TOO BUSY TO DIE
JOE and I set up housekeeping on Jerolemon Street in Brooklyn and after a couple of months, bending to social pressure, we got married. Sometimes his sister would stay with us for awhile; sometimes his kid brother would sleep over. We had a cute little apartment that Joe's mother had furnished for us. My friend Rena and I played young housewives, lounging over coffee while our husbands went off to work.
My exchange for these sunny days was that I had to tolerate my mother-in-law's contributions of food. If she wasn't the world's worst cook she had to have been a close second. She would bring a freshly killed chicken and flick the feathers all over the house before under-roasting it. One morning, for breakfast I served to Joe and his brother the half-baked rice pudding she had brought over. They didn't want it. I said, "Joe, if you don't eat this pudding I won't let you go to work." Silence. They ate it. There was a barely premature irony in my nonsensical threat; Joe's problems with keeping jobs were soon to become evident...
Too Busy To Die by Frances Lief Neer. Published by Trafford Publishing, 2004
ISBN: 1-4120-252-6-5
