Refrigerator Nazi

Terror at the dinner table….

The dinner bell clanged. It was a small gold hand-held bell. It was not real gold, of course. There was no real gold in the house. And it was not all that loud. If any of the three children had music playing in their rooms it could not be heard coming from the kitchen. But all three children were trained to always watch the clock so they were always listening for the bell as five o’clock in the afternoon approached. Dinner was ALWAYS served at EXACTLY five o’clock. It was never late and it certainly was never early.

Mother stopped ringing the bell and placed it in its designated spot on the shelf next to the spices above the kitchen counter to the left of the stove. “A place for everything and everything in its place,” was one of her countless rules.

Within seconds of the cessation of bell-ringing a cacophony of footsteps commenced. There were the footsteps of Peter (age 10) coming up the stairs from his basement bedroom and there were the footsteps of Jennifer (age 12) and Sarah (age 5) coming down the stairs from their shared upstairs bedroom.

The children filed into the kitchen and then proceeded into the dining room where they took their assigned seats at the dinner table. The chair at the head of the table was always occupied by Mother. To her left is where Jennifer sat and to her right is where Peter sat. The opposite side of the table from where Mother sat was where Father usually sat but, as was so common, Father was not home today.

Father always worked two or three jobs to support the family. Mother believed that a woman’s place was in the home so she never worked. To hear her tell it, taking care of three brats was more work than any human deserved. So in the place where Father usually sat was Sarah’s high-chair. At age five, Sarah was far too old for a high-chair but she was not allowed to graduate to a real chair until she “learned how to eat like a real child.”

At the place settings of each child there was a glass of milk. It was a small glass, probably not more than about eight ounces. Peter looked at his glass of milk with great lust as he was, as always, extremely thirsty. He knew, though, that no one was allowed to take a drink of milk until after their dinner plate had been served.

And no one was allowed to talk.

To take his mind off his thirst, Peter looked around and his vision ended up focused on the refrigerator in the kitchen. There was more milk in that refrigerator. It was a relatively new refrigerator; only a couple of months old. It was the newest thing in the whole house. The entire outside of the refrigerator was stainless steel as were the handles to the side-by-side doors. It even had an ice dispenser built into the left-side door to the freezer. According to Mother, it cost a fortune. It was not only the most expensive thing in the house but it was the most modern.

Because of the stainless steel handles on the refrigerator, Mother discovered that she could tell whenever anyone in the family opened the refrigerator because they would leave fingerprints on the stainless steel handle. She never went past the refrigerator without looking at the handle to see if there were any fingerprints on it. Whenever she saw fingerprints on the stainless steel refrigerator door handle she would call the family forth and demand to know who went into the refrigerator without permission. Once the culprit came forth and confessed and was given required punishment she would then wipe clean the handle with a towel so that she could see when next the refrigerator was breached.

Mother never bought anything unless it was on sale or unless she had a coupon. She was the ultimate penny pincher. She would never make out a grocery list without a calculator at hand. She would calculate the quantity of something to be purchased and then divide it by the number of family members. Everything was always divided by five; equal amounts for each family member. No one ever was allowed more than their allotted share.

“This is democracy,” she would say. “We didn’t have it so good in the war. No one got their fair share. We all starved. Now you kids have it way, way too good here in America so you should be happy with your share and not complain! You kids need to learn how to suffer!”

Peter had serious problems with this dictum. After all, he was a ten-year-old boy. Ten-year-old boys have bottomless stomachs. Ten-year-old boys need endless supplies of food because they are growing at an exponential rate and no amount of food seems adequate.

Why should a ten-year-old boy be fed the exact same amount of food as a five-year-old girl?

The three children stared straight ahead as Mother placed their dinner dishes before them. Each plate was proportioned in quantity of food exactly the same. Tonight each plate featured four fish sticks, an equally measured serving of mashed potatoes and an equally measured helping of sweet corn out of a can. With their dinner before them, the three kids knew that they were not allowed to take a bite until Mother, with her plate with equally proportioned amounts of food, sat down and took a bite. Not until then were any of the children allowed to take a bite.

There was never any “saying of grace.” Those three children never even knew what “saying of grace” was until they saw it on TV in subsequent years. It was many years before they realized that their mother was a fanatical atheist.

For years their mother had told them stories of what it was like to grow up in the middle of Europe in the middle of World War II. She told them of how several families would huddle together in an old abandoned barn with nothing but a loaf of bread between them and how they divided that loaf equally among all of them. As a young girl she may have only gotten a bite or two but they were the most delicious bites of bread she ever had.

She would tell stories of how her father came across a small slab of bacon. They fried up that bacon and had a feast and they saved all the drippings of bacon fat. In subsequent days as that bacon fat congealed they would spread it over a slice of bread, sprinkle some salt on it, and it would be the closest thing to eating meat that they would encounter for days or weeks.

She would tell stories of how she saved the framed photograph of Adolph Hitler that she used to have next to her bed and in the most dire of times she would hold that photograph to her heart and pray that somehow Hitler would win the war and save all of them and life could somehow be normal again.

And then she would tell stories of how the evil Russians eventually came marching into the area and rounded up all the Germans, stripped them of their land, their homes and all their possessions and put them in cattle cars on the railroad with nothing but the clothes on their backs and shipped them all to Germany where they would live in repatriation camps for several years. She would vividly tell her children of all the horrors of war and she would tell them repeatedly through the years they were growing up that, if only Hitler had won the war, the world would be such a better place.

Peter wondered if the horrors of which she told were much worse than the horrors she put her own children through.

As Mother took a bite of mashed potatoes, the three children immediately commenced eating their dinner. Peter first gulped about two-thirds of his glass of milk. He then commenced to eat like a famished wolverine, which is to say that he ate like a ten-year-old boy. No amount of food is ever enough for a ten-year-old boy. He sucked his food down his throat like a well-built American-made vacuum cleaner. When he was done he finished his milk.

And then he looked around the dinner table. Mother was barely halfway finished with her meal as was Jennifer. For some disgusting reason, Mother and Jennifer always finished their meal at almost the same exact moment. Jennifer always did everything to please Mother. Looking at his baby sister, Sarah, Peter saw that she had taken all of the ten or twelve bites that was her norm and she was now playing with her food.

Looking at baby Sarah’s plate, Peter realized that he could easily eat up everything on her plate in addition to what he had already eaten and then maybe, just maybe he would be full. Sarah was already full and just playing with her food so why did she have all that food that he could have easily gobbled up? It wasn’t fair. He was a ten-year-old boy who needed enormous amounts of food and she was just a five-year-old. Why did Mother expect them to eat the same amount of food?

And Peter also wanted more milk. Having finished first, Peter just sat there watching the rest of his family eat in silence. Mother and Jennifer ate very slowly and deliberately while Sarah just played with her remaining food. Peter wanted more food and more milk but could only sit there watching and stewing in his own juices. He looked longingly at Sarah’s plate of unfinished food.

And then Mother and Jennifer almost simultaneously finished their meals.

And then suddenly the phone rang.

The family had recently upgraded to having two phones. There was one on the kitchen wall and there was one in the parents’ bedroom upstairs.

Screeching her chair back, Mother got up, “Remember, no one gets up from this table until everyone is done eating everything on their plate!” She pointed at baby Sarah who was playing with her mashed potatoes.

Mother then left the scene to run quickly upstairs to answer the telephone in her bedroom.

Mother was barely gone before Peter and Jennifer got into an argument. They argued about Democracy and fairness and everything that was wrong with the world, they argued about everything that was wrong with boys and everything that was wrong with girls, and they argued about food and the appropriate behavior involved. They argued about what was fair and what was real and what was right. They argued about which of them deserved the praise of the “Great Mother.” And then they looked at their baby sister who was still playing with her food.

Jennifer addressed her younger sister, “Come on, Sarah, eat your food. We don’t wanna sit here forever.”

And then Peter decided to do something brave. With Jennifer looking at him as though he were a convicted felon, he decided to be one. He got up from his chair, grabbed his eight ounce glass and proceeded to the refrigerator. Setting his glass on the kitchen counter, he opened the refrigerator and took out the carton of milk. He poured himself a glass-full then put the carton of milk back in the refrigerator. Walking like a stud who had just gotten laid, he returned to the kitchen table with his glass of milk. Sitting down at the table, he proceeded to down the entire glass of milk. With the side of his hand he wiped the milk mustache off his face.

Jennifer was beside herself, “Peter, how dare you! How dare you?! You just broke the rules! You are in so much trouble!”

The glass of milk tasted better than any Peter had ever drunk. After a snort of derision he looked fiercely into Jennifer’s eyes and exclaimed, “Oh yeah? Well, no one needs to know. I was thirsty and I poured myself some more milk. So what! What are you going to do about it? Cry? If you weren’t such a Mama’s girl you would stand up for yourself, too. While you keep kissing Mother’s butt you know inside that Mother is sick. She’s sick!”

“What are you saying?!”

“I’m saying that Mother is sick!”

“Petie! How can you say that? She’s our mother! Yes, Mother had a horrible childhood but that doesn’t make her sick! You’re mean! You’re disgusting!”

“No I’m not. I’m just saying the truth. You know that Mother is sick. You know she has a problem but you just won’t admit it. You just want to be her favorite so you can get what you want.”

“How dare you!”

“How dare I say the truth? Really? Come on, you know it, she’s not a normal mother. You have friends with normal mothers just like I do. We both know that she is not normal. She’s a Nazi for Christ’s sake!”

“Don’t take the lord’s name in vain!”

“What?! When does taking the ‘lord’s name in vain’ have anything to do with our mother? She has sent us off to church every Sunday for forever but she has never once come with us to church. She refuses to step foot in church. She doesn’t believe in God. She only believes in Hitler.”

Jennifer looked down at her empty plate then all around and finally said, “Okay, maybe Mother is a little sick. But it’s only because what she went through. Maybe she’s a little sick but it’s a sickness in her mind. It’s not something that we can catch. It’s not like a disease or something. We can’t catch it like a cold. It’s her problem, not ours. We just have to put up with it until we’re old enough to move on….”

Just then a silence ensued as the sound of Mother’s footsteps coming down the stairs froze all activity at the dinner table.

The silence was broken when Peter looked at Jennifer with a death-like stare and said, “Really? Really? We really can’t catch it?”

Mother entered the kitchen and proceeded to the dining room but she glanced sideways at the refrigerator and noticed that there were some fresh fingerprints on it. She stopped. She looked at the fingerprints on the refrigerator door handle and then at her children seated at the dining room table, “Okay, who went into the refrigerator?”

Jennifer immediately pointed at Peter, “It was him! He got himself another glass of milk!”

Peter’s jaw dropped as he looked at Jennifer.

“Is that true, Peter?”

Peter stopped looking at his older sister in contempt. He put his head down onto his hand and confessed, “Yes, I got myself another stupid glass of milk.”

Mother grabbed a towel from the counter and wiped clean the handle to the refrigerator. “Okay, Peter. You decided you deserved another glass of milk. Well, you know what that means? It means that tomorrow you can only have one glass of milk instead of two. It means that the bowl of cereal you have for breakfast tomorrow will be one without any milk. Why? Because you just stole a glass of milk from your sisters and you have to pay for it by getting only one glass of milk tomorrow.” She paused, “Do you understand that, Peter?” she yelled.

With his head down, he responded, “Yes, Mother.”

Mother then picked up her dinner plate and glass and took it to the kitchen sink. She turned around to her children and yelled, “As always, no one gets up from the dinner table until EVERYONE has finished EVERYTHING on their dinner plate! And when everyone is finished Peter will wash and dry all the dishes! Is that understood?”

Jennifer and Peter nodded their heads and mumbled, “Yes, Mother.”

After Mother left the room to go upstairs, Jennifer and Peter looked up at each other with intense scorn and hatred. Then they turned their heads to look at their baby sister Sarah who was now attempting to shove a kernel of corn up her right nostril.

Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction.