Interview With a Jewish Vampire (21 page)

`“Don’t ask! No need to think about that now, Fanny. You have too much to learn about the vampire lifestyle first.”

“
I’m desperately hungry…and thirsty.” Mom whined. “Please, can I get something to eat, or drink I guess it is? How about a glass of water? Can I have water? ”

I felt terrible for her. She sounded pitiful. I’d never heard Mom beg for food or water before.

“
No, you can’t have water, Fanny. It will make you sick. Let’s get her to the farm, then” Tess answered, directing us all to the van. “We’ve got a ways to drive.”

We turned out of the cemetery and hit I-95 North.

“
Where the hell are we going, Tess?” Mom asked.

“
We’re going to Volturi Ranch on lake Okechobee, it’s about a hundred miles northwest of here.”

“
Why so far?” I asked.

“
Florida is too built up around here. We’ve got a huge ranch up there with lots of deer and even exotic animals the original owner imported for hunters. Vampires from all over come down here to hunt. Shel, you might enjoy hunting a deer, but Fanny would probably prefer our tamer sheep and goats.”

“
Don’t underestimate me, Tess,” Mom almost growled. “I’m feeling predatory tonight.”

“
I’d like some coffee and a snack. Is there anything for humans to eat?” I was starving.

“
We’ll find something for you, Rhoda,” Tess said. “You can eat at the casino. The Seminoles have a big one nearby. Did you know that some vampires are really good gamblers? That’s how they get rich. They develop photographic memories and card count. We have to be careful not to get thrown out.”

“
Sheldon, it might be a lot easier to gamble than to cut diamonds for a living?” I suggested.

“
Rhoda, I have a terrible memory and I hate to gamble. I hate games. I can’t even win at Checkers.”

We stopped at the first gas station we saw. Tess got out to pump.

“
Shouldn’t I do that?” Sheldon asked. .

“
I’m a vampire, not a little old lady. I can pump gas,” Tess huffily replied, grabbing the hose and stuffing it into the tank.

“
Hurry up, why dontcha,” a beefy man with a ponytail yelled from his pickup behind us. There was only one pump and we were at it. He turned to the blonde next to him and sneered, “This old broad is going to take all week to finish pumping gas.”

I heard a growling from the back and then the door opened and Mom flew at the man, yanking open the door of his truck and instantly latching onto his neck with her teeth. She clung to him and I heard a sucking sound.

“
Mom!” I yelled. “Get back in the car.”

Sheldon looked horrified and went after her and grabbed her so quickly I barely saw him move. The man held his neck with an expression of horror and disbelief, staring at Mom. I’m sure he had no idea what hit him.

“
Tess, let’s get out of here quick,” Sheldon yelled.

Tess moved fast, pulling the hose out of the tank and jumping back into the van. Luckily she’d used a credit card.

We zipped back onto the road and Sheldon turned to Mom. “Fanny, what were you thinking?

“
I wasn’t thinking. I’m so tired of being put down by young people. They think we’re dirt. It was automatic. Plus I’m hungry.”

“
Geez, Mom, you have to control yourself. You could get into a lot of trouble.” I said.

“
You could get us all into trouble, Fanny,” Tess said. “We try to fly under the radar, metaphorically that is.”

“
I’m so sorry,” Mom said, sounding truly remorseful. “I’ll try to control myself from now on. It’s just so strange being in this body. I have impulses I never knew existed.”

“
You’ll learn, Sweetie,” Tess smiled at her. “Just follow what I do.”

“
Mom, give me your dentures. That should make you pretty harmless.”

She obediently handed them over. I asked Tess, “Do dentures grow fangs? What if you’re a toothless vampire?” I’d noticed that Sheldon’s incisors turned into fangs when he was excited. He hadn’t plunged them into me … yet.

“
We have vampire dentists who make retractable fangs for dentures. When they’re in the vampire’s mouth dentures act like real teeth, but they’re removable. It’s very handy.”

“
Live and learn.” I grimaced. “Or rather die and learn.”

Mom settled down but still looked pretty unhappy. I held her hand, which seemed to help.

“
Hope you’re not going to go after me, Mom,” I said, trying to make a lame joke.

“
Rhoda, don’t be ridiculous. You’re my daughter. I would never hurt you. I didn’t know what I was doing back there. It was like there was a monster inside me. I wasn’t myself at all. This whole vampire thing isn’t going to be easy.”

There
was
a monster inside her. I should have known it, I’d heard the stories at the B.A. meeting. I just assumed she’d be like Sheldon, or Tess. But then both Mom and I had always been compulsive eaters. We’d struggled with our weight our entire lives, except recently because Mom was so sick she’d started losing. I guess human compulsive eaters become vampire compulsive bloodsuckers. I hoped Mom wasn’t going to attack anyone she knew, just strangers. But that was bad enough.

Eventually we pulled up into a long driveway with a lot of scrubby tress and vegetation and a long low structure that looked like a lodge . No houses were in sight.

A tall, very handsome, very black man with a Haitian accent came up to the car. “Yo, Miss Tess, I see you got a new lady here? She one of you?”

I was surprised to see Tess touch and stroke his arm and look up at him flirtatiously. It wasn’t an old lady gesture.

“
This is Fanny, Jean. She’s going to be visiting with me. A couple of her friends are changing soon and they’ll be coming too.”

“
That’s good, Miss Tess. We’ll buy more animals with the money from selling these.”

“
Fanny, do you want to feed now?” Tess asked Mom.

Mom looked ravenous. We followed Jean to a large barn filled with a variety of animals, from sheep to goats to chickens. A young man in a T-shirt, jeans and sandals, with a yarmulke, side curls and fringes hanging out from under his shirt, was standing there waiting for us. Jean introduced him as Rabbi Izzy and told him Sheldon was a former rabbi.

“
Great to meet you, Sheldon,” Izzy said, asking him a lot of questions about what he did and what living in New York was like.

“
I wish you’d come down here and join me. I always have to be here to certify that the animals are kosher. Sometimes I want to go on vacation.”

I couldn’t do this kind of work. Too bloody.” Sheldon wrinkled his nose and quickly changed the subject. “How did you manage to become a vampire rabbi? Do the local rabbinical authorities know about it?”

“
Of course they don’t, and I certainly wouldn’t tell them, I’d lose my job and possibly worse. They don’t check up on me. Even though there’s nothing non-kosher about what I do. Did you know that for an animal being slaughtered by a vampire is totally humane. They don’t feel a thing.”

“
If you say so,” Sheldon said. “The rats I capture don’t seem too happy about it.”

“
Rats! That’s disgusting. How about a goat?”

“
I’d love one.” Sheldon patted his stomach with enthusiasm.

“
Can I leave please?” I backed away. “I don’t think I could watch you all suck the blood out of these poor little animals.”

Jean gestured me to follow him. “I’ll get you some real food, Miss Rhoda, I’m famous for my jerk stew. Let’s leave these bloodaholics to their evil ways.”

I was taken aback by the “evil” word, but he said it so good-naturedly that I let it pass.

Jean fed me some fabulous spicy stew in his little house, down the walkway from the lodge, which was decorated with colorful Haitian folk art and squishy, comfortable furniture. I’d bought a few paintings from Haitians on the street in New York City and treasured them. His wife Yasmin, a statuesque pretty black woman with straightened, neatly coifed hair and a peasant skirt, came in and sat down with us. She had a lilting accent that sounded Jamaican.

“
How did you two get involved with a bunch of vampires?”

Yasmin laughed. “It was that or live in with white folks. I get to live with my husband and kids here and have my own house and a nice life. I used to have to leave my kids with my sister in Jamaica so I could take care of white ladies. Plus we like these vampires. They’re the good ones, they don’t hurt anyone and they pay for the animals, which we get to sell to a kosher butcher after Izzy certifies them. Very profitable.”

“
Who are the bad ones?” I asked.

“
You don’t want to know!” Yasmin said, making the sign of the cross. “They’re dangerous.”

By the time Mom came back from her dinner, if you can call it dinner, with Sheldon, I was napping on Yasmin’s couch. I woke up abruptly when they came in. Sheldon had his arm around Mom’s shoulders in a paternal gesture and was herding her towards me. Tess was nowhere in sight. Mom was acting strange although the strangeness was hard to define. It was as if she were herself but herself on speed. She’d always been speedy, but now she was all over the place,

“
What an adorable painting,” she said to Yasmin, pointing at one of the Haitian artworks on the wall, a colorful oil of a woman with a bundle on her head. “Wherever did you get it?”

Before Yasmin could answer Mom lifted some flowers out of a vase and breathed them in deeply. “Ah, what a scent. I don’t believe I’ve ever smelled flowers like these before. What are they?”

Before Yasmin could answer that question she zipped over to where I was sitting, plunked herself down and effused, “Rhoda I have no idea what you and Sheldon did to me but I feel reborn. Why didn’t you do this to me years ago? Why have I been so old for so long?”

“
Mom, how could I have done it years ago? I needed Sheldon. I’m not a vampire.”

“
Oh, that’s right. Well you’ll just have to become one. It’s an incredible experience. I wonder how long it will last?”

“
Forever,” Sheldon chimed in.

“
There’s no such thing as forever,” Mom said sternly in her schoolteacher voice. “Everyone knows that.” Not waiting for a response, she got up and zoomed over to a corner where there were a few modern sculptures that seemed to be assembled out of odd bits of junkyard refuse and rubber tires. I thought they were odd looking, but Mom picked one up and started gazing at it raptly.

“
This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. It looks like a woman bending over her baby.”

She was tripping out-- acting like I did after my first hit of LSD—as if everything in the world were new and wondrous. I found it disconcerting to say the least to see my practical, no-nonsense mom transformed into a hippie on an acid trip.

Yasmin proudly announced, “That’s the work of Jean Camille Nasson, a famous Haitian sculptor.”

I would have been impressed if I weren’t so worried. “Sheldon, what’s going on? She is not acting like herself.”

“
Don’t worry, bubeleh, it’s just the effect of first blood. After that first feeding a new vampire sees everything as if it were brand new. It won’t last. By tomorrow she’ll be her cynical self again.”

In the meantime mom was scaring me.

“
How come she thinks she’s not going to live forever?”

“
That concept takes some time to get used to, Rhoda. You can’t wrap your mind around it right away. It took me a long time to realize I was immortal. It was frightening—and not pleasant. When you have all the time in the world, it’s hard to figure out what to do with yourself.”

“
Mom has never had a problem keeping busy. I’m sure she’ll just go on doing what she’s always done—movies, concerts, walks on the beach, sewing.”

“
I wouldn’t bet on that,” Sheldon said. “Some vampires change. They get hungry for excitement along with blood. Your mom may be that type.”

“
Why are you talking about me as if I’m not here,” Mom said. “I am not going to change. I’m still a socialist and always will be.”

Mom was really irritating on the way back. She sat behind us and kept pointing out landscape features. The worst thing was that it was night and I couldn’t see them.

“
Rhoda, look at that gorgeous lake. Let’s stop and take a swim.”

“
You must be nuts, Ma. I can’t see a lake. And if I could I sure wouldn’t want to take a swim at four a.m.”

“
Really. It’s four a.m. I can see everything like it’s, well, daytime.”

“
Look up ma, no sun.”

“
I won’t have trouble driving at night anymore.”

“
Stay out of the sun, Fanny,” Tess admonished her. “You’re a newbie and you might get a bad burn. Plus it will hurt your eyes really badly, even with sunglasses.”

“
I’m going to miss the sun,” Mom said sadly. It was her first real expression of dismay at her new state. It suddenly hit me that bad things could happen to good vampires. Anything that hurt Mom from now on would be my fault—and would make me feel guilty. She could blame me for anything that went wrong with her new life. Mom, like all Jewish mothers, was an expert at pushing guilt. She’d pretty much given it up in her old age but I wasn’t sure why. Maybe she realized I really was a good daughter and she started feeling guilty about depending on me so much. Guilt was a double-edged Jewish sword, and we both wielded it expertly.