The shiksa sees me and her face turns red. When she blushes, we all blush. See, see? My father, happy, looks at my mother: The shiksa has shame, after all.

He turns to me. "What're you blushing for, bubeleh?" my father says, but I won't say. Yet I am glad, glad that I made the shiksa blush. Now I am a man.