WHITE AS SNOW
The guy who owns Yacob Funds LLC is playing Mary Had a Little Lamby in twelve keys.
You know, I hate how Google makes me so paranoid. I am checking with Google to make sure Yacob Funds doesn’t exist, and praying that my reference to a children’s song doesn’t get pulled up by a home schooler who might know me because I taught piano to five of her nine children. Google, you are a blackmailing pimp.
Mary was for real. This, you can also Google. She lived in Massachusetts. When you see a watercolor drawing of her, with buttercups and a lamb, she’s six or seven years old. The real Mary, however, was eleven when the incident took place, so the question of why she didn’t tie the lamb to its post or put it back in its pen leads me to speculate that Mary was a prankster. Then, to capture the event for posterity, Mary’s friend John wrote a poem about it, and inexplicably, like a stupid cat video, Mary’s song infected the globe. (They had their songs, we have our Youtube.) Perhaps we can find one person on this globe who doesn’t have the tune stuck in their childhood neurons, in Upper Mongolia or Deepest Africa.
Mr. Yacob is turning deepest African red (water buffalo-kill red) stumbling through Mary’s song in the key of C-sharp, with a I-V7 accompaniment. “I’m going backwards. Not only am I not learning anything, I am actually going backwards.” I’m inclined to agree. I am failing him as a teacher.
I am checking out his thighs, looking past his hands. They are muscular, and they stretch tight against his pants. His hands are fat and hairy. I have to blow my nose. I get up and blow my nose, and wipe my hands with the alcohol sanitizer that sits on top of the piano.
Mr. Yacob is short. Possibly only three inches taller than me. When he goes home before his lessons instead of coming straight from work, he changes into a Yale sweatshirt and clogs. Have you ever seen a man wear clogs? Don’t ask me how, but it totally works on him. The Yale sweatshirt not so much, but he’s proud of his kids.
I am going to have to be a better teacher for Mr. Jacob.
At our last two lessons, he’s talked about being Jewish. Maybe because I wrote a four-hand arrangement of Havah Nagila for my kids. He said that the one thing Jewish parents provided for with no questions asked was tuition for college, and I’m thinking immediately of the three or four Jewish kids I knew with single moms who had to scrounge around for scholarships. I tell him I don’t know how the hell I am going to provide for my daughter’s education, what with Freddy’s job as an envelope-tearer-opener. (I filled out some job applications for him and was tempted to put “678 envelopes opened and sorted per hour” under “Additional Skills”.)
It’s funny like Kafka, I tell myself. Freddy works with Puerto Ricans and they bring in spicy pork and chicken for their breaks while he has to make do with cup-o-ramen because I don’t cook much these days. He flirts with a single 22-year-old mom named Jennifer Lopez who wears her thong so that is shows above her low-waisted jeans and fights to be in line at the microwave with little guy named Axil Rosa.
Mr. Yacob advises me with which stocks I should buy and tells me to start saving now. I don’t have anything to save. I have a keen business sense (really, I do) but that doesn’t help when you have nothing to begin with. The one thing that I could sell is myself, but I don’t want to. It’s a lot of unpleasant work, and you have to deal with people you can’t stand.