by Rachel Ament
My best friend in junior high was a girl named Rosie. She was petite and perky and plotting her Future in Dance. My most time-consuming activity between the ages of eleven and thirteen was self-imposed nose restructuring so I could be petite and perky, too. I spent hours (in twenty-minute intervals each night) pushing my nostrils back. Willing it to mold into the same ski-jump shape as Rosie’s.
Of course, all that did was make a rosy-colored crease in my skin and convince me I’d never be as bouncy or successful in life. Again, my mom reassured me. She told me Rosie peaked early and I was destined for greater things. Plus, my nose added “character.”
When it came time for my first kiss (which was really way past time, since I was already a sophomore in college), I resented my beak even more. Eddie was two years older than me and very patient. He was Irish, with deep-set brown eyes, a thick mane, and an unassuming, softly freckled nose that barely took up space above those lips. Those lips. How could I get to those lips? I kept tilting my head side to side, trying to lodge my schnozzola into one of his dimples. Or maybe if I leaned over, I could hook it around his jaw and then open-mouth smooch him? It was exhausting, not to mention terrifying. I apologized profusely.
“I just don’t know where to put my nose,” I whispered sadly.
To his credit, we dated for a solid year before he found someone with smaller facial features. I lost several months nursing that first heartache and filled a lot of soggy journals with woe-is-me-and-my-stupid-nose. Mom even flew out from New York to Chicago to help me stop sobbing and kept repeating, “C’mon, Abidab. You’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
“His new girl is tiny. Especially her nose,” I whined.
“Mazel tov for her. You can smell flowers and forest fires.”
When I finally climbed out of my self-pity shell, I was truly grateful that Eddie had (a) gotten me naked and (b) inspired me to keep performing with the improv comedy troupe where we met. After college I got hired to tour with Chicago’s Second City, writing and performing comedy—a dream come true and a perfect placement for a large-nosed Jewess.
It was May 2000, and my cast was in South Carolina for a big theater and music festival. We’d arrived in the afternoon, thrown our bags down, and walked through the theater for a quick dress rehearsal. Then one of the guys suggested we go play a game of basketball in a park nearby. We still had two hours to soak up the sun with our Chicago-pale faces before curtain.
None of us were athletes. We were the misfits and class clowns who’d finally found a place to tell twisted jokes and make things up in front of an audience. There was probably one solid bicep among the eight of us. (The piano player’s.) But that didn’t stop any of us from scrambling all over the court.
I was “blocking” my friend Andy from making a basket. This involved draping my spaghetti arms over his body and trying to squeeze the air out of him. Most likely illegal in the NBA, but for my purposes, it felt just right until Andy decided to do some sort of swivel pivot, then picked his head up and cracked his skull into my face. Or rather, the most obtrusive part of my face.
I saw stars. Planets and comets, too. My friends led me off the court and sat me on a bench. Andy looked genuinely apologetic. The other guys did that awkward shuffle of Do we have to wait here or can we get back to the game? The girls hovered around me and petted my shaking skin.
“Does it feel broken?”
“I think there’d be more blood.”
“Abby, you can hear us, right?”
“Get her some ice.”
“Yeah! Ice!”
As I lay on a cot a few minutes later with a small glacier atop my nose, I tried to steady the room with my eyes. I called my mom back in New York and reported the accident. I even let a few tears slip for the first time that day. I was woozy and scared. I needed my nose to be whole so I could go on stage that night. I wanted my body back in one piece so I could know who I was.
My mom’s response: “Calm down, sweetie. Just think, now we can get that nose job we always wanted.”
“Um, I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“Kidding, kidding,” she demurred quickly. Then in the silence she added, “But, you know…”
It stung a little that all these years she’d actually agreed with me about the curse of my schnoz. I definitely could’ve used a You’re so brave and beautiful speech right about then. But Joanie Sher didn’t dole out empty compliments. She was made of and fed me hearty (chicken soup) stock. She expected—no, demanded—me to be as tall and confident as she was. And I felt relieved that she’d finally let me in on her true feelings. The buried thoughts that I rarely got to hear behind her painted grin. In some ways, her admitting that my nose could use work was the biggest compliment she’d ever paid me. In her dot, dot, dot of silence I heard her saying:
I believe in you. I never thought you’d make it this far in show business, and I want to give you every girl’s best chance—a new nose.
“Mom, do you want me to change my nose?” I asked her.
“It’s up to you, Chicken. I just want you to stand up straight and be happy with who you are.”
Backstage an hour later, I paused and looked at myself in the mirror for a simple, still moment. My head was throbbing softly but there was no more blood, and concealer worked well over the bruise. Yes, there was a definite knot now, just below the bridge. I looked more like my mom than ever before. And that made me smile. I leaned in closer and covered my clip-on mic before whispering, I am doing A-okay.
“Places!” yelled our stage manager.
I drew my lips in fuller with my stop-sign-red lipstick. Then I pulled my shoulders back so I was standing up straight. And when the lights went up, I knew the crowd was cheering for me.
MY GRANDMOTHER’S MEN
Kerry Cohen
My grandmother told me more than once that she wanted me to write her and my grandfather’s love story one day. She thought their relationship was interesting because he was a doctor and she was a nurse and because they met over surgical dressing. (I still hear this as something to put on your salad.) She didn’t understand that the real reason their relationship was interesting was because it was good.
They had in-depth discussions about medicine and art and music. They were thoughtful about each other’s feelings. They had a rhythm. My grandmother made the meals, and my grandfather reminded her regularly of her beauty, her intelligence, her worth. Before Grandpa got sick, they had a lively sex life. I know this because once, while at the dinner table, my grandfather leaned toward me. He had thick eyebrows and looked almost exactly like Sam Waterston.
He said, “Your grandmother is the most beautiful woman in the world.” My grandmother, hearing this, leaned toward me, too.
“Your grandfather is a wonderful lover,” she said, her eyes locked with his. I almost choked out my water, both wishing I didn’t have to be the vehicle for their flirtation and pleased that I was.
Often they would take naps in the afternoon together, and I would see them, their arms wrapped around one another, snuggling and taking comfort in one another the way only people who are schtupping will.
When my grandfather died, way too soon from heart disease, my mother stayed with my grandmother, afraid to leave her alone. Her grief was huge. You could see it sitting on top of her as she moved through her days, just trying to get through. My grandmother was eighty-one when he died. Most of her life had been lived. But she was still sprightly, still busy with golf and bridge. She had salt-and-pepper hair that had never gone all the way to salt. She wore it short, and it was as soft as baby hair. She never left the house without lipstick, one of her credos.
Over time, she became herself again. Slowly, she began to get color back in her cheeks. The darkness started to lift. She began to laugh and gripe and find her way on her own, without the love of her life.
My grandparents lived in Florida a
t the Fountains, a Jewish retirement community. She was surrounded by tons of other widows, and very few men. As it tends to go with old age, women outlive their husbands, and the ratio was about 80/20. And that’s how my grandmother suddenly found herself in fierce competition for Abe Rabinowitz.
Abe was only seventy-seven, which meant he still likely had a few years left in him, maybe even a decade. This made him prime real estate at the Fountains. I was twenty-six when my grandfather died, and I made a point of visiting my grandmother whenever I could. I hated the thought of her being alone. When I did visit, I’d often find her on the phone with one of her friends before she’d hang up, disgusted.
“They’re like a bunch of teenagers the way they gossip,” she said about her friends.
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone’s trying to take down everyone else. Sylvia’s wearing high heels suddenly. Ruth is brushing up on her Hebrew. Uch. All this talk because they’re jealous Abe might like one of them.”
I laughed. “Is Abe really all that?”
She waved her hand to dismiss the question. “He’s an old man.” She sat on the couch, letting out a little groan. “You know what I like in a man these days?” she asked.
I couldn’t wait to hear. My grandmother could teach me things when it came to men. It wasn’t just because she’d been married for fifty-seven years to a man who adored her until the end. It’s that her standards were so much higher than mine. While she wore Prada and vacationed in Europe, settling for no less, I was in graduate school, wearing hippie-style clothes and falling for (and sleeping with) every last man I could find, just hoping one of them would stay and be my boyfriend. When they didn’t, because they never did, I went on to the next, hungry and desperate like a stray cat. I had no other models. My own parents had divorced after an ugly affair and custody battle. They only spoke if they had to.
“What?” I asked, eager to find out from her what mattered in a man, what the secret was to a good relationship.
“A pulse,” my grandmother said. “I just want him alive.”
Well. Maybe we weren’t so different after all.
I went back to school, embroiling myself in yet another love affair I couldn’t make work. And my grandmother went back to the bridge club. When I visited again, a few months later, my grandmother left me alone the first night. She had a date. With Abe.
“You got Abe!” I said, ecstatic for her.
“Ach,” she said. “He’s just a man.”
“But there were, like, fifteen women who wanted him.”
“Oh, many more than that,” she said with a wink.
Abe moved in not long after. On the few times I saw them together, he looked at her with that same love in his eyes as my grandfather had. When he died only two years later from complications from pneumonia, my grandmother moved in her new man, Martin.
Around this time, I fell for Toby, a pot dealer who played in a band. He spent most of his time out and about, making deals and playing gigs, while I waited for him in our house in Portland, Oregon. When he was home, he worked on his plants in the basement, building inventory.
When my grandmother invited me to visit her in Florida, though, he agreed to come. We packed up swimsuits and sunscreen and headed down on a morning flight. He went straight to the swimming pool and then tracked water on my grandmother’s tile floor. He opened the refrigerator and found himself snacks. My grandmother watched him uneasily.
One evening, he went to sleep early, and she came to sit beside me in front of the television. Martin was also already in bed. He seemed so much older than she did. All men did since Grandpa.
She patted my knee.
“How are you, Bubby?”
“I don’t like him very much,” she said, referring to Toby.
I took her soft hand. “I know.”
“He’s not good enough for you. You should find a good doctor like your grandfather. Someone who will treat you right, like you deserve.”
I said nothing.
“You know,” she said, “I talk to your grandfather every night.”
I squeezed her hand.
“I tell him what I did that day. I tell him about you, about how special you are. He already knows. We both always knew.”
Hot tears stung my eyes. “I miss him,” I said.
“I miss him so much sometimes I can’t breathe,” she replied.
“What about Martin?”
“He’s just a friend so I don’t have to be alone. I’ve never loved anyone but your grandfather.”
Eventually Martin died, from stomach cancer. And my grandmother gave up on men and went back to traveling. Somewhere in there I met someone who reminded me of my grandfather. He was kind, and he was a person who would care deeply about our future children. So, I married him. I dedicated my flowers to my grandmother at the wedding, in honor of her marriage to Grandpa.
I said, “I can only hope to have the kind of love you and Grandpa did.”
But we didn’t. Or, rather, things grew complicated, and we eventually divorced. And the truth is that I hadn’t learned the lesson I needed to learn from Grandma while she was still alive.
She died at ninety-four. I had just given birth to my second baby. I was three years away from an impending divorce. A few years earlier, I told her that when she passed, because we all knew she would have to eventually, I wanted her wedding ring because I still believed more than anything in what she had with Grandpa. She had smiled and patted my hand.
“The ring is all yours,” she said. I went to touch it, but she yanked her hand away. The ring’s circle of diamonds glittered. They were marquise-shaped and embedded around the entire ring of platinum. “But not until I’m a cold, dead corpse. Do you know how much this thing is worth?”
At that point, I still didn’t know what she knew: that I was worth as much as I believed. That’s all there is to love.
Recently, I fell in love again. We have those conversations about art and writing. We have that rhythm my grandparents did. But also, he believes in my worth because I’m finally starting to believe in it, too. It’s been almost four years that we’ve been together, and things are different. I still have to remind myself that I’m lovable, that I can have this, that I deserve love. We have a wedding date, and when the time comes, I’ll put my grandmother’s ring on, finally having written her love story.
THEY’RE ALL JEALOUS OF YOU
Mayim Bialik
They say no one loves you like your mother, especially your Jewish mother. In my case, I have had more than ample opportunity to test this.
As a child, I was teased a lot. I was a head shorter than the shortest person in all of my elementary school and junior high classes. I had a prominent nose, a deep scratchy voice, and no curves to speak of until I was about sixteen—up until which I could have passed for a boy from the neck down. I had an odd sense of humor and precocious taste in music. I often came home holding back tears, waiting until my mother could hold me and fill the air around us with her rose-scented perfume, listening to my sad tales of teasing and humiliation until I had no more tears to shed.
And then she would say the words that in her infinite wisdom were supposed to make it all better: “They’re all jealous of you.” My earliest recollection of hearing her say “They’re all jealous of you” is mixed with the distinct notion that I did not know what the hell she was talking about.
If they are jealous of me, I wondered to myself, why are they teasing me? It just didn’t make sense. As I got older, I started to question her explanations of others’ jealousy as the reason for their teasing. My mother met my bewilderment with a sympathetic glance and a modest recounting of my assets as she saw them: I was petite, adorable, funny, smart, and most importantly, I was a very good person, always trying to help those less fortunate than me. And if Barbra Streisand could be so famous and amazing a
nd wonderful with her nose, why should mine be any problem? Actually, the way my mother told it, I was indeed a fantastic, gorgeous person and I am surprised I did not become jealous of myself.
• • •
I became a professional actress at the age of eleven, and my mother was right there with me at every audition and every callback, cheering me on as she primped my hair and applied my neutral lip gloss. At this tender age, I was already labeled an “ethnic character actress,” and at auditions as in real life, I was surrounded by an ocean of WASP-y, perky, nasal-voiced girls who had been in theatrical training since they were able to walk.
At first, I simply did not have success in commercials or in any roles calling for classic, American apple-pie looks. What do you think my mother told me when I lost all of those parts to those perky girls? “They’re all jealous of you.”
By this time, some preadolescent angst and cynicism had set in, and I started finding it increasingly unbelievable that everyone in the world would be jealous of me. My mother’s love for me—the fact that she was, indeed, my number one fan—slipped from my grasp, as I struggled to reconcile her love and adoration with the rejection I received from boys, from the popular girls in school, and now (seemingly) from the entire entertainment industry. Confusing times.
This phase did not last long, though, and a year after I started acting professionally, I was cast as the young Bette Midler in the 1989 Touchstone feature film, Beaches. Finally, I was in my element: I was portraying an ethnic (Jewish!) character actress and I really got to shine, New York raspy voice and all. The movie came out the week of my bat mitzvah, and unfortunately, despite my low-key nature, kids at school decided to be snarky toward me instead of excited for me. This led to a whole new phase of coming home in tears. I didn’t want people to make any sort of fuss over me, but I certainly didn’t expect to be the butt of a whole new set of jokes.