788: Half-Baked Stories About My Dead Mom

Ira Glass

When my friend Etgar was a kid growing up in Israel, his mom would tell him a story every night before he went to sleep. But it was almost always a story that she would invent, right then on the spot. Never read him any children's books.

Ira Glass

So almost every night, it was a custom-made story, with flying camels, or a room that people would walk into and lose the power of speech, and all sorts of other made-up things. But always, Etgar says, the details and the feelings in the stories echoed whatever was going on in Etgar's life that particular day. Etgar's mom did this for Etgar, because her parents had done it for her when she was a little girl in Poland during World War II.

Ira Glass

After all that, Etgar grew up to be a short story writer. He's Etgar Keret, has lots of books. There were times that his mother would not invent a story but tell him some story from her past, and he loved those too. As a kid, Etgar had a favorite that he would ask her to retell more than any other story.

Ira Glass

Escaping right before the Germans arrived, they're Jews. In the story, Etgar's mom is just five years old. She remembered her mother holding her hand and carrying her baby brother.

Ira Glass

Right.

Ira Glass

Wait, wait. Somebody's carrying a grandfather clock with them as they're fleeing?

Ira Glass

Cartoon, because from where they were behind, what she sees is this clock, right, with two feet sticking out underneath it, trudging along, and then an arm poking out on either side.

Ira Glass

So for her it's fun. They're fleeing, and she's not feeling danger. She's just like, this is kind of fun.

Ira Glass

Oh, my god.

Ira Glass

That's a moment in the story Etgar always loved, even as a little boy, where time kind of stops. And the war stops, and it's his mom, and her mom, and her brother just there.

Ira Glass

Recently, after all these years-- his mom's been dead a little while now-- Etgar has tried to write about her. And when he got to writing this story about the cabbage patch, for the first time, he says, he realized just how close they all came to dying. It really had never hit him before. The way his mother always told the story, it was so from a kid's point of view that there was no sense of danger in it.

Even hiding in the field, it seemed like kind of a children's game, like hide and seek. Don't make any noise. When the soldier appears, he's just some man standing there. So it makes the stories tricky to figure out how to tell. You kind of have to choose between describing the reality of the war-- the menacing reality-- and his mother's reality, when she often doesn't understand or notice any of that.

Etgar, I should say, writes a lot about his family. He did a whole book about his dad. But he says he's always found it impossible to write about his mom, for a bunch of reasons, actually. Including one big one that has nothing to do with the war at all, but with who she was.

Ira Glass

She was capable of very extreme action. And it was hard not to want to leave out some of the most aggressive parts of her. And it was hard for him to get her across in the way he saw her. And it felt very strange that, you know, he had these books, and he had this whole life as a writer, but he couldn't figure out how to write about his own mom.

And then he started drafting these little fragments, short stories that were just like three or four paragraphs long-- tiny stories. And he wrote dozens of them for this museum in Berlin that wanted to collaborate with him. Most of the stories didn't amount to much. They'd start and stop and go nowhere. And crumpled up copies of these incomplete, discarded stories ended up as part of the exhibit that they made.

But the stories that worked, I read them a few months ago. And they just killed me, some of them-- sharp little shards of stories that together captures something complicated about his mom. And Etgar and I decided to try to adapt them here for the radio.

So we've done it, and today on our show-- it's "This American Life," by the way, from WBEZ Chicago. I'm Ira Glass. What you're going to hear is this unusual kind of portrait of his mom, told in these quick little stories that Etgar is going to read. It's eight stories in all, plus occasional bits of conversation between him and me.

His mom-- Orna Keret was her name-- made it to Israel after World War II when she was 14. That's where she lived her life and raised her kids.

In the stories, Etgar has changed the name of one little boy who gets beaten up by another boy, because he didn't want to embarrass the guy today. Etgar's wife, Shira, and his son, Lev, show up in a story. And we'll start with this.

Etgar Keret

Story number one, "Bedtime Story." The very first time my mother told me about her father, I was in kindergarten. I remember lying under the covers in my pajamas, while Mom sat on the edge of my bed and relayed the story with pride.

Soon after the Germans occupied Poland, she told me, one of my mother's non-Jewish neighbors began collaborating with the Nazis. He was a short man with black hair and a large nose. As my mother said, he looked like a caricature of a Jew. And he took advantage of this to pose as one, which allowed him to uncover the hiding places used by his Jewish neighbors and turn them in. After the Germans forced all the Jews to move to the Warsaw ghetto, Mom and their family no longer saw this neighbor, although they continued to hear horrific stories about his informing on people.

One morning, my mother and her father walked out of the ghetto with a simple plan. They would buy a loaf of bread on the black market, sell individual slices in the ghetto to cover the costs, and keep a couple of pieces for the family.

They snuck out and walked down the streets of Warsaw without wearing the yellow stars that all Jews had to wear. This was extremely dangerous, but since her father was blond with blue eyes, and she was fair haired, too, they hoped they wouldn't raise any suspicion.

Unfortunately, in the crowded town square, they ran into their old neighbor, the informant, who didn't think twice before grabbing my grandfather by the shirt collar and yelling, "Jews! Jews!" My grandfather tried to break free, but he realized that even if he could, they would instantly be surrounded by passersby, who would never let them escape.

He looked at my mother and gave her a wink meant to reassure her, or at least to make sure she knew that, even in this terrifying moment, he was thinking only of her. Then he grabbed the neighbor by his collar and shouted, "Jew! Jew! I caught a Jew."

The crowd looked on in confusion at the two men, my tall, fair-haired grandfather and the short, black-haired neighbor, who looked, according to my mother's description, a bit like me, clutching each other's clothes and screeching, "Jew!" Within seconds, a few people fell on the neighbor, pinned him to the ground, and kicked him in the head and body until he was dead.

And that was your grandfather, declared mom with a smile, and stood up. Before leaving my room, she leaned over, kissed my forehead, and said, sweet dreams.

Etgar Keret

Story number two-- "Razor." When I was a child, my mother hugged me all the time. All mothers hug their kids a lot, I know. But my mother hugged me more than a lot. I liked it. But over time, I began to notice that when she touched me, it was always with the back of her hand, never the palm.

One evening at bedtime, my mom finished telling me a story, and then stroked my face with the back of her hand. "Mom," I asked her, "how come all the other moms touch like this?" I demonstrated a caress with the palm of my hand. "And you're the only one who touches like this." I demonstrated again with the back of my hand.

My mother smiled and kissed me on the forehead. "When I was little," she said, "I didn't have a home like you do, only an orphanage. And the people there, some of them, didn't always want to be good to me. So to be on the safe side, I stuck a piece of gum to the palm of my hand, and I lodged a razor blade in the gum."

She showed me how she stuck the gum to her hand, and then inserted an imaginary blade into that invisible gum. When she finished, she held the back of her hand to my face and caressed me gently. "This," she whispered, "is how I touch the people I liked. And this--" she let the palm of her hand hover millimeters from my face without touching it-- "is how I touched the ones I didn't like so much."

The palm of mom's hand was so close to my face that I could feel its warmth. The blade didn't touch me, but I knew it was there. Palm of the hand, back of the hand-- until that evening, I never knew they were so different.

Ira Glass

Etgar?

Ira Glass

You've told me that one of the things you want to be careful about is you don't want to overemphasize your mom's experience in the war. Explain that. Explain why.

Ira Glass

OK. So with that in mind, maybe we should still summarize very quickly what happened during the war, just to give listeners a general sense. I know her family died. Did she end up in a concentration camp?

Ira Glass

In hiding?

Ira Glass

How did she speak German that young?

Ira Glass

Yeah, you told me a story about her on a bridge. Tell that story.

Ira Glass

OK.

Ira Glass

That's story's just amazing, that she had the presence of mind that young.

Etgar Keret

Story number three-- "Fabric." Before I was born, my mother worked in advertising. She invented slogans, produced commercials, and bargained with newspapers over the ad prices. She really loved it, but it was a demanding job, and she wanted to devote as much time as possible to her kids.

So when I was a baby, she quit and opened a fabric store. It was called Fabric Basement, and it was in a basement with no windows. She chose it because of the location, across the street and a few doors down from our apartment. It was damp, and dark, and a little musty, but everything inside the store was decorated in good taste.

Mom used to take me with her to work every day and put me on the counter in a bassinet. I grew up listening to her stern pronouncements on questions of cleavage and rivets, and closely watching the eager women who entered the dimly-lit basement to search for the perfect fabric and cut for the dress of their dreams.

When I think about it now, I see my mother hoisting heavy rolls of fabric around in that narrow, dank space. I know it was hard work and didn't pay much. But when I was little, the Fabric Basement seemed to me like a sort of secret kingdom, where my mother reigned supreme.

Her subjects came to her with their hopes and dreams, and she, the Queen Mother, proclaimed which options made them look thinner and which fatter, what was flattering, and what looked cheap. She spoke with no hesitation or excessive politeness, just as a queen should. And the women kept coming to her little side street in Ramat Gan from all over the country so that my mother could flip through the stacks of Burda Magazines that were piled neatly on the counter and select the patterns that would accentuate their advantages and conceal everything else.

Not everyone can be beautiful, Mom told me once. But if you make an effort, and you don't give up, you can always be less ugly.

Etgar Keret

Story number four-- "Rain Day." It happened 11 years ago. My wife Shira, my son Lev, and I got up at 7:00 AM. Shira was making a tuna fish sandwich for Lev, who had just started first grade. Lev and I stood by the window looking out at the rain. And I explained, in a fatherly tone, he would have to stay home and play with me and mom today instead of going to school, because it was raining.

Lev received this news joyfully. Shira, not so much. "What do you mean he's not going to school?" she asked sharply. "It's raining," I replied, pointing outside. "So?" Shira wanted to know. "So when it rains, you don't go to school," I explained. All she could do was repeat my words. "When it rains, you don't go to school?" I nodded. "OK," she said. "And who made that rule?"

We had very few rules when I was growing up. We had to be polite to our parents. We had to give a coin to every homeless person we saw in the street. If someone elderly got on the bus, we had to offer them our seat, and we couldn't go to school on rainy days. The reason, according to my mother, was that, with all due respect for school, they didn't teach anything important enough to be worth getting wet for.

My mother lost her parents at a very young age, which is why, as she explained to my siblings and me, she never learned how to be a mother. "Girls learn how to be mothers from their own mothers," she said. "Every girl watches her mother to see how she raises children. But I didn't have a mother for long enough to learn everything, which is why I have to improvise now. So if you see me doing something you don't think is that great, you should always tell me."

I was very pleased to hear my mother say that, and on the few occasions when she imposed a rule or a demand that I found unfair, I always told her, and she really did listen. But as for staying home from school when it rained, I was completely on board with that. Sadly, Shira's childhood wasn't as magical as mine, and Lev had to pay for that. The poor kid grabbed an umbrella and went to school.

Ira Glass

Yes, Etgar.

Ira Glass

Well, this could be the thing that goes before it, this thing that you're saying right now.

Ira Glass

I do. So here is that story.

Etgar Keret

Story number five-- "You Never Forget a Smell." At my elementary school, there were always fights, and that was just fine with me. It was routine.

The fights always followed the same pattern-- first cursing, then pushing, then choking and kicking until one of the kids yelled uncle. And then it was over. Everyone would head to the corner store for a chocolate milk or a Popsicle like nothing had happened. In other words, no one in school was ever afraid of a little fist fighting. But everyone, even the strongest, meanest kids, was afraid to get in a fight with Tamir.

Tamir was a year ahead of me. He wasn't big, and he wasn't very muscular either. But whenever he got into a fight with someone in the schoolyard, all the kids who gathered to watch were overcome by a terrible sense of despair, because they knew a fight with Tamir never ended with chocolate milk and a Popsicle at the corner store. Best case scenario, Tamir won, and someone ended up in the emergency room. Worst case, he lost, and the fight went on forever.

Not a single kid at school ever saw him surrender. Kids much taller than him, who were already shaving, could pin him to the ground for hours, hurt him, humiliate him, feed him sand, but Tamir would still be cursing and making threats. As the fight wore on, we all knew that no matter how plainly and painfully the other kid was winning, the second he let go, Tamir would be up in a shot and chasing him down with a rock, a metal rod, or whatever weapon he could find. If a teacher or another grownup tried to intervene, they'd get clobbered, too. Bottom line, if anyone had asked me when I was 10 years old what I was most afraid of in the world, I definitely would have said Tamir.

Every Wednesday after school, I would meet my mother at the grocery store and help her carry the bags home. She would wait outside the store dressed like a queen, in a dress or trendy suit. She always wore lipstick that matched the color of her dress or scarf, and a fashionable hat perched on her head like a crown. As I walked along a busy dirty Bialik Street beside her, loaded with grocery bags, I thought she looked like a stubborn Cinderella, one who insisted on remaining a princess, even after the clock struck midnight and everything turned back into a pumpkin.

Our apartment building was at the top of a hill, and I always got sweaty and out of breath on the way up with all the groceries. Sometimes I asked for a rest stop, which mom would use to smoke a cigarette.

One day, on a break, we heard a strange howl. It sounded like a cat's yelp mixed with a human sob. The second my mother heard this peculiar sound, she tossed her cigarette on the sidewalk, and started quickly marching uphill in the direction the noise was coming from. I picked up all the bags of groceries and tried to keep up with her.

Before I'd even reached our building, I could see Tamir standing on the sidewalk, waving a stick over his head. At his feet lay Yaki, a boy from my class who lived across the street from us. And when Tamir thumped him on the back with the stick, Yaki whimpered. He barely moved.

I was completely paralyzed, but not my mother. She marched over quickly on her stilettos. Tamir ignored her and landed another blow on Yaki's back. My mother grabbed Tamir's the arm with one hand and his hair with the other. Tamir tried to wriggle out of her grip, swearing and blustering. "Let me go," he screamed. "Let me go right now. I'll fuck you up, you bitch."

Terrified, I looked at my mother. She didn't seem to understand who she was dealing with. I'd seen Tamir stab a teacher with a compass and throw a brick at the principal, and I knew exactly how this would end. My mother would eventually have to let go, and then all hell would break loose.

I wanted to say something, to warn her. But I didn't know exactly what to tell her. The only good advice I could give her about Tamir was not to mess with him. But it was too late for that.

Mom twisted Tamir's arm behind his back, which made him drop the stick. Yaki was still on the ground. "Just wait, you bitch," Tamir hissed. "I'll tear you a new one."

My mother looked at him coldly, and signaled for me to come closer. I moved towards him, dragging the grocery bags, and stopped the few steps away. That seemed close enough. But Mom beckoned me to come closer.

"It's all right," she said in a reassuring voice. "Don't be afraid. He won't bite." I took a few more steps, until I was standing within spitting distance of Tamir's sweaty face. "Leave me alone," he screeched. "Let me go or I'll whack you." "Shh," Mom said, still using a soothing voice. "In a minute, as soon as you listen to what I have to say."

Tamir stopped talking and turned to my mother with an expectant look. "Do you see this boy?" my mother asked, and she held Tamir's face close to mine. "This is my son. Now, take a deep sniff. Good. You never forget a smell."

Tamir's face was barely an inch away from mine. I was so close that I could see the blood vessels in the whites of his eyes as he gave me a menacing look. "And this," Mom said, turning Tamir's head towards Yaki, who managed to sit up on his knees, "is his friend, Yaki. As far as I'm concerned, this whole neighborhood is yours, except these two. You can hit, bite, stab, steal-- anything you like. But if you so much as touch them--"

"If I touch them, then what?" Tamir said with a chilling smile. "You'll call the cops? I've had the cops called on me 10 times." "Oh, the police, God forbid," Mom said. "They have more important things to worry about." She dragged Tamir over to the big dumpster next to our building.

"If you touch my son or Yaki, I'll kill you, and then I'll throw your body into this trash can." She was pulling Tamir's hair now, making him look right into the dumpster. "And the next morning, a truck will come and remove your body with the trash, and bury it far, far away. And no one will even come looking for you or try to find out what happened, because no one will miss you."

As a child, you quickly learn to identify when your parents are making empty threats and when they mean what they say. Mom's tone-- detached, almost bored-- was her ordinary voice, the one I recognized from conversations with the ladies at her fabric shop, or people she ran into on the street. And so within seconds, I stopped being scared that Tamir would break free and beat us up and started being scared that he'd die.

My mom put her face right up to Tamir's, and he looked at her, wide-eyed. "You might be a bully, Tamir, but you're not stupid. Now, I want you to look at me very closely, and tell me whether I'm lying or if it's really going to happen."

Tamir kept staring at my mother as if he were hypnotized. And after a pause, he said, almost in a whisper, "I promise you, Mrs. Keret. I'll never touch them." "Very good," said Mom, and let go of him. "I knew you were a smart boy."

They stood facing each other for some time, a 12-year-old boy in a school uniform and a little woman in a red dress and high heels. Mom slowly lifted her hand and caressed Tamir's sweaty hair. "Very good," she repeated softly. "Now that we're clear on everything, you should go home. It will be dark soon, and it's getting cold."

Ira Glass

Etgar?

Ira Glass

I think all the stories that you've told so far, your mom is the hero. And I wonder, are there stories where you felt embarrassed for her, or she embarrassed you, or she isn't the hero in that way?

Ira Glass

But it was embarrassing.

Ira Glass

I get that. But I'll just point out that I asked you for a story where she's not the hero. And in this story, she's still the hero.

Ira Glass

Guru, yeah.

Ira Glass

OK, so Etgar, we have to get to the station break-- the ID break now.

Ira Glass

Well, it's like a minute that we give to the radio stations to do their local stuff.

Ira Glass

Oh, we just hang out here for one minute.

Ira Glass

OK. OK, and then do you want to read the wording that gets us into the ID break?

Ira Glass

Yes, now.

Ira Glass

It's "This American Life." I'm Ira Glass. Today's program is this thing that Etgar Keret and I concocted, that we're calling "Half-Baked Stories About My Dead Mom," where Etgar is trying to create a picture of his mother, Orna, through these fragments of memory-- eight very short stories that he's written about her, plus some conversations.

Some basic facts about his mom's life, before we go any further in this hour. After her time in a Polish orphanage and some time in Czechoslovakia and France, she arrived in Israel as a teenager on a ship whose Hebrew name roughly translates to "don't mess with us," or "you will not threaten us," which Etgar says is the perfect name for the boat that his mother would arrive on.

At 18 or so, she married a professional soccer player and divorced him a few months later. Went to live in France for a year or so. She was an incredible dancer, won dance competitions. Danced once with the singer Jacques Brel.

The way she met Etgar's dad, he was drunk and peed on the French embassy, not knowing it was the French embassy. Cops thought it was a political statement, threw him in a squad car and ran off to get the guys he was with. Etgar's dad saw his mom walking down the street, just walking by at that moment, and wanted to meet her.

Ira Glass

When Etgar's dad sobered up, he had a hard time actually convincing her that he was not a criminal of some sort. They were a good match. Both had been children in Poland during the war so, Etgar says, neither of them had any idea what a normal childhood or a normal home would be.

Ira Glass

After his mom died, Etgar found that she had kept all the little notes that his father had written her over the years, going back a half century. Most of them were things like, "We're out of milk. Can you pick some up?" Or "I'll be home at 9:00, not 8:00." She seemed to have saved every one.

Ira Glass

Yes, Etgar.

Ira Glass

Yes, Etgar.

Ira Glass

OK.

Ira Glass

She said that to you in that conversation.

Etgar Keret

Story number seven-- "The First Angel You See." I only ever heard this story once. My parents had just come home from a wedding, and my mother was completely drunk. If she'd had one less drink that night, I probably wouldn't be able to share this story with you.

It's a little hazy in my imagination, but in the story, my mom is little. It's during the war, and her mother, my grandmother, is holding her hand while carrying mom's baby brother. And the three of them race up the stairs in some building.

Mom can hear the footsteps of the people chasing them. When they get to the rooftop, my grandmother tells Mom to run as fast as she can and jump down to the roof of the next building, which is slightly lower. "Don't be scared," she says. "You can do it."

Mom waits, expecting her mother to say, "And I'll be right behind you." But she just stands there out of breath from the run. "When will I see you again?" my mother asks. And her mother bends over so their faces are very close, and says, "You're going to run as fast as you can, and then jump as far as you can. And as soon as you land, you're going to keep running and not stop until you get to Daddy. After that, you grow up into a woman, and will meet a man and fall in love, and start a family with him. And in the end, you grow old and die.

And right after you die, go up to the first angel you see, and tell him, 'I'm going to see my mom.' And he'll know, because I'll talk to him before you get there. And he'll bring you to me."

This is not where the story ends. After my mom jumped onto the other roof, she didn't run as fast as she could, the way her mother had instructed her. Instead, she hid and watched the Nazi soldiers kill her mother and smash her little brother's head against a brick wall. When she told me this, I could feel her guilt, but I also sensed how proud she was of her mother, who, even in the last moments of her life, refused to lie to her daughter.

47 years after she told me this story, my mother died. And the last words she said to me were, "I'm going to see my mom."

Etgar Keret

Story number eight-- "A Good Day." When I was a kid, I absolutely loved eating at restaurants. In those days, in socialist Israel of the 1970s, going out for dinner was such a rare and decadent event that it was impossible not to get excited about it.

Once every few months, we'd drive to Victor's Place, a Tel Aviv eatery located next to a junkyard. After dinner, while Mom and Dad sipped Turkish coffee and smoked a cigarette, my brother would take my sister and me on an exciting tour of the junkyard, which we called the car cemetery. We'd stop at each crumpled vehicle and try to guess how it had ended up there-- trampled by an elephant, shot out of a cannon, or just driven too quickly and rammed into a stoplight.

One Saturday, when I was about six, we went to Victor's Place for my mother's birthday. The waiter was an older man with a mustache, and he informed us apologetically that, due to a kitchen malfunction, the restaurant would not be serving fries. The rest of the family received this news with indifference, but I took it really hard. Instead of a big pile of delicious, greasy fries, the waiter put a dish of white rice on the table-- white rice. And within seconds, the lavish feast I'd been looking forward to for weeks turned into just another family dinner.

My mother, sensing my frustration, asked me if everything was all right. "Nothing was all right," I snapped. If I couldn't have fries, the whole meal was a waste of time. And this birthday, which was supposed to be fun, was now the worst day of my life.

Mom listened patiently to my complaints. And when I was done, she put the back of her warm hand on my neck, and asked me, in half a whisper, to tell her how many people were sitting in the restaurant. Being a good boy, I methodically counted them all. Saturday afternoon was one of the busiest times at Victor's. And besides our table, there were 26 diners.

"26!" my mom exclaimed with a whistle. "That's a lot. Now, could you please tell me what all these people are holding in their hands?" "Oh, come on," I said with a grin. "That's easy. It's a restaurant. They're holding knives and forks."

Mom was impressed. "26 people-- 26 hungry human beings sitting at their tables, each eating only what's on their own plate. 26 people holding knives, and yet not a single one of them is stabbing anyone else." She leaned over, planted a soft kiss on my forehead, and said, "Let's agree that this is a pretty good day."

Ira Glass

Etgar Keret. Most of the stories today about his mom were originally written for an exhibit about her, called "Inside Out," at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. It runs till March 19.

If you liked these stories today, one of Etgar's books is a book of memoirs, essays like these, called Seven Good Years. And he also sends out a weekly short story in a free Substack newsletter called "Alphabet Soup."

Jacques Brel. Etgar says this song was one of his mom's favorites, and she would sing it to him when he was a kid.

Ira Glass

Well, our program was produced today by me and Elna Baker. The people who put together today's show include Sean Cole, Michael Comite, Chana Joffe-Walt, Valerie Kipnis, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Nadia Reiman, Ryan Rumery, Charlotte Sleeper, Frances Swanson, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our Managing Editor is Sarah Abdurrahman. Our Senior Editor is David Kestenbaum. Our Executive Editor is Emanuele Berry.

Jessica Cohen translated Etgar's stories into English.

Special thanks today to Gal Ber, Nimrod Keret, Lev Keret for technical help, and Chris Crawford. Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org, where you can stream our archive of over 750 episodes for absolutely free. Also, there's videos. There's lists of favorite programs, there's tons of other stuff. Again, ThisAmericanLife.org.

"This American Life" is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. His New Year's resolution this year? Come up with more zingers. I told him I was having a hard time coming up with my resolution. He piped up right away.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of "This American Life."