My name’s Herman Muenster Hororrwitz, Jr. and my dad’s a big dummy. Don’t believe me? Why just a hot minute ago it went this way…
Senior: You’re evil and ugly.
Me: That’s not how you talk to me anymore, remember? Now apologize.
Senior: Alright. I’m sorry you’re evil and ugly.
Now normally I’m not the judgmental type. But in the case of my father, Herman Sr., his dumbass has become the biggest problem I could have ever imagined in my short and sad harmonica, sixteen year-old, so-called life.
“Ain’t that right, senior dummy?” I asked my dad.
“You betcha. I’m just a big fartin’ dummy!” he replied as his eyes darted from side to side amounting to what actors oft refer to as a doubletake. It was Herman’s go to when he wanted to deflect criticism. Senior did a lot of double-takes.
But when the notice from CPS came last week senior did a triple-take and I wasn’t far behind him. And while senior had no trouble sleeping the big sleep I couldn’t even catch a single wink after picking up the mail that day. I don’t know why the city can’t just mind it’s own business.
What I do know is sixteen is definitely too young for insomnia. Heck, even a kid hit in the head by a wild pitch knows that. But there it is in black & white. I am officially scared spitless and can’t catch a dog denmad wink.
It’s like everything’s bearing down on me the way Dad used to use his big magnifying glass to laser-beam ants on the front steps of our old house before he left me and Ma to live on welfare and SNAP benefits.
Yeah, Dad gave me the magnifying glass and a ventriloquist’s dummy for my 6th birthday. He wrapped them both in newspaper and electrical tape before telling me to fry the ants and keep ‘em in a jar until he came back. Then he pinched my cheek hard enough to make me cry which I did.
“Have fun with the dummy, kid,” Dad said.
That was the last thing I remember before bursting into tears when I realized Dad was walking out of our lives forever. Everybody called me a baby as I stood there holding the dummy and bawling. Ma said it was my party and I could cry if I want to. And when my cousins and uncles said I was too old to cry like a baby Ma said, “You would cry too if it happened to you!”
Yeah, Ma was great. I sure do miss her. In fact since the insomnia I been seeing her around the house out of the corner of my eye. I whip my head around but she’s gone. But she don’t fool me. I can smell her perfume. Her Windsong stays on my mind even while Dad makes bad jokes…
“Hate to break it to you, kid. Your, ‘Ma’”, he said, scorn and sarcasm dripping from his false teeth, “was a whore.”
“No! I think that embalming fluid made your head goofy.”
“Naw boy. Yer ma wanted sex on the back of the bus-“
“That doesn’t make her a whore, you big dummy,” I said feeling my collar start to get hot.
“She wanted me to drive the bus, son….”
“You lie like the rug, dummy,” I said just to be saying something.
“Think what you want, junior. But you know it’s true. All those men. All those stifled screams in the night. It’s true. All I did was give her what she deserved. Just like Weepy Moyer gave it around Chicago with an ice pick; only better.”
“You’re insane. Mom should have never let you back in. She should have let you die in the street from Covid.”
“I wish she had. Be better than sharing this crummy sty with your cowardly ass. I ain’t even sure you’re my spawn, boy.
Imagine a boy of mine getting his vengeance with a Black & Decker. Ice pick is the way to go. A nice ice cold ice pick. That takes a specialist to serve it cold. Yeah,” senior goaded making a double-take. “You probably ain’t even of my seed.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice, Pinocchio?” I mused. “And watch your mouth about Mom, dummy,” I warned, “or I’ll wash it out with Murphy’s oil and a blowtorch.”
“Watch your mouth, dummy,” Dad mimicked. “Watch your mouth, dummy!”
I had a headache and senior’s bullshit wasn’t helping. I put him away in his case. Flopping down on the couch I yelped as a barbecue potato chip dug in my back. “Fuckin’ shit!” I yelled over-reacting and then I felt hot tears on my face.
A voice from in the case said, “You should clean up this dump, junior. CPS is coming in a few days, remember?”
God, why can’t it be last Monday. Why can’t I remember how to sleep? If I could just get some sleep I could figure out something. Ma always said there ain’t nothing that ain’t figure outable.
I used to know how to sleep. But before you cast aspersions on me for being an insomniac and a truant it’s really not like I ain’t been trying to sleep let alone neglecting my education. For real, I been trying hard. Warm milk. Cookies. Edibles. Wikipedia. Nyquil. Useless all.
Ma always said smoke and mirrors wouldn’t get us anywhere. So the hard truth of the matter is I got nothing in the nighttime sleep department; nighttime brings me nothing but face to face with my worries.
“Man up, junior! She had it coming to her…. They’ll never believe the truth. They’re gonna put you away in a small little case called solitary and they’re gonna throw away the key.
And that’s if you get lucky, boy. You picked the wrong horse, son. We could have gotten away with it. We could have been on easy street but you had to fuck it up, boy.”
I flipped the couch cushions. The blast radius of potato chips, gummy bears and cookie crumbs made it past the peanut butter and jelly stained glass top coffee table.
“Just shut the fuck up, will you, you big, fucking dummy?”
Just how pathetic my situation was was only exacerbated by my dummy Dad providing color commentary and really bad Dad jokes.
So here we were again last night. It’s about ten o’clock. I get in my bed, hiding under my tear stained, Steve Ditko, Doctor Strange blanket, the one Ma gave me for my fourteenth birthday before Dad did the thing to Ma. The things I had swore he’d never do again. Never. Again.
“That’s the difference between you and me, you big dummy. My word is good.”
I heard that arrogant passive aggressive snicker muffled through the case. “Sure, if it makes you feel better, junior. But what ain’t good is if they find your good old Dad the undertaker pickled in his own juices.”
The dummy had a point. I come from a long line of ventriloquists and undertakers. And it was my Uncle Bucker from Canada who’d come back to Brooklyn who brought me into the business. Unc said I was a natural and was real good to me and Mom. He was just like a Dad to me and used to make Mom and me pancakes sometimes in the morning.
Heck, after a year Unc was letting me do the customers all by myself. And me and Ma sure liked the extra money even if we always smelled a little funny. Better to smell funny with a full stomach then smell good and starve.
“My word’s good, junior. I said I’d be back and I came back, boy. But Unc Buck; well he was bound to fall in that vat.
I said I can sleep the big sleep and you seen that too. So you best believe your old man’s word is his bond. What you don’t know and what you ain’t seen is what’s gonna happen when they find me with a reconstructed jaw made outta chicken wire…”
I did a double-take twice and heard myself say, “I think I am losing my mind. “
“Aw come on, junior. It’s only insomnia cause you patricided and pickled your old man. I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.”
“Fuck you, dummy.” Herman Muenster Hororrwitz, Jr.; master of the snappy comeback.
I went into the bedroom since the dummy was obviously not going to zip it.
I tucked myself in just like Mom used to. She used to say she was tucking me in like a frankfurter. Then she’d tickle me as she’d say, “… with mustard, and relish and….”; well, you get the picture. I loved Mom. Still do. Only Dad did something bad during lockdown. It was so bad that, well now…
…well now, since last week anyway, through these cold Brooklyn winter nights, I desperately try to sleep. But sleep won’t even try and creep up on me. Now, I realize the blame game and tricks are for kids but I got to blame somebody, or I might go madder than I already went during lockdown; and if you must know that’s when all my dummy troubles began. And, not to mention, confidentially; I am a kid.
Maybe, if I poke the big dummy’s head through the bedroom door… and say, “Junior’s got Covid. Just interview me from over there… Social distancing.” Yeah, that’s the ticket. Social distancing and a big dummy named senior in an N-95.
“It’ll never work,” a muffled voice antagonized from the other room. “They’ll see right through your pathetic ruse. This ain’t zoom. This is your doom.”
“Shut the fuck up, dummy.”
I had a plan coalescing and that was more than I’d had in a while. And then, then suddenly I felt sleep creep up on me. A big black pool opened up before my red, swollen eyes and now I think, now I think I just might get some sleep tonight….
“They’ll get you boy,” a muffled voice taunted. “Your lips still move.”