(pp. 11-13)

... It was my mother who could accomplish anything, who herself had to admit that it might even be that she was actually too good. And could a small child with my intelligence, with my powers of observation, doubt that this was so? She could make jello, for instance, with sliced peaches hanging in it, peaches just suspended there, in defiance of the law of gravity. She could bake a cake that tasted like a banana. Weeping, suffering, she grated her own horseradish rather than buy the pishachs they sold in a bottle at the delicatessen. She watched the butcher, as she put it, "like a hawk," to be certain that he did not forget to put her chopped meat through the kosher grinder. She would telephone all the other women in the building drying clothes on the back lines — called even the divorced goy on the top floor one magnanimous day — to tell them rush, take in the laundry, a drop of rain had fallen on our windowpane. What radar on that woman! And this is before radar! The energy on her! The thoroughness......

... She is never ashamed of her house: a stranger could walk in and open any closet, any drawer, and she would have nothing to be ashamed of. You could even eat off her bathroom floor, if that should ever become necessary. When she loses at mah-jongg she takes it like a sport, not like the others whose names she could mention but she won't not even Tilly Hochman it's too petty to even talk about let's just forget she even brought it up. She sews, she knits, she darns — she irons better even than the schvartze, to whom, of all her friends who each possess a piece of this grinning childish black old lady's hide, she alone is good. "I'm the only one who's good to her. I'm the only one who gives her a whole can of tuna for lunch, and I'm not talking dreck, either. I'm talking Chicken of the Sea, Alex. I'm sorry, I can't be a stingy person. Excuse me, but I can't live like that, even if it is 2 for 49.

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Yiddish Terminology in the Text goy pishachs, schvartze dreck (cf. kosher)

General American Cultural References Jell-O (gelatin dessert, "jello salads") Chicken of the Sea, Mah-jongg tuna, horseradish, delicatessen

NYC (i.e. Am-Jewish stereotype) Phraseology

• "not-like-the-others-whose-names-she-could....", etc.
• "rush, take in the laundry..." (urgent, frantic, 'quick' pace...)
• "Jewish mother" stereotype

Other Examples of Yiddish Terminology in SAE

bagels & lox, bialy, blintz, borsht chutzpa, cockamamy gesundheit, glitch kibitzer, klutz, kvetch mazel tov, nebbish nudnik [boring person]

(Phudnik .. "nudnik with a PhD...") schlemiehl, schlep, schlock shlong, shtik yenta, zaftig (see also Yiddish-English Glossary and Common Yiddish Terms in SAE)

Examples of Yiddish phraseology in SAE

Who needs it? Get lost! I should have such luck. It shouldn't happen to a dog. This I need yet? I need it like a hole in the head. It's O.K. by me. All right already.

My son, the doctor. My son, the lawyer. Excuse the expression, but... Smart, he's not.... [cf word order in Leo Rosten, 'The Joys of Yiddish'] Fat-shmat, so long as she's happy.... My son-in-law he wants to be....