Where Were My Eye Balls?

   My parents used to travel back and forth from Russia to visit my sister and me before moving to America. My mother gradually adjusted to the generally high quality of customer service in this country and quickly learned the benefits of being a customer. She couldn’t believe her eyes - people were polite and attentive indeed! What she liked most was that she had the right to return or exchange items that didn’t meet her expectations - something almost unthinkable for her!
  One day, she came back to Russia and found out that my Dad brought home expired yogurt. Mom didn’t even want to listen to my father’s reasons - that it was not America, and nobody would take the dairy products back - she sent him back to the store anyway.

“Where were your eyeballs?” the sales clerk yelled vulgarly at my father, looking down at him. 

   It became our family joke for years: “Where were your eyeballs?”

   Last April, my mother moved in with me to start a new life after we lost our father to cancer. First things first, we needed to buy a new bed for her and went shopping. We found a nice mattress store and purchased a new mattress sealed in plastic. The joy ended right there. My mother and I noticed a strong mildew odor in her bedroom as soon as we furnished it. 

   My mother got horrific headaches day after day, but I was not able to be attentive to her, having my own allergy symptoms increasing day after day. My throat swelled and I lost my voice for weeks to come, and I didn’t even sleep in the room. For a public speaker to lose her voice is the same as for a jeweler to lose her fingers. I make my living through my voice. That was scary.

  Well, the molded mattress was new - that didn’t seem like a problem that couldn’t be fixed.

   “It is America - not Russia!” I told my mother, smiling.
   In Russia we say, "He who laughs last, laughs best." I quickly learned that Americans use the same saying: it took me five visits to the mattress store to get nowhere.

   I soon could tell that the owner of the mattress store “stopped liking my face."

   I still believed that storeowners would naturally try their best to satisfy their customers. Instead, we experienced déjà vu: before our eyes, the American man transformed into a rude and arrogant salesman (too familiar to us Russians). He looked angrily and hatefully down at my mother, who sat innocently in the armchair, not having a clue about what was going on, and yelled,

   “Do not sit on my furniture! Get off my furniture! Get out of my store!”

   He was so angry I had to call the police, not knowing that the owner could behave as he wished on his property. That was explained to me later by the city police officer.

   “Arrest her! Arrest her for trespassing!” the owner didn’t stop yelling, even in front of the police officer.

   “I can’t.”

   “I’d rather be arrested,” I said calmly and offered to turn myself in, envisioning how my friends would picket the mattress place. I knew I would win. It is not Russia; my dignity is preserved in America.  
   After we left the store, my mother complained: 

   “Where is the new mattress? Did the owner agree to give us a new one?”

I hugged her and smiled, “Where were our eyeballs, Mom?” She looked at me with sudden understanding, and we both laughed through tears.