Hand me down pets: 4824 S. Union, 4611 S. Union, 524 W. 46th Street
My mom changed apartments a lot when we were kids. We felt connected to mom – but not to where we slept. Every apartment we ever had was a declining reflection of the 1972 Sears catalogue, and whatever artist my mom was channeling – usually Picasso or Van Gough - resulting in our 4-bedroom flat decorated with “The” Rembrandt, wall-to-wall green shag carpeting, the fake crisscrossed swords, the statue of Rodin’s Thinker, the quilted gold bed spread on my parent’s queen-size bed, the white French Provincial furniture in my pink bedroom. In her head it all added up to Spanish.
Linda Ronstadt and Hall & Oates rocked through the house as she danced, smoked Salem cigarettes, took naps on the 3-piece sectional couch, waitressed her ass off 50 hours of the week at a couple of different restaurants. Maybe it’s where I got my hurried stride.
We waited for buses together on trips downtown and shared one stick of gum. She always found interesting little things on the ground as we walked along. She’d stop. Bend over, practically her nose to the ground and say – “Look at that. What is that?” It was never more than a small blue soldier or someone’s missing earring. But sometimes it was a tooth, or a dead baby bird.
I don’t know how many long walks she has left in her, but her sense of curiosity has miles to go! Directed all at me, making me feel like someone’s always trailing me –following my every move – or at least trying to keep up with the secret life she believes me to have. She’s sly to interrogate me about where I’m going. Did you just get home, or are you going out “again.”
She missed her call for the Nuremburg trials.
I like to unleash her on unsuspecting doctors or social workers that come to see her. As she’s a poor woman, her supply of public resources to keep her sound and safe are constantly visiting her. Often they come to interview her, ask about her measly social security income, assess her health and state of mind, which is always a flurry and a blur and a mix of comic tragedy. She doesn’t hold back. Tells them everything. Including what’s happening with me, across the street at Aces bar, and with the government, the economy and her hangnail, and her tongue, which she claims is a masterpiece. If only she could stop biting it.
Once she turned the tables on a dietician who came to visit her at the house. These poor souls – begin by asking my mom a series of questions – uncovering her bad habits.
How much sugar do you eat day?
Oh not too much. Just one candy bar a day.
And I chime in – and usually a piece of cake.
Oh yes, some cake, mom says. Maybe some pancakes in the morning. And at night I usually have a snack.
Is it something sweet? The dietician asks.
No, it’s usually a banana, or some pretzels, or a candy bar.
How much dairy do you eat each day?
Hardly any.
Except for the milk in your cereal, and the glass of milk you have with your lunch and dinner, I say.
With a big smile – my mom, says, “Oh yeah, that’s right!”
The nice dietician woman then makes a big mistake - Do you have any questions for me?
And then the odyssey known as Anna Bracken channeling Charlie Rose unfolds…several minutes into it, the dietician’s eyes glaze over, my ears bleeding, my mom says….What kind of cows make lactose? Are they the brown cows on those commercials?
Then that familiar look comes over the dietician’s face. [I’ve seen it on many who encounter my mom for the first time. It’s the same way you’d look if someone said: You look exactly like Tony Curtis from the Boston Stranger.]
Okay, that’s enough. I say. Let’s wrap this up. The dietician packing up her stuff as quickly as possible; running out the door, while releasing the cat’s claws from her leg.
There have been so many times when I’ve had to apologize for my mother insinuating someone looks like Charles Manson or the beautiful Christian Bales from American Psycho – naming the scene.
That’s my mom. Responsible for our macabre sense of humor, keeping us fed and always a roof over our head, even though the apartments kept getting smaller and smaller, and dinners looked more like spaghetti every night. The one woman who always made sure we had pets in the house.
We loved animals – especially cats. We always had one or two. Most of them were strays or “hand me downs.” A neighbor too old to care for her pink-stained poodle. A jackrabbit my Aunt Pat found on Halsted Street one night in the summer. Dogs that followed my step-dad – fast Eddie Bracken, home from the bar.
But the best were the cats we inherited from the previous apartment owners. Trouble is these dislocated pets were always restless, roaming and mangy.
The poodle always ran away back home to the old lady’s house a few blocks away. She’d call us on the phone and say, can you come get Harold. Well Harold’s new name was Gigi and he’d snap at me and cry when I dragged him back to our apartment. Damn I thought that dog was a chick.
Then there were the odd cats that would run into our apartment whenever we opened the back door. Some apartments came with their own set of strays. They didn’t belong to us – but to the family that lived in the apartment before we moved in. The cat would come in – traipse around, wondering what the fuck happened to his family, his favorite chair, and who’s this other cat living here? Then we’d move, not even bother taking telling him, much less dream of taking him with us.
This coming and going was natural. Nothing ever felt like our own, even our pets. Our physical location was never as important as where were stood with each other. And it was always together, even when we lived thousands of miles apart. Today my mom and I live next door to each other. She shares my cat Allen. She tells me sometimes, “He’s very dreamy today Laurie, keep an eye on him.”
And I know that her mind is miles away from where it used to be. There is distance between us – from the little girl I used to be – to the woman she is today. And yet, here we sit, right next to each other, even with minds straying. The place where I begin and she ends.
Honey I’m home
