Granny to the Rescue

"Two things reduce prejudice: education and laughter." Dr. Laurence J. Peter

I had two grandmothers growing up, one we loved to hate, the other we just plain loved.

Grandma was "the bitch," a sour, bitter woman without a genuine iota of warmth or human kindness.

Granny, on the other hand, was youthful, charming, funny, warm and loving -- in short, the coolest grandmother in the known universe.

Though 100% Jewish on all sides, there were no "Bubbes" or "Zaidas" in our family when I was a kid. Well, wait. There was my grandfather's mother, a wizened old lady in her 90's with a tight white bun who, in my memory, was always in a wheelchair. She also had a cane (why, I don't know, and no one else seems to know either). But she used to poke at my sisters and me with that cane, as if she'd turned over a rock and these strange rotund little girls had tumbled out. She gave us the creeps.

I'm not sure I ever knew her real name. She was referred to in the family only as--all one word--Littleoldbubbe. It wasn't until I met my husband and heard stories about his own Bubbes that I sagely put two and two together ... and, ohhhhh, the light dawned. Little. Old. Bubbe. Duh.

Back to my grandmothers. And a vignette that sums up why we felt about them the way we did. When I was in junior high I got a very short haircut. I'm guessing some movie star made it all the rage, probably Audrey Hepburn. I, however did not remotely resemble Audrey ... if you need a clue, think Annette Funichello. (And if you don't know who she is, fageddaboutit). I was, to put it kindly, chubby. Very. But the one thing I had going for me was luxurious, thick, glossy, curly hair, that deep blue-black color that shines in the dark. Why my mother let me cut it off is a mystery. Maybe she hoped I'd look enough like Audrey to stop eating so much.

However, such was not to be. I emerged from the hairdresser with a halo of tight frizz -- the first Jewish Afro of the 60's. I was horrified. Mortified. My mother told me I looked "lovely, stop whining." My "boyfriend" (i.e. an eighth grader I had a huge crush on who occasionally smiled at me in the cafeteria and on the playground, and had once kissed me during Spin the Bottle at a party) took one look at me coming toward him down the school hallway with my new do and closed himself fully into his locker.

Death to my ego. Forget broken heart, I passed Go and went directly to Devastated Spirit. I had been shot out of the sky and left for dead, not even worth a heartbeat check. I ran all the way home--not a small feat for a chubbette like me--dehydrating, not from sweat, but from an amount of tears I didn't know it was possible to shed. We're talking buckets, gallons, huge vats of tears. The kind that leave you gulping air, making those pathetic hhhunh, hhhunh, hhhunh noises from deep in your chest like an asthmatic dog.

Granny was visiting, ohyesohyesohyes, she would comfort me. But oh god, no! Grandma the bitch was there too! She took one look at me, turned to my mother and uttered the immortal words that still echo in our family lore, "She looks like a nigger-wop."

I was dumbstruck. Mouth literally agape. We didn't use those words in our family. We didn't even think those words. In fact, that was probably the first time I ever heard either of them spoken out loud. My father the Jewish businessman was of necessity a registered Republican, but he and my mother were both All-The-Way-With-Adlai. We came to the table every night dressed for dinner, prepared to discuss politics and world events and books and ideologies while served by a White cook and a White maid -- local farmgirls, no "schvartzas" in our liberal home.

I think I had read the "N" word in To Kill a Mockingbird when I was about seven. I was savagely smart, not a great attribute for a fat girl, but an excellent way to submerge myself in worlds more interesting and less painfull--at least to me--than mine. I taught myself to read at age four when the one chapter our mother read to us nightly from Little Women wouldn't do. I felt about the March family the way today's kids feel about Harry Potter. And frankly, I'd rather be me in that regard.

So those horrible words were out there, stinking up the room as three generations of women stood trembling in varying degrees of distress. "WHAT did you say??" my mother demanded in outrage. Not the best move.

"I said she looks like a nigger-wop," Grandma reiterated coldly to our shocked faces.

Granny into the breach, with the reply of the century. "Well I don't like those words, but yes, I suppose she does," she said without missing a beat, "Lena Horne and Sophia Loren."

You should only have a Granny like that.