downstairs to a gray sedan idling at the curb. From the window I watched a stocky man in a brown suit help her into the front seat. He had a pencil moustache and thinning, slicked-down hair combed across his large head. This was Robert, my mother’s older brother. He would drive my grandmother to her sister Frances’s house for dinner with the rest of the family, including her many other grandchildren, nieces, and nephews.
Once I heard my grandmother remark to Evgénia that she wanted to take me along. “But Robert, my son, won’t allow it. One day he’s gonna have to,” she added defiantly.
That day never came.
I was not to meet Robert’s children, his brother’s children, my great-aunt, nobody. He never relented. I had enough of my father’s pride and anger to tell my grandmother the feeling was mutual.
“I don’t want to meet any of them,” I said bitterly, “especially him. If they hated my mother, and now me, I want no part of them.”
My grandmother looked pained, furrowing her brow. Usually she confined expressions of feeling to her eyes—just a glance or a flicker to clue you in. She didn’t defend my uncle, or herself, didn’t offer excuses, but neither did she give me the satisfaction of agreeing outright. Warmer hearted than anyone else in her family, she nevertheless would not speak against them—especially under my father’s roof.
Yet, to the end, she defied them by remaining with my father and me when she could have been living with her sister or one of her sons. Her other grandchildren saw her for a few hours a week, while she devoted most of her time to me.
I could console myself with this knowledge, but, in truth, the ongoing rebuff from my mother’s family hurt badly. As I grew older, and understood better how cowardly, how insane, it was to punish a child for choices his mother made before he was born, I knew my instincts had been correct and I was better off having no contact with these people.
E VGÉNIA ARRIVED at dawn and left at dusk, except on Sundays. After I dressed, we gave Re his morning walk, down Webster Avenue where the shops were opening, the grocer stacking pyramids of fruit, the old man at the Chinese laundry ironing in the window. Then she heated me milk with honey stirred in, and toasted rolls already buttered, and joined me at the table with her first cup of tea, to which she added a spoonful of blackberry jam. At eight o’clock she sent me off to school with two quarters for a hot lunch at the cafeteria.
Evgénia and I got along well, and I came to trust her implicitly. When she thought I was out of line, she called me “Effendi Xeno,” raising her voice a notch. Outside the house, away from my grandmother and father, she relaxed out of her role.
During our walks, she liked to talk about the birds we spotted: the thrushes, bluejays, doves, and cardinals that lived nearby, in the New York Botanical Garden. She could identify every type of cloud, from cumulonimbus to altocumulus. “And highest of all,” she said, “the cirrostratus you can only see from the mountains. In my country, people say angels make their wings from those clouds.”
“Do you believe in angels, Evgénia?”
She hesitated. “No. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
Sometimes, sitting on a bench outside the candy store, sipping Cokes, we played the game of guessing people’s occupations, the nature of their errands, and their destinations. It was a game I liked because, without conclusive answers, our conjectures took on lives of their own, entertaining us long after the person had disappeared. Evgénia was good at it. From the way she picked out and assembled details, I sensed she had seen more of life, across the social spectrum, than she let on. Maybe more, at thirty-two, than she had wanted to see.
At dinner she read me human interest stories from the
Daily News:
a French balloonist had sailed over the North Sea; a doctor in
Once I heard my grandmother remark to Evgénia that she wanted to take me along. “But Robert, my son, won’t allow it. One day he’s gonna have to,” she added defiantly.
That day never came.
I was not to meet Robert’s children, his brother’s children, my great-aunt, nobody. He never relented. I had enough of my father’s pride and anger to tell my grandmother the feeling was mutual.
“I don’t want to meet any of them,” I said bitterly, “especially him. If they hated my mother, and now me, I want no part of them.”
My grandmother looked pained, furrowing her brow. Usually she confined expressions of feeling to her eyes—just a glance or a flicker to clue you in. She didn’t defend my uncle, or herself, didn’t offer excuses, but neither did she give me the satisfaction of agreeing outright. Warmer hearted than anyone else in her family, she nevertheless would not speak against them—especially under my father’s roof.
Yet, to the end, she defied them by remaining with my father and me when she could have been living with her sister or one of her sons. Her other grandchildren saw her for a few hours a week, while she devoted most of her time to me.
I could console myself with this knowledge, but, in truth, the ongoing rebuff from my mother’s family hurt badly. As I grew older, and understood better how cowardly, how insane, it was to punish a child for choices his mother made before he was born, I knew my instincts had been correct and I was better off having no contact with these people.
E VGÉNIA ARRIVED at dawn and left at dusk, except on Sundays. After I dressed, we gave Re his morning walk, down Webster Avenue where the shops were opening, the grocer stacking pyramids of fruit, the old man at the Chinese laundry ironing in the window. Then she heated me milk with honey stirred in, and toasted rolls already buttered, and joined me at the table with her first cup of tea, to which she added a spoonful of blackberry jam. At eight o’clock she sent me off to school with two quarters for a hot lunch at the cafeteria.
Evgénia and I got along well, and I came to trust her implicitly. When she thought I was out of line, she called me “Effendi Xeno,” raising her voice a notch. Outside the house, away from my grandmother and father, she relaxed out of her role.
During our walks, she liked to talk about the birds we spotted: the thrushes, bluejays, doves, and cardinals that lived nearby, in the New York Botanical Garden. She could identify every type of cloud, from cumulonimbus to altocumulus. “And highest of all,” she said, “the cirrostratus you can only see from the mountains. In my country, people say angels make their wings from those clouds.”
“Do you believe in angels, Evgénia?”
She hesitated. “No. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
Sometimes, sitting on a bench outside the candy store, sipping Cokes, we played the game of guessing people’s occupations, the nature of their errands, and their destinations. It was a game I liked because, without conclusive answers, our conjectures took on lives of their own, entertaining us long after the person had disappeared. Evgénia was good at it. From the way she picked out and assembled details, I sensed she had seen more of life, across the social spectrum, than she let on. Maybe more, at thirty-two, than she had wanted to see.
At dinner she read me human interest stories from the
Daily News:
a French balloonist had sailed over the North Sea; a doctor in
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