“He was very stingy,” Grandma Lisa once told me about her father, when she and I stood at the chest of drawers looking at the big photograph. “Oy, oy, so stingy! My mama left him… She took us along, four children, and moved to Tashkent… That was very long ago, in 1914. I was a little girl.”
“She left him…” I imagined a heart-rending scene: my great-grandma Emma abandoning her native home with two small children in her arms, and another two tagging along… Apart from Grandma Lisa she had another two daughters, Sonya and Rena, and a son, Abram. And still she found it necessary to part with her husband… She wasn’t afraid. A divorce was something unthinkable for Asian women; it was considered a shame, a crime.
Great-Grandma Emma… I only saw her in pictures. She had died the year I was born, ten years before. But I heard about her often. Everyone who had known her remembered her warmly and respectfully. She was blessed with a kind and sympathetic soul. She helped many people. Almost all her children took after her, all but one daughter…
And that very daughter, my Grandma Lisa, would go up to the chest of drawers where the big photograph of her father stood in all its splendor, and it was there that she said her short prayer every morning. On top of that, she quietly expressed her thanks to him… For what, one may ask, did she thank the person from whom her mother had escaped with four children, including her? It’s hard to comprehend.
As I entered the kitchen that morning, I could already predict in great detail what would follow.
“Good morning,” I greeted her.
“Morning, morning,” Grandma answered as she continued to bustle about. “Wash up quickly.”
Grandma wore her usual pale, patterned housedress and white-trimmed slippers. Her left hand was behind her back as if she were ready to rub the sore spot at the moment she would choose to complain about her “spindileeze.” She held a shiny, well-polished pot in her right hand.
One of Grandma Lisa’s unquestionable merits was her marvelous cleanliness. She kept the house in perfect order and demanded the same from everybody else. The cleaning woman Grandma employed was exhausted from her instructions and quibbles.
“You either clean or you don’t!” Grandma exclaimed, pointing her finger at another corner which was not quite licked clean. “There’s so much dirt there!”
I would turn out to be that “not quite licked clean corner” every morning. The sink was in the kitchen. The procedure of washing took place under the observant eyes of Grandma, and it would begin with the morning class in hand washing.
“No, that’s wrong! That’s absolutely wrong! Rub here,” Grandma would pat the outside of her wrist. “Now wash it off… And now soap them up again. Rub! Rub harder!”
I washed my hands like most children. Just think of Tom Sawyer. I would just wash my hands with water or use a little soap and rinse it off right away. But I couldn’t get away with that when Grandma was around. I had to fulfill all her requirements. And still a grimace would distort Grandma’s face.
“Oy, oy, oy, the water is so dirty! Soap them up once more.”
At last I would be granted permission to dry my hands. Then Grandma would start groaning again:
“Look how dirty the towel is! From just one use!”
I don’t know what to call the character trait that wouldn’t allow Grandma to permit any trifling thing to happen around her without receiving her attention and supervisory directions. Perhaps she was exerting her leadership, for which she had never found an outlet. One way or another, everything that entered her field of vision had to be corrected, adjusted and improved.
Grandma sometimes managed to give her instructions calmly, but she would normally get nervous right away. It took nothing for her to fly into a rage and start shouting. This was also one of her character traits.
Grandma looked quite funny when she got upset. She would shake her head in such a way that her silk headscarf would stand on end and slip off her red hair. Her eyes would widen and her eyebrows rise abruptly. With her legs spread wide and her right hand raised, Grandma would accompany her words with expressive movements of her index finger, like an experienced orator in front of a big crowd.
It was interesting to watch Grandma, but certainly not when I became the object of her attention.
After fulfilling all the requirements, I could at last step away from the sink. The torture was over… until dinner.
Then Grandma Lisa was again bustling about the stove.
Grandpa’s favorite drink, choyi kaimoki, was prepared in a pot on the stove. It was an old Asian drink.
Milk was poured into strong boiling tea. That mixture was slightly salted and left to boil for some time. The amount of milk, the time it took to prepare it, both before bringing it to a boil and after, were very important, for the taste of the choyi kaimoki depended on it. Besides, one had to stir it now and then. Grandma Lisa would dip a bowl into the pot, fill it and pour it back into the pot. The unique aroma filled the kitchen.
“Vale-RY, get the teapot quickly!”
Unlike Grandma Abigai, who pronounced my name softly and melodiously,
“Va-le-ry,” always smiling tenderly, Grandma Lisa called me, and everyone else, seriously, sternly, stressing the last syllable of my name, “Vale-RY”, almost shouting “RY”.
“Get kosis, please.”
Grandma would point toward the lower shelf where big bowls were kept so that, God forbid, I didn’t pick up the wrong bowls.
Dishes were organized in a strict order. Milk dishes, as directed by Jewish law, should not be mixed with dinner dishes. They were never washed together. And if Grandma, after retiring to her bedroom to take a nap after dinner, heard the clinking of dishes, she would wake up immediately and give instructions loudly or dash to the kitchen to make sure that everything was done right.
The choyi kaimoki was ready. Grandpa and I sat down at the table. Grandma served breakfast. She would usually have hers alone later.
We were having breakfast at the living room window, which faced a neighbor’s garden. It was strange that I couldn’t figure out whose garden it was, though I tried many times as I walked around the adjoining lanes.
That garden was a mystery to me. It was very small, no wider than our living room, but longer. It was surrounded by the walls of neighboring houses, so it wasn’t clear to whom it belonged. Perhaps it was no one’s, but a red rose bush grew in that garden; it was the only one there, and someone tended to it.
"There were no other windows in the living room, and my favorite yard was not visible from there.
Grandpa Yoskhaim had bought the plot on which his house now stood for one thousand rubles in 1933. It was a garden without any buildings, planted with sweet cherry trees. Grandpa attended to the construction of the house himself. He sometimes told me about it, though rather sparingly. And I listened with great interest, even agitation. I could vividly imagine Grandpa, barefoot, his pants rolled up, trampling the clay mixture with his feet to make a kind of adobe mixture.
The clay was viscous heavy, and wet, and one had to trample it for hours. Here, the walls appeared. Then Grandpa, together with his friend, lifted and placed a crossbeam to support the roof.
Gosh, how very difficult it was to do! Their faces became bloodshot, and the veins on their necks and arms bulged.
I was very proud of Grandpa, and I thought: what a strong, patient, skillful person he must have been to build his house himself".
“Well, what are you dreaming about? It’ll get cold. Watch how I do it,” Grandpa commanded.
Steam was rising from the bowls into which Grandma had poured the choyi kaimoki. A thin trembling layer was forming on top of the milk. Grandpa scooped up a spoonful of butter and put it in his bowl. Then he crumbled a piece of small white flatbread, put it in the bowl and mixed everything. Now, the surface of the milk was covered with a layer of butter in which pieces of the flatbread floated like little rosy islands. After checking that there was enough of everything, Grandpa dipped his spoon into the bowl and scooped it up.