David Grossman - The Book of Intimate Grammar

And three days after Aron’s return, Mama and Papa sent Grandma Lilly to the hospital. They were afraid to tell anyone what they were planning, especially Yochi, and they waited till she’d left for ballet and Aron had gone to the supermarket with a long shopping list before calling an ambulance; only, Aron arrived home just in time to see them helping the driver pull Grandma into the van.

As soon as Aron noticed the commotion he understood. It was almost as if he had been preparing himself for this moment. He did not approach. What was the point. It was hopeless. Rigidly he walked past the ambulance, and Mama and Papa averted their eyes. He slouched up the stairs, pursued by Grandma’s screams, and set the shopping bags on the Formica table in the kitchen, but then suddenly he couldn’t stand it anymore, and he rushed to his window and peeked out from behind the curtain.

Grandma was going berserk down there, cursing and kicking and scratching everything in sight. For a moment old words poured out of her and it was hard to tell whether she was in her right mind or not, preferably not, though, maybe: the whole world heard her scream that they were throwing her out, her, after all the years she’d sweated and slaved for them making the kishelech Hinda peddled at fancy prices, not that she ever paid her for her work so she could go out and buy herself a dress or a pair of earrings. Mama tried to hush her, grinning apologetically on every hand, but Grandma continued to blast her inHebrew and Polish: For twenty years I held my tongue, because if anyone finds out what even Mauritzy doesn’t know yet (Mauritzy was her name for Papa), you’ll be arrested as a murderess.

Mama turned white and her hair stood on end. Then she lashed back at Grandma Lilly: “You shameless thing, you’re sixty years old, sixty, not sixteen, you hear!” And Grandma made a face and said, perfectly lucid, “And you’re the dried-up prune you always were, Hinda, even at sixteen!” Aron, who was listening behind the curtain, stuck his fingers in his ears and sobbed out loud, because they both had a point, especially Grandma: life for Mama was a sea of tsuris. What’s happiness, he heard her say to Yochi the night of Papa’s accident; a moment here, a moment there, and before you know, it’s over. “Is this my thanks for taking you in and feeding you all these years!” she yelled at Grandma now, her hair flying Gorgon-like around her face. “For bathing you and dressing you and licking your ass, is this what I get?!” Papa tried to separate them, but they flared up at each other like ancient torches, in front of the neighbors yet, and the children, even Zacky Smitanka was there, leaning over his handlebars, and trust Sophie Atias to step out just then on her way to the grocery store, naturally, she wouldn’t miss an opportunity like this to watch the Ashkenazim going at it, her and her gaudy Sephardic slippers; and finally, when the ambulance drove off with Papa and Grandma Lilly in the back, a kind of hush descended over the street, and Aron threw himself on his bed, utterly exhausted.

He lay there motionless. He could hear Mama pacing around her bedroom, pleading her case before an invisible jury, accusing, explaining, blowing her nose. He tucked his head under the pillow with Grandma Lilly’s fancywork: there were hundreds, no, thousands of those pillowslips and coverlets: long-tailed parrots, luxuriant palm trees, brilliant butterflies, tropical fish … Deprived of her embroidery, Grandma withered, but hunching over her bright-hued threads again, she lit up like a lamp, and Mama would sigh and say, What are we going to do with these pillowslips, Mamchu, who’s going to buy them all? But Grandma ignored her, sewing with fervor, filling the house with her plump little pillows; there wasn’t much else to do, she rarely went out, and practically lived on the Pouritz, nibbling chocolates, licking her fingers like a child even in front of company, or skimming the Yiddish paper for gossip about the rich and famous. Mama wouldn’t let her lift a finger around the house, except for the Thursday “thorough,”and didn’t allow her in the kitchen, there was room for only one woman there. And yet how could somebody like Grandma Lilly, like Grandma Lilly used to be, bury herself in the house day after day, Aron asked Yochi, and Yochi squinted at him, the gloom in her dispelled by a knowing twinkle, and said, Watch, li’l brother, watch her face and her hands, and then look closely at the embroidery. And Aron gazed into Yochi’s eyes, wondering at her wisdom, and shyly asked her why she acted like that. Like what? The way she did around Mama, pretending … playing a role. What role, what do you mean? You know, as if you were, well, dumb or something, and he shuddered at his chutzpah, but Yochi threw her arms around him and hugged him tight, and murmured into his neck while he smelled her haimish fragrance, You’re a smart kid, Aron, smarter than I am in certain ways, but there’s one thing I know that maybe you don’t. She giggled, or did she gasp, his neck was damp, I know how to stay alive around here.

Silence. Papa wasn’t home from the hospital yet. Yochi was still at ballet. And Mama was pacing in her room, up and down, to and fro. Again he tucked his head beneath the pillow and sniffed the mesh of embroidery, remembering something that happened once, on this very bed he was lying on, it was mean of him to think about it now that she was practically dead and about to become a saint, but long ago, when he was six or seven and Mama and Papa went away for their annual vacation at the Sea Breeze pension, and Grandma Lilly stayed home in charge, well actually Yochi was in charge, she was only ten, but even then she was more mature than Grandma, and Grandma put on such a show for them, here in this room, he shuddered to remember, she climbed up on the bed and acted out a scene from the detention camp in Cyprus, how she was released and sailed to Palestine after the war, and how — oh, why didn’t Yochi stop her — she was introduced to Mama.

Aron couldn’t remember the details, all he managed to bring to light was an image of Grandma Lilly with her dress between her knees, jumping up on his bed and announcing in her artful baby voice, Now I show how I met your Hindaleh.

Aron turned to Yochi, too young to understand, but troubled by Grandma’s roguish eyes. Yochi hesitated: early on she had chosen Grandma as her ally, partly to spite Mama, and she had her reasons for wanting Aron there to watch. Grandma covered her face as if inprayer, slowly seeping herself in memory, and suddenly she broke into a smile and started prancing on the bed. She carried herself with grace, old as she was, and you could tell she was remembering how she used to dance on the stage. “Ho, the zop I had me, you should have seen it, kinderlach, the braid was thick like so, down to my tuchis!” Her hand slid longingly to her nape, where Mama had shorn her hair in a charmless bowl shape long ago, Mama was her hairdresser too. “I used to dance the polka-waltz at the Kaffe Theater! And my cavalier, Mauritzy Wolfin, loved to watch his stomping ‘shiksa mit a ponytail’!” She threw her silvery head back and laughed. Aron drew closer to Yochi. “And when we lay in bed,” she whispered, “he spread my zop around me, black as sable, and said, This is the night sky, Lilly, and you’re my demilune …”

Aron’s mouth dropped and Yochi smiled. She knew all those stories, like the one about how Grandma ran away from home when she was thirteen to join a traveling theater, and how she had Papa out of wedlock, though Mama better not find out she knew, it made her sick to see the blank in Papa’s identity card. “You see, kinderlach,” said Lilly, “I was only forty-one when I come to Eretz Yisrael. Forty-two at most, and still a beauty, even after three years in a dark cellar in Poland, and after the camp in Cyprus, eyes like fire, I had, a figure like fine champagne, they said, everywhere I go heads turn; and boobies, Yochileh, firm like this! And a pair of legs on me, aiaiai …” And she rolled up her dress again, gazing wistfully at her legs, which were still pretty good. “Even Lieutenant Stanley, the one at the camp in Cyprus, said my body was good enough for a certificate, so I board a ship for Palestine.” She sailed the bed with a dreamy smile. “And when I step off on land, I see Mauritzy, only the curls he had in Poland were gone! Kaput! And beside him was standing your mama, your Hindaleh.” She pronounced the name with a little smile, and Aron glanced anxiously at Yochi, but she didn’t glance back. “Mauritzy wore a coat like an old man, it was the first time I saw him since he was sixteen, when he turned Communist and ran away, and he didn’t write a letter from where he was in the war. I never knew, was he alive? was he dead? But now I took one look, like this”—she shook her head, arched a furious eyebrow, and melted into a smile—“and I saw Mauritzy was gestorben. Finished. Back in Poland he was strong, a little meshuggeneh maybe, like an animal, but a cavalier, with a fine smile and teeth like Jan Kipura. Andwhen we walk through the streets together engagé , the people take him for my husband, and he had muscles, Yochi, the Polacks never guessed he was a Jidovsky, and now when I step down from the ship I take one look at him, and vish!” Again she arched her eyebrow and squinted. “I know it: he’s through, kaput! And when he runs to me crying, Mamaleh, Mamchu, I cover his mouth and tell him, Sha! Shtill! Don’t call me Mamchu! Call me Lilly! What, everyone should know I’m the mother of this shlimazel. So then Mauritzy says to me”—she mimicked Papa’s lumpy, long-suffering face, and Aron giggled and felt a pang of guilt, and turned to Yochi, but Yochi stared past him, studying something of infinite interest out there—“And now, Lilly, meet my wife, I married her in Israel, and she’s practically a Sabra, she came from Poland when she was only two, and her name is Hinda Mintz, now Kleinfeld, the name she has from me.” Grandma Lilly nodded. “And your mama put her sweaty hand in mine and said, I will call you Mamchu now, only please remember, Mamchu, in Eretz Yisrael his name is Moshe, not Mauritzy. Tfu!” spat Grandma. Aron recoiled and Grandma gave a throaty chuckle. He hated the sound of it. Why was he stuck with her for a grandmother, why couldn’t he get one who was kind and loving, who liked to spoil you like a regular grandmother?