A Love Story

BUBBY

 

I know she is home. It's Saturday. Bubby doesn't cook or clean on Saturday. That's a day of rest she tells me and I shouldn't write or ride on our Sabbath. Today I can smell something wonderful coming from her house but can't say the word. She calls it stzulent. It's a big pot of cut up meat that goes in a huge pot with lots of cut up potatoes, tomato sauce, onions, water, spices and, and,  and, I don't know but a lid covers it and Bubby puts it in the oven, lights the burner with a safety match, and lets it bake all day and night so we have it for dinner on Saturday night after the Shabus is over. I love it. Everybody loves it. Friday, before it's dark and Sabbath begins, my dear Bubby has washed the kitchen floor and put newspapers all over it so nobody should even walk in there and open the oven.

 

By the time I am nine years old, I am as tall of my Bubby. She lets me button her shoes when I visit every Saturday. The city's biggest playground is only a few blocks from her row house and her tiny almost bare back yard. No grass grows, not a flower or weed–except a lilac bush that planted itself. It hardly ever gets any lilacs but one Saturday I saw two on its skinny branches and broke them off to take to my fourth grade teacher on Monday. Bubby saw me and came screeching out of her kitchen. 'This is Shabus. You have disturbed the dead. God would not like what you did.' She yanked the flowers out of my hand and put them in the garbage. I still loved her but really wanted those lilacs for Miss Bernbaum.

 

My Bubby had silver white hair, down to her waist. It was like silk and she let me comb it. Then she wound it into a beautiful knot on the top of her head, until an ugly thing grew there that she always covered with her silky hair. It grew bigger and bigger until my Mommie took her to a doctor who operated on it. Mommie used to go to her Mommie's every day to take care of it. I went along but couldn't look at the top of her head anymore and missed the silver hair. I seem to remember it grew back by the time I was ten.

 

The only dress I ever saw her wear was brown, dark, dreary brown, with buttons down the front. A belt made out the dress material was almost worn out. I could tell her slow walk, her brown dress from two blocks away and when I saw her, I'd run to help her carry her small paper bags with peas in the pod or half a bunch of celery that she would buy on sale at the grocery when they were ready to close for the day.

 

After my Zaidi died, Bubby came to live with my mom, dad, sister and me. My mother borrowed  a cot that had gray metal legs, a very, very thin mattress, and no blanket, but my mother had an extra blanket, too big for the little cot, but that didn't matter. It dragged on the bedroom floor and made Bubby sneeze. The cot, with it's dragging blanket, was put along the wall in my bedroom. Every nite I was afraid I'd wake up and find my Bubby dead. I would close my eyes real tight and wait to hear her cough or move around.

 

My daddy fought with my Bubby, didn't want her to stay with us forever and called my aunts and uncles together for a meeting in our house. I was not allowed into the meeting, stayed outside the closed kitchen door and heard a lot of arguing, banging on the table. When Daddy walked out and saw me standing there trying to hear what was happening, he sent me right up to bed and warned me not to come out until he said it was ok.

 

Morning came. Bubby, my sweet Bubby with the once beautiful silver hair, was putting her few things into a grocery bag. She saw me, called me to her, hugged me tight, kissed my cheeks, my nose, my fingers.
'Come see me. I'll be living with Aunt Sophia for a while.' My father called her, 'Let's go, Lady.' Mama gave me a nickle twice a week for me to take the street car to visit my Bubby. Oh, how we loved each other. I saved my pennies and one time bought her a big bottle of orange soda. We drank it out of the same glass and she told me a story about Russia when she was a little girl. We hugged so tight I thought maybe she hurt herself. It was eight o'clock at night and I had to take two street cars to get home. On the street car platform, I saw her in the window of Aunt Sophia's bedroom. We waved goodbye just as the street car stopped for me and some strangers.

 

That Saturday, Shabus, I was dressed, ready to go to art school, came downstairs and found my mother and father sitting silently in the living room. Mama called me. 'Darling, you don't have to go to school today.' 'Why, Mama?' I asked. 'Bubby died.' Then Mama began crying, 'Right in my arms, she died.'

 

Then I cried and cry again to you as I still see her with an orange soda moustache waving goodbye and in my drawer of treasures, I still have the ragged brown belt of her only dress.