The Foreman Side

So far I've only written about my mother's side of the family, the Hermansons - the Hatfields and the McCoys side - tales of my mother are a large part of that lore, as most of my friends can tell you. Here's a story. A true one. Another true one. Opening night. My first for hire directing job. She's there. Lizzie Foreman. My mother. Give her credit. She never missed an event. "Well, Mom, how'd y'like it?"

                  "I thought it was very nice, dear, but wouldn't it have been better if your fiance' had been there?"

                 "Mom, I don't have a fiance'."

                  "My point."

So, I, being righteously infuriated, scream, "I directed Carousel and that's all you've got to say - where's my girlfriend?"

                    "Fiance'."

                    "Get outta my face. Go back to the hotel. I do not need this shit." 

With that I turned around and walked away. A few days later I get a letter.

                    "Dearest Son: I just want you to know that all mothers dearly love their children and are proud of them, even if they are mentally retarded. Love and kisses, Mother."

Grow up with that.

But the Foreman side - ten brothers and sisters - was equally eccentric and worth a few words of their own. Fasten your seat belts. Here's the first of them.

Just because she wore Uncle Mitchell's underwear didn't make Aunt Gertie a lesbian. Here's the story on that one. Early on, at the turn of the twentieth century, when they were kids on Smallwood Street back in Baltimore, Aunt Gertie was the Foreman family extrovert, always singing and dancing around the house, the latest lyrics, the latest steps. Came adolescence and with it acne, terrible acne, pimples that turned purple, oozed and would not go away, cheeks ripe with fruit gone bad. She was a misery. No solace whatsoever until the day she heard about this new gizmo specifically designed to treat acne with x-rays focused on the ravaged skin. They were not wealthy people but my grandparents were determined that Gertie should get the treatment, and so she did. One side of her face was smooth as creamery pudding. The other side was burnt nut brown, her entire cheek, burnt nut brown. Bad calibration. Something. Nut brown. A recluse at fifteen, she rarely left the house again. 

I don't know if Uncle Mitchell were her older or younger brother, but they were close in age. A twin brother to Uncle Mitchell - Uncle Millard - died young. Mitchell was as introverted as Gertie was extroverted.  If Gertie were prosecco, Mitchell was buttermilk. She would whoop and holler and splash me with a kiss whenever I came to visit while Uncle Mitchell would simply smile meekly from his seat on the sofa and say, "Hi, there, Stevie." In retrospect, I think Uncle Mitchell was gay. I have no evidence to this effect except the accumulated cues of a lifetime of observation. Uncle Mitchell did that? Oh, yeah. Uh, huh. And that? I see. And that? I get it. If it looks like a duck...

So

Aunt Gertie and Uncle Mitchell continued to live together until Mitchell's death, and even then Gertie continued to live in the same house. Once, when she was taken to the hospital, she asked my mother to pack a kit bag for her which is when my mother discovered Mitchell's gotkes in Gertie's underwear drawer. When questioned Gertie didn't flinch. She saw no point in spending money for something already so accessible.

How they got to where they did is another story. It began somewhere near Vitebsk, inside the Pale, Lithuania.My grandfather, Louis, had an older brother who was shot in the back by the cossacks because he refused to sign up for the Russian army. Louis and another brother took note, ran away from Russia, and somehow landed in Baltimore where Louis procured a horse and wagon and started a teamster business. My grand uncle, Louis' brother, decided the pickings were better out west so that's where he went and wound up working on the railroad. Come payday the paymaster doesn't call out his name but does call out the name of a worker who had dropped dead the day before. My granduncle's hand shot right up. He took the dead man's paycheck and the dead man's name. Right there and then an entire branch of the Foreman family disappeared. Gone for a paycheck.