The Day My Mother Cried and Other Stories: and Other Stories

The Passing of Bubbeleh

41 The Passing of Bubbeleh ubbeleh was the family pet. She happened to be a guinea pig, which is not the most fashionable beast in the kingdom of pets, but to my wife she had it all. Bubbeleh was about twelve inches long and weighed in at maybe thirty ounces; her furry body was a tawny brown with white flecks on the head and face and she was always smiling. At least that was what my wife said. The rest of us never saw that smile, but my wife insisted it was in Bubbeleh’s eyes. “They smile with the eyes like Mona Lisa,” she said with a finality that was thunderous. The guinea pig came to us by chance. She was brought home by my son from his fourth grade classroom lying timidly in a Florsheim shoe box. My son, who is the humanitarian of the family, especially when it comes to animals, told us that none of the kids in his class wanted “the pig” as they called her. It was the last day of school before the summer vacation and the guinea pig whose name was Brenda had to find a home. My son raised his hand and was given the animal and the shoe box. My wife was not elated with my son’s magnanimity but changed her mind when she set eyes on Bubbeleh. It was love at first sight. The first thing she did was change her name. In her opinion, Brenda was a name for an overweight cat who lives on Park Avenue. “We’ll give her a name with a Jewish ring to it,” she said emphatically. “She’s such a cute bubbeleh.” And so the guinea pig with the smiling eyes became Jewish and her new name was “Bubbeleh.” According to my son and his teacher Miss Ernestine Hobbs, the animal was purchased in a pet shop that 42 | William D. Kaufman sold mostly dogs. Miss Hobbs paid ten dollars for her, a bargain she said, because guinea pigs usually went for twenty. My son said Bubbeleh came from South America, probably a place called Bolivia but he wasn’t sure. “And she will eat anything that is green,” he said. “Green,” my wife asked. “Right. And she defecates a lot.” “Defecates?” my wife said with a furrowed brow. “Where did you get that word?” “From Miss Hobbs. She says it all the time when she talks about Brenda.” “Bubbeleh, you mean,” my wife corrected. “Right. Bubbeleh. She is quite a defecator, Miss Hobbs says.” “I think we’ve covered the subject,” my wife answered. “Okay.” But he didn’t let go. “She eats cabbage leaves or lettuce or celery, but no onions. They make her belch.” He paused for a few seconds and then added, “And she defecates endlessly.” “Endlessly?” my wife asked. “That’s what Miss Hobbs says.” “I get the picture,” my wife said and terminated the conversation. Bubbeleh resided in what had been and still is, I suppose, a large fish tank where my son’s goldfish cavorted for a while and usually after a week’s interval bellied up and died. My son blamed it on the food or the room or the cooking odors or the sunlight or the lack of sunlight or the genus of the guppies he bought almost weekly. Whatever it was, fatality was the end game. My wife referred to the fish tank as the Castle and kept it spickand -span except for Bubbeleh’s defecatory emissions. It was my job to clean out the Castle every few days and add new nesting materials. I used a mix of cedar chips and sawdust, but Bubbeleh began eating the sawdust so I leaned more heavily on the cedar chips. Guinea pigs are very timid animals, but smart. To begin with, they never try to escape. My wife would extract Bubbeleh from the Castle and place her on the lawn where she would nibble on the grass. She did her grazing within a small circle and squealed and squeaked all The Passing of Bubbeleh | 43 the time she was working on her turf. Mornings around six she would signal my wife that it was wake-up time and chirped and squawked and squished until my wife picked her up and gave her some water. She used a teaspoon and dribbled the liquid down Bubbeleh’s mouth, which often caused her to...