Useful Gifts by Carole L. Glickfeld

Author:Carole L. Glickfeld [Glickfeld, Carole L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-0-8203-3761-6
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2010-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

Begin the Beguine

THE day before my Cousin Rona's wedding, my Aunt Sadie called from New Jersey. "Tell Mother she shouldn't bring anything," she said.

My mother was by the window sewing. I had to stomp my feet a few times before she felt the vibrations and looked up.

"S-a-d-i-e telephone," I told her in sign language.

My mother got up all excited and knocked the picture frame off the table. "Stupid, hurry," she signed. Of course, she couldn't hear her slippers crunching the glass.

She stood next to me by the phone the whole time I was interpreting back and forth.

"What n-e-w-s?" she asked me to ask Aunt Sadie.

Aunt Sadie said my Uncle Ben was more nervous about the wedding than Rona. Then my aunt asked how everyone was feeling. Then she asked what everyone was doing. I told her my mother was hemming the coat she sent us which used to be Natalie's. It had a mouton collar and cuffs on account of my Uncle Ben being rich from his car business. I didn't tell her my sister wouldn't wear the sweater from Rona, which my mother said was foolish.

Finally Aunt Sadie said, "I only wish your grandmother was alive. Not in her wildest dreams, darling, I can tell you . . ." I didn't know what she meant about the dreams, so I just interpreted the first part to my mother.

After I got off the phone, my mother said, "M-i-s-s, sorry never see you." She pointed to the picture of my grandmother in the frame she'd knocked down. "W-i-g," she reminded me. My grandmother kept her head covered and she had to meet my grandfather through a matchmaker on account of being Orthodox. He always wore a yarmulke, but in the picture he's wearing a top hat. He came to America by himself the first time because my grandmother didn't want to go, but he went back to get her and my mother and my Aunt Sadie.

"Plane?" I asked my mother, even though I knew the answer.

"N-o plane, old-fashioned ship slow." She told me again about getting off the big boat in New York. When the men questioned them, she hid behind my grandmother's skirt to pretend she was shy. They didn't allow deaf-mutes into America for some reason, but she got in.

My mother swept up the floor and took out the pieces of glass that were still stuck in the frame.

"Why n-o other picture Grandma?" I asked her. We had lots of pictures of everyone except her. My sister told me once there was some big secret why, but she made up lots of stories, so you never knew.

My mother shrugged. She looks funny when she isn't telling everything. She pressed her thin lips together and raised her eyebrows. "Nothing," she said, and then to get my mind off it she pointed to the wedding picture of her and my father on the other side of the frame.

"Handsome," she signed slowly, like she was remembering.

She always says that about the wedding picture and the pictures of my father playing basketball at the Lexington School for the Deaf.

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