DECEMBER 2007
"In the Mouth of a Fox":
Mamasu, Johnny's
maternal grandmother - his father insisted all his
children call her that word but never telling them
in their dialect "Mamasu" meant "her
mother" - had the uncanny ability to become all
the ferocious animals the ten year
old boy had seen in movies but unlike Tarzan
and his animal friends frolicking about, he gave her
- out of full respect - all the area she
desired to dominate by walking far far around her so
her claws could not engulf him in a tight suffocation
inside her shawl that reeked of the stale bread she
always carried inside the pouches of her old
dress, which according to his father she hadn't
stopped wearing since she gave him permission to marry
Johnny's mother, after Johnny's three sisters were born.When Mamasu spoke, as she sat fully on his father's once favorite lawn chair beneath the willow tree telling him nasty stories about all the Sanques, excluding vast tales of those on his mother's side but he would hear about them from his father when they were hiding from her in the garden, her words took on a fox' purr-like quality.
When Johnny's concentration wandered away to looking at a squirrel climbing the tree - her words found homes in growls that chewed up comprehension but which always did get him to sit up straight to put on his listening face; trying not to look into her eighty-five year old black eyes that were encased in a murky-like haze.
The morning she took on the aspects of a laughing snarling hyena, due to his father accidentally stepping into his "peepot" that always had a place beside his side of the bed so much he hated to get up in the middle of nights to walk to the bathroom that was a adjacent to Mamasu's bedroom, had her asking at breakfast before each laugh: "Were you going swimming last night? Did you have your life jacket on? Is that why they call you pishamole? Do you know your adopted country has become for most of the world that isn't taking money to like it Jubilation E. Cornporn and because of your greedy capitalists and military war mongers who want to eat the whole world for the profits out there!"
Johnny's father fought back while looking at his wife with words falling uncontrollably out of his mouth: "Tell your mother who never washes her hands that I could have gotten died killed in deep waters and then who would have brought her food she hoards inside her pockets?"
"Hey, you saving that big piece of sausage stuck between your teeth for lunch." Mamasu counterattacked with words though rolling off a boneless tongue could break bones; using them like sharp needles to stitch a past of tattered fabric with needle points full of revenge.
His father circled his wagons with both arms to shield his food from her spit missiles that he believed were infested with germs yet to be discovered. Eatings often ended abruptly when she did her cough: bringing up phlegm and dangling it like body parts of animals that had come close to her.
Her laugh all that Saturday made Johnny begin dreaming of creatures at the ready to began tearing chunks of his flesh - if he didn't run to his father who sitting high atop their willow tree.
The last day of August Mamasu told them all that instead of going back that week to Brooklyn she was staying for an additional two more months knowing her two sons, Deo who knew the price of everything but the value of nothing whom she named after the great Mozart and Sensio her eldest who had lost three fingers in the Alps repealing Austrian and German charges in the war to end all wars not suspecting that the super elite would continue their ways of perpetuating hate among the "riffraff" with demeaning tales about Each on the Other so making for future fodder to feed more of their wars for self-interest and had another son that would die with him of "the Spanish flu" that mightily resembled her late husband who when working the marble in Vermont began a new family in a New Plantation Haven naming each child after the ones he left behind in the old country. Both her living sons Deo and Sensio would respect her wishes for the hell she always put them through since they had taken her away from her town of Stairs in the Mezzogiorno which was once called Malevento for its evil eyes and witches but changed by the Romans to Benevento - hoping the name change would encourage these people they feared so much to become nice gentle folk like a future song called "Gentle hearts and Gentle People" - which never would happen!
Only after Johnny's mother called her brothers and hysterically asked if they had agreed in not picking the fox up but being told they would keep their word and retrieve her as promised did Johnny's father stop his sobbing while punching himself in the head - which reminded Johnny of the many times his father would shout "Where the facawee?" when getting deeper lost in finding short cuts while driving - convincing Johnny they were for real Indians that Mamasu said they were - making lightening sharp images flash of seeing his old old nemesis heading south gathering up butterflies in her mouth. END 11-15-07