On days my mother had meetings after school, someone came to stay with my brother and me until she got home. The idea was to keep us out of trouble. Tom had started a fire in a neighbor’s garage one summer—a small fire, a friendly fire, pure science on his part. Nevertheless, he stood accused and was no longer above suspicion. In my case, I was caught smoking down by the river. When my father pressed me on the subject, I confessed I had stolen the cigarettes from Joe Hrcka’s Mobil station down the street. But only once, I insisted. I was still in elementary school. I didn’t want my parents to think they had a smoker and a petty thief on their hands, which in fact they did. An amateur liar too. Danny Leman and I, on more than a couple of occasions, had walked out of Pat’s Food Center with packs of Swisher Sweets stuffed in our pants.
Thursdays the woman who cleaned our house sat with us for an hour or two. Her name was Velma Studaker. She was not quite five feet tall, a vigorous, unmarried woman of few words who dressed in brown and had a helmet of brown hair. She went to our church. She loved us and exuded a force field of rectitude. On her days I think my brother and I stayed straight just to save her the agony of having to rat on us.
Other afternoons our unlikely companion was Mrs. Mack. She lived across the street with her daughter, Marge, who had two children—one a rangy teenager who got in a lot of fights (his nickname was Mugs), the other a daughter who had been crippled by polio and sat in a wheelchair. Mrs. Mack was an unlikely choice because it was clear to anyone who spoke to Marge that there was alcohol in the house, a lot of it, and most definitely the hard stuff. My parents did not drink. They didn’t socialize with people who drank. We avoided restaurants that served alcohol. But on those afternoons my parents needed someone, Mrs. Mack crossed the street, climbed the steps on our back porch, and came in the house.
Unlike Velma, there was an air of fatigue and anger about Mrs. Mack. She sat in a wing chair in the living room, stiff and immovable, and watched As the World Turns and The Merv Griffin Show. She ignored us, except on cold afternoons when she ordered us to turn up the heat in the house. We tried to ignore her too, and we would have escaped to the swing set in the backyard if it weren’t for a special talent she possessed.
During commercial breaks, she would trudge into the kitchen, take down a drinking glass, and fill it half full with water, into which she stirred a teaspoon of baking soda. Steadying herself with one hand on the kitchen counter, she raised the glass and downed her drink. Having returned to the living room, she sat and waited, ruminating, scowling at the TV. Five minutes would pass, maybe ten. Without warning she would raise the deepest, most resonant belches we had ever heard. The first time it happened I’m sure both my brother and I blushed and looked at each other, horrified, unable to believe our ears. Just about every day, unembarrassed, she eructed in our living room, delivering sonorous, roaring belches, while we hovered nearby, out of sight, within easy earshot. One time, after a particularly powerful one, she said, as if putting the matter to rest for us, “I have a heartburn.”
At that age, we were still finding our voices. We would come to appreciate the difference between an accidental eructation and a purposeful one.
One day in seventh-grade math, Ellen Schmidt turned to say something to me, opened her mouth, and emitted a tiny, audible—and unmistakable—burp. She turned red; we both laughed. On the other hand, there were belches that were created, that were willed. While Mrs. Mack’s were strictly utilitarian, and Schmidt’s was accidental, these were performance burps, and they could be impressive for duration, tonality, and, of course, volume. Two classmates I remember were particularly eloquent.
Many mornings after our family moved out of town, Mark Trogan and Dan Leman picked me up in the red pickup truck the Trogans used for utility purposes in their hotel and restaurant business. Sometimes driving back to town on our way to school, listening to Paul Revere and the Raiders on the radio, we took turns belching. Mark was the boss. There was no dispute. He produced numbers that were long, rounded, and ear-splitting. He had a wide mouth, which he opened and stretched to ensure maximum fullness of sound.
Mark was bested, to my knowledge, only by Bob Strecker. If a belch could have a kick or thrust, Bob’s did. When he squared his shoulders and let one go, his lips forming a tight, perfect O, the sound and the force of it were worthy of a physics experiment, for which, unfortunately—this being the predigital age—we lacked the technology. I’m sure the data would have been impressive.
Scientists have taken little interest in belching. The American Journal of Gastroenterology makes mention of “a behavioral peculiarity,” offering this clinical distinction: “The gastric belch is the result of a vagally mediated reflex leading to relaxation of the lower esophageal sphincter and venting of gastric air. The supragastric belch is a behavioral peculiarity. During this type of belch, pharyngeal air is sucked or injected into the esophagus, after which it is immediately expulsed before it has reached the stomach” (my emphasis). Indeed. In their study of the supragastric variety, I can just picture a team of gastroenterologists observing adolescent boys with time on their hands and easy access to air. The Journal adds: “Behavioral therapy has been proven to decrease belching complaints in patients with isolated excessive belching.” They don’t describe the therapeutic regimen, but I guess it would include grounding, withholding allowance and privileges, frequent endless lectures, and beatings.
Oddly, I have scant memory of my children learning to eructate. One child, I recall, could belch but not whistle; the other whistles but does not belch. There may be an obscure genetic determinant at work here, the way some people have, or lack, the ability to roll their tongues, or some family members have, or lack, attached earlobes.
I cannot imagine not being able to belch. The behavior is antisocial and puerile, but not without an element of joy. Maybe Mrs. Mack cracked a smile once in a while.