Short Story 2: From My Grandma

By Letty Cottin Pogrebin

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The trouble started when my friend Katy found Grandma’s false teeth floating in a glass on the bathroom sink. I guess I was so used to seeing them that I didn’t even notice them anymore. But Katy noticed. She shouted, “Yuuuck! Gross!” and started laughing hysterically, and pretending to talk to them and making them talk back. I had to get down on my knees and beg her to shut up so my grandmother wouldn’t hear and get her feelings hurt.

After that happened, I started to realize that there were a million things about grandma that were embarrassing. Like the way she grabs my face in her palms and murmurs “Shaine maidl” which means “beautiful girl” in Yiddish. What would Katy say if she saw that!

Or how Grandma always says her B’rachas before she eats. B’rachas are Hebrew blessings that thank God for things. All I can say is my Grandma must really be hungry because what she eats isn’t exactly worth a thank-you note. Chopped herring is gross enough but white bread soaking in warm milk could make a regular person throw up.

And that’s just the problem. My friends are regular people. So when Katy or Jill or Angie are around, I have to worry about what Grandma’s going to do next.

Once she took me and Jill out to Burger King, even though she doesn’t eat there herself because they don’t have kosher meat. Instead of ordering our hamburgers well-done, she told the person behind the counter, “They’ll have two Whoppers well-to-do.” Jill burst out laughing, but I almost died.

After a while, I started wishing I could hide my Grandma in a closet. It got so bad I even complained to my parents. My parents said they understood how I felt, but I had to be careful not to make Grandma feel uncomfortable in our house.

“She’s had a very tough life,” said my Dad.

“Try to make the best of it,” said my Mom.

I was trying, believe me, I was trying.

Then, on Wednesday, something happened that changed everything. My teacher made an announcement that our school was going to be a part of a big Oral History Project. We were supposed to help find interesting old people and interview them about their lives so kids in the future will understand how things used to be.

I was trying to think if I knew anyone interesting when Angie nudged me from across the aisle. “Volunteer your grandmother!” she whispered. “She’s interesting!”

So that’s how I ended up here. The whole school is in the auditorium for a big assembly and I’m up here on stage interviewing my own Grandma. We have microphones clipped to our shirts and TV cameras pointed at us and a bunch of professors are standing off to the side in case I need help asking questions. Which I don’t.

After all this time, nobody knows my Grandma’s stories better than I do. I just say the right thing to get her started.

Like when I say “Grandma, why did you leave the Old Country?” she goes right into how the Nazis took over her town.

I’ve heard all that before.

But then she starts telling this incredible story that is brand new to me:

“My parents, they sold all their furniture to buy passage to America. In the meantime, they hid me in a broken-down barn under a pile of straw. “Can you believe it?” Grandma says, looking right at me. “When I was only a little older than you are now, I was running from the Nazis. Me and my parents and my grandparents got into a big old ship, and people were getting sick during the trip and some of them even died. But we had a happy ending when we saw the Statue of Liberty.”

While my Grandma talks, I see all my friends and teachers are listening to her as if she’s a great hero. And suddenly I feel so proud of my Grandma, I could burst.

I can hardly wait to ask her the next question. “How did it feel when you saw the Statue of Liberty, Grandma?”

“Very nice,” she says. “When that lady she held up her lamp for us to come in nice and safe, I knew everything would be okay. I knew it.

Next she talks about her life in America and I hear her saying something else that she never put in any of her stories before. She’s telling us that she loved her family very much, but she has to admit one thing: that she used to be ashamed of her grandmother.

“For twenty years that woman was in this country, but she wouldn’t learn English, never,” says my Grandma about her Grandma. “Such a shame she was to me in front of my American girlfriends.”

I can’t believe my ears. I feel a little stabbing pain in my heart. And right there on the stage I make a B’racha to thank God for never letting my Grandma know I was ashamed of her, too.