“Hey,” my mother said suddenly. “Do you want to go with me Sunday? Into the city to help Poppy. I think he’s probably going to move to Florida year-round soon. Not just fall and winter. Retirement, you know. And Aunt Gert has a place down there too.”
My mother’s face is so pretty. If I had to pick a movie star that she looked like, it would be Amy Irving, Steven Spielberg’s first wife, and not just because my mother’s name is Amy too. It would be because of her hair, mostly, I suppose. My mother’s hair curls in ringlets, golden brown ringlets. Her face is round, like a soft heart.
Her eyes are light brown, like mine.
“Okay,” I said. I was lying down with my head on my pillow. “I’ll go with you.”
She smiled. Her eyes were dry now. “Want me to tuck you in?” she asked.
I hadn’t been tucked in in a long time. “Okay.”
There isn’t much to the ritual. Really, it isn’t anything more than pulling the covers up to my chin and then patting them down around my body, my feet, and up to my shoulders. I never liked my covers tucked under the mattress. My legs like a little “elbow room” so I can shift around while I get comfortable without pulling out my blankets. My mother knew how to do it just right, so I was tucked in but not confined. Comfortable but not trapped.
Then she always used to say the same thing: Tight as a knish.
Only she pronounces it like its two syllables, almost. K-nish, but not exactly. When I was little, I used to wait till she left the room, then I would practice saying it in the dark to myself.
Kenish. Nish. Kinish. K-nish.
But what is a knish? Something to wear? Something to eat? I just knew it was something Jewish, like shayna maideleh and oiy vey; something Nana probably said to my mother when she was a little girl.
I just never thought to ask.
“Tight as a knish,” my mother said now, but she didn’t turn off my light. She stood in my doorway with her hand on the switch. “Caroline, start thinking of something you might like. Something of Nana’s.”
I guess I could have told my mother about the necklace right then, but I was afraid she’d think it was silly. Or she’d say something like she said to Rachel’s mother, that it was hypocritical, like having a bat mitzvah.
“Okay, sweetie? Something to remember her by. Maybe one of her needlepoint pictures or one of those little figurines she collected.”
She flipped off my light.
“Okay, Mom,” I said into the darkness, but I didn’t have to think.
I knew exactly what I wanted.
12
Putting on Her Face
The first time I ever got to see my nana without her makeup on, I was five years old. I will never forget it. It was the first time I got to sleep at my grandparents’ apartment by myself. Sam wasn’t even born yet.
I was taking my bath in the tub in the morning, even though at home I took my bath at night. I remember how I loved the black and white tiles in their tiny bathroom, the matching towels, and the fuzzy cover on the toilet seat.
“Can I come in?” My grandmother knocked on the door. She was already in.
“Sure, Nana,” I said.
My grandmother was still in her underwear and I think I was more embarrassed than she was. She looked like she was outfitted in white armor, a big, huge bra and massive underwear combined into one, only her arms and legs sticking out. I couldn’t imagine how she had gotten herself into it. But she had.
“You know we can’t go anywhere until I put on my face.” She always said that. She had to “put on her face.” Without her makeup my nana was like a completely different person. Her lips were faded and thinner, her eyes were smaller, and her eyebrows were totally nonexistent. But I thought she looked much more beautiful.
I remember thinking, I could see more of her.
The very first thing my nana did was take a small round cotton ball and press it to the top of her favorite, her only, perfume bottle. The room filled with the sweet smell. She flipped the bottle over once, quickly, and then she tucked the damp cotton ball into her bra, right between her breasts.
Then she continued to talk to me while she was blotting her face with what looked like squares of tissue paper, up and down, all over her skin.
“Did you have a good night’s sleep?”
“Of course,” I answered. I lowered my back into the hot water. My legs stretched out and my feet rose up, not quite touching the shiny metal faucet.
“Was it too noisy last night for you?” she asked. “It can be so noisy in the city and you are a country girl.”
“I live in Greenport, Connecticut, Nana, and I slept good,” I answered.
Because I loved the sounds of the cars beeping, the mournful sirens, the sharp voices that would drift up from Lexington avenue all night long. It was comforting to me. It was Nana and Poppy’s apartment. It felt warm and safe. I felt like I belonged here.
“Now for the most important step,” my grandmother said. I had to poke my head out of the curtain again to see.
“Moisturize,” she said. She rubbed her whole face with cream, till she shone.
While I watched, I was hoping we would order Chinese food that night, even though we hadn’t had breakfast yet. I would get egg rolls. Wonton soup. Fried rice. Lo mein. Maybe sweet and sour chicken. But I didn’t have to worry. We always got Chinese food when we came to my grandparents’ apartment.
Nana was in the middle of spreading the liquid foundation that made her look tan. She never missed a spot, and you would never see that line some old ladies get all along their jaw. That line that makes you wonder if they were blind when they were putting on their makeup, or when they asked, “Do I look all right?” that someone was playing a nasty joke on them. Never my grandmother.
“What would you like for dinner, my shayna maideleh?” my nana asked. I remember thinking that she could read my mind.
Shayna maideleh? She had probably said it a hundred times before, but it was the first time I really heard it. Now she was putting on her eyes, a liquid black line on the top and on the bottom. Fake eyelashes and then blue shadow.
“What does that mean?” I asked her.
“What does what mean?” Nana was leaning in toward the mirror, drawing eyebrows, perfect arches where they must have once, long ago, grown all by themselves.
“What you called me. Shayna you-know-what.”
She turned to me, her face was almost completely on. “Shayna maideleh? It means my pretty girl. Caroline, my beautiful granddaughter. My shayna maideleh. In Yiddish.”
“Did you used to call my mother that?” I asked her.
“Of course I did,” she told me. “All the time.”
The last thing my nana did, I noticed, was her lips. She took a colored pencil and drew a line just outside where her lips really were, and then filled it in with red lipstick. While I watched she reached over and tore off a single sheet of toilet paper. She pressed it to her lips and then tossed it away.
“I’m going to get dressed now. You take as long as you want. So how about Chinese food for a change?”
“That’s a funny one, Nana.”
She shut the door behind her.
When I was getting out of the tub, drying myself with a big soft towel, I looked down into the wicker trash basket under the sink, and there was my nana’s fragile red kiss.
Now I wish I had thought to take it out and save it.
13
Who Will Be Like Me?
It was called Hermès Calèche, straight from Paris. Nana’s perfume.
That was the one thing I wanted.
My mother said I had to keep it from the sun or the liquid inside would evaporate. It would happen eventually, she told me, but it would take a very long time if I kept it safe. And the scent would just get stronger in the meantime.
As soon as I got home from New York City, I went into my room, shut my door, and slid my desk chair in front to block it, just in case. I opened my nana’s bottle of perfu
me and held it to my nose. Suddenly it was like she was in the room with me. Or like she had just passed through and she’d be back in a minute.
Only I knew she wouldn’t be. That was a hollow feeling I could barely stand.
I reached inside my drawer and felt around for the tissue paper. I took out my necklace and clasped it around my neck and I looked at myself in the mirror above my dresser.
About a year ago, Rachel and I wanted to go to the mall. We wanted to go by ourselves and we had prepared a list of five or six girls in our grade that had already done so without being killed or kidnapped. But our mothers were united and neither one would allow it. They had to go with us.
“We won’t even talk to you,” Rachel’s mother said. “Promise.”
“I swear, we’ll walk seven paces behind you at all times,” my mother added.
They were making fun of us.
“We’ll pretend we don’t even know you.”
“We’ll pretend we don’t even like you.”
They died laughing but it was really annoying, and of course they didn’t keep any of their promises. They talked to us the whole time and commented on everything we looked at. And then we went into Claire’s to look at the jewelry. Our mothers had temporarily slipped away behind some feather boas and studded leather belts.
“These are nice.” Rachel was spinning one of the tall rotating displays of earrings.
“Oh, I love this,” I said. I was looking at a crystal. I suppose it wasn’t real crystal since it was only a twelve-dollar necklace, but the rose-colored, cut surfaces sparkled like a diamond’s, a crystal cross shape on a black rope.
“Try it on,” Rachel said from behind the earring display. “Let me see.”
I stepped around to stand in front of her and show her what I was wearing.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s a cross.”
“So? Isn’t it pretty?” It lay just below my collarbone and was the exact hue of the shirt I happened to be wearing. “It’s cool. It doesn’t mean anything. I mean, it doesn’t have to.”
“But it does,” Rachel said.
I shrugged and hung the necklace back up where I had gotten it from.
Now I put my fingers up to my throat and touched the pointy Star of David, my grandmother’s necklace, a delicate chain made up of countless tiny links. If I wear this, will people think I am Jewish?
Is that what I want to be?
Will I be?
14
Now If I Were Having a Bat Mitzvah
“Do you think I have to invite Lauren now?” Rachel was asking me.
“To your bat mitzvah? Lauren Chase?”
Rachel and I were in our after-school program art class, working on our charcoal still lifes. Lauren’s sleepover birthday party was less than a week away. I still hadn’t had the guts to ask Rachel if she had received an invitation in the mail or an informal verbal one like me. I decided it didn’t matter; we were both going to our first A-list sleepover.
I wasn’t sure I really wanted to go, but it was better than not having been invited at all.
But Lauren Chase at Rachel’s bat mitzvah!
“Why?” I asked Rachel. “It would throw the whole balance off. We had it all figured out.”
The more I thought about it, the worse it was beginning to sound.
“Well, my mom said I should,” Rachel admitted. She hadn’t even begun her drawing. In the center of the room on a little table sat a blue-striped bowl with one pineapple, three apples, and a bunch of grapes that hung over the side like they were trying to escape. One pear stood on the table, outside the bowl, left out or already freed. It was hard to tell.
“She said if I wanted to go to Lauren’s sleepover I should want Lauren to come to my party.”
“But a birthday isn’t anything like a bat mitzvah,” I practically shouted.
The image of Lauren’s long blond hair and expensive dress, strappy shoes, and stuck-up attitude was ruining Rachel’s special day for me already. We had put so much thought into who to invite.
We had started with one huge, long list of nearly everyone we knew. Rachel’s mom had given her a number: sixteen, eight girls and eight boys. Not including family friends who had kids, not including business friends who had kids, not including family, like cousins. Sixteen kids who were just Rachel’s choice.
“Does that mean me?” I asked. “Am I one of the eight girls?”
We were in Rachel’s bedroom with a notebook.
“No,” Rachel told me. “You are a family-friend kid. We can invite eight other girls besides us two.”
“And eight boys,” I added. This was way before Ryan Berk asked me to square-dance.
It was exciting, powerful, even. It was going to be a big deal. All the girls would wear dresses and the boys would have to wear suits or at least jackets and nice pants. My mother had promised me we could go into New York City to shop for a special dress just for Rachel’s bat mitzvah.
Rachel started shaping a pineapple and the bumps of what I thought were going to be the grapes with her stick of charcoal. “My mom said I shouldn’t go to Lauren’s party if I didn’t want to invite her to mine.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Invite her, I guess. My invitations haven’t gone out yet. I still could. She’d never know she wasn’t on our original list. It wouldn’t hurt her feelings.”
“But we don’t even like her!” My hands were black with charcoal. I wasn’t paying attention to my picture and I was smearing what I had done with the sleeve of my shirt. Not to mention getting my sleeve dirty.
“You forgot your smock again, Caroline.” Mrs. Fein walked by. “Very nice drawing, though. Very nice.”
I looked down at my paper. The smear had created a kind of shadowy third dimension I didn’t know I could draw.
“And nice start, Rachel. Try to hurry a little. Class is almost over.”
I thought the teachers who taught afterschool programs were always nicer than during the regular day because they knew we didn’t have to be here. We wanted to take art. We had chosen to be here. Teachers like that.
In fact, Rachel wanted to be some kind of visual artist when she grew up. Her stuff was hanging all over the halls. But today she seemed distracted. The grape bumps were turning out to be the edge of the blue-striped bowl.
Not her best work, but I didn’t say anything.
“You know, I’ve been thinking,” I said to Rachel when Mrs. Fein moved on to critique the group at the next table. “Maybe I should have a bat mitzvah.”
There, I said it even before I knew what I was saying, because in truth this was the first time the thought ever occurred to me. But once it came out, it seemed to make sense.
Rachel laughed. “Then you’d have to invite Lauren Chase too,” she said.
I don’t think she realized I was being serious.
15
Nana Told Me This Story Once
I remember she told me her family lived in Brooklyn, in Brownsville. Her father owned a candy shop on Pitkin Avenue. I already knew my grandmother was the youngest of nine children. The Gozinsky kids from Saratoga Avenue. I only knew two of my grandmother’s sisters, Bea and Rose, but they both lived in Florida and I had met them one or two times. Back then, when my grandmother was growing up with five brothers and four sisters, she told me they had been very poor.
My grandmother had the usual stories about sharing a bed, sharing clothes, shoes with worn soles. No meat for dinner. Sometimes no dinner.
Oh, c’mon, Nana.
You want to listen or you want to ask questions?
She told me she had no toys, no games, no dolls.
And one day she was out with her mother doing errands. She must have been very young, four or five years old.
“Wait here, Freidaleh,” her mother said to her. “I am going into the butcher shop. Wait right here and don’t move.”
Freidaleh? But your name is Freida, isn’t it? Everyone calls you Freddie.
&n
bsp; Yes, but not then. My mother added that to all our names. She called my sister Bea, Berthaleh. She called my sister Min, Mineleh.
Like shayna maideleh? I asked.
Exactly.
For a long time, Freida did as her mother told her. She waited on the street. She had watched her mother disappear into the shop, and she waited. She leaned against the building behind her. She looked down at the patches in her dress and the holes worn into her shoes, and that’s when she noticed a big store directly across the street.
She didn’t know why she hadn’t seen it before. She had been to this street many, many times. Maybe because she was so little and the crowd was so thick and the people were so tall. But she saw it now. A wide glass window, and inside were shelves and shelves of toys. Freida had never had a new toy of her own.
You’ve told me that story before, Nana.
What story?
About how you never had any toys, no presents. No dolls.
It’s no story. It’s true.
Well, you’ve told me it before.
So now I’m telling you again. Do you want to hear the story or not?
I do.
Freida was like a little pony, stamping her feet, trying to stay still to do as her mother had told her. But as she watched, a beautiful young woman holding the hand of her young daughter entered the huge toy store. Freida couldn’t stand it any longer. The little daughter looked to be about Freida’s age, but that’s where the similarity ended. This little girl was wearing a hat, a beautiful straw hat with a ribbon, and white gloves. Her dress was clean and had no patches. Her shoes were new. Her socks were starched white and they were about to disappear out of Freida’s sight.
Freida darted out across the street and got to the window just in time to see the little girl and her beautiful mother walk inside the store, still holding hands.
The Truth About My Bat Mitzvah Page 4