Dreidels on the Brain (11 page)

But then everything changed. She started to put strange things in the blintzes—once I found gravel—so we couldn't eat at her house anymore. We still went to see her, but she would get really upset, yelling at my mother. Since then she's gotten a lot worse. Now I would happily let her pinch my right cheek as much as she wanted, if she would go back to being the grandma she was when I was young.

Most of the time now she's just really mad, screaming mad. Usually it's about the gas men—whoever they are—who she says are coming to throw gas at her. My dad says it's not her fault; it's because something terrible happened to her before she left the old country. But that was sixty years ago, and he has no idea what it was.

She used to live in Pasadena, which isn't far from here by car, maybe seven or eight miles. But then, about a year ago, she got so worked up about the gas men that she walked all night to our house, and when we went out in the morning, we found her asleep on the porch (which is not very comfortable—it's coated with AstroTurf, which looks like grass but is actually prickly plastic). We didn't know what to do, so my dad woke her up and drove her home.

A month later, she did it again. Then again a couple weeks after that. We never knew when we were going to wake up and find her on the porch. The funny thing is that when she was sleeping there, she looked so peaceful. We learned not to wake her up suddenly, because that's when she would start screaming.

“The gas men! They're following me! They're throwing gas at me!”

I once made the mistake of trying to argue with her. “Grandma,” I said, “that's not possible. You can't throw gas!”

She paused for a second, then started shaking her head. “Shah! Where's your father? And your mother—what's she doing to him?”

The biggest problem with my grandmother is that she's convinced my mother is trying to kill my father. She used to call over here about fifteen or twenty times a day, and when we answered the phone, she would start to scream. “Your mother! She puts poison in his food! Don't let him eat it!”

We weren't supposed to tell her where my father was working. But she found out anyway, and called there again and again until she reached his boss. Then she told
him
all about how my mother was trying to kill my father. After that happened a couple of times, he lost his job.

I know that sounds crazy, but to
really
understand how crazy it is, you'd need to know my mother. The only way
she'd be dangerous is if you could poison someone with niceness. She never gets mad, even when she should. If holding in laughter can cause an embolism, can being too
nice
make you bust a gorgle? That would be bad. I couldn't understand how she put up with my grandmother saying those horrible lies.

“How can you stand it?” I asked her once.

“Oh,” said my mother, “life is difficult for her. She's—not well.”

“Yeah? I get sick too, but I don't call people murderers!”

“We have to be understanding,” she said. “She's suffering. Because of what happened when she was leaving Poland.” There it was again. “Besides,” said my mom, “when she starts to scream, I just do this.” My mom reached a hand to her hearing aid. There was a short squeal as she turned it off and smiled weakly.

My grandma hadn't come over for a while, but then, one morning last summer, I found her on the porch, right in front of the door. I could have gone out the back door, and probably should have. But I figured I could jump over her no problem.

Big mistake.

I actually
did
make it over—I'm sure I didn't touch her. But a few seconds later, she woke up and started to scream, so loudly and for so long that the neighbors called the police.
That had happened a few times, and the officer who usually came was pretty nice about it. My dad, who can charm anyone, explained that she was upset because she lost her cat—which wasn't true, as she never had a cat. The officer managed to calm her down, saying they'd find the cat, and gave her a ride back to Pasadena in his police car.

This time, though, there was a new police officer—with a crew cut—who didn't buy the cat story. What's more, as he came toward my grandmother, she started screaming at
him,
calling him a Cossack and a whole bunch of other things in Yiddish, saying that
he
was the gas man. He didn't like that at all. He looked so mad, I thought he was going to handcuff her, but instead he backed up to his car and radioed the police department. About ten minutes later this big white van pulled up. Four huge guys got out—and one of them was carrying something. You know what it was?

A straitjacket—exactly like Houdini's! It even had leather straps. The big guys held her arms as they slid on the jacket and fastened the straps. As soon as they did, she stopped screaming and stood there with a confused smile on her face.

“See that?” my dad said. “She's fine. All calmed down. She was just upset about her cat. So, why don't we take off the jacket and—”

“Stand back, sir,” the officer said to my father.

I watched my grandma, mesmerized. I knew that Houdini
would have escaped from it in a couple of minutes, or less. I knew exactly how he would do it too. He could dislocate his left shoulder, which is the first thing you have to do to escape from a straitjacket. Although there are lots of things dislocated about my grandmother, her shoulder isn't one of them. I knew she wouldn't escape.

Eventually they took her to the Los Angeles County Sanitorium.
Sanitorium
is one of those funny words, because it should probably be called an
In
sanitorium. I never went there, but my mom and dad did, several times, and came back
haggard,
which is a vocabulary word for “looking exhausted and unwell, especially from fatigue, worrying, and suffering.” When I asked my mom about it, all she said was, “Well, the wallpaper is nice.”

That's how I knew it was
really
bad. If there's even a tiny speck of good somewhere, my mom will find it. So if wallpaper was the best she could do, that meant it was horrible. I think it actually made my grandma a lot worse, being around all those crazy people. They only let patients make phone calls once a week, on Sundays, when she would call us five or six times. Whenever I answered, I tried to bring up subjects that wouldn't upset her, but it wasn't easy.

“Hi, Grandma! How's the food in the sanitorium? Are you making friends?”

“Shah!” she'd say. “Where's your father? What's she doing to him?”

“I hear the wallpaper is really nice. What color is it?”

“Poison! She gives him poison!”

Eventually I would have to hang up, and because there was only one phone, she would get in line and call again. After about a month, and several trips to the courthouse, my dad arranged to have her moved to the Jewish Home for the Elderly and Infirm of Greater Los Angeles.

A week after she got there, we all went to visit. I don't know what the sanitorium was like, but I can't imagine it was much worse than this. All the people were sitting around a big room, in green plastic chairs. A bunch were arguing, some were asleep, and some were just chewing. A radio was playing really loud classical music, I guess to drown out the other noise.

The whole place reminded me of this Jell-O parfait they advertise on TV. We've never had it—my dad says it's goyisha food—but the commercial makes it look pretty cool. It's a powder you mix with boiling water, then put it in a special glass that's swirly and shaped like an ice-cream cone. Somehow, it makes three layers—foamy on top, creamy in the middle, and see-through at the bottom. I have no idea how it does that, but the exact same thing had happened to the air in the Jewish Home.

The top layer was all smoke, mostly from cigars. The bottom layer smelled like cleaning fluid, with just a hint of throw-up. And the middle layer was pure noise. Not just any noise, but
kvetching
.

If you're only going to learn one Yiddish word, I suggest
kvetch
. It means complain, but in a Yiddish way, which is a high art. I only know a little Yiddish, but it was clear that everyone there was trying to outkvetch each other.

On the far side of the room, sitting all alone, was my grandmother. Not screaming, not sleeping, not chewing, not even kvetching—just sitting. When we gave her the flowers we'd brought, she stared at them but didn't speak.

It was so horrible that I didn't want to go back a second time, but my dad said, “It's a
mitzvah
to visit the sick.” People think
mitzvah
means “good deed,” but it actually means “commandment,” something you
have
to do, so I went. And it's a good thing I did, because on that second visit, as we walked in, something
amazing
happened.

“Gladys?” said a woman at the counter. “Is that you?”

“Esther?” said my mom. “What are you doing here?”

It was the third Esther, who is neither Chopped Liver Esther nor Esther Nestor, but Never Stops Talking Esther. She looked at my brothers, then at me.

“You're the baby, aren't you?”

“I used to be,” I said. “When I was small.” I get that a lot,
and don't generally like it, especially when it's followed by that grabbing of the cheek thing, which makes me feel like a chipmunk. But that didn't happen this time. Instead she said, “Wait a minute! You're Joel! Aren't you the one who does magic shows?”

I nodded.

“I read the article about you in the
Temple City Times
. It said you're a professional magician!” Her eyes lit up. “Wow—a celebrity right here in the Jewish Home for the Elderly and Infirm!”

People heard her talking and started to gather around. “Look!” she said. “This is Joel, Gladys's son! He's a real live magician!” A couple of people applauded, even though I hadn't done anything. “Can you show us a magic trick?” she asked.

I always have something with me, ready to impress whoever asks. I pulled some sponge balls out of my pocket—red and fluffy. I put one in my hand, one in hers, picked up a pen from the counter to use as a magic wand, and waved it over both our hands. I opened my hand to show that the ball had disappeared. Then she opened her hand, and she had both of them! More people had wandered over and they applauded. I made one ball disappear—and pulled it out from under Esther's clipboard. Then I did it again, but this time pulled it from the ear of an old man standing next to me. Everyone loved that.

“Hey,” she said, “this gives me a great idea. Why don't you come do a performance for us?” Before I could answer, she said, “Ever since I started working here last month, everyone asks me, they say ‘Esther, why don't you bring in a magician to do a magic show for us?' And I say, ‘I don't know any magicians.' But, now, just like that, here you are! It's magic!”

She brought a calendar down from the wall and turned some pages to December. “I know!” she said. “Let's do it for Hannuukkah! Our celebration is Sunday afternoon, December nineteenth, in the social room. The kitchen will serve latkes for lunch, then we'll light the candles, and then you! It'll be wonderful! How much do you charge?”

I had no idea what to say. This was way bigger than a birthday party. Could I charge forty dollars? Fifty? I gulped and was just about to speak, when she said, “We have one hundred dollars in the entertainment budget. Will that be enough?”

My heart nearly stopped. One hundred dollars?! All I could do was nod.

And the best thing of all was right then, my grandmother came up to me. Only she wasn't the screaming grandmother. She was the nice grandmother. She put her arm around me and said, “This is my grandson Joel—he's the baby.” She squeezed my cheek. “He's a wonderful magician!”

“Don't I know it!” said Esther. “Not only that, I've just
hired him to do a magic show for us at our annual Chanukka party!”

My grandmother didn't say anything; she just reached over and squeezed my cheek again. It was the happiest I'd seen her in years.

I put the arm guillotine away. “A magic trick is only good if it works for your audience,” Mister Mystery had said at my first lesson. “The most important thing is not the trick. The real magic is in you, the magician.”

Since that lesson, I'd been working hard to make myself as magical as possible.

“Hey there, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages!” I said to the mirror in the hallway. “I know why you're here. It's because you believe in—” And this is the important part. The pause. That's what really nails it. You don't rush; you take your time. But not too much time—just enough to look slyly to one side. When Mister Mystery does it, he actually winks, usually at some beautiful woman in the audience. It's not just charming, it's misdirection; they'll look at your face instead of your left sleeve, where the bouquet of spring-loaded feather flowers is hidden. Then they're amazed when you pull it out and say, “—magic!”