"I just vomit a little."

There's no place like home. There's no place like home ... click, click, click. (Or in my case, wearing Chacos ... thunk, thunk, thunk.) This is my mantra while in my old hometown of West Memphis, Arkansee. Just across the mighty Missisip from Memphis lies a cesspool of a delta town that I am convinced was built on top of an Indian burial ground. I think, for good measure, the drunken founders of the burg dug up all the bodies and used them as fill for the levies. I'd list all of the atrocities that have taken place there in my lifetime but it's just too long. Let's just say that my being stalked by a pedophile was not high on the police department's priority list when I was a kid. "Somebody's been making obscene phone calls to your 10 year old and parks outside her school, you say? Sorry, we got our hands full with today's murders. Don't even get me started on traffic control for the dog track." This, in a town of 16,000.

So, I go back there once a month to do chores for my Austrian step mother. I never see anybody I went to school with when I'm there. School being the operative word here because anybody with an 8th grade education got the hell out of there.

The chores this weekend were taking down and washing all the curtains, washing windows, driving the stepmother all over creation, and choking down her cooking. "I make balls, dey really good. Dey already cooked, I just vomit a little." I will try to describe the balls. They are dumplings filled with minced meat and enclosed in a gooey shell composed of mashed bedaydas and egg. The balls are floating in a brown grabie. (The words in italics are what I call "Erni-isms" and my attempt at describing my stepmother's accent. Good luck figuring them out - we're still trying. Here's a freebie, vomit=warm it.) I made the mistake of asking what was in them. "Just meat I tryin to use up - a little beef, some ham, oh, and bologna. There someting else, I don member what." I'm thinking squirrel. Before I know it, she's dumped two of the lethal tennis balls on my plate. "You need more grabie?" The filling was the color of raw liver due, no doubt, to the artificial coloring in the bologna. I thought that I could at least have one of the homegrown demaydas on the counter, but no, she insisted I eat one from the frijator. Now every good Southerner knows you don't put tomatoes in the refrigerator because it ruins the tomatoey goodness. You let 'em rot on the window sill before you do that. "You want some murcal vip for you demaydas?" I figured it couldn't hurt them any more so I said, "Yes, please." As luck would have it she had to get the Miracle Whip from the refrigerator in the store room. I used the opportunity to chop up one of my dumplings and toss it into the cats' litter box (conveniently located right next to the kitchen table). "You like dem balls?" I responded it was the best ball I ever ate but just didn't have room for two. The cats were really pissed. "What is this shit in our litter box?" (Okay, I made that last part up. There's no way I could have gotten away with tossing anything in that litterbox. Erni knows when her cats are even thinking about taking a dump and practically holds the litter scooper under their ass. Apparently, examining feces is a Bavarian thing. Ever seen a German toilet? The litterbox is next to the kitchen table, though. I didn't make that up. I once suggested moving the litterbox to the bathroom and she was totally repulsed. Cats defecating in a box next to you while you eat, on the other hand, is completely acceptable.)

So now you're thinking, "How old are you? Just tell the old bat you're ain't eatin' no stinkin' balls." Well, you don't know Erni. She is 4 feet, 10 inches of Nazi certitude. I, on the other hand, am 5 feet 0 inches of conflict avoidance. No wonder we get along so well.

Holy shit! My husband just returned from Walmart and said that somebody got shot and killed in the parking lot earlier. There were about 9 police cars there and the officers were working the crime scene. The bad juju done followed me home!