Part 2…THE CONCLUSION

At my grandma’s house lunch was the big meal of the day, dinner was called ‘supper’.

Because I was a terrible ‘eater’, my grandma usually cooked me a ‘special’ supper. Things that my mother would never cook for me and mostly I “dassn’t tell her about”…We had secrets me and Grandma… and when I was really mad she would hold me until I stopped raging and would go, “Sha, sha, sha”, as she would try to calm me down. I loved my grandma Goody like I loved nobody else. She was my island of safety in a world that was sometimes confusing because sometime’s I had this good mommy and sometimes my mommy was mean and scary, too. She would hurt me when she hit me and she would do worser things then that too, that I really don’t want to talk about now.…and my grandma would hold me as I yelled about it…when grandpa delivered peoples dry cleaning in his car my grandma would ask me about was there anything that I wanted to tell her as soon as he left. She knew that I didn’t trust my grandpa, and that’s another story I’ll tell later, too – but anyway that’s when I would tell on my mommy to her. If I started to get very, very mad and wanted to yell and started to cry, she would let me and she would hold me in her lap and go, “Sha, sha, sha…”

The first time that I ever told on my mommy to her, she held me like that and when I was quiet again, and the big hiccupping, the heavy kind of ones inside big sighs stopped, she made me promise not to tell anyone else about what I had just told her. She told me that she believed me and that she knew about my good mommy and bad mommy, too. She had seen my mother when she went “mishuga” is what she said about it. So she knew that I was telling her the truth. I promised her that I wouldn’t tell anyone, especially not even my daddy. I broke that promise though when I was four. I once did tell my father, but that’s a whole other story. But after that I kept my promise to my grandma until after she died, and I was in college, and I told my friend Rick, and that story comes later, too.

So if I had been there for dinner/lunch and liked the food, my favorite was the boiled fish, there would be a special portion for me that she had saved in the fridgidaire. Or sometimes she would make me special things that she knew I liked. Like rice pudding with heavy sweet cream, or my favorite which would be chocolate pudding that she would make for me hot and fresh from the stove poured over fresh white bread and laced with heavy sweet cream. I was a very skinny little kid, and a bad eater especially for my mother, and my grandma was always trying to fatten me up. She would feed me around 5 o’clock on the days my father and mother would be coming by to pick me up at the store, and I wasn’t sleeping over. Tonight my daddy was coming to get me and because the weather had started to get cold, we wouldn’t walk home my grandpa would take us in his car.

That night as soon as I got home my mommy gave me a bath and then put me into some warm new pajamas that my grandma had just made for me (she made me all my pajamas). In the summer they were made from cotton that my daddy would get her the material for, and in the winter, or in the fall like now, they would be of flannel with long sleeves and my daddy also brought her those piece goods, he would call them, too. Then my parents both put me in the bed and tucked me in.

Use to be my mother would carry me into my bed, she always did when I slept in the crib, but since I got my big girl’s bedroom set, because my mommy was going to have a baby sister for me and she would have to sleep in my crib my daddy carried me in and both of them tucked me in. I didn’t like that too much, and I really wanted a big brother and not a little sister either. But I loved my bedroom set.

There was a bed, and a dresser that matched the bed with a mirror over the dresser. There was a chair that was set next to the window in my bedroom that looked over the garden. That was my very own reading chair. There was a little table next to the chair and that’s where I put special toys that I could play with quietly when I was by myself in my own big girl bedroom. My favorite toy (the thermometer thing) was right there on the table when I came into my room to go to bed. The light was just turning to dark before night time. Out the window where the sun was going down the sky was bright pink with big fluffy clouds. The kind that my mommy told me were really the thrones in heaven where the people who were dead went and God and the angels were, and people who had died who were good people sat and watched down on me like my grandpa Levine who had died, and I couldn’t really remember him. Although everyone in the family told me that I was only 9 months old when I told him, “Bye, bye pa, be good,” when he first went into the hospital and I tried to get him to take my teddy bear with him, but not my favorite ‘tickle cover’, that he teased me to give to him, or he would just take it... I first began to talk when I was 4 months old, everyone told me that, and that I walked when I was 6 months old. Every night when those clouds were there I would look up at them and try to see were there really people who were up there, and could I ever get to really see them? So far I hadn’t.

As soon as I could hear the buzz of my parents’ voices in the living room I knew it was safe to get out of my bed. I tip toed out of bed over to the chair and table. I eased myself quietly into the chair and reached for my new toy and turned towards the window, I wanted to see if I watched it very closely could I see the thing on the temperature part move up or down. I looked at it very carefully tipping it towards the light that still came in through the window until it got too dark and I couldn’t see the red part in the middle anymore. It was getting darker in my room and I was getting sleepy. I rubbed my eyes and once again wondered how did the Sand Man get in here without my seeing him? Every night I would try to stay awake to see him and every night I knew he had been here, because I could feel the gritty sand in my eyes and I never, ever saw him, but what I did see that night changed my life forever, and gave me then my favorite quote then, which with some subtle changes thanks to Hillel, is still my favorite quote now...

I snuggled under my covers and said, “Now I lay me”…to myself something that I always did with my grandma, and never did with my parents and I soon fell asleep. When I opened my eyes again my room was very dark. There were no sounds in the house so I knew that my mommy and daddy were probably sleeping in their room that was right next door to mine. What happened next is my Halloween gift to you, blessed reader (and I do mean bless you each and every reader).

There was a strange light coming from the mirror over my dresser that was just across from the foot of my bed. It was kind of greenish and as I watched I saw a face forming in the mirror and as I watched the witch that Joey and I had chased down the sidewalk today started to form her shape right there in my mirror! As I watched frozen so I couldn’t move and tried to scream but no sound came out of my throat, she stepped out of the mirror and was standing directly over me, as I cowered in my bed! “Get up and out of that bed!” She said in a whispery voice that crackled and sent shivers down my back. It felt like my hair was prickling on the top of my head and I was very, very frightened. I tried to scream for my daddy and mommy, but still no sound would came out of my mouth, my throat just made little whistles while I tried to scream and I couldn’t even whisper let alone talk or scream!

I was shaking as I got out of the bed, it felt like my knees were going to buckle and I was going to fall, she kept talking and her voice was mean and crackly, “Doesn’t feel so good does it Missy Elaine”, she knew my name! “Doesn’t feel so good when someone is being mean to you and doesn’t talk to you in a nice voice, does it? Does it! I’m talking to you, does it?” My voice still wouldn’t come out and she laughed and it sounded high and very nasty, as she glared at me, I could see her eyes glowing green in the dark. In fact there was a strange light in the whole room now and even though everything was shadowy I could see it all, my whole room and the witch who was now standing right in front of me most of all. She said to me, “This is a very nice room and you don’t deserve it”…She had her cane and she was wearing her black cloak and it touched the floor, she went over to my dresser and pulled the bottom drawer wide open, “Empty those clothes on the floor!”…I did what she told me to do, I took out my underwear and my socks and my sweaters that were in the drawer, and she took her cane and messed up the orderly piles I was trying to make. All my socks were in pairs and she made me unfold them and she spread all the clothes all over my room…she pointed to the open now empty drawer with her cane and she said, “I am going to sleep in your comfortable bed and you are going to sleep in that drawer!”, and she pointed her cane right at it, and held that position until I climbed into the drawer and holding my knees bent so I could squeeze my body in I got into the drawer on my back. It was very uncomfortable and the wood in the drawer came through my pajamas and felt hard and like it could scratch me, and my head was kind of bent on my chest and I could hear my breathing but still I couldn’t say anything! No sound would still not come out of my mouth. As soon as my body was mostly in the drawer she jumped right into my bed and put her head on my pillow and pulled up my blankets and went to sleep, I could hear her snoring!

For a long time I lay there whimpering in that hard drawer! I didn’t fall back to sleep and I couldn’t budge and I still couldn’t make myself scream! I was very frightened and wanted my grandma to save me, and wished hard and wished some more that someone, anyone would come and save me and no one came! Just as the light was coming into the room from the rising sun, suddenly the witch was standing in front of me again! “Get out of that drawer right now!” she ordered me…and I did. “Now, she said give me your favorite toy!” I didn’t want to but I gave her my thermometer thing, and as soon as I handed it to her she took it in her hands brought it back to the window and as I watched her do it, she broke it in half with her cane, and laughed and laughed. Then she opened the window, turned towards the mirror and then turned back to me. She said, “I hope that you’ve learned your lesson, or I’ll be back!” and then just like turning the corner, just like she did yesterday, she was gone.

Then I found my voice and I started to scream, I found my feet and ran across the floor and ran into my mother and father’s room and jumped into their bed…I was sobbing, my daddy had already left for work and my mommy was waking because I was making so much noise. “Save me, save me, save me…The witch came and got me and made me sleep in my drawer and she slept in my bed and broke my thermometer thing!!!” Was basically what I was trying to say, other kinds of words and sounds and sobs were what was tumbling out of my mouth, but at least I could talk again!

My mother reached for my squirming frantic body and held me against her in the big bed that she and my daddy slept in. It smelled like my mother, I loved that smell even though sometimes I really was mad at my mother. It was a mostly sweet smell and sad and happy all at once and it calmed me down and she listened as I told her the whole story even about how it all started with me and Joey about the old lady that looked like a witch on the street in front of the tailor shop and how we had chased her and I heard myself saying because my mother asked, that I was very, very sorry and I would never-ever do that again…

Then there was my good mommy. Oh and when she was good she was so very, very good – the very good mommy was here. She told me all about the Golden Rule, she said it was, “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.” She told me all about how being mean to somebody is a really bad thing to do. That when you are mean to someone that it is very bad thing to do, it is a sin and you should always do unto others as you would have them do unto you. She told me that it was part of being Jewish to have this Golden Rule and she held me in her arms and said that she could tell I had learned my lesson, because of what happened with me and the old lady who looked like a witch. She could tell that deep inside myself I was really very sorry and would never try to be mean to any old people never ever again...And I don’t think that I ever was. Not mean to old people at least.

Then she got out of her bed and she picked me up and carrying me in her arms walked with me into my room. Every thing was back where it was supposed to be. My under pants and sweaters, and socks in that same bottom drawer, neat like when my mommy first put them in there. Then she walked me in her arms over to the window and when we both looked down there was the broken in half thermometer thing, in front of the wide open window…

“See, I told you”, I said…I clung closer to her body and she sat down on my bed still holding me and rocked me back and forth in her arms like my grandma, her mommy did, and said, “Sha, sha, sha…I believe you, I believe you”, and I knew that she really did believe me.