YES, I SWEAR

My sister was named for our paternal grandmother Rose, a grandmother neither of us ever knew. She died at age 36, ten years before I was born. But, I got to know her thru my father’s devotion to her memory. This story is going to be next to impossible for you to believe it, but it is Gospel, or as Jewish people like our family would say, ‘It’s emiss (the truth). Seven sons and one daughter grew to adult hood and they confirm what I am about to tell you. That is, if you decide to read on. The choice is yours.

Grandma Rose had 26 pregnancies. 6 children between ages 1 and five died of various illnesses. There were 12 miscarriages at different stages. During all of those years she was a midwife, well known through out Baltimore as the most reliable, most knowledgeable, cleanest in the city. ‘Come, Martha needs you. She is ready.’ Martha, Mildred, Adele, the name put a face on the mother-to-be. Grandma would get her little black bag, a shawl if the weather was cool and get Al, her oldest child, and Bob, my dad, to care for the smaller children. Another would run to the barber shop a block away where my grandfather might have had a customer to shave, a hair cut, application of leeches. He would not leave a customer until he was finished and then would go home.

Grandma was a wonderful cook, she could make a tasty meal out of drek (pardon me but my daddy called it ‘shit’. The children didn’t complain, had school lunches usually wrapped in newspapers stuck in their book bags. If you have come this far, stay and believe.

My grandfather was mean, an ogre. The children, his wife, were all afraid of him. He was a sex crazed man who never let my grandmother alone, no matter how often, how far along she was. There came a time, she was 34, and pregnant. A miscarriage was about to happen.She pulled a wooden chair over to the rusty kitchen sink, stepped on the chair and sat over the pipe. Picturing her cleaning the sink, somehow getting rid of what was going to be her baby, makes me sick. But that’s what she had to do. And, from the rust, she got an infection and lost her hearing. That didn’t keep grandpa off of her.

Dec. 14, 1914, a bitter cold, icy night in Baltimore, Grandma, carrying her 6 month old son, banged on my parent’s door. She and the infant were wrapped tightly in black shawls. ‘Sarah, help me. Joseph is sick. His forehead is hot. Come to Dr. Williams with me.’ Of course, my mother went. It was a long walk on streets lit now and then by gas lamps. They had to walk between the no longer used train tracks, switch Joseph between them every block. There was an ice free short pavement to the doctor’s office. My mother knocked on the door. When she opened it, a clinky jingle sounded. The waiting room was semi-dark, dingy. Grandma spoke to my mother. ‘Sit down on the sofa. Take Joseph from me. I don’t feel so good.’ That done, Rose put her head on what was left of mother’s lap, closed her eyes and died, just like that.

My mother must have screamed for the doctor because he came hurrying in. He took Joseph from my mother so he could see what was wrong with Rose. What was wrong was she was dead.

That’s all I know except I still have the article, now yellow and dry, about the tragedy. I found it amongst the treasures my father had saved when his turn came to die.