“You mean he’s becoming a Muslim?”
“Does he confide in me? How should I know? All I know is we’re talking about the yeshiva and all of a sudden he’s telling me that’s what black people should do, run their own schools, and I’m saying you sound like Adam Clayton Powell, and he’s telling me he agrees with him and he believes in black power. So of course I let him know I think he’s meshuginah, and he says I’m just like all the other honkies. What’s a honky?”
“It’s sort of a slang name black people use for white bigots.”
“Bigots! Ooh! Twenty-seven years we’re married, we never once had a fight over black and white!”
“Well, times are changing. People are more outspoken now.”
“You know, it never occurred to me before.” Suddenly her voice was very small and “Do you think your father could be a secret anti-Semite?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You know Dad isn’t anti-Semitic, or anti-white either; he’s just pro-black.’
“Twenty-seven years sleeping in the same bed with his cold feet on my tookus and never a word of complaint! And now all of a sudden he’s Stokely Carmichael and I’m an Israeli aggressor!”
“What do you mean an Israeli aggressor?”
“That’s the worst of it. He says the Arabs are victims and the Jews are aggressors and the Arabs are Africans like the blacks in America are really Africans and so if you’re black, you gotta support the Arabs. That’s when I walked out!”
“Now, Mom, I’m sure you’re exaggerating. Why don’t you go back home and--”
“Never! I’m never going back there! Let him wash his own dirty socks, that Arab!”
“But what will you do? Where will you go?”
“Well, for tonight, I’ll stay here,” Reb’s mother announced.
“But there’s no room.”
“You could sleep on the sofa. It’s too much to ask a son should give up his bed for his mother one night?” In the bedroom, Llona, still naked, crossed over to the window and looked out. It was five flights down. There was no fire escape. And there was no other way out of the bedroom except through the living room. Heart pounding, she went back to the door to listen some more.
“I’m very tired; that man wears me out,” Reb’s mother was saying. “So I’m going to bed now just as soon as I get your linens and make up the couch for you.” She started for the bedroom door. Just then the door buzzer sounded again. “You’re expecting company at this hour?” she asked Reb.
“It’s probably Dad coming after you.”
“He should care so much!” she sniffed.
“Dad.” Reb opened the door and hurried his father through the foyer and into the living room before his mother could have a chance to head for the linen closet in the bedroom. “See, I told you it was Dad,” he said to his mother.
“What’s the matter, I forgot to wash and iron your burnoose?” she greeted her husband sarcastically.
Reb’s father was a large man, heavier and darker than his son. His hair was gray and his face would have been quite handsome if it weren’t wrinkled with a scowclass="underline" “Tell the woman I’ve decided to forgive her and take her home where she belongs,” he instructed Reb.
“Tell Ali Baba he should live so long!” his mother told Reb .
“Mom, why don’t you go home with Dad and the two of you straighten it out there?” Reb pleaded.
“He said that! Your son! I didn’t!” Reb’s father was quivering with black indignation. “I didn’t ask you! I told you! You come home now!”
“You didn’t. You didn’t even talk to me. Through your son you communicate like all these years I had ears to listen and now I don’t!”
“Tell her I’m ready to leave!” Reb’s father announced.
“You hear how he talks to me? A sheikh talks to his camel like this, maybe. Well, you tell your father the sheikh it’ll be a cold day in Mississippi before I live in the same apartment with him again! You tell him that!”
“Dad, Mom says --”
“I heard her!” Mr. Klein’s voice thundered. “And I didn’t miss that subtle ethnic slur either. Mississippi indeed! That’s the kind of remark that betrays her. She’s a racist in her heart, and she doesn’t even know it!”
“A racist? Oy, vey!” Reb’s mother rang her hands. “Twenty-seven years I live with a Negro and—”
“A BLACK MAN!” Mr. Klein roared. “Not a Negro! A black man!”
“Excuse it, I forgot that all of a sudden you’re an Afro-American. I married a Negro, and now from nowhere, I’ve got a Swahili!”
“Why don’t you just call me ‘nigger’ and have done I with it?”
“Sure! .So then you’ll be able to excuse your anti-Semitism!”
“What anti-Semitism? I’ve never been anti-Semitic in my life and you know it. Didn’t I even let you bring up my son as a Jew? An Orthodox Jew, at that!”
Reb interjected hastily, “You’re both being silly. Dad, you know Mom isn’t a racist. And Mom, you know Dad isn’t anti-Semitic. I mean, we all know that’s true, because if it wasn’t you’d both have to be anti-me. So why don’t you just apologize to each other and kiss and make up?”
“Let him apologize first.” Reb’s mother held her head high and facing away from her husband.
“Never!” Reb’s father turned his back on his wife and stuck his chin out.
“Then I’m not leaving. I’ll go get the linens and make up the couch.” She started for the bedroom door again.
“Neither am I,” Reb’s father announced.
It brought her up short She turned around and faced him indignantly. “What do you mean?”
“I’m spending the night with my son. I refuse to go home to your house.”
“But you can’t do that!” Her lower lip was quivering. “I’m staying here!” She sat down at one end of the couch as if establishing her claim.
“I can and I will. You’re staying here? Well, so am I!”
He plopped himself down at the other end of the couch from her and turned his back.
“Now see here, both of you--” Reb stood in front of the couch and looked from one to the other. It was no use. They weren’t listening. Reb knew his parents. They were stubborn as mules, both of them. “All right!” He gritted his teeth with frustration. “But I’m damned if I’ll give up my bed to either one of you! You can both sit out here and sulk all night as far as I’m concerned. I’m going to bed.”
“Sleep well, son,” Reb’s father called after
“You want I should make you a cup hot milk your stomach should rest too?” his mother asked.
“No!” He slammed the bedroom door behind him.
“What are we going to do?” Llona whispered.
“Just wait. I know them. Both of them escalate when they’re playing to an audience. If I leave them alone, maybe they’ll get bored and start talking and work it out and go home.”
“I’ve got to go home too,” Llona reminded him. “I’m a Working girl, remember? I need my beauty sleep.”
“Gee, I hope you’re not going to run off right after they do. You can stick around a little while, can’t you?” Reb stroked her naked breast.
“We’ll see.” Llona pulled away. “Stop that. It makes me nervous with them right in the next room.”
“Okay. Let’s just be patient and see what happens.”
It was a long wait. In the living room Reb’s mother sat at one end of the couch, his father at the other end, each stubbornly facing away from the other. First one would sigh, and then the other, but neither broke the frozen silence. Finally, however, Reb’s mother got up, went into the kitchen, came back with a rag and started dusting the furniture.
“What’s happening?” Llona asked. She was sitting on the bed while Reb was on his knees in front of the door with his eye pressed to the keyhole.