Mother for Dinner

by Shalom Auslander

  Listen, Ninth said quietly, I know I should have told you this sooner, okay, but to be honest, I really didn’t think this was going to go this far, you know? I thought we’d bury her, for Christ’s sake; I didn’t think we’d actually agree to . . . this. But now, all of a sudden, Unclish is here, we’re heading out to the University, and I mean . . .

  What is it, Ninth?

  Ninth sighed heavily. He waited for the last of the brothers to disappear up the stairs.

  I’m vegan, he said to Seventh.

  You’re vegan.

  Don’t say it like that.

  Since when?

  I’m a veterinarian, Seventh. I don’t eat animals; I never have.

  You ate Auntie Hazel.

  I wasn’t a veterinarian then, Seventh; I was a kid. And besides, I gave my portion to Third.

  It’s one bite.

  It’s a bite and a half, said Ninth. I can’t.

  You can’t back out, Ninth. We all agreed.

  I’m not backing out, Ninth said. I’m just . . . I’m just asking you to help me.

  Help you? Help you how?

  Eat my share, said Ninth.

  No.

  Please.

  Ninth, we agreed to give her a proper Consumption. If you want to throw her up afterward, that’s your call.

  That’s still eating, Seventh.

  That is not eating, that’s swallowing.

  That’s eating. That’s the definition of eating.

  Seventh took out his phone. Hey Siri, he said, what is the definition of eating?

  First called from upstairs.

  Guys, he shouted, we need you up here!

  I have found what you’re looking for, said Siri. The definition of eating is to take into one’s mouth and ingest.

  See? said Ninth.

  Hey Siri, Seventh continued, what is the definition of ingest?

  I have found what you’re looking for, said Siri. The definition of ingest is to take into the body by absorbing.

  There, said Seventh. If you spit it up, you’re not absorbing. If you’re not absorbing, you’re not ingesting. If you’re not ingesting, you’re not eating.

  Ninth rubbed his chin, uncertain.

  First called again:

  Guys, come on! She’s heavier than a goddamned piano!

  Okay, Ninth said to Seventh as he headed for the stairs, fine. But no absorbing.

  The other nice thing about being Siri, thought Seventh as he trudged upstairs after his brother, is that she doesn’t have siblings. No brothers. No sisters. No nothing.

  Thanksgiving?

  Empty table.

  Christmas?

  House to herself.

  Grandparents’ Day?

  What’s a grandparent?

  No wonder she’s so goddamned chipper.

  * * *

  • • •

  May any people Consume the deceased, asked the Elders, or only Cannibals?

  Only Cannibals may Consume the deceased, said the Elder Elders.

  And may any Cannibals Consume the deceased, asked the Elders, or only family?

  Only family may Consume the deceased, said the Elder Elders.

  But what if one of the family has married out? asked the Elders. May the daughter-in-law, if she is not Cannibal, Consume the deceased?

  No, said the Elder Elders.

  But is not a daughter-in-law family? asked the Elders.

  Yes, said the Elder Elders.

  Then why may she not Consume? asked the Elders.

  Because only humans may Consume the deceased, said the Elder Elders. And non-Cannibals are subhuman.

  Jesus, dude, said the Elders.

  * * *

  • • •

  Tenth climbed onto Mudd’s bed and lifted her by her shoulders, while Third took her legs.

  Wouldn’t it just be easier to chop her up first and then bring her down? First asked. You know, like movers, with a bed? They don’t bring the whole damned thing down in one piece.

  We do not chop her up, Unclish said. We Drain, then we Purge, then we Partition, then we Consume.

  It took the combined effort of every member of the Seltzer family to extricate their dead mother from her house. They had to remove the bedroom door from its hinges, and the railing from the staircase, and the storm door from the entryway, but eventually they got her outside and into the back of First’s SUV.

  And behold, the Seltzers went forth.

  Unclish had First open all the windows, to keep the body cold and buy them some time before beginning the Victuals, and he reminded them all to drive with an abundance of caution, obeying speed limits and traffic signs so as not to get stopped by the police. As it turned out, his concerns about speeding were misplaced. Commuters fleeing the approaching winter storm weren’t waiting for rush hour to head home, and traffic on the Garden State Parkway was heavy. Mudd was bloated, blue, and starting to stink.

  This is nice, said Seventh of the vehicle, trying to distract First from the stench filling his car. Escalade, huh? What do these go for?

  With the corpse or without? said First. I’m taking a cleaning fee off the top of the money, just so you know. This is my only ride.

  Not that it’s any of my business, said Seventh, but why does a guy in an Escalade need money so badly?

  It’s a leftover, First said of the truck. The last one.

  Last what?

  The last Can-Am Limo, said First, and he began to explain:

  After leaving home at eighteen, First took a job driving for Tel-Aviv Car Service in Queens. It was run by Jews who assumed, given First’s dark but ambiguous features, he was Israeli.

  You from Israel? they asked.

  Of course.

  Which part?

  Y’know, First had said. The main part. With the Dome.

  Jerusalem?

  Bingo.

  He was hired on the spot. He liked the job, but resented the percentages the company took. First had grown up listening to Mudd condemn then-President Ronald Reagan for not acknowledging his Cannibal heritage. (On the plus side, though, he called his wife Mommy, which Mudd thought spoke well of him.) First, though, admired Reagan—not because he was Can-Am, and not because of the whole Mommy thing, but because Reagan ushered in what came to be known as the Greed Is Good decade. Here at last was a view of America that First could embrace:

  Every man for himself.

  Make a buck, keep a buck, and to hell with everyone else.

  First had been told the story of Julius in the melting pot a thousand times. Mudd told him the It-Was version, Father told him the Was-It version, but First had his own capitalist version: Whatever happened that day in Detroit, whether Julius wanted to get into that pot or not, the one person First knew for sure wasn’t in the pot was Henry Ford.

  Because Henry Ford owned the damned pot.

  And he owned the suckers in it.

  With that in mind, First decided to start his own car service, with his own cars and his own drivers. He was a determined young man, and soon Can-Am Limo had a fleet of vehicles operating in all five boroughs. Aside from the occasional Fuck Canadians he found scratched on the cars, it was a heady, successful time.

  America, he thought with a smile. Was it not worth it?

  He had contracts with dozens of corporate clients, and moved into a sleek renovated loft in Lower Manhattan. Then, on 9/11, it all went dark. In the wake of the World Trade Center attacks, his clients began to suspect that First, given his dark but ambiguous features, was Muslim . . . and therefore a terrorist.

  Are you crazy? he said to them. I’m Israeli. I’m from Tel A-fucking-viv.

  I thought you said you were from Jerusalem.

  I was born in Jerusalem. But I moved to Tel Aviv . . .


  No amount of denial could convince them, and so he did the only thing he could to assert his loyalty to the United States: He bought a case of tiny American flags, and covered his fleet in them. He put tiny American flags on the windshields, tiny American flags on the passenger windows, tiny American flags on the bumpers; he even put tiny American flags inside the car, attached to the fold-down cup holder and the backs of the headrests, desperate to prove his unwavering patriotism. But it was no use; actual Muslims, also trying to prove their loyalty, did the same thing with their cars and stores, so that the tiny American flags on First’s cars made him seem even more Muslim than he had seemed before.

  One by one his clients switched to other, non-al-Qaedian car services. Soon he had nothing left but one last Escalade and a case of two thousand tiny American flags. He sat in his office, ready to give up, ready to return home as Mudd always said he would, ‘with your tail between your legs.’ But as he boxed up the leftover flags, he noticed something. There, etched on the side of the tiny wooden flagpoles, were the words Made in China.

  Even in his misery, the irony of this made First laugh; as an American who had been run out of business by other Americans who thought he was un-American, it gave him a particular joy to see American flags made by the nation’s largest economic competitor, sold to Americans expressing their support for America while actually supporting a Chinese company that probably made flags for every country in the world.

  And it gave First an idea.

  A quick search revealed that the Chinese company that made the American flags was named All-American Flags Incorporated, and it had, via a combination of shoddy manufacturing, cheap materials, and underpaid labor, put out of business a US-based flag company called American Flags Incorporated. The Chinese had simply added the word All to the name, undercut their stateside competitor by 50 percent, and priced them out of business. Their strategy had worked, but that was ten years ago; America, First knew, was now a very different place, full of knee-jerk nationalism and the reactionary xenophobia that comes with it.

  Why not profit off the very same tribalism that had bankrupted him in the first place?

  The following day, First opened All-All-American Incorporated, making cheap American knockoffs of cheap Chinese knockoffs of American products. He simply ordered the parts in bulk from China, assembled them in his garage with underpaid Muslim workers who had, like him, been laid off in the wake of 9/11, and stamped them with the All-All-American Incorporated logo. Proudly Knocked Off in the United States of America was emblazoned on every item they sold.

  And they sold thousands.

  He didn’t need to be cheaper than the Chinese company; he only needed to match their price. Nationalism and paranoia did the rest.

  The money rolled in, and First expanded. AAAI made American knockoffs of Chinese knockoff cell phones, American knockoffs of Chinese knockoff children’s toys, American knockoffs of Chinese knockoff watches, American knockoffs of Chinese knockoff laptops. They had a great few years, and First made more money than he ever imagined. But once again, fate was against him, and the Great Recession hit. It gave the Chinese the opportunity they were looking for. Fear of Others now took a back seat to Fear of Financial Ruin; Americans were less worried about being blown up than they were about going under. The hatred of all things foreign was replaced by a love for all things cheap, and the Chinese seized the opportunity, opening a new company called All-All-All-American Incorporated, which specialized, as the packaging proudly declared, in Chinese Knockoffs of the American Knockoffs of Cheap Chinese Knockoffs You Love, at the Cheap Chinese Prices You Need.

  First couldn’t compete. It wasn’t long before the orders dried up and he had to fire his staff, who were now suing him, claiming they were being fired simply for being Muslim.

  But I am Muslim, First said to his attorney.

  I thought you were black, said his attorney, who, because he now thought First was Muslim, stopped returning his calls.

  And that was the end of that.

  This Escalade, First said to Seventh, is all I have left. That’s why I need her money. I hate taking it, but I need it.

  You should write a book, said Seventh. The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time-Muslim-Israeli-Limo-Driving-Corporate-Cannibal-American. It’ll be a bestseller, trust me.

  First sighed.

  I thought I was leaving this Cannibal shit behind, he said.

  It’s one bite, said Seventh. A bite and a half.

  No, said First, I mean back then—when I left, when I was eighteen. I packed my bags and walked out the door, thinking I’d find that mysterious, wonderful creature called an American. Open-minded, accepting, like Julius found on that boat, remember? But I didn’t. You know what I found? Cannibals. Everywhere. Not Cannibals like us, but cannibals. Male cannibals in suits and ties, female cannibals power-dressed in tailored skirts and shoulder pads, cannibals in corner offices driving Porsches. And they consume, brother; they consume. They consume cars and clothes and houses, they consume and consume and consume, and yet they stay hungry, these cannibals. Stark raving mad hungry, even when their bellies are full. Just eating, eating, eating. And so you watch that, and you think, Shit, I better eat too. I better eat before all the food gets eaten up. So you start eating too, and you realize that now you have the hunger, that bottomless hunger that never leaves. And so you eat and you eat and you eat, but all that eating, that takes a lot of energy, you know? Stalking, killing, dragging it all back to the cave. That’s a young man’s game. You get older, you can’t do it anymore, and you begin to wonder if it was worth it. You’ve been eating your whole damned life and you’re still hungry. And let me tell you, that’s when it’s over—that’s when you’re done. Because with these cannibals, if you’re not hungry, if you’re not one of the eaters—the eaters who don’t even know why they’re eating anymore—then you’re one of the eaten. I’m almost forty, and let me tell you, Seventh—I’m meat. I’m lunch. I’m done. The colors of America aren’t red, white, and blue, brother; they’re green and gold. Maybe I should have just stayed with the Cannibals I knew. At least they ate for a reason, you know.

  Seventh looked out at the sea of gleaming automobiles around them.

  I know, he said.

  * * *

  • • •

  Julia kept the indignities she suffered at the hands of Henry Ford a secret, concerned what Julius might do to Ford if he knew. Without explaining why, she begged Julius for them to leave Detroit, to return to New York. She cried, she yelled, but he refused—the pay at the Ford plant was just too good.

  It was then, Mudd told her children, that Julia knew she would have to save herself, even if it cost them their income, even if it cost them their home and their future. She could not allow herself, as a Cannibal woman, to be defiled any longer. And so, one Friday night, after work had stopped for the weekend, Ford grabbed Julia as he always did, and dragged her to his office.

  At last, he said, undoing his pants. We have all night.

  Julia trembled with fear. As he tore at her clothes and buried his face between her breasts, she reached for the letter opener on his desk. Murder would mean the end of her freedom, but it would mean the end of the bastard Ford too. But as she did, she noticed, on the wall behind his desk, a framed photograph of Adolf Hitler.

  All night? she said. Oh, I couldn’t possibly.

  Your fool husband is busy cleaning toilets! said Ford as he groped and pulled at her. Don’t be concerned with him.

  Oh, it’s not him, she said. It’s just that it’s Shabbos.

  It’s what?

  It’s Shabbos, said Julia. The Sabbath.

  Ford zipped up his pants.

  You’re . . . Jewish? he asked.

  Yes, she said. You can still rape me, of course, but I’m afraid I do have to be home before sundown.

  Ford went pale.

  You’re a .
. . Jew? he asked, the word itself like dirt in his mouth.

  You didn’t know? Julia asked.

  No, I didn’t know! shouted Henry Ford. I thought you were a fucking Indian!

  Julius never learned why he and Julia were chased out of the Ford factory that night, or why their belongings were set aflame, or why their windows were shattered, or why swastikas were painted on the front door of their home.

  The fools must think we’re Nazis, said Julius as they fled.

  With nowhere else to go, they returned to Brooklyn. There Julius fell into a deep depression, and he cursed America and he cursed fate, and every morning and every night, Julius apologized to Julia for getting fired, and he promised that he had cleaned the toilets that night the best he could, and he swore he wasn’t a Nazi and that he didn’t even know what National Socialism was.

  Julia kissed him, and told him that she knew it wasn’t his fault, and that she loved him no matter what, and they held each other close, and nine months later, Julia gave birth to a beautiful boy they named John.

  Because, said Julia, in this nation of Johns and Jims and Jacks, I want him to belong.

  Because, muttered Julius when she was out of earshot, this world is a toilet.

  And because it will never be cleaned.

  * * *

  • • •

  Carol lay on the examination table as the technician conducted her ultrasound. Everything seemed fine, said the tech, but they wouldn’t be able to tell the baby’s sex via sonogram for several more weeks, after the fetus was well out of what was known as the Indifferent Stage.

  It gets that from me, joked Seventh.

  Before we become male or female, the nurse explained, we are simply a person. Not male, not female, not rich, not poor, not Democrat, not Republican. We possess what is referred to as an indifferent gonad, which will eventually become either testes or ovaries.

  An indifferent gonad, said Carol. Sounds nice.

  It does, the nurse laughed. Around the eighth week or so, the indifference ends. And that’s when we become one thing or the other.