Handwringers

By Sarah Mintz

“I know a girl with a large head who tells only sad stories. She tells me that her stories are not sad because there are other people with worse stories and though this is true, it strikes me as the saddest thing she could say.” A motley collection of characters populate these short, short stories, shaped by the daily barrage of media aimed at the general populace. Dramatic, and darkly funny, they revolve around Jewish identity. The schlemiel — a figure in Jewish folklore who is unlucky and inept at the same time — is not always apparent in the pages, but is evoked as a guiding concept. People cling to would-be wisdoms, memes, and TV tag-lines, while failing to locate their misplaced communities. A particularly apt book for our current world, where chaos and anxiety reign.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Radiant Press
• Release date: May 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781989274484

Sarah Mintz

Sarah Mintz is a graduate of the English MA program at the University of Regina. Her work has been published with Book*Hug Press, JackPine Press, Radiant Press, Apocalypse Confidential, The Sea & Cedar Literary Magazine, and Agnes and True.

Book preview

A graphic of a crowd of bald people all with different facial expressions, happy, disgusted, angry, goofy, some of the characters have thrown their hands in the air. The background is yellow, the title is handwringers by Sarah Mintz.

Copyright @ 2021 Sarah Mintz

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher or by licensed agreement with Access: The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (contact accesscopyright.ca).

Editor: Michael Trussler

Cover art: Sarah Mintz

Illustrations: Sarah Mintz

Book and cover design: Tania Wolk, Third Wolf Studio

Printed and bound in Canada at Friesens, Altona, MB

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of Creative Saskatchewan, the Canada Council for the Arts and SK Arts.

Funders

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Handwringers / Sarah Mintz.

Names: Mintz, Sarah, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210154756 |

Canadiana (ebook) 20210154780 |

ISBN 9781989274477 (softcover) | ISBN 9781989274484 (PDF)

Classification: LCC PS8626.I699 H36 2021 | DDC C813/.6-dc23

Box 33128 Cathedral PO

Regina, SK S4T 7X2

[e-mail]

www.radiantpress.ca

For Steven Mintzberg

TtlPg1TtlPg2

Contents

A Car Called Vera

Skinning the Cat

Whatever Larry’s Looking For; It’s all in the beef, hot gods an money men—god schlock and sellin’ dogs

About Dinner; Self Similar

Let’s Go

Old Soul

imagine wisdom as wrinkled and wrinkles as decay

the god of feral children

Always Being, Then and After

Colour Can’t See

Sick Dance

Street Trash

Karen’t

Camp Cheakamus

Little Wisdom I

the Loose Light of a Pale Wooden Moon

Reveal Yourself

common folk

Sponsored Content

Find the Bottom

A Vote for the Vulgar Nightclub Clown

Horton Hears a Nu

runneth over

Bunny

what you know you know

who ate who

caw! caw! caw! caw! caw!

trees and babes

Tell Me What You See!

equals

parts of the werld

Kina Hora

Schlemiel! Schlimazel!

Disgrace as their Portion

Nothing Mattress

The Process

for how long did the subject watch the bloody finger

ah shanda far di goyim

Maury the Mensch

Eulogy for the Man with the Trumpet

a timeless shrug

Krumholtz & Me (a jellyfish)

L’Shana Tova, I Guess

tv

For a Song

Give it to me. I’ll do it.

Luftmentschen Living in Cloudy Places, Undoing Things

Joke’s on You

eyelids askance; knows best

Please Don’t Eat That

pig meat

Lizard People

Crowded Rooms

Who’s There

Strangers in the Vent

plain as the nose

face1

clay date

till the end

invitations

Heart to Heart

proverbial

Alice Through the Crowd

the Door on Your Way Out

Be Fruitful

Better you don’t

Technically, it’s a chanukkiyah – Erica Strange

In the End, Man Will Probably Peel his Skin

Love Me

Little Wisdom II

Ladies and Gentlemen

Mrs. Yablunsky

Question on the Absent Concept Integral to Identity; or, The Rise of the NBC Homunculus

to whom life happens

Notes

george: (depressed) I feel like I can’t do anything wrong.

jerry: Nonsense. You do everything wrong.

hand

Seinfeld,

The Millennium

Season 8, Episode 20

A Car Called Vera

My grandmother kept a razor in her car when I was a kid. She would shave spots she missed on her legs because she couldn’t see in the low light of the bathroom. It never seemed weird or gross but to say it out loud now it does. Her car always seemed beachy and peaceful and faded and crisped by the sun. Somehow the razor fit right in with the beach blankets and beach toys. She doesn’t keep a razor in her car anymore. She’s got a Vibe now and it doesn’t feel open and summery and it doesn’t smell like dried seawater or driftwood. It’s a zippy little red car that reminds me of her sister because her sister has red hair and always used to drive a red car. I think maybe my grandmother got a red car because she would have thought that she shouldn’t because her sister’s cars were always red then she would have resisted the idea that she shouldn’t and played ignorant if anyone thought to bring it up. Of course no one ever would. But her car doesn’t smell like the beach anymore. It smells a bit like a hospital, an industrial hospital. Like the smell of the place they fix wheelchairs. Wherever that is and whatever it smells like. Probably it’s because of her variety of canes, walking aids with neat features, and orthopedic shoes. All the things she keeps in her car to prop her up, to let her walk and drive—though everyone wants her to stop—to hold onto freedom. But whether or not we take it away or the encroaching smell of a hospital displaces the smell of the beach, it’s fading. Her freedom is fading because her body is dying, her mind is dying, and her time is dying. But she wants it still. I want it too. For me, already noticing that things don’t have the same shape that they used to. My face, my body, my feet, harder, more calloused, nails less curved, skin less elastic, all things colluding to one day lay me down. And for her. I want her to keep her accumulated knowledge; I don’t want to have to squeeze it out of her in an effort to save memories, memories no one will ever see or know or hear or feel again. I want her to keep them. I want the living embodiment of those memories to keep them and keep her body and keep growing until she’s everywhere bigger than everything and we have all her memories still, and maybe—anyway, maybe that is what happens. Maybe the stories that never get told get to be known anyway. No matter how stupid they are.

Skinning the Cat

Sarah laughed. So the story goes. She laughed when God told her that she and her elderly husband would become parents. She laughed and God spat. God spat and Abe cowered. Sarah shrugged and said, Who am I to argue? And laughed all the way to the hut and in the hut she swept the floor and hung a mobile of dried gourds from the roof and sat down at the table and started scratching out baby names on a piece of goat hide. And God said What the fuck. And Sarah said, Excuse me? And God said, It’s mine! My miracle. Call him Isaac, and cut his cock. And Sarah said, Whatever you say. And God gave her a squint eye and thought, Weird tone, weird way to obey, but she obeyed and she tossed the hide of baby names into the fire and made a raspberry sound with her mouth and God scratched his head and shook it too. So Abe and Sarah made an effort like dragging a dead cat through the desert and trying to prop up the cat and open and close the cat’s mouth on the dead mice they found in the sand just so they could call him a mouser, and lo! Sarah got fat. And Abe and Sarah saw her swollen ankles and hugged and held each other and God said, Don’t I get a thank you? and crossed his arms and Sarah and Abe looked at each other and sighed and then got down on their hands and knees and kissed the floor of the hut and God said, That’s more like it, and Sarah laughed and Abe laughed and God didn’t know if they were laughing with him or at him so he thought it was best if he just laugh too. And Isaac came and they called him Isaac and Sarah let Isaac suck on her withered tit while she beat her maidservant and the maidservant’s boy with a broom she kept just for beatings and Abe said, God, she’s beating my bastard! And God said, Just don’t worry about it. Sarah—I don’t know, but I think she’s okay. And Sarah held up the broom and nodded severely and God gave her a hopeful thumbs up. And they cut Isaac’s cock and he cried and cried and while they were at it, through the storm of tears that muddied the hut floor, they cut Abe and Abe cried and cried and Sarah laughed and God was once again starting to wonder about Sarah until the moyel came and sucked at their peckers and Isaac laughed and Abe laughed too. And God knew that there were a gracious family full of God and good humor and it was good—though he never understood why Sarah insisted on using air quotes whenever she called her son over, ‘Isaac’, she’d say, Time to say your prayers, she’d tell him with a penetrating eye on the sky. And God could only shake his head and make it rain and think, Weird. Weird way to obey.

Whatever Larry’s Looking For; It’s all in the beef, hot gods an money men—god schlock and sellin’ dogs

After a 1990s Hebrew National Hot Dog Commercial

Hello Larry, says a knowing voice from behind a hot dog cart, long time no see. The sky is impossibly blue, the same colour as a man in a windbreaker in the sandy background, the same colour as the ocean, the same colour as the side of the hot dog cart, the raised area where people put money. A wide woman in a straw hat drags a small boy with a yellow tube around his waist towards the blue water, blue water like the blue sky. Larry swings his arms high. A white kite hovers overhead. Larry turns, led by his belly, in search of the voice that knows him by name. The voice pinches in towards Larry as Larry faces the hot dog cart. You know me? Larry asks and dips his Wayfarers down towards his nose, as the hot dog cart tilts and the voice booms, like a book larry. A scuba diver walks behind Larry stiffly, looking like a plastic doll while a light mid-day beach breeze blows the edge of a red and white striped cabana somewhere in the distance. Larry is confused, he’s amused. Who is this guy anyway maybe Larry thinks. Larry in a Hawaiian shirt, Larry with a receding hairline and heavy jowls, Who is this guy who knows me like a book and stands here waiting for me, waiting to sell me a hot dog? How about a Hebrew National Hot Dog? the voice dripping with temptation, dripping and running over—hot dog—it’s soft when he says it, he lets the heavy book of Larry fade away for a second, hot dog. An out of focus hot dog with a stream of yellow mustard obscures Larry for an instant but not the beach sweeper in blue like the sky outside of the red and white cabana. Larry is holding the hot dog. Take credit card? he asks, no longer concerned with the vendor who knows his name, ready to ignore the jokes the vendor makes: I take credit for everything, the vendor quips to the who beyond. This is some of my best work, the voice intones and Larry gets ready for a tour of the grill. Fresh kosher beef, perfectly seasoned. Larry takes a bite, It’s divine, he either says or thinks, the quality obscures the intention. Thank you, the vendor says while a woman in a black