Odyssey In A Teacup

by Paula Houseman

  We Jews generally operate on JMT (Jewish Mean Time), which is GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) plus half an hour. In other words, late. If an invitation says a function is to start at five-thirty (even if it says five-thirty sharp) and you arrive at five-fifty, you’ll most likely be amongst the first guests. But I was warned that funerals always started at the appointed time. We don’t want to keep the dead waiting.

  The service began dead on eleven-thirty, right on schedule. The rabbi started with a reading of biblical passages, which was followed by silent prayer. The silence was shattered by a very loud noise. It sounded like the blowing of the shofar. This is a ram’s-horn trumpet, kind of like a bugle, used during the Jewish New Year. It’s a bit like a trumpet sounded at a king's coronation, only we’re asking God to be our king again for the New Year. I knew this much, but I didn’t know the shofar was also blown at a funeral.

  It isn’t. I figured this out from the reaction around me. Many gasped; some tittered.

  ‘Good God, what a despicable man!’ a woman behind me whispered to the person sitting next to her.

  ‘Yes, passing wind at a funeral, no less!’ agreed her neighbour.

  I looked to the front and saw Maxi staring in horror at her Uncle Ernie, the reptilian herald. People were whispering, but I heard music (just like at Zelda’s wedding): ‘The whole production started when Uncle Fester farted’ (to the tune of The Addams Family theme song) was playing in my head.

  ‘Shhhh.’ The rabbi called for quiet.

  The whispering stopped; the music didn’t. I smiled. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the woman on my left watching me. It felt uncomfortable, but I didn’t dare look back.

  At this point, Maxi interrupted my narrative. ‘I have a confession to make. That was actually me. I tried to sneak out a small one. How was I to know it would be so loud? Anyway, I just turned to look at creepy Uncle Ernie in disgust. Everyone knows he has questionable morals.’

  ‘How come you never said anything?’

  ‘I was ashamed.’ We all looked at Maxi in shock. ‘Yes, I know, I know. But I do know the difference between right and wrong.’

  And yet, you deliberately farted at a funeral.

  I could relate to her feelings of shame, which is why I hadn’t told her about my experience at the funeral. Anyway, the timing hadn’t been right, and then I forgot about it. I continued with my story.

  I don’t know what I expected, but ten minutes into the service, I was antsy. Granny Ida was resting on quilted satin, while we had to park our arses on a hard wooden pew. Where’s the bloody logic in that? And the rabbi rabbited on in Hebrew, which I still didn’t understand (Hebrew was taught in Gerard’s Sunday school lessons but you don’t catch much of it standing outside the classroom). I looked around and noticed the seats behind me had filled up. In keeping with tradition, men sat on the left side of the chapel; women sat on the right. Vette was interstate, and couldn’t get back in time (Jewish burials take place the day after death). But Ralph was there, next to the aisle in the second pew from the front. He was also looking around. As we made eye contact, he sombrely acknowledged me with a nod, and then slowly scanned the women’s section. Again, he looked at me, this time with tears unashamedly streaming down his face.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ I mouthed.

  What a ham! Ralph barely knew Maxi’s granny. Still, he didn’t respond because he wasn’t looking at me, as such—he wasn’t reaching out to me. In his pseudo display of grief, he just wanted to be seen. Ralph was between relationships and thought that funerals were a good place to pick up, on account of everyone dropping their defences and being more open. Also, he knew that a Sensitive New Age Guy appeals to girls, hence the faux tears. I rolled my eyes and continued looking around. I saw some familiar faces, but no one that I knew all that well. It would be slim pickings for Ralph because there weren’t a whole lot of young women.

  Now I was bored shitless. It was approaching midday so I started imagining lunch (my on-off relationship with food was back on at the moment). Maybe spanakopita (spinach and feta pie)? Maybe Melba toast spread with chicken liver pâté? Perhaps a bagel with smoked salmon and cream cheese, sprinkled with black pepper? ... Yum yum! My mouth was watering, my stomach rumbled. I was getting hungry.

  The congregants rose. I don’t know why. But I followed suit. I’d envisaged a beautiful lunch. I felt good, and it showed—I had a beatific smile on my face.

  Vette now cut in. ‘Wait, wait, wait ... back up!’ She was looking at Ralph. ‘You were trying to pick up at a funeral? Isn’t that a little, um, irreverent?’

  ‘Under normal circumstances, probably. But Maxi cut one at her own grandmother’s funeral. Ruthie was thinking about lunch and looking like she’d hit a high spot. How is what I was doing any worse?’

  Vette thought about this for a bit. ‘Point taken. Go on, Ruthie.’

  ‘Anyway, the woman on my left was unimpressed.’

  I hadn’t paid her any attention when I was looking around, and I might have ignored her the first time I sensed her staring, but now I felt her eyes boring into me. I turned to face her and instinctively jerked back. Never mind that she was giving me a Sylvia look; she was a sight!

  Short and dumpy, she was wearing a tight grey dress—austere, yet with a plunging neckline. I gawped at her mammoth Dolly Parton-like breasts pressing against the fabric, with a slash of a cleavage that kissed her collarbone. I was also transfixed by her face. Toffee apple red, Clara Bow lips were painted over her thin, almost non-existent pair. In contrast, severe, thin Elizabethan eyebrows were pencilled-in like a pair of bell curves high above over-plucked ones. She turned away but her scorn hung heavily in the air between us. Still, I continued to stare. Equally distracting was her hair: jet black, thick, tight, sausage-like ringlets stuck out all over the place.

  Oh God, I’m sitting next to Medusa.

  In Greek mythology, Medusa was the butt-ugly, man-hating gorgon with greenish skin and bloodshot eyes. This woman beside me didn’t have green skin (although it was sallow), her eyes weren’t bloodshot and she wasn’t ugly, but she was no oil painting. Or maybe she was—a poor composition, though, because there were too many distracting elements that could throw the viewer. I almost envied her mirror, which was obviously blasé. I tried to focus on the bigger picture; wondered if her name was Zola, as in ... gorgon-zola, ha ha ha! I chuckled aloud. Bugger! That got the attention of this overwrought oil painting. She stared at me icily, sending chills down my spine. Where was Sylvia’s turquoise blue glass bead to ward off evil spirits when I needed it?

  I quickly looked away. According to the myth, if you gazed directly into Medusa’s eyes you would be turned to stone. I may have become adept at converting, and even though I loved playing the game ‘Statues’ as a kid, it was never my dream to end up as one permanently. And … I was hungry. If by some misfortune I was going to turn to stone, it at least had to be on a full stomach. Thankfully, as we all sat down again, Zola stopped staring. But then, my stomach growled again.

  Zola’s head snapped around and she glared at me. With the sudden movement, every tightly coiled ringlet concertinaed, snake-like, and hissed—‘Shhh!’ Well ... not her hair exactly; that was her mouth silencing me.

  Really? It was an involuntary rumble, you ridiculous person!

  But the roiling obeyed and shushed. It began moving south, though, where it dropped into the large intestine and cramped. Soundlessly. These were no longer hunger pains. A downdraft intensified. Oh dear Lord, I was making methane!

  I must have swallowed a lot of air with the spinach and cheese pie in the sky that I’d only imagined eating! Now I needed to ... cut the cheese! Quelle honte (What shame)! I didn’t want to be in the same category as Uncle Ernie—no one knew it had been Maxi—and what would the women behind me and the rest of the congregation think? I sure didn’t want to be known as my father’s daughter.

  Meanwhile, Typhon of the devastating winds, who had a stranglehold over Joe’s ‘back door’,
was threatening to lose his foothold in mine. And while Typhon might have known his way out of the darkness, I didn’t.

  Please God, help me. It’s not Sunday. Give me some sign you’re here.

  He heard me. I knew it—I had a feeling in my gut, because I no longer had a feeling in my gut. Instead, I felt a deep calm. I sat in silence and listened to the rabbi, who’d finished with the prayers and was in the middle of eulogising Ida.

  ‘ ... It’s now time to let go and to entrust her soul to God’s care.’

  What? Let go? Let go! What kind of dumb-arse sign was that? God was toying with me. God was mocking me. Well two can play at that game! I can figure this out on my own, God! I can ... anal-yse the situation. Ha!

  Option 1: Get the hell out of here!

  Not so easy. Just like at Zelda’s wedding, I was next to the window—this time, stuck between (someone who could turn me to) a rock and a hard place.

  Option 2: Breathe!

  Not advisable. I didn’t need to swallow any more excess air (feared it, even).

  Option 3: Draw on memories of a past solution.

  When I was seven, Joe backed up against my freshly ironed school shirt, which was hanging on the linen closet door. He deposited a fart in the shirt pocket. ‘For safekeeping,’ he’d said. The teachers didn’t think it was too funny that day when I told them I had a fart in my pocket.

  This was a useless option as there were no children in school uniform.

  Option 4: Buckpass.

  (a) scapegoat an inanimate object

  An ex-employer had let a monstrous one rip as he approached the door to his reception area. He then tried to lay the problem at the reception door’s door, shaking the ‘culpable’ knob accusingly.

  A lame option. A loose, shaken doorknob does not sound like any of the variety of fart noises (there are many). Plus, I wasn’t sitting near a door.

  (b) scapegoat a living being (one for whom farting is life-giving)

  Other than Joe (or Uncle Ernie), the only kind of person who would fart without compunction at a funeral was sitting right under my nose in the row in front of me. Beulah Chojnacki was a wizened, weather-beaten little old lady with snow-white hair and a dowager’s hump. Everyone knows all really old people are flatulent; it’s almost a speech form for them. We expect it, but it’s still gross. So, I could let rip, look pointedly at her in disgust and indicate my distaste by harrumphing, making a display of shaking my head and scrunching up my face (subtly, though, because overkill tends to point the finger at the overkiller).

  Not an entirely foolproof solution: Zola seemed to be highly-strung. If she was put out by an involuntary tummy rumble, there’s no telling what a fart would do. Plus, I had a pang of conscience: I hated being blamed for something I didn’t do, so it wasn’t nice to do the same to someone else.

  Option 5: Cough really loudly and fart at the same time.

  Not the best one. Something to do with quantum physics. My mouth is close to my middle ear, no one else’s, so even though I wouldn’t hear the fart because the sound of the cough would drown it out, everyone else would.

  Option 6: Accept the inevitable and find a reason to justify it to myself (I was down to the wire here).

  By all accounts, at a funeral you can express your feelings with reckless abandon, and without fear of criticism in an emotionally constipated society. God knows, Ralph did. As my gut spasmed and growled again and I sat there thinking and shrinking, I noticed him looking at me.

  ‘What’s up?’ he mouthed.

  ‘I need to fart,’ I mouthed back.

  ‘Me too,’ he mouthed in response.

  Seriously?

  Then, with a tortured look on his face, Ralph leaned forward. Wrapping his arms around his waist, he rocked back and forth, silent sobs wracking his body ... or so it might have seemed to the average onlooker. I knew better, though. Ralph was laughing. He was finessing the fine line between the facial expressions of crying and laughter. Another fucking drama queen; another Sylvia protégé! I felt even more inadequate. But I’d have to deal with those feelings later.

  A fart is not a feeling, even if I tried acting like it was. And it’s not socially acceptable. Martyrdom, on the other hand, is socially acceptable. It also scored you pity points in the community. Sylvia excelled at the role of the crucified one. Sylvia embraced martyrdom. She often said, ‘Pour être belle, il faut souffrir’, which means ‘To be beautiful, it is necessary to suffer’, although I think her idea of suffering related to the pain of waxing, tweezing, wearing girdles, etcetera. But my understanding of being belle meant not doing anything where I might end up being perceived as ugly. So, not long after I unleashed the beast on the bus that day twelve years earlier, I put a muzzle on it. And on this particular day, it meant not only keeping my mouth shut, but every other orifice as well. So, this fart was going to remain confined, and godammit, I was going to suffer for it!

  Or ... maybe not.

  Did I really want to live like Sylvia? No way!

  Option 7: Become the warrior!

  This fart was going to remain confined. Same decision the martyr would make; different driving force. I wasn’t going to be at the mercy of base impulses like Joe. Typhon and I were at war!

  I was winning.

  Infused with strength, I felt the wind abate, and the pain ceased. The service had come to an end, but as the congregation stood, Zola suddenly turned towards me. Oh no.

  ‘Are you going to the cemetery?’ she asked.

  Why? Why was this person talking to me? Was she the designated stonemason for the Jewish sector of the cemetery? Was she going to use me as the raw materials for granny Ida’s headstone?

  ‘Um ... aren’t they serving lunch first?’

  Zola gasped and looked at me with disdain.

  ‘Lunch is not served at a funeral!’ she spat. As my cheeks reddened under her filthy look, she turned on her heel and said under her breath, ‘How impertinent! What temerity!’

  My body tensed up. Was I turning to stone? In a manner of speaking, yes—I was petrified. It would serve me right. But why? It wasn’t like I’d done anything—yet. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful, but nobody told me that a funeral wasn’t catered. I naïvely assumed it was scheduled for eleven-thirty because that was around lunchtime. And why didn’t they serve food?

  Jewish rites of passage are traditionally associated with fine feasts: ‘How was the wedding?’ ‘Oh, it was a wonderful spread.’ A funeral is a rite of passage. Okay, so it’s the last one, but still. Wouldn’t the dead want a kind of celebration of their lives before they’re interred? It doesn’t have to be a sit down affair. Finger foods would do. If I catered this funeral, I’d probably serve up devilled eggs and angels on horseback (a bit of an icebreaker to get the congregation speculating about where granny Ida would take up residence in the afterlife), cocktail weenies served on toothpicks with a dipping sauce, Monte Cristo sandwiches, mini pizzas, chicken drummies, baklava, kugelhopf ...

  Ooh ... Oi! Nisht gut! My gut churned violently. Worse, I felt a sneeze coming on. Shit. Must be from the fucking pepper on my imaginary bagel! Typhon and I were still at war, but have you ever tried to outmanoeuvre a being that has thousands of years of practice under his belt?

  Typhon was winning.

  I needed to launch; I needed to get out of there. Pronto! So, tight-sphinctered (like that day at Henley Pool), I shuffled (not so pronto) towards the door, down the steps and into the chatty crowd assembled on the pavement. Time was of the essence now, and fortunately my car was parked only a few metres away. Still, hanging on was a Herculean task. And because Hercules was half-man, half-god, pitted against an all-god like Typhon, it wasn’t hard to figure out who would blow who away.

  Hercules lost.

  KA-BOOM!

  Everyone turned to look. Every. Single. Person.

  Not at me, though. They were looking at the passing car that had backfired at exactly the same time that I did.

  Phew! Or ... mayb
e not. I was a tad disappointed. Nobody heard me. I didn’t even hear me. But I sensed it would have made Joe’s after hour performances sound like amateur night. Yet, whether it was a beneficial or a destructive wind was open to debate. I needed Ralph’s input on my output. And there he was, several metres away, flanked by two attractive women who seemed to be comforting him. Really? Geez, hadn’t he milked it enough? I started zigzagging through the crowd towards him when Uncle Ernie stepped in front of me.

  ‘Hey toots, was that a moving service or what?’ he asked my breasts.

  ‘Yes it was.’ You have no idea. But ... hang on a sec, your mother just died ... and you’re perving on my tits? Ecch! I was about to lose the lunch I hadn’t actually eaten.

  ‘Wanna lift to the cemetery?’

  I squinted apologetically. ‘I’m not going.’ The tank was out of gas; I had a void inside me that needed filling. Picking Ralph’s brain would have to wait. ‘I have to go home.’ For lunch.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN:

  ESCAPE FROM THE MAD HOUSE

  Ralph, Maxi, Vette and I shared many anecdotes and many laughs that weekend. The four of us agreed there was a need to organise an annual mini-break to recharge our batteries, and we all went home enlivened. But I was now more aware that home, for me, hadn’t changed. The crazy exterior of the house I grew up in should have tipped me off long ago that the way we lived was not normal, especially seeing as everyone else had ordinary looking houses. As a child, I had believed that was what normality looked like.

  With the help of Albie, Joe had vulgarised what was originally an unobtrusive, red brick home by painstakingly painting the mortar black, then varnishing both bricks and mortar in a high gloss Estapol. And it wasn’t as if we were hidden in a cul-de-sac like an embarrassing secret; we lived on a main road, so everybody I knew (and didn’t know) could see the frontage. Fortunately, the masses couldn’t see the inside of the house.

  Joe’s customised tacky taste in clothes spilled over into how he decked out everything. His office positively vomited kitsch. Lining his desk was a collection of Bobblehead dolls (each one sitting on a lacy doily), snow globes, an owl cookie jar (with nothing in it), a vase of plastic flowers, a vintage long neck poodle figurine, and half a dozen troll dolls. His domain. Fine. But he was also the self-appointed interior decorator at home. According to Joe, because he was the breadwinner, he had the last—and only—word.