Grandma Foley by Connie Wolf

Grandma Foley was my mother’s mother. She was, I wish to say this kindly and with the greatest respect and affection, but the only word that comes to mind is “pitiful”. Truly, she was. My most vivid memory of her is my last memory of her. It was from a summer visit when I was fourteen years old. That was the summer that my father’s union was on strike and we went back to New York for a month long visit. Tim and I looked forward to staying at Grandma Irland’s house with its sprawling lawns and attic full of family treasures and we looked forward to long visits to Uncle Frank’s farm. There were seventeen cousins on Dad’s side of the family and on the week-ends the house was full of family and laughter. One morning, I awake to my mother’s announcement, “Today you are going to your Grandma Foley’s for an overnight visit”. It was to be just me because I was her favorite and there was nothing for my eleven year old brother to do there. Well, what was there for me to do there and who asked to be the favorite? I wondered, but I knew better than ask out loud. I was her first grandchild, my mother and I had lived with her in a large creaky house in the city during World War II, she cared for me while my mother did shift work in a munitions factory and Dad was overseas. I didn’t remember this but I had seen the pictures and heard the stories. I did know she loved me. She sent me notes with crumpled dollar bills, the writing hardly legible. Her sight was failing but when she could still work she was a cleaning lady in a large movie theatre in downtown Syracuse. She would find lady’s handkerchiefs left behind in the seats and would save the prettiest ones, the ones with crocheted lace edgings or fine embroidered flowers and she’d take them home, carefully hand washing and ironing them and send them to me. I knew all this but still, I didn’t want to go, especially alone, why didn’t the whole family go? Why not Tim? Why me? I knew better than argue with my mother so on this warm summer morning she drove me from Grandma Irland’s sprawling country home to the city, to Syracuse where my Grandma Foley now lived in a third floor walk-up flat. The entry to her flat was through the kitchen, an airless room without windows. The entire flat was hot, a single fan in the living room made a feeble breeze, and all the windows in this room were open to the noise of the city. After a brief visit my mother left me there instructing her mother that I needed a bath before we went anywhere. My mother called her “Maw” and she spoke sharply to her using the same impatient tones that she used with me. While I rolled my eyes in contempt, Grandma agreed with everything she said, always eager to please and I suspect always aware that she too would fall short of my mother’s expectations. That, we had in common. It wasn’t until my mother left that I discovered something that she didn’t know. This was a cold water flat and Grandma had to heat the water on the stove so I could take the bath as ordered by maternal directive. This was a strenuous job for her; she was a large woman with full blown diabetes and cataracts that almost completely clouded her eyes. I stand by, awkwardly watching her. She wears a dark colored shapeless dress and tightly laced shoes. As she huffs and puffs from stove to tub her hair works its way out of it’s less than tidy bun. She had long thin grey hair pinned up with hair pins into a knotted bun; it wasn’t a style or fashion choice, just somewhere to put her hair. She emits a fragrance of talcum powder damp with perspiration. Finally, after she makes several trips, I stop her, telling her it is much too hot for a warm bath and I preferred cool water. I close myself in the bathroom and she settles herself, nose to screen, in front of the television set. It is a small black and white set with rabbit ear antennae that she constantly manipulates. The set barely had a picture at all, just wiggly lines in a field of constant snow. The sound works so she has some idea what is happening, I think she was watching a soap opera. After my bath we go out, Grandma holding tight to my arm, her sight so poor that she can’t read the numbers on the various buses that pull up to the stop on the corner. She tells me which line we need and which stop to get off on. We transfer to go to the shopping district and I’m impressed with the intricacies of the transportation system and her familiarity with it. I ask how she found her way around when she was alone and she says, “I ask someone”. I think about this large untidy woman asking strangers for help and I’m overcome with sadness and, ashamed as I now am to admit it, also some revulsion at the pitiful image this evokes. At the newsstand she asks if I would like some magazines and I eagerly agree. I chose a movie magazine and a “True Romance” I’m not allowed to read these trashy pulps at home and she vetoes the romance magazine, saying “Oh dear, your mother wouldn’t like that”. I swap it for a “True Story” it’s the same trash but apparently she doesn’t know this because she buys it and we go on to the market. On the way back to the flat we get off the bus a block early and she steers me to a large house. The windows are all open and I can her loud voices, a number of people all talking and yelling at the same time. I stop walking and say, “Grandma, they are having a fight in there, we better not go in”. She replies, “They’re Italians” as if this explains everything. Sure enough, we are welcomed at the door with open arms and are told to “Sit, Sit” and “Eat, Eat”. Grandma says no we can’t stay she just wanted to bring me by to meet the lady who crocheted the shawl she sent me for Christmas last year. Mrs. Carlone laughs and pinches my cheeks and teases me about catching a young man’s eye. I blush and mumble an unintelligible reply. One of the grown daughters has brought home a young man, he is handsome and muscular and I am fascinated. The family keeps heaping his plate with pasta and bread and he keeps his head down, shoveling it in while the daughter hangs on his muscular upper arm, She is short and plump like her mother; all the women are short and plump and the men, muscular except for Pa-Pa Carlone who is rotund. All speak loudly, there are no real conversations only yells and cat calls and laughter, and I am immediately enthralled. There is only one chair left unoccupied so Grandma sits in it and insists I sit on her lap. I am as tall as she and I sit on her lap with my feet touching the floor. I am struck dumb with mortification. My grandmother smiles broadly and holds me tight around the waist, she is happy. I’m confused, I want to be angry with her for humiliating me but she’s so happy. She drinks a cup of tea and I a soda before heading home. Climbing the three flights to her flat we have to stop and rest at each landing, Grandma can hardly catch her breath. The flat is empty when we return, she stands with her nose to the kitchen clock squinting at the hands. She explains that its payday and Uncle Billy probably stopped at the tavern so we will eat without him. I don’t remember what we had for dinner but it was fried and the vegetables came from a can. Before dinner she lifts her skirt and gives herself a shot of insulin in one massive thigh, I am horrified but don’t make a sound. By now I have figured out that my feelings will not be discerned as long as I remain quiet. I have always had a very expressive face, never able to appear impassive. It had got me into a lot of trouble at school and even more at home. I could roll my eyes or let my mouth fall open in amazement or maybe roll my upper lip in a sneer ‘ala Elvis Presley and it was all lost on Grandma. My horror at the injection went totally unnoticed and later when she counted on her fingers to see if she has enough calories left for the day to have a piece of bread, I begin to silently cry letting the tears fall into my plate. She never notices. She tells me how happy this day has made her and I jump up and give her a furious hug, unable to speak. The following spring she had cataract surgery, she planned to move to California to be close to us when she recovered. She never left the hospital, the surgery went fine but her heart failed and she died in the recovery room. It is my hope that in my fusion of DNA I have inherited her capacity for unconditional love. To love so completely with such joy and no expectations of return was her gift, her talent and I hope her legacy to me.