Orange Slices

Grandma, my mother’s mother from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, originally from Poland, always cut oranges for me and my twin sister in eighths. On our first-grade trip on the Circle Line to Bear Mountain, I didn’t know how to peel an orange. One of the chaperones, Mrs. O’Donnell, also Polish, shook her head in disgust.

Cheek Pinch

Grandma, not much taller than my first-grade self, pinched my cheek raw and mumbled mamashaynele. Mother’s pretty one. She said that to all her granddaughters.

Trendsetter

My mother carried a photo of Grandma in her wallet. Grandma in trousers, hands in her pockets, standing maybe at a rest stop en route to upstate New York, probably to a kuchaleyn, a bungalow colony in the Catskills where she would still have to do all the cooking. I have this photo now. 

Cross-stitched

When I inherited my mother’s mid-century dining room set, the breakfront contained tablecloths Grandma embroidered. Neat cross-stitching in variegated green. Stitches so clean I can’t tell the difference between front and back. Her occupation on the ship to America said seamstress.

Featherbed

When Grandma traveled on the SS George Washington in 1914, she and her mother brought their featherbeds and candlesticks from home. My mother had Grandma’s featherbed made into two quilts for my twin and me. I comforted myself under the layer of my grandma’s downy protection.

Sister-Wrapped

I have a clear memory of Grandma in a black dress sitting with her sister, Tante Sarah, on my aunt’s front stoop in Queens. Grandma moved there to live in Aunt Bella’s basement after Grandpa died. My twin and I fell asleep on my aunt’s bed, arms wrapped around each other, just like Grandma and Tante Sarah.

Shotgun

I trekked to Manhattan’s City Hall to retrieve Grandma’s marriage record: March 2, 1918. I remembered Aunt Bella was born November 1918. When I showed my mother the document, she said, “That was my father.”

Thirtieth Anniversary

My mother told me Grandma would hide jewelry she wanted my mother to have during her visits to our house. A pin in the underwear drawer. A watch where my mother kept her hosiery and garters. The watch on which Grandpa inscribed his love for her on their thirtieth wedding anniversary in 1948. I have the timepiece now.

Fortieth Anniversary

My cousin sent me a short 8mm film clip of Grandma leaving Schuster’s Kosher Restaurant in Coney Island. She was all dolled up in furs and her best jewelry. Tante Sarah, now widowed, was there, along with my parents and my aunts and uncles. Male cousins were there, too, but not the females. We still don’t know why, but my mother appeared disgusted.

Silver Dollar

I never knew Grandma gave my twin sister and me silver dollars on our birthdays. My father kept them. Years later, when I found them, I asked why. He shrugged. “Have you ever wanted for something you didn’t get?” “No,” I said. “There you go.”

Montefiore Cemetery

Decades after Grandma died of leukemia, my mother still cried at her gravesite. I only saw my mother cry two other times: When my eight-month-old son was hospitalized and had an IV sticking out of his foot, and when my sister’s prospective mother-in-law argued with her the day of my father’s funeral.

Bananas and Cream

I still see her, my grandmother Rose, bustling about our kitchen during Passover, doling sour cream over our sliced bananas and sprinkling sugar on top.

 

Barbara Krasner is a New Jersey-based writer whose work has appeared in more than seventy journals, including Jewish Literary Journal, The Jewish Writing Project, Minyan Magazine, Vita Poetica, and Of the Book. Recent books include Insomnia: Poems after Lee Krasner (dancing girl press), The Wanderers: Poems (Shanti Arts), and the forthcoming Memory Collector (Kelsay Books) and The Cousins Club of Dead Relatives (Kelsay Books).