What’s the Difference Between a Scene and a Chapter?

“Anyway,” he continued, “she has a day planned with Ingrid. They're going to a bunch of

places around New Hope.”

The purpose of the trip was to find old things, like gravy boats and kerosine lamps. We

already had those kinds of lamps all over our living room. Once, a squirrel came down the

chimney and the poor thing ran around the room in a panic looking for a way out -- across the

fireplace mantel, across the drum table, the sofa table, and the bookshelves. My mother went

hysterical, and made my father shoot the little animal to save her precious lamps. I cried for days.

I wished every lamp had been toppled and shattered. I worried about orphaned baby squirrels

starving in their nest. A useless old lamp wasn’t more valuable than a squirrel. That was my third

experience with death and her love of antiques made another strike against my mother.

“I’ll go with you,” I told my dad. “I’ll stay with Grandpa when you take Grandma out.” It

was my chance to hear the rest of my grandfather’s story, to learn more about the girl, and

genocide, and to try to find a way to believe that my life wasn’t so bad.

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NEW CHAPTER

Saturday morning, my mother left before I got up. I listened to her departure from my

bed.

“We’ll be late,” she called to my father, as she went out the front door. “Eat with your

parents. Don’t wait up for me.”

I liked every part of her story. She and Ingrid would be cruising antique stores in

Pennsylvania, and attending a show and lecture on Depression Glass. Mind-boggling dull. She

would be two hours away from home. I peeked out the front window. Ingrid was driving her

powder blue convertible. I really didn’t understand why she was friends with my mother.

I opened the curtains next my bed before I left. The shade was up across the way. Darlot

was sitting on the bed with his bare back to me. TK I shut my curtains again, and ran from the

room, embarrassed to have seen him like that, and wanting to see him again like that.

My dad and I were in Brooklyn by ten. It was funny how fast everything changed as we

traveled the twenty-four miles from Cranford to Clinton Avenue, how trees, sweet air, and nice

houses were replaced by tenements, apartment buildings, handball parks, factories, and a smelly

mix of hot pavement, trash, and exhaust. My grandparents lived on the sixth floor of a red brick

high-rise that was built in a square around a shadowed courtyard and was an easy walk to the

Myrtle Avenue stores. Their apartment was on the inside of the square, looking down at the

courtyard. Any other day, I would have jumped at the chance to go to the stores. I like TK, TK

and TK, but on this day, I wasn’t interested in any of that. I had more pressing things to do.

When my grandmother opened the apartment door, the scent of fresh baked choreg

flowed out. My father swore he was addicted to the Armenian sweet bread, and he made a

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beeline to the dinette table where the braided rounds were piled in a deep basket. It wasn’t

Easter, and Grandma traditionally only made the bread at Easter.

My father bit into one, chewed with a look of supreme delight, and swallowed before he

asked.

“Ma,” he said, “baking in this heat! What’s gotten into you?

My grandfather called from the bedroom. “I asked her to make it.”

My grandmother laughed. “And he wanted rice pudding, and ponchiks too. Plus it isn’t

even ninety today. So I made it all.”

I was thinking that my grandmother had probably mixed chocolate syrup into the ricotta

filling of the ponchik’s because she knew I liked it, when my grandfather came out of the

bedroom. He was partially dressed, wearing a short sleeved undershirt with his khaki pants. He

seemed unsteady on his feet. When he sat down at the table, the light from the window was full

on his face. He hadn’t shaved. There were pouches under his eyes and the skin around his eyes

looked purple. For a moment I thought his lips were blue but he shifted in his chair, out of the

light, and they looked normal again.

“Coffee, Rose,” he said. “Please.”

My grandfather always went out of his way to do for himself. He never asked my

Grandmother to do anything for him, but cook her specialties. My father looked up from his

bread.

“You not feeling well, Pop?” he asked.

My grandfather didn’t answer right away. He split a choreg, dribbled honey on it, and

took a bite. “Still warm,” he said. “The best.”

“Pop?”

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“Good, I’m good, Eddie. Stop the worrying.”

“Of course, I’m worried, Pop,” my father said, “You have to tell me the truth.”

“I always speak truth. You know that.”

My grandmother, washing a bowl at the sink, harrumphed, and grinned at Grandpa over

her shoulder. He puckered his lips and blew a kiss at her.

Then he said to my dad, “That’s why your wife doesn’t like me.”

My father couldn’t deny it. He took another bite of bread instead.

My Grandpa looked at me. “You’re not eating, Emme?” he asked.

I shook my head no. I wasn’t hungry. Something was nagging at me….

He peered more closely at me. “Watching your figure for the boy next door?”

I felt a hot blush bloom on my face. Why TK. “Eric is an idiot.” I said.

My Grandfather smiled. “Not the red head,” he said, “the other one, the new one. He’s

the catch.”

My father, my grandmother, and my grandfather laughed and I TK

“And won’t that burn Marilyn’s behind!” my grandfather said.

I had a sudden need to get away from their knowing laughter, so I got up and went. I sat

on the toilet for an extended time, and I studied the grout between the mint green tiles. I splashed

water on my face, and patted it dry with a hand-towel. I smoothed my eyebrows. I pulled the

elastic off my pony tail, finger-combed my hair, and secured it again. I gave the adults plenty of

time to be on a new subject. When at last I emerged, my father and my grandmother were headed

out the door, dragging two folded wheeled carts behind them.

“You want us to get you anything, Satchmo?” he asked me.

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I wanted them to be gone a while, so I had enough time to hear all of my grandfather’s

unfinished story. “Genoa salami from Pignatelli’s?” I said, “And those pepper biscuits?”

Pignatelli’s store was off Myrtle Ave, closer to Waverly Place. They’d have to walk farther to go

there, which was the point.

“What do you think, Ma? Think you can do it today?” my dad asked.

“Yeah, sure I can,” she said, “I’m not such an old lady you know.”

She was, in fact, thirteen years younger than my grandfather. I had never questioned their

age difference but that moment, in the light from the picture window of their apartment, I

realized my grandfather looked much older than she did. Before I could pursue that thought, my

father and my grandmother were out the door, and I was alone with him at the dinette table.

Without asking, my grandfather put two ponciks on a napkin, and slid them over to me.

“You want iced tea?” he asked. “In the fridge.”

As I got up, he slid his coffee cup toward me. “Would you mind?”

I didn’t mind. I liked fixing things in their house because I didn’t feel the need to be

perfect. If I spilled something, no one barked at me. My grandmother would say, That’s why

paper towels were invented. I’d clean it up, and that would be that. If I spilled anything at home,

my mother would huff and puff, tell me I was careless, and complain about the extra work I

created for her.

I slipped into the kitchen and took a glass out of the cabinet next to the sink. I opened the

fridge. The refrigerator was empty except for the pitcher of tea, a box of baking soda, three

plums, a pound of butter, a bottle of water, and seven plastic bottles of medicine on a shelf at my

eye-level. There were four small brown bottles, a fifth large brown bottle, and two white ones. I

saw my grandfather’s name on two of the labels. I reached up, and turned the other bottles to

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read the labels. All of them had his name on them, and the names, I presumed, of the pills

contained in the bottles. The names were long, and had many syllables. I turned the bottles back

to their original positions, and took the pitcher of tea out of the fridge. There were orange slices

and strawberries floating at the top of the pitcher. I poured the tea without spilling, and put the

pitcher back into the refrigerator. I glanced at the medicine bottles, and counted them again.

Seven. I closed the door, filled my grandfather’s coffee cup from the electric percolator, and

carried our drinks to the table.

“Thanks, Sweetie,” he said.

My grandfather drank his coffee black. He slurped it. I imagined my mother’s look of

disgust, and I slurped my ice tea.

I bit into one of the ponchiks and was delighted when I discovered my grandmother had,

in fact, flavored the donut filling with thick dark chocolate syrup.

“Yum,” I said.

“She’s always thinking of you,” my grandfather said.

“I know, Grandpa,” I replied, and the knowing made me feel happy, and content to be

where I was.

We ate and drank in silence for a while. The dinette set was pushed against a wide

window. You could look across the way into other apartments, or down into the courtyard. I

remembered how Anne Frank watched people from the attic of the secret annex, watched them

scurry to and fro, living their regular lives four stories down, while she hid. How she wanted to

be with them, to ride her bike, to laugh, and have fun without a care. For a second, I imagined I

could feel a little of what she felt, a horrible sadness. Then I shook my head to shake myself out

of it.

Page 7 of 35

“What’s the matter?” my grandfather asked.

“Nothing,” I answered.

“It has to be something. Were you shaking fleas out of your hair?”

“No, Grandpa,” I said, and laughed. “Just thinking.”

“Thinking what?”

I looked at him. “About Anne Frank.”

“Anne, again,” he said. His tone wasn’t critical. He didn’t make me feel I was silly, or

that I was being stupid, or that my thoughts didn’t matter.

“Her story really affects you,” he said, but it wasn’t a question..

My eyes welled up. I hated it when I cried at unexpected times, but it had been happening

more since I started getting my period TK months before. “Yes,” I replied.

My grandfather pushed his plate away. He picked choreg crumbs off the tablecloth and

dropped them on the plate. He brushed his palms together and patted his left breast.

“Ha, forgot my shirt,” he said, “no cigar.”

“Do you want me to get it for you?”

“Nah, I’m okay.” He settled his forearms on the table and looked out the window to his

left.

“You see the window with the blinds up and the orange cat on the sill?” he asked. “Right

across from us and one floor down?”

I spotted the cat, stretched out like a sphinx, head on paws. “Yes,” I said.

“The woman who lives there is friends with your grandma.”

“Okay.”

“They sit on one of those benches down there for hours at a time.”

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“That’s—nice.”

“Polish woman. Good cook,” he said.

“Okay.” I felt a little impatient. I didn’t understand why he was telling me this. “What

does that have to do with the story?”

“It has to do with that book your reading.”

I imagined he meant that it was nice to have a friend, that Anne Frank didn’t have the

change to sit on the bench and talk with a friend. I imagined he was telling me I should be

grateful. “Grandpa,” I said, “can you tell me the rest of the story about the girl?”

He peered at me again. “Yeah, sure,” he said, “Where’d I leave off?”

I moved to the edge of my seat. “You picked her up. She said her name was Noyemi.”

NEW CHAPTER

Yes—Noyemi.

She was frail, and limp like a baby bird with no feathers, you could see the bones under

her skin, and blue veins you could trace with a finger, like lines on a maps. I don’t think she

weighed fifty pounds. I had the crazy thought this girl was risen from the dead, and then I

realized in a way, it wasn’t so crazy. She stared at me. She closed her eyes and opened them

again. A slow tear fell from one, rolled across her temple, and disappeared into her hair. Her lips

were dry, and cracked, and her teeth were exposed. I felt myself shaking. Some tough guy.

“You are safe,” I told her.

“Safe,” she repeated, like an echo. Her eyes closed again, she turned her head, and passed

out or fell asleep, I didn’t know which, and it scared me bad. She’d made it through what she

did, and who knew what else. We needed to get help for her.

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Mohe and I put her in the sling. She was a little bundle. The guys above pulled the rope

and Mohe supported the girl from underneath, lifting her up and over his head as she went

higher, trying to keep her from hitting against the rock wall. Mohe was big, six foot five or so,

but he had to let go when she was less than halfway up. I think we all held our breath until two

sailors laying on the edge above us, with two more holding their legs, reached down and grabbed

the rope to ease her up. I climbed after her, and Wisniewski took my place on the gully floor

with Mohe. It was late afternoon and we wanted to get the women buried before dark.

It was a relief to see the girl awake. I helped her sit against the trunk of a shade tree. I

supported her when Esposito washed the deep scalp wound above her right ear, and dressed it

with gauze from the first aid kit. Gunshot, I guessed, but didn’t ask. Not then. The girl was

patient, she didn’t flinch. To my thinking, she’d been through worse. Her eyes followed the

sailors who disappeared into the gully. She watched as the remaining bodies were brought up one

by one, and laid in the grass. The men had stopped talking. It wasn’t a business for talking.

The girl got worked up, agitated, when Paulie and Wisniewski walked past with armloads

of the dead women’s clothing. She spoke so fast, I couldn’t follow what she was saying. She

reached out to them, she tried to stand, to follow the two guys. I put my hand on her shoulder to

stop her.

“Hadjiss, hadjiss,” she cried, and knocked my hand away.

Her sudden energy surprised me and alarmed me too. I was afraid she would collapse.

Collapse, and maybe not get up again. “You want the clothes?” I asked.

“Yes, yes.” She rocked side to side, and held her clenched fists to her mouth.

“Wiz, Paulie, hold up. Bring that stuff back. Put it here.” I pointed to the ground in front

of us.

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They did. They set the two piles down, put their hands on their belts, exchanged looks

with me, and watched the girl paw through the clothes. She grabbed a skirt, a dark blue skirt, and

held it to her chest. Then she raised it to her face and kissed it. “Mine,” she said. It looked too

big for her, too long. None of us said anything. If she wanted the skirt, she could have it. She

gripped it with both hands.

“You want anything else?” I asked.

The girl nodded. She stared at the pile of clothes, but didn’t let go of the skirt.

“The blouse, the white one, that one there,” she said, and pointed with her eyes, and chin.

I picked it up. There were spots of blood down the front of it. One long sleeve was torn off. The

round collar embroidered with red and yellow poppies. My mother used to do detail work like

that. I handed it to her. She took the blouse with one hand, and crumpled it to her chest with the

skirt. I wondered if she was right in her head – if she even could be right in her head after what

she’d been through. I figured I didn’t know the half of it.

NEW CHAPTER **

My grandfather suddenly went silent. He was studying his hands. I waited, until I

couldn’t wait anymore.

“Then what?” I asked.

He didn’t respond. The whole family thought he was a little deaf, but he was adamant it

was our fault, that we mumbled. He claimed his hearing was fine and dandy. My grandmother

said he had selective hearing, that he heard what he wanted to hear, and nothing more. I raised

my voice.

“You want another cup, Grandpa? Coffee?”

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He covered his mouth with the back of his hand, coughed, glanced at me, took his glasses

off, leaned forward, and dug into his back pocket for his handkerchief.

“How ‘bout a glass of water instead, Sweetie?”

“Okay,” I said. I went to the kitchen, looked at the clock, and did some quick figuring.

My father and grandmother might be gone another hour. At the rate, my grandfather was talking,

I might not hear the whole story before they got back, or for years. I needed to hurry him up. I

filled a glass from the water bottle in the fridge, and went back to the table.

He took a long drink, set the glass down, then picked it up again, and drank some more. I

wanted to be patient,and scream at the same time.

“What happened then, Grandpa?” I asked.

“Happened?” He seemed to have forgotten what we were talking about.

“What happened after the girl got the clothes?”

My grandfather gave me a blank look. How can that be, he was just talking about it.

“Noyemi, Grandpa,” I said, louder than I intended. “The girl you found.”

His eyes brightened, he was back. I didn’t get what had just happened, but I was relieved.

“Yes—Noyemi,” he said, “I was saying I didn’t know the half of what your grandmother

had been through.”

I TK. I felt as if I’d just gotten bopped on the head, poked in the chest, and smacked with

a board all at the same time. My grandmother? I wanted to yell What the hell! I didn’t curse in

front of my parents, though they thought nothing of cursing in front of me from time to time. I

knew what worked for them, would definitely not work for me in front of them. The one time I

told my mother she was full of shit, my jaw was sore for a week from her full swing slap. I did

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most of my cursing in my head, or whispering in my room. I looked forward to the day when I

was an adult, and could say what I wanted. Until then, I had to be careful.

I squeaked. “The girl was Grandma?”

“Yes, of course the girl was Grandma,” he said, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the

world.

How could I not know this? Why didn’t anyone tell me? I was hurt, and furious. I dug my

fingernails into the vinyl tablecloth, and under the table, clenched my toes. No one thought I

should know? That I was too much of a child to know? I was never good at hiding my emotions.

My grandfather asked, “What’s the matter with you? You want me to stop?”

I clamped my teeth into my lower lip, and shook my head. I tried to find the words to

express what I was feeling. They were log-jammed in my throat.

“You want to hear the rest?” he asked.

My words took off for parts unknown. All I could do was nod.

NEW CHAPTER**

This is how it went from there. We put your grandmother on a bed of blankets in the back

of Esposito’s truck. We had to move sacks of rice, bulgar, some of the supplies we were taking

to the orphanage, from that truck to another, to make a spot for her. Couldn’t have anything

falling over on her. The kid, Thompson, sat with her while the rest of us dug the graves. He gave

her small sips of water, and fed her bits of bread, and dates.

“Not too fast, not too much,” I told him. She looked very bad but I wasn't sure just how

bad. She might not keep it the food down.

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Thompson talked to her. He said he told her about the farm. Listed every animal. Told

her about his three sisters, and his brothers, and about swimming in the pond with the ducks and

the snapping turtles.

The sailors, one by one, took breaks, and checked on the girl. How’s she doing? She say

anything? Eat anything? Doing okay? Things like that. They were shaken up. It was a terrible

thing we found, and terrible work we had to do. I planned to request shore leave for every one of

them when we got back to the ship. A few days of carousing would do them good. Me too.

It was going on dusk by the time we finished burying the women. There were thirty-one

of them. Near as we could figure, your grandmother would have been the youngest of the group.

It was dark when we finished hauling rocks and piling them on the graves. We made thirty-one

wooden crosses out of branches and twine in the light of the full moon and a couple of kerosine

lanterns. It was after midnight when we headed on to Malaytia. We were bone tired, and filthy.

I’d never wanted a bath so bad before. Esposito was too tired to talk for once. He didn’t make a

peep when I said I’d be riding in the back with the girl. I just watched her. She slept. I stared at

her chest to make sure she was breathing. It was some night too. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky,

and it was full of stars. You forget that about the sky, those millions of points of light. It was the

kind of night that could make a man feel God, and I hadn’t felt him in a very long time. This girl

was saved, and I couldn’t help but think that maybe I found her for a reason.

It was close to five in the morning, and getting light when we got to the orphanage, one

of the places run by Near East Relief. Little Flowers, it was called, a girls’ orphanage, one of our

regular stops. The woman in charge was an American missionary. Mary Katherine Mason. She

supervised a hundred and fifty Armenian girls there, girls orphaned in the Genocide or given up

by their mothers to save them from being taken as wives by the Kurds, and Turks. To save them

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from being turned Muslim. Mary Katherine served with the Red Cross during the Great War, in

the trenches, in Flanders, then she volunteered to work in Turkey. She was a triage nurse, with

dental training, and a helluva good looker too. She filled the gap left in the area when the local

Armenian doctors were deported, and probably killed. Schooled the girls, protected them,

supplied medical care to anyone who came to her.

Mary Kathrine Mason could sweet talk one minute, shoot like a man the next, and cuss

like a sailor. She would burn the ears, nose, and hair off anyone to tried to hurt her girls or staff.

The Turks didn’t know what to make of her, and every sailor on my detail was in love with her.

Maybe even me.Too damn bad she was a nun.

We drove up to her place and she came out. What happened TK.

She didn’t hesitate to take your grandmother in.

NEW CHAPTER**

My grandfather stopped talking again. I became aware of the light, brighter then before,

now that the sun was in the front of the apartment building. It was high noon. I was surprised it

wasn’t later. I felt like I’d been in the dark, in a theatre watching a movie. He yawned, and I

realized he must be tired. I blinked and looked over the sill, down to where kids were playing

kickball in the courtyard, and back up to the window where I’d seen the orange cat. He was

gone. There was a woman in his place. My grandfather followed the direction of my eyes.

“That woman is your grandmother’s friend, Hester,” he said. “Hester Brodzki.”

My brain was over-full and my thoughts were muddled. My grandmother was the girl in

the story. She was shot, and left to die. My grandfather found her. He took her to an orphanage.

How old was she? How did they end up married? How did she get in the gully? Where was her

family?

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“Hester was in Bergen-Belsen.”

I half heard what he said. Were any of the dead women in the gully related to my

grandmother? Her mother? Sisters? That would make them my family too, My family killed like

the Jews were killed. My Armenian side. My dad teased me sometimes by calling me half-breed.

I had never cared. Fifty percent Armenian was just what I was, like being a girl, or brown-haired,

or hazel-eyed or five foot six tall. Everybody was something, a whole something, or a mix of

something. People I knew were different nationalities. We went to different churches, and ate

different foods on holidays. Differences weren’t a big deal, unless like Joey Littrel, you had

extreme body odor. Then nobody wanted to hang with you. Among the people in my suburban

New Jersey town, it seemed only my mother had a serious issue with the color of skin. At least,

that is what I thought at that point—that minute—that day. Until the second at my grandfather’s

kitchen table, I realized Armenians, just like my grandparents, just like my father, people with

distinctive noses, eyebrows, and hair color had been killed the same as the Jews had been killed,

because of their religion, because of who they were. What kind of people get to make that

decision? I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact. Sitting in a sun spot at a kitchen table, in

Brooklyn, the week after men had landed on the moon, and I started a crush on a boy from

Brazil. Anne and her family went into hiding, for two years, to try to stay alive. What else, I

wondered, had happened to my grandmother? My grandfather had said my life wasn’t so bad.

Maybe, I suddenly thought, it wasn’t.

Bergen-Belsen. The name pried at my conscious. I knew it from somewhere. My heart

jumped as I made the connection. It was the concentration camp where Anne Frank and her sister

died, just two weeks before liberation, before they would have been freed, and could have gone

home. My head swiveled back to the window. The woman was gone. I hadn’t gotten a good look

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at her. I opened my mouth to ask my grandfather if I’d heard him correctly, but there was a

knock on the door, and my father and grandmother were back. They were animated, talking

about a homeless woman they’d seen, the sale on salami, and the fruit grocer’s temper.

“Grandpa,” I cried, “Please – I need to know what I happened. I need to know about

grandma’s friend. And are there others here? In this building?”

My grandfather reached across the table as they came in. He patted my hand.

“Later,” he said. “Don’t say anything to your grandmother.”

I wouldn’t have dared.

I stared at her TK

My grandmother had my father lift the heavy brown paper bags out of the carts, and line

them up on the kitchen counters.

“No, no, no.” she said, when he made to help her put the groceries away.

She pushed him out of the kitchen saying, “I do it myself. I know where everything

goes.”

“You put the ball game on,” she said, “sit with your father. I’ll get your lunch in a little

while.”

“Cubs and Dodgers in Chicago,” my grandfather hollered from his seat, “Should be a

damn good game!”

My mood went from okay, and almost good, to deep black and molten in an instant. I had

no patience for baseball, especially not today, and both my grandfather, and my father were

obsessed with it. The Saturday afternoon game was the highlight of their week during the season,

and there would be no talking to them once it was on. They’d have lunch on snack trays in front

of the television, and forget anyone else existed. I was disappointed and frustrated because there

Page 17 of 35

would be no opportunity for me hear the rest of the story that day, not unless the game was

rained out. When my father asked me to get the trays out of the closet for them, I took my time. I

rattled the trays, and made as much noise as I could. They were engrossed in baseball talk when I

unfolded the trays and thumped them down, and neither my father or my grandfather looked at

me.

I went back to the window by the table, and looked down into the courtyard. Loads of

kids were out playing, and the benches were full of parents. The cat was back in the window

across the way, this time sitting upright and pawing at something on the glass. My stomach

rumbled. I thought of the salami, and went to the kitchen to see where we were with lunch. My

grandmother wasn’t there. I picked a peach out of a bag, and put it back. I bent a corner open on

a white bakery box, and spotted something with chocolate frosting. I’d given up sweets when I

first saw the boy from Brazil. I smoothed the corner back down. I really wanted a sandwich. The

volume was too high on the television. My grandfather and father were focused on the screen, so

I went to look for my grandmother.

Though it was only the two of them, my grandparents liked space, and their corner

apartment was a two bedroom with one bath. The first open door to the left in the hall was the

bathroom. It was empty. The second open door on the left was the master bedroom, a big airy

room. My grandmother wasn’t in there either. I stopped for a moment and looked at the oval

portrait of Jesus centered on the wall above the double bed. It gave me the creeps. The door to

the second bedroom was on the right side of the hall, and it was closed. The second bedroom was

small, and jam packed with so much furniture you had to sidle around the twin bed. It was

wedged between a night stand, a dressing table, a tall bureau, a desk, and a fat upholstered chair.

Page 18 of 35

This room didn’t have a portrait of Jesus. That Saturday, I heard my grandmother’s voice

through the closed door.

Her voice was low, and rushed. I leaned closer to the door, and put my ear against it.

Spying, just what my mom would do, I thought, and then reasoned, but I’ll only do it for a minute.

I figured I had good reason to spy today: she was Noyemi, the girl in the story. But I couldn’t

make heads or tails of what I was hearing. She stopped speaking and I heard rustling, then she

spoke again, in the same low voice, a long string of syllables and breaks that rose a little, and

then fell. She stopped. There was silence, and two more words I didn’t recognize, in an angry

tone, as if she was talking to someone. The voices, she must be talking to the voices. I took a

deep breath, turned the knob, and opened the door. Act like you didn’t hear anything, I told

myself. Act normal.

“Can I help make the sandwiches, Grandma?” I said it before I could register what I was

seeing.

My grandmother was on her knees between the bed and the bureau. She dropped to a

crouch as if to hide. She put her hands over her ears, and I could see they were shaking.

“You okay, Grandma?” I asked, unable to make sense of the scene. “Can I help you?”

She didn’t answer, she dropped her hands, and stared at me without blinking. I waited,

and tried not to be frightened. I wanted her to blink. I wanted her to say something, to say my

name, or call me Sweetie. TK

Then I smelled the bread, Italian, Pignatelli’s was famous for it, fresh baked, maybe still

warm. The two long white paper bread sleeves were on the edge of the bed with a roll of silver

duct tape, and scissors lying between them. The crusty ends I called elbows were sticking out of

the bags.

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“Grandma, what are you doing?” I asked her.

She replied, but I didn’t understand her. Armenian. I’d heard Armenian words from time

to time, words she said meant “son,” or “beloved,” or “dear one,” and the names of Armenian

foods, but that was it. I could say some the words too, but not the way she did. My father spoke

only English. He was born a week after my grandmother arrived in the United States. He never

learned Armenian. Except for the foods. I never asked why. It was just the way it was. I had

never wondered what my grandparents spoke in private.

“What, Grandma?”

She seemed to hear me then. She switched to English.

“Go away, it isn’t safe.” She spit the words out in a hiss.

“What isn’t safe?”

“Go away, I have to hide it.” She whispered from between gritted teeth.

“Hide what?”

She looked right at the bread.

Hide the bread? What is she talking about?

My grandmother looked over her shoulder. She shook her head, and said something else I

couldn’t catch. She raised one hand. She held it palm out, fingers spread wide, and made a

pushing motion. She shrugged her shoulders. She turned back to me.

“Go,” she said. “Get out.”

Her tone shocked me, and hurt, and it made me cry. I backed out of the room, pulling the

door too fast. It slammed and shook the jamb. The tears blurred my vision. I had to feel my way

down the hall to where the stadium crowd was cheering from the television, and my

grandfather’s arms were up in an armchair victory wave.

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“Outta the park!” he shouted.

I stood in front of them, and blocked the screen. “Something is wrong with Grandma,” I

blubbered before either one of them could speak.

My father knocked his tray table over when he stood up. “Where is she?”

“The little room,” I answered. My father took off at a run.

I couldn’t see my grandfather’s face through my tears, but he shoved his tray table to the

side, braced his hands on the arms of the chair and started to push himself out of it. He wasn’t all

the way up when my father yelled, “It’s okay, Pop, she’s okay.” My grandfather plopped back

down on the cushion, exhausted from the effort of trying to stand.

“Come here,” he said.

I took the steps to his chair, and stood there. I rubbed my eyes, and sniffled. I felt like I

was five again. He held out his handkerchief. I hesitated.

“It’s clean,” he said.

I blew my nose into the white cotton. The handkerchief smelled like my grandfather, like

soap, and cigars.

“Give it here.” My grandfather reached out, and I put it back in his hand. “Sit,” he told

me.

I sat in the chair my father had vacated. It was still warm.

“Can you tell me more…?” I began to ask.

“No,” he said sharply, “Not now.”

We watched the game as we waited for my father and my grandmother to come out of the

little bedroom. A black man was at bat. Bases were loaded. My grandfather leaned forward, he

rested his elbows on his knees, and pointed to the screen.

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“You know Ernie Banks?” he asked.

“No,” I said. I wasn’t interested in sports. Maybe I’d heard the name. I didn’t really care.

All I could think of was what was going on in the bedroom, the bread on the bed, my

grandmother on her knees, the look on her face, and the tone of her voice, the girl in the ditch,

the woman with the car.

He pointed at the screen. “Ernie Banks,” he said, “a great ball player.”

The man had his knees bent over the base, his bat up. The crowd had hushed. The camera

showed the whole field. Bases were loaded. Even I could see that. It settled on the pitcher, then

switched to the batter who swung missed the ball.

Strike one.

My grandfather said, “I want the Dodgers to lose.” I knew that. He always wanted the

Dodgers to lose. He had never forgiven them for leaving Brooklyn. He refused to call them the

LA Dodgers.

A second pitch, and the bat connected with a thwack, the hit was good, the voice of the

crowd swelled as the short stop ran backwards with his eyes, and his glove up. The ball popped

off the edge of the glove and shot sideways before it dropped and rolled like it was running for

freedom into the outfield. The announcers went crazy. All three men on base made it to home

and Ernie Banks slid to third, as the crowd roared his name.

“What did I tell you, a great player, right?” he said. He didn’t seem to need an answer,

and I didn’t feel like giving one.

A commercial came on. It was supposed to be funny, with a man eating spicy meatballs,

but it didn’t make me laugh.

Then he asked quietly, “What was your grandmother doing?”

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I realized he must have been waiting for me to tell him. I took a shuddery breath. Maybe,

I thought, if I said it out loud, what I witnessed wouldn’t be so strange. In a few short sentences,

I told him what I saw, and I told him what I heard. My grandfather didn’t respond. He continued

to watch the television. There was a man on second, and a man on third. The batter had just been

struck out. I wondered if he had caught what I said, or if the television was more interesting. I

wished I could turn it off, and then decided it was better to have it on. The television was normal,

and ordinary. I wondered why my father, and my grandmother weren’t coming out of the

bedroom.

Ernie Banks came to bat again. My grandfather shifted in his seat, coughed, and cleared

his throat.

“She does that,” he said. “Hides the bread.”

I waited for him to say more, but then my father came back into the room, with . mMy

grandmother was right behind him, empty-handed.

She veered into the kitchen, and he headed to us, looking over at the television as he

walked. I got up out of his chair, and stood to the side of it. I didn’t know what to do, or where to

go.

“What’s the score, Pop?” my dad asked. He seemed himself. Jovial, as if nothing had

happened.

My grandfather gave him the latest. They went back and forth on runs, and strike-outs,

and the short-stop’s embarrassing play. My dad settled into his chair. That’s it? I wondered. No

explanation? Nothing about Grandma? I jumped when she called from the kitchen in a big

voice.

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“You want your sandwiches on rye, Italian or a Kaiser roll?”

Both men asked for rye. I didn’t answer at all. My father poked me in the belly.

“Emme, what do you want?” he asked.

I wanted to know what was wrong with her, why she was hiding bread, and what was

going on, but I answered. “A roll.”

My father raised his voice. “A roll, Ma, give Emme a roll.”

He poked me again. I hadn’t moved.

“Give Grandma a hand,” he told me.

I shook my head. My eyes filled up and threatened to spill. I stared at the floor.

He grabbed my hand and tugged on it. He pulled me closer, and said, “It’s okay, she’s

okay. Go on.”

I walked to the kitchen feeling TK. My grandmother was peeling thin slices of Genoa off

a three-inch deep pile of it, and building four sandwiches.

“A treat for your Grandpa,” she said. “ We won’t tell the doctor.”

I was glad she spoke first. It made it easier for me to come up with something to say.

“He isn’t supposed to have salami?”

“He isn’t supposed to have fatty foods,” she answered. “The cholesterol. No cheese, no

butter, no cheese boregs, no bastererma. He’s miserable,” she said.

Boregs. triangles of buttery thin, flaky phyllo stuffed with seasoned cheese, or spinach or

meat, and baked a golden brown. Basterma, the seasoned dried beef my father and grandfather

ate fried with eggs, the scent of it so strong that they smelled of it for a day and a night

afterward. My mother said it came out their pores. She wouldn’t touch it. Basterma and eggs was

a Saturday only meal. The boreg I liked, the basterma, no way.

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“But today, a treat, he’ll have to be good again tomorrow.” My grandmother laughed.

I felt myself relaxing. She seemed to be herself again.

We ate salami sandwiches, stuffed grape leaves with lemon wedges, and shriveled, cured

olives, the men from the snack trays in front of the game, my grandmother and I at the table by

the window. I ate slow. My grandmother didn’t. She never talked during meals, instead, she

concentrated on the business of eating until her plate was bare. She never left anything, and if I

tried to, she reprimanded me. My father, joking around at random times, called her the starving

Armenian, and even she laughed at him. She laughed at all of his jokes. I remembered him

saying it as I nibbled at an olive, and, watched her clean her plate that day. My grandmother ran

her finger around the plate to wipe up lemon juice and oil. She licked her finger clean. She

picked up olive pits, popped them in her mouth, and sucked on them. She was intent on what she

was doing and did not look up. Her cap was off. She usually kept one on inside, and out. I

couldn’t remember when I had last seen her without it.

I was hit by a wave of sadness. Her bald spot was very large, her scalp was shiny, and

only a few strands of hair remained on top. The hair at the sides, and in back of her head was still

black, but scattered strands of silver caught the light. She was in her mid-fifties then. A new

picture of my grandmother began to form in front of me at the table that day, pieces of mystery

shifted and moved closer together, and juggled for position. I was beginning to see what I’d

never noticed, and hear what I’d never listened to. I was beginning to feel things I’d never felt.

There was more going on than I’d been aware of. I was beginning to realize this was what it

meant to be an adult, and I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. I was, I realized, in limbo.

After lunch, my grandmother went in to nap.

“So much walking,” she said, “I’m pooped.”

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She left a bag next to the front door. A large brown grocery bag with the top folded over

twice.

“For you,” she said to me. “Take it home with you. Open it there.”

I guessed it was bananas. She was always after me to eat more.

“Potassium,” she said, “you need it for everything.”

The afternoon moved slowly from there. I leafed through a dozen National Geographic

magazines, and sat, chin in hand, at the table, looking out the window at nothing much. The

orange cat had disappeared from the window across the way, and it was too hot by then for kids

to be out playing in the courtyard. I wished I had brought a book with me, or even the journal I

had just started.

The Cubs won the game in eleven innings that afternoon, three to two. Their third

baseman did a victory jump, and clicked his heels. My father did the same thing as my

grandfather cheered from his chair. I didn’t care who won. I was more than ready to go home.

My grandmother was still sleeping when we left.

“Let her sleep,” my grandfather said. “Busy day for her.”

He stood up to hug me. He wrapped his arms around me, and squeezed me to his chest.

“Next week?” he asked.

I knew he meant he would tell me more of the story, explain everything, make me feel

TKTKTK. “Yes, next week,” I said.

“I’ll pick you up Friday after work,” my dad said.

I looked back up at my grandparents’ apartment window when we got down to the

courtyard, and I waved up at my grandfather who was standing there watching us. Out of the

Page 26 of 35

blue, I had a horrible feeling I might never see him again. My father tugged at my arm to make

me move.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing.” I replied. Another lie.

He put the radio on in the car, and turned it to a station I liked. I was glad, because I

didn’t have to talk. I didn’t want to. I set the brown bag on the floor next to my feet. My father

didn’t mention the bag, and he didn’t bring up my grandmother until halfway across the

Brooklyn Bridge.

“It’s not her fault, the way she is.” He didn’t have to say her name.

“You know everything about what happened to her?” I asked.

“I think I do,” he answered.

“Will you tell me?”

“Pop said he wants you to hear it from him. He wants you to understand your history, our

family history. It will help you understand Grandma too.”

I watched the Jersey landscape roll past the car window. “Okay,” was all I could muster

to say in response.

NEW CHAPTER

My mother wasn’t home when we got back. At least I wouldn’t have to answer her

questions. My father made a beeline to the kitchen.

“I’ll feed Lilly, I’ll take her out too,” he said as he went.

Page 27 of 35

That was fine with me. Even if I did hear the basketball that night, I wouldn’t go out, I

didn’t feel like it. I felt off-kilter, and drained from the day. I wanted to be alone. I was in my

room before I realized I had carried the brown bag upstairs. I set it on my bed, and opened it to

the ripe smell of bananas. There was a white bakery bag laying on top of a big bunch. The bag

wasn’t heavy. It was full of sandwich rolls, the same kind I had asked for at lunch. I pulled one

out, and counted the rest. There were six of them. Why bread, why today? She had never sent

bread home before, only fruit, or dessert. Why did she say it was for me, and not us, the family?

Thinking, all at once, became exhausting. The roll in my hand smelled good. I took a bite, and

then finished the whole thing. I closed the bag, and shoved it into the deep drawer of my desk. I

left the bag with the bananas outside my bedroom door, to take downstairs when I went. The day

had sapped my energy and I was in no rush.

I took a shower, dried off, and doused myself with baby powder. I did a pimple check.

My face was clear. I regarded my face a little longer. I looked a lot like my grandmother,

everyone except my mother said so. Same cheekbones, same chin, same eye shape and color. I

was the same age as she was when my grandfather found her. I tried to imagine myself bone thin.

I couldn’t. I put on a pair of knit shorts and an oversize night shirt. I towel dried my hair, then I

ignored it. I started to feel lighter. The shower had rinsed away some of the muddiness in my

head. I grabbed the journal, and a pen, switched on the reading lamp over my bed and sat cross-

legged against the headboard. I peeked through the narrow part in my curtains. The blinds were

up in the window across the way, and the curtains were open but I didn’t see Darlot. I made the

part between mine a little wider, just in case, but I didn’t want to be obvious. I opened the

notebook, and stared at the page where I had written Dear Anne, and nothing else. I wasn’t sure

if I was ready to share my deepest thoughts, like Anne Frank did. I wasn’t sure I could put them

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into words. Or maybe I couldn’t until I tried. I bit the top of the pen too hard, and felt a sharp

pain in my jaw. Why was everything so difficult? I put the tip to the paper. You start at the

beginning. Easy to say, but I didn’t know what the beginning was. I had to start in the middle,

because the middle was all I knew.

Too much is going on. Grandpa is sick, Grandma is hearing voices again, and my mother

is on me every time I open my mouth. Then there’s this whole thing about my family I didn’t

know, about being Armenian, and a genocide that affected my family. My father, and I guess my

mother knows about it, though I won’t ask her. Germans instigated the trouble in Turkey years

before Hitler became a leader, and my grandmother lived through it. As I read your diary I

imagined the Annex, and you, and your family, and you in the attic with Peter, and the world

outside the Annex, the stories about work camps, and concentration camps you heard while you

were hiding, the airplanes, and the bombs you listened to, the food you didn’t have. You helped

me see your life as a Jew, the injustice, and the awfulness of everything under the Germans. I

imagined being you. I know I am going to imagine being my grandmother too, and it scares me.

The last time the voices talked to my grandmother, she was put in a hospital, where I wasn’t

allowed to visit, and nothing was okay until she came home. My mother started to call her crazy

then. There isn’t a day when I am not mad at my mother for some reason but when she calls my

grandmother crazy, she makes me feel crazy. I’d rather be crazy than like hermy mom. That my

grandmother is hearing voices again, and hiding bread, those are secrets to keep from my

mother, along with the secret of the boy from Brazil in the window across from mine. My dad

says my grandmother’s behavior has to do with what happened to her. I need to know the whole

story. My grandparents will be here next weekend. I have to find out the rest then.

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Caio,

Emme

I shut the notebook. It had gotten dark. I jumped when a circle of yellow light appeared

on my arm and jittered across my lap. I pulled one side of my curtains all the way open. Darlot

was waving a flashlight in his window. He held it under his chin, and grinned at me. He looked

like the devil. I smiled for what felt like the first time that day. He held up a finger. Wait. He held

up a piece of paper, and the flashlight over it. Sub shop tomorrow? He already knew about the

sub shop? Everybody hung out at the sub shop. You could get a great sandwich for a dollar and a

half, and see and be seen by everyone who mattered. TK I nodded, and gave him a thumbs up.

My mother didn’t have to know. She would be down the street helping with a garage sale all day.

He held up another sign. 1:00? I gave him a second thumbs up. He returned it. I waved, and

closed my curtains. It was only then I realized I might have a real date. My mother wouldn’t like

that one single bit.

I went to sleep thinking about TK.