Grandma would curse him out too, her eyes burning, lacking all recognition, her grey hair all uncombed, undone, the waves of it sticking out from her shawl, shockingly, like electric wire. Then she’d scurry away, describing with gestures toward the sidewalk the extent of her bitterness. Daniel was always glad to see her go. What worried him was when, a half-block away, she would turn with a raised fist for a parting blast, and it would become a very rhetorically involved curse, and she would forget in what direction she had been going and come back toward him and the house and the whole thing would start all over again. She ran away all the time. To Claremont Park. Down the hillto the New York Central tracks. In her black dress telling the world all the mad family secrets. Sometimes she went around the corner to her one friend, Mrs. Bittelman, also a widow, but a younger woman, perhaps in her late fifties, a kindly red-faced woman who seemed to Daniel to be the only person who liked Grandma and who had the patience to take seriously the stream of imprecations coming out of Grandma’s mouth, and to sit with her and nod solemnly and with sighs, until the spell was over. And to bring her home. Mrs. Bittelman had, beside her kindness, impeccable credentials: her only son, Jerome, had been killed in the war. Mrs. Bittelman’s apartment was on the ground floor of the apartment house around the corner on 173rd Street. The Venetian blinds were always drawn shut. In one window was one of those service stars. During the war a blue star in a window meant that that family had a soldier serving somewhere in the Army. A gold star meant that the boy had been killed. Mrs. Bittelman’s star was blue, but the boy had been killed. She had never had the heart to set the matter straight. She was an old Jewish lady, though not as old as my grandma, and the faded blue star on a shield of white cloth with a red border and gold tassels hung from a stick in her window years after the war was over.
Sometimes Grandma went the other way. Then, in a few hours the phone would ring. Or sometimes a police car—a police car!—would pull up to the curb in front of the house, a green and white police car, and Grandma would emerge with great dignity, contemptuous of the cops who tried to help her out of their car. A green and white police car would pull up. Here is Grandma furiously shaking off the patronizing grip of the Bronx cop as she struggles out of their car.
SEVERAL EXPLANATIONS
In my life as Daniel, I heard several explanations for Grandma’s plunges into the pit. Susan, age fifteen, in her new ivy-league cool: “I never knew Grandmother, but from what yousay, I suspect it was menopause.” My mother, during a particularly bad spell—I have stopped by the door to watch my father holding the thrashing old woman down on her bed so that the Doctor can give her a shot; small and frail, she is putting up a terrific struggle; and my mother stands at the foot of the bed shouting “Mama, stop it. Stop this nonsense, stop it, Mama!” and then, seeing me stricken pale in the doorway, my mother leads me downstairs and explains why, at the age of five or six or whatever I am, I am subjected to such things … It is simple: Grandma goes mad when she can no longer consider the torment of her life. My mother’s catalogue of the old lady’s misfortunes—the abandoned parents whose brown picture she still keeps in her drawer, the death of her first-born in the street, the death of her two sisters in the big fire, the death of her second-born from the flu, the death of her husband, my grandfather who would have loved me if he’d lived. “What killed him was not tuberculosis, what killed him and killed them all was poverty and exploitation, and that means being poor and being kept poor by people who grow fat and rich from your labor. It’s not fair, is it?”
“No, Ma.”
“Your grandma slaved all her life. To end up with nothing.”
Ignore
Sometimes Grandma went the other way. Then, in a few hours the phone would ring. Or sometimes a police car—a police car!—would pull up to the curb in front of the house, a green and white police car, and Grandma would emerge with great dignity, contemptuous of the cops who tried to help her out of their car. A green and white police car would pull up. Here is Grandma furiously shaking off the patronizing grip of the Bronx cop as she struggles out of their car.
SEVERAL EXPLANATIONS
In my life as Daniel, I heard several explanations for Grandma’s plunges into the pit. Susan, age fifteen, in her new ivy-league cool: “I never knew Grandmother, but from what yousay, I suspect it was menopause.” My mother, during a particularly bad spell—I have stopped by the door to watch my father holding the thrashing old woman down on her bed so that the Doctor can give her a shot; small and frail, she is putting up a terrific struggle; and my mother stands at the foot of the bed shouting “Mama, stop it. Stop this nonsense, stop it, Mama!” and then, seeing me stricken pale in the doorway, my mother leads me downstairs and explains why, at the age of five or six or whatever I am, I am subjected to such things … It is simple: Grandma goes mad when she can no longer consider the torment of her life. My mother’s catalogue of the old lady’s misfortunes—the abandoned parents whose brown picture she still keeps in her drawer, the death of her first-born in the street, the death of her two sisters in the big fire, the death of her second-born from the flu, the death of her husband, my grandfather who would have loved me if he’d lived. “What killed him was not tuberculosis, what killed him and killed them all was poverty and exploitation, and that means being poor and being kept poor by people who grow fat and rich from your labor. It’s not fair, is it?”
“No, Ma.”
“Your grandma slaved all her life. To end up with nothing.”
Ignore
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