by Philip Roth
“Howdy,” said Jolly Cholly, stepping into the hallway. “Now what can we do for you ladies?”
“It’s Jolly Cholly!” the women cried. “Oh, look! It’s Hothead! It’s Chico! It’s Deacon! It’s Roland!” And then the three were talking all at once—“Oh you poor Mundys! You poor boys! How you must miss your sisters and your wives! Who sews your buttons? Who darns your socks! Who turns your collars and sees after your heels and your soles? Who takes care of you, always away from your home?”
“Oh,” said Jolly Cholly, with a kindly smile, “we manage okay, more or less. It ain’t so bad missin’ a few buttons now and then. There’s a war on, you know.”
“But who feeds Frenchy his toast and his fries? Who looks after Bud to see he brushes his teeth after games? And Chico, with the sorest arm in the league—and nobody to cut his meat!”
“Oh,” said Cholly, “don’t you worry about Chico, he just sort of picks it up by the bone you know, with the other hand, and—and, look here, this is nice of you and all, but ain’t you ladies from Kakoola anyway? How come you ain’t sewin’ buttons on for the Reapers over there, and bein’ Moms to them?”
“They don’t need Moms!” they cried, triumphantly.
“Well, we don’t neither, ladies,” said Jolly Cholly. “We’re a big league club, you know, so of course thanks for the offer, very kind of you and all.”
And yet within the hour the Mundys were marching through the darkening streets of Kakoola behind their self-appointed “Moms,” each of the players obediently calling out the kind of home-baked pie he would like as the grand finale to his home-cooked meal. So what if it didn’t accord with their “dignity”—so what if Roland Agni turned up his prima donna nose and refused to join in? Let Agni go back to brood in that lonely hotel! They might be a homeless ball team, but that didn’t mean they had to do without their just desserts! Hell, if they were doomed the way Mister Fairsmith said they were, they would be doing without everything soon enough.
“Wayne?”
“Apple!”
“Bud?”
“Cherry!”
“Chico?”
“Banana!”
“Mike?”
“Rhubarb, peach, chocolate cream—”
“Big John?”
“Hair!” and, laughing, he ducked down a dark alleyway, dragging Nickname with him.
“Hey, Jawn—what about my pie?”
“You miss your momma, do you, Nickname?”
“Well, no.”
“Is that why you was cryin’ when she started in talkin’ about sewin’ on buttons?”
“I wasn’t cryin’, I got some shit in my eye, that’s all.”
“Come on, boy, you was bawlin’ like a babe! She started in talkin’ about darnin’ socks, and you wuz about knee-deep in tears.”
“Well,” admitted the second-baseman, “I am homesick, a little.”
“Haw! Haw! Sick for home are you? Miss your mom, do you?”
“Oh Jawn, don’t kid with me—I—I—I—miss everythin’ a little,” he said, with a sob.
“Well, niño, then that’s what we are going to get you—everythin’! Just like it used to be for you, boy, back in the good old days!”
And so they set out across Kakoola, Big John telling his protégé, “In a town like this, Nickname, there ain’t nothin’ money can’t buy. And if they ain’t sellin’ it here, they are sellin’ it in Asylum—and if they ain’t sellin’ it in Asylum, there is always good old Terra Inc. down at the end of the line. Hell, a ballplayer could spend a lifetime roamin’ this league, and never lack for entertainment—if, primo, you know what I mean by entertainment, and secondo, what I mean by a ballplayer! Haw! Haw!” he roared, reaching for Nickname’s little handful. “Come on, muchacho, I’ll get you mothered all right—I’ll get you a momma who really plies the trade!”
Oh, did Nickname’s heart start in pounding then! A whorehouse, he thought, his very first! What Ohio youngster’s heart wouldn’t be pounding!
But when they finally stopped running they were on a street that looked just like the streets where all the nice families lived in the movies he used to see on Saturdays back home. “Hey, John,” he whispered, “this is the wrong place. Ain’t it? Look at them houses. Look at them white fences and them green lawns.”
“Yeah—and look up there at them street signs. This is it, Nickname. You heard of Broadway and 42nd Street. You heard of Hollywood and Vine. Well, this is the world-famous corner of Tigris and Euphrates. This is the world-renowned ‘Cradle of Civilization.’”
“What’s that?”
“Haw! Haw! Why, first time I ever heard of it, I guess I was only a lad your age too. Down Nicaragey way, from an ol’ sailor off the Great Lakes. He was a shortstop for my paw, till he got the d.t.s and we traded him to a Guatemala farmer for a mule. He says, ‘I been everywhere, I been to Shanghai, Rangoon, Bangkok, and the rest, I been to Bali and back—but what they got right up there in Kakoola, Wisconsin, U.S.A., ain’t like nothin’ in the whole wide wicked world for fixin’ what ails you.’” Dragging Nickname with him, he started up the walk to 6 Euphrates Drive, which like numbers 2 through 20, was a white house with green shutters and a water sprinkler turning on the well-kept lawn.
John righted a tricycle overturned on the steps and rang the chimes.
“Hey,” whispered Nickname, “some kid lives here.”
“Kee-rect. And his name is you.”
A little peephole opened in the door. “Whattayawant?”
“Say ‘I’m home, Mom,’” whispered John.
“But I don’t live here, Jawn!”
“That don’t matter. Say it. It’s like ‘Joe sent me,’ that’s all.”
“Awww—” But into the peephole, Nickname said, “Okay—I’m home.”
“‘Mom’” said Johnny Baal.
“Okay! ‘Mom,’” whispered Nickname, and the door swung open just as doors do when the magic words are spoken in fairy tales—and there was a woman looking nothing at all like what Nickname had had in mind. She wore no rouge, smoked no cigarettes, leered no leers. Oh, she was pretty enough, he supposed, and young too—but what the hell was she doing in a blue apron with yellow flowers on it? And holding an infant in her arms!
Instead of winking, or wiggling her hips, she smiled sweetly and said, “Why, my little…”
“Nickname,” whispered Big John.
“Nicholas?”
“Nickname.”
“My little Nickname’s home!”
“Right on the nose, cutie,” said Big John.
“Oh, Nickname,” she said, leaning forward to kiss his cheek, “let me just put sister to bed. Oh, you must be so hungry and tired from playing all day with your friends! How you must need your little bath!”
Nickname made a face. “I just had a shower,” he said to John. “Down the stadium.”
“Well, now you’re goin’ to get a nice, warm soapy bath.”
“Awww, Jawn!”
“Come, darling,” said the woman and she turned and started up to the second floor, crooning to the tot in her arms as she mounted the stairs.
“Is she the one we do it to?” whispered Nickname.
“Nope,” said Big John, leading the boy over the threshold. “She’s the one what does it to you.”
“Does what? And why’s she got to have her baby here, in a place like this?”
“And what’s wrong with this place, niño? This here is as cozy as you can get.”
Sure enough, he could not complain about the accommodations. They were standing in a living room that had two big easy chairs pulled up to the fireplace, a sofa covered in chintz and plump with pillows, and hanging on every wall paintings of bowls of flowers. There was also a playpen in the center of the large round hooked rug. Stepping easily over the bars, Big John sat down among the stuffed animals. “Take your choice,” he said, holding an animal in either hand, “the panda or the quack-quack? Well, what are you waitin’ for, Nickname? Hop in, mucha
cho.”
“Come on, Jawn. I ain’t fourteen months—I’m fourteen years. I’m a big leaguer!”
“Hey—a rattle! Ketch!”
“But I’m second-baseman for the Ruppert Mundys!”
“And here’s a little fire engine, all painted red! Ding-a-ling! Make way, here comes the fire department!”
“Aww, Jawn, you’re makin’ fun of me, I think.”
“Hey, here she comes—now get in here, you!”
Reluctantly Nickname obeyed. He’d rather be in there with John than out on the rug with the woman with the apron and the apron strings.
“Ah, there’s my darling little boy!” she chirped. “There’s my…”
“Nickname,” announced Nickname. “Nickname Damur, second-baseman, lady, for the Ruppert Mundys. In case you ain’t heard.”
“And all ready for his bath too, my little second-baseman!” Lovingly, she extended her two bare arms over the side of the playpen. “Come now, darling. Mommy’s going to clean you and oil you, and then she’s going to put you in your nice jammies and feed you and read to you and put you to beddy-bye—isn’t that going to be fun?”
Nickname cocked his right arm. “Watch it, lady, I wouldn’t come no closer with that kind a’ talk!”
“Bastante, you little bastard,” said John, “all she wants to do is take care of you. All she wants to do is give you all the comforts of home. Ain’t this what all you big leaguers is pissin’ and moanin’ about? Ain’t this what all that clubhouse croakin’ is about? Now cut the shit, Nickname, this here is costin’ me fifteen smackers! You know what I could get for that kind of dough in this town? Three different redhot nigger gals all at the same time!”
“Let’s go get ’em then, John—let’s get ’em, and split ’em!”
“You kiddin’ me, niño? I’m talkin’ about jungle pussy, boy, what’s got fire in her belly! Now you just travel up them stairs, sonny—and do as your momma says. Go on, go on—here’s your little quack-quack. Now git!”
So the second-baseman climbed out of the playpen and balefully followed his “mom” up to a bathroom whose wallpaper was a gay design of clowns and trumpets. There he was undressed and bathed, toweled down, powdered, diapered, and encased in a pair of pale-blue Doctor Dentons, with booties to cover his feet. Though he had long dreamed of being naked with a woman, all he felt while she kneeled on the floor beside the tub and cleaned the insides of his ears, was a desire to knock her down and run. And it didn’t help any having Big John in the doorway making wisecracks, and reaching out with his toe to lift her dress and admire her behind.
“Now,” said the “mom,” “for your little hot dog.”
“Hey, that there looks like fun!” roared John, as she soaped between Nickname’s legs.
“Only it ain’t,” moaned the humiliated big leaguer.
After his bath came dinner of pea soup and applesauce, spoon-fed him by his “mom”—“Awwww, John!” “Eat it, Nickname—it’s costin’ fifteen smackers!”—and then he was released from his high chair and led up by the hand to his room, where she read to him the story of Little Red Riding Hood (“What a big pair you got too, Momma!” kibitzed Big John from the doorway) and finally she kissed him good night. “Go to sleep now, baby. It’s way past your bedtime,” she whispered, tucking the blanket in around his shoulders.
“Hey, Johnny!” cried Nickname from his enormous crib, “it’s still light out! It ain’t even eight! Enough joke is enough!”
Oh, that amused John greatly too. “Hey,” he said to the “mom,” “better sing him a lullaby, too.”
She looked at her watch. “That’ll be à la carte.”
“Oh yeah? Since when?”
“It’s either a lullaby or a story, Mac—not both.”
“At fifteen smackers?”
“I don’t make the rules around here, bud. I’m only a working girl. For fifteen dollars you get a Caucasian mother, patient and loving, but without the extras.”
“Yeah? And since when is singin’ a lullaby to a baby ‘a extra’?”
“Look, there’s a war on, in case you haven’t heard. What with servicemen coming through on their way to the front, we’re at it round the clock. Overtime, doubletime—you name it, we’re workin’ it. I can give you ‘Rock-a-Bye-Baby’ for ninety-eight cents, but that’s the cheapest we got.”
“Ninety-eight cents for ‘Rock-a-Bye-Baby’? You know what I can get for ninety-eight cents down by the lake?”
“That’s your business, Mac, I’m only tellin’ you what we got here at the C.”
“Where’s Estelle?” said Big John.
“Down the office, I suppose.”
“You wait here, Nickname! We’re goin’ to find out about this here war-profiteerin’!”
And Big John was down the stairs and gone. Despite the vehemence with which he had spoken to her, the woman seemed quite unperturbed; she extracted a pack of cigarettes from her apron, and offered one to Nickname.
“Smoke?” she said.
“Nope. I just chaw.”
“Mind if I do?”
“Nope.”
“Okay,” she said, “take five, pal,” and stepping to the window, lit a cigarette; she expelled the smoke with a long weary sigh.
“Look,” said Nickname, “I don’t need no lullaby, you know.”
“Sure, I know,” she said, laughing softly. “That’s what they all tell me. The next morning they come down all spiffed up and shaved and Aqua Velvaed, and they say, ‘You know, I didn’t need the light on all night. I didn’t need that glass of water, really. I didn’t need to wet the bed, I didn’t need to fill my diaper three times over’—but it’s me who has to change ’em, see, irregardless of what they really needed. It’s me who has to be up and down the stairs all night long, holding their hand when they wake up from a bad dream. It’s me who has to be the nurse when they get a little tummy ache at 2 A.M. and cry like they’re going to die. I don’t know—maybe it’s the war, but I’ve never seen such colic in my life. See, I used to work the day shift around here. Put ’em in the stroller, wheel ’em around to the park, give ’em a nap, a bottle, play patty-cake, and that was it, more or less. Oh, sure, they act up in the sandbox and comes four o’clock they start whining out of the blue, but believe me, it’s nothing like this all-night-long business. Turn the light on. Turn the light off. Hold my hand. Sit over here. Don’t go away. I got a pain in my nose. I got a pain in my finger. And on it goes, and I’m telling you, you begin to say to yourself, ‘Honey, there’s just got to be a better way to earn a living than this.’ Sure, the tips are good and I don’t have to bother with Internal Revenue, and I get to meet some pretty important people—but, let’s face it, I can work the swing shift in a war plant and not do so bad either. I got kids of my own I’d like to see sometime too. You know something? I got a grandchild. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, would you? Here, look here—” from the wallet she carried in her apron pocket, she extracted a small photograph. “Here, ain’t he somethin’?”
The picture she handed Nickname was of a little tot dressed exactly as he was, and sitting up in a crib, though one not so large as his own.
“He’s real cute,” said Nickname, handing the photo back through the bars.
“Sure, he is,” she said softly, looking at the photo, “but do I get a chance to enjoy him? It seems like half the naval training station was here just on Sunday alone.”
“If you’re a grandmother,” asked Nickname, “how come—if you don’t mind my askin’—how come you look so young?”
“I used to think it was because I was lucky. Now I’m starting to wonder. Look, look at these legs.” She lifted her dress a ways. “Look at these thighs. I used to think they were some kind of blessing. Here, put your hand out here. Feel this.” She placed her buttocks against the bars of the crib. “Feel how nice and firm that is. And look at my face—not a wrinkle anywhere. Not a gray hair on my head. And that isn’t from the beauty parlor either. That’s natural. I ju
st do not age. Know what Estelle calls me? ‘The Eternal Mom.’ ‘How can you quit, Mary?’ she says to me, ‘How can you go off and work in a factory, looking the way you do, and with your touch. With your patience. Why, I just won’t have it.’ Where’s my loyalty, she asks me. Oh, I like that. Where’s my loyalty to the wonderful people who come here to spit pea soup in my face? And what about the boys going off to war—how can I be so unpatriotic? So I stay, Nickname. Don’t ask me why. Cleaning the mess out of the diaper of just about everybody and anybody who has fifteen bucks in his pocket and is out looking for a good time. Oh, there are nights when I’ve got applesauce running out of my ears, nights when they practically drown me in the tub—and I haven’t even talked about the throwin’ up. Oh, there’s just nothing that’s out-and-out disgusting, that they don’t do it. Sometimes I say to myself, ‘Face it, honey, you are just a mother at heart. Because if you weren’t you would have been out of this life long ago.’”
When the trouble began down in the street, Nickname’s “mother” motioned him over to the window to take a look. “Well,” she said, in her unruffled way, “looks like your buddy is going to get it now.”
Nickname crawled over the side of the crib and padded to her side. On the front walk, within the glow of the carriage lamp that had been turned up on the lawn, Big John was talking heatedly to two men in white uniforms who appeared to have stepped from a laundry truck parked at the curb; across the side of the truck it said,
C. OF C. DIAPER SERVICE KAKOOLA
“Who are those guys?” Nickname asked.
“Oh,” said Mary, with her soft laugh, “don’t be fooled by the name. Those two don’t happen to take any crap.”
The three men entered the house. “Hey, Nickname!” Big John called up the stairs. “Come on! Put your jock on, niño! We’re gettin’ out of this clipjoint!”
“Whattaya say now, fella, this ain’t a barroom,” cautioned one of the diapermen. “It’s a comfortable middle-class home in a nice neighborhood where people know how to behave themselves. If they know what’s good for ’em, anyway.”
