Whirligig by Paul Fleischman Page A

hated taking pills. I rushed down her hall and opened the door.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” I almost yelled the words.
    She was still in her pink nightgown, propped up in her old canopied bed. Her head turned slowly from the intercom to me. “Jenny. I called for Deborah.”
    â€œShe’s gone out.” I scanned her. The skin hung in accordion folds on her cheeks and drooped below her eyelids but didn’t seem to be flushed or pale. Her small eyes were bright.
    â€œWhy did you call? What’s wrong?”
    â€œWhat?”
    She refused to admit that she needed a hearing aid. I sat on her bed and bellowed as if she were across the Grand Canyon. “How do you feel?”
    â€œWeak,” she said. “No strength.”
    Talk like this was a change for her. Until lately she’d always answered “Like Jesse Owens” or “Like Joe DiMaggio.” She was an amazingly positive person for someone who’d been in Auschwitz. I took her hand and stealthily looked, for the thousandth time, at the place on her wrist where her number had been tattooed. She’d had it removed, and seemed to have done the same with her memory of that time. She never brought it up and wouldn’t answer my questions.
    â€œWhat do you need?”
    â€œIs Joseph home?” she asked in return.
    â€œHe’s still at work.”
    She looked down and mumbled her disappointment. Then her head rose. Her eyes scuttled over me. “Do you drive, kindelah? ”
    â€œYes, Grandma.”
    â€œSo grown-up you are, Jenny.” She viewed me with pride. “So tall. Such beautiful brown hair.” She smiled. “Let’s go, then.”
    I stared back at her in panic. “But I don’t have a real license yet. Are you kidding? Go where?”
    â€œSomewhere.”
    I knew where, from my parents’ experience. To a pharmacy way out on El Cajon where the trustworthy son of a friend of hers worked. Or on a scavenger hunt for a brand of cracker that hadn’t been made in twenty years, or a cheese she remembered from back in Poland. Nothing had tasted good to her since the cancer treatments had started.
    â€œGrandma, listen! I’ll call my father. He’ll stop by on his way home. What do you need?”
    â€œThis he can’t bring me. First, help me dress.”
    â€œBut I only have a learner’s permit,” I stammered. “An adult always has to be with me.”
    â€œI’m not an adult? I’m not old enough?” She gave a laugh, which started her coughing. Her left hand pointed at the closet while she hacked.
    â€œThe navy blue dress,” she got out at last. Her accent was still thick. Then again, Yiddish was her first language, English her sixth. “And the black shoes, Jenny dear.”
    Practically all of her shoes were black. I stood before her clothes and bit off two fingernails. With my mother gone, that left only the old Toyota, a manual. I hated shifting. I turned around.
    â€œBut, Grandma, my mother can take you. She’ll be back in two hours. At—”
    â€œNo more waiting,” she declared. “Waiting is dangerous when you’re my age.”
    I gathered her clothes and helped her get into them. The temperature was in the nineties, but she insisted on that wool dress, broiling and ancient. Likewise on a wig from the Eisenhower era to hide her chemo-caused baldness. Though our house was quite modern, with lots of glass and odd angles, my grandmother’s clothes and furniture made her room into a time machine. From her heavy, claw-footed dresser I got the gold brooch that she asked for. Then I helped her up and put her cane in her hand. The bend of its handle matched her back. We inched our way down the hall.
    â€œWe go left here, Grandma. It’s shorter.”
    I was now a full head taller than she was. I pulled her gently to the left and winced at the sight of her baggy dress. She’d lost weight and