grandparents’ house for the food that we knew would be there—corned beef on rye and
kashkaval
, the hard salty cheese from the West Side Market, honey-sweet halvah, warm pita with tomatoes and feta, peaches and pears from the yard.
After stuffing ourselves, we’d slip out the back barefoot and run as fast as we could to the field and woods behind the house. On summer days there was always the scent of rose and honeysuckle in the air. We came and went as we pleased as long as our grandfather wasn’t raging at one of us for misplacing the butter dish, a pencil, or a spoon. “Hillbillies,” kids called us, but I thought of us like sisters of Mowgli from
The Jungle Book
. If things got worse, Rachel and I could always live in a wolf den in the middle of the woods.
Sometimes we spent the night at our grandparents’. Rachel and I slept upstairs in our grandmother’s room in two twin beds side by side. We covered ourselves with thin scratchy blankets while Grandma curled up onthe love seat in the guest room. Our grandfather slept alone in the master bedroom, in his four-post king-sized bed. No one was to enter uninvited or they’d get the belt. “Good night,” I’d say to him from the doorway, the sinister red rooster lamp glaring at me from his nightstand. “Good night, girlie,” Grandpa would say from his bed, cigarette dangling from his lips, the air around him thick with smoke.
At breakfast, I’d tilt my head back so Grandpa could spoon orange-blossom honey into my mouth with his callused meaty hands. When I had a cold, he placed a string of garlic around my neck. Garlic and honey could cure anything; so could the raw eggs he tossed back in the morning with whiskey, or the yogurt he made in a vat, warm cultures growing beneath his brown leather coat. My grandfather told me what I should eat from his garden to make me strong and healthy—parsley for “the halitosis,” plums for “the constipation,” mint and apples to keep the doctors away.
Outside the house there was always something stirring in the deep ripe earth—green shoots poking up, rows of tomatoes and green beans, clusters of flowers and herbs. At our grandparents’ there were three yards: the front lawn, tidy for show, with a silver ball on a white plaster pedestal; the middle one, with rose beds, dogwood and plum trees, and the birdbath Grandpa always forgot to fill; and the backyard, where the garden was, a shady magnolia, fruit trees, and a lush carpet of grass. The backyard was connected to the Bentes’ and the Budds’; Rachel and I reigned over all three. Beyond the wall of trees that lined the yards was where the owls and the deer hid. At night I’d think about the quiet deer, and imagined wolves living in warm dark caves, waiting for my sister and me to come.
In the summer of 1965 I am six and Rachel is seven. Our mother sleeps all day and wakes right before dinner. She paces in the apartment or outside, where everyone can see her muttering under her breath. Will she have to go to the hospital? Who will call? Our grandma is ashamed to call but she’s the only one who does. Grandma says, “What will the neighbors say now?” as the ambulance screeches into the driveway on Triskett Road and muscular strangers come bounding up the stairs. Where does she go? When ourmother returns weeks later, she walks like a drifting boat. She says that the Nazis hooked her head up to machines at the hospital; they set her brain on fire.
“That mother of yours better straighten up her act,” our grandmother tells us. And every few weeks, our mother seems to snap out of it. She dresses up, applies for a temp job as a medical secretary or stenographer, and for a few days or a week or two she is a working mom. “What a waste of those hands,” our grandmother says. “She should be playing Severence Hall.”
When she’s feeling a little better, our mother takes my sister and me to the art museum or the zoo. Once in a while she ushers at
kashkaval
, the hard salty cheese from the West Side Market, honey-sweet halvah, warm pita with tomatoes and feta, peaches and pears from the yard.
After stuffing ourselves, we’d slip out the back barefoot and run as fast as we could to the field and woods behind the house. On summer days there was always the scent of rose and honeysuckle in the air. We came and went as we pleased as long as our grandfather wasn’t raging at one of us for misplacing the butter dish, a pencil, or a spoon. “Hillbillies,” kids called us, but I thought of us like sisters of Mowgli from
The Jungle Book
. If things got worse, Rachel and I could always live in a wolf den in the middle of the woods.
Sometimes we spent the night at our grandparents’. Rachel and I slept upstairs in our grandmother’s room in two twin beds side by side. We covered ourselves with thin scratchy blankets while Grandma curled up onthe love seat in the guest room. Our grandfather slept alone in the master bedroom, in his four-post king-sized bed. No one was to enter uninvited or they’d get the belt. “Good night,” I’d say to him from the doorway, the sinister red rooster lamp glaring at me from his nightstand. “Good night, girlie,” Grandpa would say from his bed, cigarette dangling from his lips, the air around him thick with smoke.
At breakfast, I’d tilt my head back so Grandpa could spoon orange-blossom honey into my mouth with his callused meaty hands. When I had a cold, he placed a string of garlic around my neck. Garlic and honey could cure anything; so could the raw eggs he tossed back in the morning with whiskey, or the yogurt he made in a vat, warm cultures growing beneath his brown leather coat. My grandfather told me what I should eat from his garden to make me strong and healthy—parsley for “the halitosis,” plums for “the constipation,” mint and apples to keep the doctors away.
Outside the house there was always something stirring in the deep ripe earth—green shoots poking up, rows of tomatoes and green beans, clusters of flowers and herbs. At our grandparents’ there were three yards: the front lawn, tidy for show, with a silver ball on a white plaster pedestal; the middle one, with rose beds, dogwood and plum trees, and the birdbath Grandpa always forgot to fill; and the backyard, where the garden was, a shady magnolia, fruit trees, and a lush carpet of grass. The backyard was connected to the Bentes’ and the Budds’; Rachel and I reigned over all three. Beyond the wall of trees that lined the yards was where the owls and the deer hid. At night I’d think about the quiet deer, and imagined wolves living in warm dark caves, waiting for my sister and me to come.
In the summer of 1965 I am six and Rachel is seven. Our mother sleeps all day and wakes right before dinner. She paces in the apartment or outside, where everyone can see her muttering under her breath. Will she have to go to the hospital? Who will call? Our grandma is ashamed to call but she’s the only one who does. Grandma says, “What will the neighbors say now?” as the ambulance screeches into the driveway on Triskett Road and muscular strangers come bounding up the stairs. Where does she go? When ourmother returns weeks later, she walks like a drifting boat. She says that the Nazis hooked her head up to machines at the hospital; they set her brain on fire.
“That mother of yours better straighten up her act,” our grandmother tells us. And every few weeks, our mother seems to snap out of it. She dresses up, applies for a temp job as a medical secretary or stenographer, and for a few days or a week or two she is a working mom. “What a waste of those hands,” our grandmother says. “She should be playing Severence Hall.”
When she’s feeling a little better, our mother takes my sister and me to the art museum or the zoo. Once in a while she ushers at
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