A Family Poem For the Holidays

A Real Wyner

Until recently, I used to wish
my mother had not changed her name back
from Lockwood to Lachowitz,
had not decided the shtetl-past
found in three syllables was worth
the linguistic hideousness.
I could have been truly Anglicized,
Lauren Lockwood—a Hollywood star,
even though it sounds more like a porn
star. I wished, growing up, her name-
change had remained, spread, renamed
all the Lachowitzs of the world
Lockwood for good like my well-off
Westchester cousins passing for WASPs.

Holly Ilene Lachowitz, my mother,
fresh out of college, alone in midtown
Manhattan—aside from a crazy
roommate scavenged from the yellow pages
who one time spotted my mother naked
on her way to the bathroom
and remarked on her likeness
to vanilla ice cream, I want to lick
you, she said. After that, Holly
really was alone—a poor accountant,
a woman in a man’s world, a Jew too.
She was afraid she would not get hired
with the name Lachowitz in bold
on her resume. So she became

Holly Lockwood, a perfect match
for her blond hair, green eyes, lucky
remnants of Polish and Austrian
ancestry. But that nose, that hooked nose,
almost looks likes a penis if you stare
down at it from the front, there’s this ridge,
this mushroom bulge at the tip. Lachowitz
would have made it grow like Pinocchio,
though Lockwood was the lie, and with a job
it seemed to shrink, to pale in importance
compared to her ability to fill
out timetables as well as her blouse.
Nowadays, a Jew doesn’t have to think
twice about landing a downtown job,

doesn’t have to feign WASP connections—
Yankee swaps at Christmas time, glossary
of yacht club members, their mothers, their boats
named after those mothers, preceding
diminutive mandatory—or turn
all attention to that long, blond hair.
Nowadays a Jew can afford
to return to Lachowitz from Lockwood,
can eat latkes for Hanukkah
in the office and take time off
for the High Holidays, can stop lying
about the Lockwood family ancestry,
blaming the nose, if asked, on some German
who penetrated the family gene pool

hundreds of years ago, Dem Deutschen Volk.
Thank god I’m not Lauren Lachowitz,
though my father’s Wyner has given me
my fair share of bad jokes and rude remarks
and almost legal recourse to whine
about it. Vilna to Viner to Wyner,
Afrikaans for wine-r, from Russian
Lithuania to South Africa,
a map of the Jewish Diaspora,
assimilation in the consonants.
We made it up, like the Lockwood, but less-
overtly Anglicized, over-
compensation for a lack
of Mayflower money. But thank god

I’m no Lachowitz. I still find the tone
hideous, and with my minor lisp,
I can barely get that “z” out without
incident. My mother feels the same way.
Why else would she have condensed nine letters
to one, an initial, a single “L,”
period, in between her first
and acquired last name. Holly L.
Wyner. I bet she couldn’t wait to change
her name again, for a single man, not
fifty in an office who all turned
at exactly the same moment
to look at her rolling buttocks
as she shook out her hair and walked on by.

How disappointed she must have been
to marry my father and realize
the hoped-for change would be a setback,
possibly, to some points of view—not mine—
Lachowitz to Wyner, obnoxious,
her Queens accent, he with his Boston tone.
Me with a medley of the two,
especially when I’m drunk and that lisp
can’t be kept a secret under my tongue.
Why couldn’t his Sephardic side have stayed
in Spain, remained Abravanel,
so exotic, so sexy, Sephardim
compared to shtetl-Ashkenazis
with their lisp-unfriendly last names. Damn you

Isabella. Lauren Abravanel.
It doesn’t really go. I’d need a new
first name, but in the tradition
of assimilation, I was named
after a movie star, Bacall,
my mother after the film industry
itself, her sister, Marilyn,
after its most tragic bombshell.
I wonder if my grandparents knew
Miss Monroe was born Norma Jean Baker
or if they cared at all when they filled out
their daughters’ birth certificates,
unable to predict how many times,
Holly would change her last name

for the men around her, if they cared,
if one even discussed such things at all,
if they felt nervous bringing two Jewish
girls into the world, a man’s world,
a WASP’s world where Holly would have to be
blond and silent, or that loudmouth Jew,
but never the two in the same office.
I doubt it crossed their minds, as my grandpa
sold those Wall Street stockmen their watches,
worked as a jeweler, mastered the stock
market through small talk. I doubt it,
as his wife used her master’s degree
to stay at home, raise kids, play house.
But now, after assimilation

and ensuing years of atheism,
thank the god I don’t believe in
I’m not Lauren Lockwood,
a name for the American dream,
but a real Wyner, a real Jew, Amer-
i can, two thousand years of scattered-ness,
assimilation in the consonants.