My Mama is going batty

October 30 10:45 pm
I’m currently reading Naked by David Sedaris, having unfortunately finished Lamb, hitherto the funniest book I’ve ever read in my life. I read every word, went as slowly as possible, just to make it last as long as I could. Everyone should read Lamb; it’ll add a good dose of humor to your life, and to an otherwise un-funny history of a religion.

The second piece in Naked is about the narrator (whom I think is David Sedaris himself, though I’m a little confused) growing up mercilessly O.C.D. He has to knock each elbow on the front door seven times before entering, has to rearrange the kitchen, the bathroom, kiss the fourth, eighth, and twelfth steps, and lick a light switch, all before entering his bedroom. The walk home from school is worse. I didn’t laugh much at the chapter, though I thought it mildly humorous all the same. Being me, I more felt sorry that the kid had OCD and wondered if there was treatment for it. I ruin funny writing with such wonderings.

Naked did give me cause to ponder my own Moroccan mother, however. She is sick with some medical condition that neither gestures nor Fati’s English can describe to me. All I know is that she likes to be in bed a lot, and when she’s not in bed, she moves relatively slowly. (That could also be because she has breasts the size of small watermelons, but I’m not sure. I don’t have big breasts, or breasts at all, really, so I’m not a good judge of their effect on one’s speed).

She is sick this evening with some type of autumn sinus infection, and so was in bed when I got home. Zainab answered the door and my little three year old neighbor Laila pranced up to me to give me a kiss. (Laila and I are buds. I smile at her and pick her up and tell her she’s zweena (pretty), and she tries to carry on full fledged conversations in Moroccan Arabic with me. I think that she thinks I’m a native speaker, or something. The novelty of my whiteness has worn off, and I think now she expects me to talk to her. And then she must think I’m daft when I don’t respond and look at her blankly. It’s fun talking to Moroccan three year olds).

“Shhh,” Zainab said. “Mama mriDa” (mama is sick). To me this meant that the house should be silent because Mama was in bed, sleeping.

No sooner had I dropped my things in my room that Mama called, “Zainab ” I’ve always taken her constant yelling for Fati or Yassine or Zainab to be important or necessary — I have no idea what they’re saying, so I just assumed that it was important stuff. After my sick Mama started calling for her children tonight, and multiple times, and after Fati had closed her bedroom door to Mama’s calls and Zainab had fallen asleep (although the past few nights Zainab has made me lie to Mama and tell her that “Zainab nesa”, “she’s sleeping”, just so she can avoid whatever it is Mama has to say), I was left to wonder what the woman must be going on and on about. She’s ill, for Christ’s sake Why won’t she stop the constant yelling? What the hell could be so important that she has to call one of her children to her side, or at least get their attention from across the hallway, every five minutes, if not more frequently? I don’t get it.

And I’ve ignored it until now, until David Sedaris made me think about voices in people’s heads and obsessive compulsive behaviors driving people to do things they wouldn’t otherwise desire to do.

I wonder if my Moroccan mama is going batty.