VoicesAdmin

A memoir by Lorna Scott Porter

Arkansas. Hot summer. Light cotton dresses. Mother had us sit at the counter, saying it was unladylike to walk down the street eating food. I held a dark little wood-colored cone, top-heavy with a cold, solid sphere that overspread its perch like a fat hen with its ruffles flopping over the edge of its nest. I was to eat it without a spoon!

I gazed at it. I licked the ruffles. As small drips appeared, I licked around the seam between the ice cream and the cone. I held the meltings in my mouth before swallowing. Soon the drips became rivulets. I licked them back up the cone and shaped the ice cream with my tongue. My tongue scraped the surface, making infinitesimal ridges that dissolved before my eyes.

I breathed the chocolate aroma. I stopped to admire my sculpture. It drooled onto my thumb. I kept licking, intent on keeping the original form. As the ice cream grew softer, the sweetness grew stronger. The globs in my mouth were richer, creamier. I held them a long time before letting them escape “down the hatch’.

Too soon, the ice cream sat concave in the cone. I reached down into the creamy basin with my tongue, pushing drips out hole at the bottom. I licked this, too.

Mother had watched all this tongue activity patiently. Finally she handed me a napkin. “You have to eat it now,” she said.

Lorna Scott Porter writes semi-biographical fiction and thanks IRP writing classes for all the help she has had.

A memoir by Leyla Mostovoy

In the 1950s there were no showers in most homes in Istanbul.  We bathed once a week and most nights we took care of hygiene the French way: “la petite toilette,” a white enamel basin filled with warm water, a wash cloth and white soap the size of half a brick used for dish-washing, laundry and shampoo.  Our bathroom had a high ceiling, tall windows that looked onto a claire voie, a shaft, between the next door building and ours, from which I remember, before we left for Israel, our maid threw her self aborted fetus.  When Mustafa, our one-legged super who collected our garbage every night and also opened the building door when tenants came back after ten pm., discovered the remains, she was taken in hand cuffs to the police station.  I remember the light switch on the outer wall was too high for me to reach when I was little.  Often I wet my pants by the time someone turned it on for me.  Father could not understand why I needed to have the light on in there: “Que vaz aazer, enfilar perlas?” What will you do in there, thread pearls, he would ask in Ladino, the bastardized Spanish of the Sephardic Jews.

It is there I was sent when mother punished me for any infractions: stealing chocolates and cookies she hid for unannounced company; cutting into ribbons her new satin slip.  The only way I could avoid being sent into the dark vault of that scary place was to confess before mother deciphered from my forehead where all my bad behaviors were written.  For quite a while I believed mother could read my forehead like an open book.  When it was Diana’s, my five year younger sister’s turn to be punished, I made sure she did not fall for the same trick.  “Don’t be stupid.  She cannot read your forehead.  Just sit on the toilet and wait.”  If my punishment was not being locked in the bathroom cell, it was having mother spank me until her arm got tired.  “I hit you because I love you,” she would say her eyes bulging, throat veins throbbing.  “I want you to become a good girl.”  Finally I was sent to my room sobbing, angry and unremorseful.  She would not talk to me until I, now on my knees, acknowledged my sins and asked for forgiveness, hands clasped as if at prayer and promising never to do it again.  “Je te demande pardon, je ne ferai plus.”

The cinnamon colored tiles of the bathroom floor, the white-washed walls, the water tank close to the ceiling with a long metal chain, the mirrored medicine cabinet in which father kept a bottle of ether he used for boils on his neck and I used to experiment on flies, was a laboratory of horrors for insects.  There was also a machine with a belt that vibrated that I was coaxed to use on my thighs and belly to lose weight.

The Miele washing machine came in when I was about seven.  Emine Teyze, Aunt Emine, the woman who brought up my sister and me and took care of the house chores, helped mother use a hand swivel to feed wet laundry into the twin rolls that squeezed out excess water.  The clothes were then hung to dry at night in the long hallway that ran the length of the apartment.  We had no bidet in our bathroom like Aunt Jenny and Uncle Joseph had.  Only when I visited them or had a sleep over at their place did I use the bidet’s warm water to send chills of pleasure through my loins to make me moan.  I must have been ten.  My body crumpled in ecstasy and shame.  I also remember Emine Teyze pulling my hands harshly away from under my blanket with a look of disgust when I took naps as a little girl.  Silent gestures are just as strong as loud, harsh reprimands.

It is in that bathroom at the age of nine that I began to practice smoking when my parents were not home.  It is there I tortured big, black flies I caught on the window in our living room with the help of a glass.  Returning with them to my torture chamber, I would tear off their wings, place the black insects on white cotton wool drenched in father’s ether, and watch them faint and regain consciousness when I put them onto the open window sill.  I squeezed out the quivering white little worms from their abdomens, stuck needles through their rear ends, then took them, skewered, to the living room, turned on the record player and watched them wobble helplessly as they turned.  I was in control of their lives.

If I were a child today I would be labeled a psychopath, but in those days in Istanbul my family knew nothing about the workings of my psyche or my experiments.  Only years later and through psychotherapy did I find out I was doing to the flies what I wished to do to some of the adults in my life.  I was supposed to become a young lady, acceptable in society, a good girl who followed instructions without questions, did not speak her mind, kept her clothes clean, and most of all was slim and would grow up to be an attractive magnet to a Jewish boy of good family, which meant a rich Jewish boy.

In that bathroom we also had a small wood stove mounted with a copper tube filled with water that was heated once a week on Fridays for the family to take turns at taking a bath.  The tub was white enamel with lions’ feet.  On Fridays Emine Teyze put a large tin bucket in the tub and filled it with hot water for grandfather, Dede.  He went first: he was the patriarch.  About once every month or two my aunts, mother and Diana and I went to the hamam a few blocks away from home.  I went there three years ago when visiting Istanbul with my sister.

I remember Emine Teyze filled a valise with colorful burnooses, clean clothes, a block of white soap, wash cloths, combs, brushes, talcum powder, a bottle of rose water for Diana and me, lemon scented cologne for the women, and a hamam tasi, a silver bowl to pour water on ourselves. (Today a similar bowl on our coffee table serves as a candy dish).  She also packed oranges, and maybe sandwiches and carried the suitcase to the hamam where she left it in a private room for us.  We arrived soon after. When everybody got undressed, I refused to disrobe and be scrutinized by my mother and aunts.  I walked into the hamam, hot and foggy with steam, dressed in a dark wool coat instead of a burnoose.

The hamam had a high ceiling with a glass dome that shed light onto a marble table in the middle of the room encircled with tiny gray marble sinks for each grown up.  Every noise was amplified and echoed throughout: shrieking kids, running water, clinking metal bowls.  We first sat in the thick humid heat of the bath waiting for our pores to open, release the dirt and sweat out the poison from our bodies.  We took turns lying down on the warm marble table and a woman in a peshtemal, traditional thin Turkish towel, wrapped around her thick waist, her brown nipples the size of a man’s thumb swinging over her belly rubbed our bodies with a coarse loofa glove and made sucking noises as if to coax out black greasy worm-like bits from our white skin that soon turned an angry red.

When squeaky clean from being rubbed down with a loofa glove, each grown up sat next to the sink with two faucets for hot and cold water.  I sat next to mother, Diana between her legs, a wash cloth over her eyes while mother lathered the soap on her long brown hair.  Mother dipped the hamam tasi into the sink and poured warm water over her head and body, which was svelte and acceptable. After we had all been cleansed we went out from this cauldron in our burnooses to the cool private room to rest on leather couches, eat refreshing oranges and drink cold soda that tasted like Seven Up.  Once rested we went back to wash ourselves again, play with water being careful not to slip on the soapy marble when going from one adult to the other for washing and cuddling.  I preferred to stay put and observe what was going on, but maybe sometimes I too ran around with my sister.  I hope and wish I did go to my Aunt Jenny for extra washing and kisses.

Years ago when my husband Manu and I visited Japan we stayed at a traditional Japanese hotel, a ryokan.  One night we went to a public bath at the hotel where men and women were separated by a wall.  We could hear each other.  Quite a few men brought their young sons but I was alone in the women’s section.  I sat on a wooden stool, washed myself Turkish style, with loofa, soap, a little bowl to throw water all over my body.  I also watched through a glass wall the moon shine over a glorious mountain.

I try to revisit my Turkish upbringing whenever I can.  It is bittersweet like dark baking chocolate.  It always leaves me wanting more although I do not like the taste.  It is not that I want to go back to my childhood.  Never.  So where does that longing come from?  Maybe from the losses I have lived through.  Loss of family togetherness, like the net of security used by trapeze jumpers in a circus yet mixed with a feeling of choking, wanting to be free from the web of confining family life.  The desire to recapture old memories I love and hate, that make me cry with emotions of regret and joy.  The feeling of not belonging and yet yearning to be one of the women, one of the tribe.

The loss of time.  How much do I have left here on this earth?  And maybe the sense that I have lived too long.  Enough!  Let me rest and be at peace in a way one can never achieve while consciously alive.

Leyla Mostovoy: It took me ten years to write my memoir that remains unpublished. I dabbled in Cabala and the philosophy of Buddhism to become less judgmental, learn acceptance and find the elusive peace at heart and mind.

A memoir by Carmen Mason

When she was ten she was finally permitted to go alone to the movies after the children’s cut-off at three o’clock. Her mother would write a note to the movie house manager saying her daughter loved, must see, could not live without The Red Shoes or Samson and Delilah or Lily; how it was impossible for her to concentrate next to all the rowdy children. He’d finally agreed to let her in.

She would walk quickly to the fifth row, choose her center seat and slide all the way down. She’d sniff in the smelly haze of fake butter and popcorn, quietly open her Good and Plenty, then – pink and white, piece by piece- crush and suck, chew and swallow the tiny pellets of licorice while the lights dimmed, the music came up and after one or two minutes in the dark, the coming attractions began or perhaps the cartoons or the newsreel would come first. Usually the lumpy, dumpy matron with her black hairnet would descend upon her right before the first main feature, wiggle her flashlight in her face and tell her gruffly to move on back to the kids’ section. That’s when she’d softly inform her she was Mr. Bryant’s special guest and wave the letter at her. The matron would squint and scowl, then trudge back up the aisle.

She loved her darkening solitude, her secret world where on each side heavy wine velvet curtains hung and thick gold braided ropes pulled tightly round them in the middle like a fat woman’s waist. Parting them was the huge white screen where women danced to Arabian melodies, barely dressed men fought lions and threw their beloveds to the ground before covering them with kisses, or a crazed ballet dancer danced, then ran off the stage, through the town and tossed herself off a parapet into an oncoming train. Or a shy country girl talked to a marionette and told him of her secret passion.

During those first few minutes – despite her praying they would not come – thoughts about death arrived and circled her, blocking the stage, deafening the music. The image of her dying father and, although she could not name it then, the desolation of chance and demise entered with the growing darkness and sat down next to her. Then the voices began – the litany, purposely, religiously: one day, you will be dead. You will die and never, ever again be here, sit here, see this movie, any movie ever again. You Will No Longer Exist. You will not see, hear, feel, smell. You will never ever have another Good and Plenty or Three Musketeers, watch the actors kiss and kill, love and lose, then embrace and love again forever. You will not again see Mummy or Melisa or any friend; eat, touch, think a single thought.Your Mind Will Stop. All This Will End. Be Over. You Will Know Nothing and Everything Will Continue Without You. You – Never. Ever. Again. Dead. Dead Forever.

Then the movie would begin.

Carmen Mason, born in the Bronx, N.Y., has written poetry, stories and essays all her life, won  several awards, and taught English and writing for fifty years while being raised by two daughters. She has been a member of The Institute of Retired Professionals at The New School for sixteen years.

A short story by Carol Grant

Ding! Ding! “Stand Clear of the Closing Doors, Please.”

She was compressed against a crowd of sweaty strangers just inside the doors of the Brooklyn bound F train as it stopped at the Broadway-Lafayette station. The doors closed but five seconds later, they opened again and more people tried to shove their way into the cramped car. She was hot, sticky and weary and yet was determined to stay facing the doors so she could make a quick exit two stops away at Delancey Street. As she gazed out of the open doorway, she looked straight into the eyes of a tall young man who was holding a bass instrument case. She looked away quickly when he gave her a friendly smile.

Ding! Ding! “Stand Clear of the Closing Doors, Please.”

The doors closed but re-opened again almost immediately. He was still standing directly in front of the door and she was drawn to look at him again. All the well-worn romantic clichés raced through her mind: “Their eyes locked,” “She felt short of breath,” “Her heart was pounding in her chest.” Despite her almost painful innate shyness, she tried to move to one side of the doorway and actually motioned for him to try and get onto the train. He smiled broadly, shrugged his shoulders and shook his head implying that it was impossible for him to squeeze in.

Ding! Ding! “Stand Clear of the Closing Doors, Please.”

This time the doors remained closed and the train began to move. She looked at him one last time and to her pleasant surprise, he winked and waved at her as the train headed into the dark tunnel. As his face vanished, she found herself feeling a mixture of great excitement and deep disappointment. What if he had boarded the train and stood beside her? Would they have talked? Would they have hastily exchanged e-mails or phone numbers? Would she have felt shy and awkward as she usually did with men? Would she have looked away and remained silent and tongue-tied? She would never know.

As she walked home later to her fifth floor walk-up studio apartment on a dingy block of Broome Street, she couldn’t get his face out of her mind.  Not only was he extremely handsome with a great smile, but best of all he was a musician. She wondered if he played bass in a rock, jazz or classical group. Would he understand how devastated she had felt when she would tell him that she had been a Juilliard piano student but had been requested by her teacher to take a leave of absence to work on her “lack of motivation and assertiveness?” Would he be disappointed to learn she was working as a sales person in J&R’s Classical Music section? Did he live on the LES or in Brooklyn? Was he a New Yorker or just visiting the city? With her luck he was probably living in an artsy Williamsburg condo with a beautiful, sexy singer.  In her tiny, stifling apartment she suddenly remembered acquaintances at Juilliard discussing the website “Missed Connections” where people in the city try to reconnect with someone with whom they have had a fleeting interaction. She never thought she would consider submitting such a search, but immediately she found herself silently composing a submission:

TUESDAY, JULY 9^{TH ,} AROUND 6PM,. BROADWAY/LAFAYETTE STATION ON THE BROOKLYN BOUND F TRAIN. YOU WERE A VERY TALL (at least 6’4’’), 20- SOMETHING MAN WITH SHOULDER LENGTH BLOND HAIR STANDING ON THE PLATFORM WITH MANY OTHERS WHO WERE ALSO TRYING TO SQUEEZE ONTO THE TRAIN.  YOU WERE CARRYING A BASS CASE. YOU WERE WEARING KHAKI SHORTS WITH A DARK BLUE T-SHIRT WHICH SAID “STRING PLAYERS HAVE GOOD VIBRATIONS!” I AM 5FT.8INS. WITH LONG BROWN HAIR PULLED BACK IN A PONYTAIL. I WAS WEARING A YELLOW SUNDRESS WITH SANDALS AND WAS CARRYING A TRADER JOE’S ORANGE CANVAS BAG. WE MADE EYE CONTACT AND YOU WAVED AND WINKED AT ME AS THE TRAIN PULLED AWAY. I AM ALSO A MUSICIAN AND PLAY THE PIANO.  IF YOU SEE THIS AND WISH TO CONNECT WITH ME, PLEASE REPLY HERE.

All night she tossed and turned and slept fitfully. She kept re-writing the paragraph in her mind. When she finally got up at 6am, she went to her computer and immediately sent the message to the “Missed Connections” website. She knew that if she thought about it any longer, she would not have the nerve to send it.

During the following two days, she lived in a state of nervous anticipation and excitement. She thought about the young man constantly and fantasized about the conversations and activities they would share when he connected with her. Every evening, she took the F train home around 6pm and her heart pounded when the train pulled into the Broadway station. She searched the platform in vain. At work she checked the “Missed Connections” site so often that her boss was on her case.

On Friday morning, July 12^th, she took the train to work earlier than usual and felt lucky to actually score a seat. She absent-mindedly picked up a copy of The Daily News  which someone had left on the seat beside her. The headlines screamed:

                            NOT A BASS IN THAT CASE!!

                            GRIZZLY MURDER VICTIM’S BODY

                            DISCOVERED IN INSTRUMENT CASE!!

The body of the Fort Greene woman, Sophie Anderson, reported missing on Monday, July 6th,  has been found and identified her parents. The body had been stashed in a bass case and dumped in a vacant lot near the Gowanus Canal. Three boys playing nearby saw a tall, blond man leave the case and walk quickly away. They immediately pried the case open and made their gruesome discovery. They called the police and gave a scant description of the man.

The only lead that Detective Bruno Fonfara of the NYPD has released so far is information given to them by the victim’s roommate who remains unidentified at this time. She reports that Sophie had been going to meet a man she had made contact with through the social network internet site “Missed  Connections.”

Police are requesting that anyone with information about this case, contact them directly or through the NYPD  CrimeStoppers  Anonymous Tipline at 1-800-577-TIPS.

 

Carol Grant, originally from Montreal, loves to people-watch and eaves-drop on the buses and trains of New York, her adopted city. she has always heard that there are “eight million stories in the naked city” and “Missed Connections” may be one of them.

A memoir by Patricia (Pat) Cooper

Pacing the aisles of desks like a ship in full sail, silk dress rustling, corset faintly creaking, iron-grey hair stowed under a net, Miss Brower let us know from the start what she expected of a senior honors class: every one of us would take part in the Shakespeare readings, requiring no memorization, but a firm grasp of the plays, each of which would be discussed in class. Our first assignment would be “Macbeth”.

At first we resisted, mumbling or declaiming lines without regard to subtext or rhythm, but soon enough, in the face of her good-humored demands, began to do ‘the work’ and to enjoy it.  Everyone, that is, but Robert, star forward on our basketball team.  An accomplished word-swallower and inveterate sloucher, he’d been chosen (how come?) by our teacher to read Macbeth in the final battlefield confrontation with our very best Macduff.

As usual, Miss B. watched from the back of the room as valiant Macduff fired off his lines at this Macbeth, who had just began to wearily mutter his own speech when there came a great roar, “STOP AND THINK, Robert!  You are a KING!  You are a WARRIOR!  Rise up! RISE UP, MACBETH!”  Speechless, Robert stared at her a moment, then lowered his eyes, took a deep breath and slowly drew himself up to face Macduff, shouting loud and clear, “I will not YIELD to kiss the ground beneath young Malcolm’s FEET…” cutting a way for himself through the dense Shakespearean thicket.

Silence, then Miss B. led the applause, which evolved quickly into stomping as the actors smiled and smiled.  We had witnessed transcendence, and somehow recognized it as a rare and wonderful thing.  Ah, Miss Brower, brave Miss Brower, I thank you, even now.

 

Patricia (Pat) Cooper, a former playwright,  independent filmmaker and film executive at Paramount and Warner Bros. is Professor Emerita at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she was head of the Undergraduate Acting & Directing Area for many years.  Currently writing a memoir in bits and pieces, she is a passionate admirer of IRP, home of the brave and the free.

 

A personal essay by Celeste Cheyney

I’m not sure exactly when I began to glance at the obituaries of public figures, featured daily in the Times. It must have been around the year when I reached age 65. Every month, the arrival of the social security check, although welcome, was a reminder of that inescapable fact of life – mortality! After a while it became clear that snacking on sunflower seeds, running three miles a day, and even swallowing a daily ration of green tea while holding my nose, could not guarantee that I’d be here forever. I started to wonder how much time I had left. I not only glanced at those obituaries; I began to play my secret game.

People read the obituaries for a variety of reasons. In her later years, my mother read them to keep up with news about friends. Colleagues of mine have used them when searching for rent-controlled apartments in the West Village and Chelsea. A friend who is a movie buff reads an obit all the way through when it’s about a childhood idol like Esther Williams, who passed away in June at age 91. He claims that reading about a life well lived inspires him to be a better person. I read the obituaries primarily to play my secret game.

Every morning when the Times is spread out over the kitchen table and I’ve had my fill of tribal murders in Afghanistan, floods in Europe, and wildfires in the Southwest, I’m ready to play. To keep my game secret I make sure nobody else is around. I take out the pencil and notepad carefully stashed in the cabinet next to the table. Then I turn to the obituaries of public figures and focus on the numbers. Of course I don’t count the age of the racing car driver who was killed in a crash at 31 or the rock star who died of an overdose in some Hollywood mansion at 23. I look at the ages of those who have exited in a more conventional way, then add the numbers and average them. If the average age is greater than mine ( which, thank goodness, it still usually is), I subtract my age from it and figure that’s how many years I have left.

When I play my secret game, some days are better than others. Some are actually quite reassuring. If the deceased featured on a given day have just died at 98, 96, and 91, which makes the average 95, I smile and blurt out “Yes!” They all been blessed with long, and probably satisfying, lives. I’m genuinely happy for them. More important, their longevity is good for ME. When I subtract my age from 95, it means I still have plenty of years left! (Naturally they’ll come with excellent health, general good fortune, and IRP membership to the very last day.) If the deceased have expired at 91, 89, 85 and 83, with an average of 87, which still leaves some margin of safety, I smile. When the numbers are 82, 79, and 73, which brings the average to 78, it’s getting a bit close but still brings a sigh of relief. However, when the numbers are 70, 66, 53 and 51, which averages out to 60, I frown and blurt out “No!” How sad that these people have died so young when others get to live so long. It just isn’t fair. I feel a bit guilty about having outlived them, but grateful that I’m still here.

Of course a long life is not always a blessing. Poor health and other problems that may be beyond our control can actually make it a curse, but let’s not talk about that.

On a good day it feels as if playing my secret game might actually offer some protection against mortality, complete with an array of other benefits. I remind myself that it’s only a game, hope for the best, and try to enjoy each day to the fullest.

 

 

Celeste Cheyney, while working with a remarkable woman who was Jewish, British and Deaf, was inspired to write a memoir about the woman’ experience as a child in England during World War II. “Making Sense of It All” was published by Gallaudet University Press. Celeste has also been inspired by writing classes at the IRP.

A memoir by Celeste Cheyney

It was June 1962, and I had absolutely no interest in what was expected of me – that I stay within 100 miles of my family in Philadelphia, find someone to marry, and settle down and have kids. I simply had to escape that terrible fate. Armed with a B.A. in philosophy from Penn and the ability to type forty words a minute, I joined three students heading west to Berkeley. Being 3,000 miles away should work.

After a week of sitting in a cramped 1959 VW Beetle all day and dozing in our sleeping bags under the stars wherever it seemed safe, we arrived. For a few days we stayed with someone’s friend and I lined up a job as a clerk-typist at the university and registered for a course in 19^th century philosophy at Cal Extension. I was ready for my new life. All I needed was a place to live.

I met Joy by posting a notice on a bulletin board at the Coop Supermarket. She called, and that evening we sipped cappuccinos at Café Mediterranean on Telegraph Avenue. An energetic, buxom blonde of 22 with a gravelly voice and intense almond-shaped blue eyes, Joy’s name was right for her as she certainly had lots of joie de vivre. She said she got her eyes from her Russian émigré father who died when she was three. Joy was working on her M.A. in French, which she intended to teach, and she, too, had no interest in marriage or kids. We both liked folk music. Her favorite album, which she loved to dance to, was Village Dances of Bulgaria. My two favorites were Songs of the Lincoln Brigade and The Weavers at Carnegie Hall. She loved to experiment in the kitchen, a definite plus since I had never learned to cook. It was a perfect match. For $100 a month each we would share five rooms on the second floor of a frame house in the flat part of town near the bay. I envisioned quiet evenings with Joy reading Balzac or Stendhal while I deciphered Nietzsche or John Stuart Mill. I had no idea of how unusual living with her would be.

It was still pre-hippie Berkeley, a few years before the Aquarian Age with its anything–goes mentality. Well, Joy was ahead of her time. It was a good thing we had two bedrooms, because the kitchen was not the only room in which she loved to experiment. While we arranged the worn chartreuse tufted arm chair and matching couch we had bought at the Salvation Army, Joy mentioned casually that she had slept with over forty men. She liked variety and preferred men from exotic places. I was horrified but tried not to let it show. This is a business and she expects me to be part of it was all I could think. I had visions of lusty men pounding impatiently on my bedroom door.

Joy sensed exactly what my fears were and tried her best to reassure me. She never did this for money. She did it simply because it was a great way to celebrate life. Nobody would get hurt. After all, she was on the Pill, those unmentionable diseases would never touch her, and she was not the vindictive type who would tell anyone’s wife. It was clear that the celebration was going to continue. She would have to keep her men away from me, I told her emphatically.

Joy had another unusual idea. It showed that studying French culture had gone to her head. Two evenings a week we would have a salon, with her as the host, or salonniere, and our participants would be mostly male.

Our salon even came with dinner. I can still see some of our guests sitting at the large round oak table we had found for $10.00 at a garage sale. I can picture most clearly slight, swarthy Ahmed, a chemist from Turkey, in his embroidered tunic. I also remember dashiki-clad, ebony-skinned Okwamy from the Congo, who was working on a doctorate in math. I can still see Laszlo, the intense blonde engineer from Hungary, who always had a slide rule in the pocket of his shirt.

We and our guests poured wine from a huge jug and devoured the tasty dishes Joy had prepared with me as her willing assistant. She loved French cooking and we often had Coquilles St Jacques or Coq au Vin, but Turkish cuisine was her favorite. It was not unusual to have eggplant stuffed with lamb, tomatoes, peppers and herbs or trout cooked with pine nuts, currants, herbs, and sweet spices.

Joy said the time when salons were prevalent is often called “the age of conversation.”

Though it was not always intellectual, we had plenty of that. As the salonniere it was Joy’s responsibility to choose the topic and set the tone and that she did with great skill.

I remember one evening when the topic was life in America versus life in the country of origin. Everyone was grateful to be here, but missed something from home. The comments made me question my assumptions and want to see more of the world. I can recall what everyone said, and my own thoughts that followed.

Ahmed believed that using price tags was ridiculous. He missed watching his father sell rugs at his shop in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar. The merchant and customer sat and bargained patiently over tiny cups of Turkish tea, and both parties thoroughly enjoyed the game. Hmmm…..Their way of doing business does sound like a lot more fun than ours.

Okwamy was saddened by the brutal murder of the Prime Minister Patrice Lamumba and by all the turmoil in the Congo. He missed being there to fight for a new nation free of exploitation and strife. Hmmm…..Maybe I should join that new agency, the Peace Corps.

“Lecherous Lazslo” earned that name the night he arrived late, found Joy occupied, and said I “would do.” (He rushed out when I threatened to call the police.) Poor Lazslo missed the arrangement he’d had back home before the Revolution – one apartment for his mistress and one for his wife. Wow!…..Nobody in Philadelphia would ever do that, but maybe in Budapest it’s OK.

I never figured out how Joy decided who was going to be the fortunate one to spend   the night; she handled that with great discretion. When a salon was over, she and the chosen one retired to her bedroom while I cleaned up the kitchen. I tiptoed to my room and curled up with Nietzsche or John Stuart Mill, ignoring the sounds of ecstasy from behind the door.

I tried to figure out what motivated Joy. Did she behave that way because she had lost her father at the age of three? I asked myself other questions. Was being so promiscuous really right? Was it as safe as she claimed?

At the end of the spring semester, Joy received her M.A. When the offer arrived to teach French at a college in New Orleans, she was thrilled. Joy turned on Village Dances of Bulgaria and twisted, skipped and tapped her way around the living room, her eyes glowing.

After that year, Joy and I never saw each other again. However, through the years we’ve exchanged letters at Christmas. For decades Joy celebrated life in the usual way in her bedroom. Until a few years ago she still had a salon. Her letters still bring back fond memories of that year of living with Joy.

I never joined the Peace Corps, but I did spend a few summers in Europe on $5.00 a day. I bargained over tea for a tribal rug in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, and wondered about couples’ marital arrangements while strolling on the Chain Bridge in Budapest. Eventually, I was living within 100 miles of Philadelphia and celebrating life with my husband and two kids, which wasn’t such a terrible fate after all.

 

Celeste Cheyney, while working with a remarkable woman who was Jewish, British and Deaf, was inspired to write a memoir about the woman’ experience as a child in England during World War II. “Making Sense of It All” was published by Gallaudet University Press. Celeste has also been inspired by writing classes at the IRP.

A short story by Eileen Brener

“We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because…  .”   My brother, sisters, and I bellowed out that song from the back of the station wagon on trips with my parents.  Long before the requirement of seat belts, the four of us with backs against the tailgate, followed our tradition of backseat singing; we always began and ended with our favorite—the one that boasted that we–the Grahams–were here in Atlanta, Georgia, in the early 1950s.

Our family had been here from Atlanta’s beginning, building stores downtown and houses on Peachtree Street fifteen years before Sherman burned most of them; then after the war we rebuilt them.  More recently our grandfather had developed a lawn treatment called “Feed Don’t Weed” that revolutionized lawn care and proved very popular in Atlanta where the average yard was a half-acre of rolling green.  Following the lead of the admired DuPont Corporation, we—Grandfather Patrick Graham, our uncle and father—considered our product as contributing to “better living though chemistry” for our weed-killer kept the residential sections of Atlanta beautiful.

People knew us: our handsome uncle who ran the lawn business, my athletic dad, a former Olympic swimmer, my mom, a scion of the venerable Candler family who’ve marketed Coca Cola for generations, and we four—new bubbles in the heady family drink.  We were sometimes featured in advertisements drinking Cokes around our family pool— Patty and Joey, my older sister and brother, diving into the water, my twin sister, Sue, and myself, Sara, splashing each other and our parents.  We were a lucky bunch, people said, and we agreed.  That is, until the word lucky no longer applied, and people shook their heads when they thought of us.

 

We lived in a rambling yellow cottage wrapped by a porch cluttered with bicycles and skates, white wicker rockers and baskets of ferns.  Our own yard, the deepest darkest weed-free green, was maintained by our devoted long-time gardener, Old Amos, so called to distinguish him from his son, Young Amos, also a gardener, but the young man died quite suddenly a few years ago.   The cause of his death remained a mystery.  He had spent an ordinary day working with his father in our yard.  Then he went home and collapsed.

Every Sunday our family had an adventure:  an outing we all participated in; it could be a visit to a museum, a ball game, or a movie.   On the day I’ll never forget, our adventure was a climb up Stone Mountain, the granite monolith about twenty miles south of town that looms over neighboring farmland.    We brought a picnic lunch to enjoy at the very top.  Our parents, Alice and Andy, had made this climb many times, Patty and Joey, now ten and eight, had climbed the mountain twice, but it was a first for Sue and me who were five and whose legs were finally deemed long enough and strong enough for the mile uphill hike.

As we pulled into the parking lot, we crescendo-ed into a final chorus of our driving song: “We’re here because we’re here … .”

“Hush, dears,” Mama pleaded, being seen rather than heard as she leaned toward us over the front seat of the station wagon.  Patty and Joey shushed but Sue and I gave it another round because we could.  We were accustomed to receiving only smiles from Mama who was proud of our twinship and regarded it as additional evidence of our family’s good fortune.

“It’s a straight-up walk, steep as can be, but from the top you can see miles—even as far as Atlanta,” Patty said.

“What if I fall down, can I stop before I get to the bottom,” Sue asked.

“Walk in front of Mama,” Joey advised, and we smiled for we all shared his faith.

On the day of the picnic nobody fell straight to the bottom, but we twins jockeyed to stay directly in front of our mother.  Once Joey slipped on loose pebbles and started sliding but Daddy caught him right away.   Finally we got to the top where the cool breeze carried a faint sound of bells ringing.

“This mountain sings like the one we climbed in Switzerland where it was the cows’ bells ringing in the distance that we heard,” Daddy said to Mama, reaching to take her hand.  Remembering this day in later years, I’m always struck by how young and innocent my parents seem.

“This mountain looks like pictures of the moon to me, “ Joey said, surveying the granite dome, “just a bald rock.”

“But look at the pools and the little fairy shrimp,” Mama pointed to a puddle in an indentation in the rock where tiny, translucent creatures were moving.

“Oh, they’re all twins and they swim upside down,” Sue commented, “Can we take them home?”

“They live here where their food and family are,” Mama answered.

“I’m a fairy shrimp,” Sue danced between the small pools, “I’m here with my food and family.  Please, let’s take some home.”

“We could dip a cup in there and catch them.” I said, picking up on Sue’s idea.  Our thoughts were so similar we would often finish each other’s sentences.

“Ok, Sara, get clean Tupperware with a top and dip it into the pool.  Get some of the stuff floating around because that’s what they eat.”  Daddy said.

The next morning the fairy shrimp in their Tupperware on the kitchen counter weren’t swimming upside down anymore.  Sue and I wondered if the shrimp had eaten every thing they liked in the water and needed something more.   I had a brainstorm:  we could give the shrimp some “Feed not Weed.”  When Sue agreed, I went to the carport where a gallon jar of the green liquid was shelved.  I poured a glass full and carried it to the kitchen.  Sue and I watched with fascination as the water in the Tupperware immediately turned a deep aqua.

“I might have used too much,” I said, wiping the liquid from my hands and arms on my shirt.

“They don’t like it.  Look they are wiggling on the very bottom.”  Said Sue, whose eyes were at counter level just even with the bottom of the container.  “Let’s pour it out and give them new water.”

Sue climbed up on a chair, pushed me out of the way and took over the project of catching the small creatures.  Reaching down into the green mixture, she splashed the liquid over her face and chest.  It left green spots all over her.

Then Patty came in.  “What are you guys doing?  Is that yard food?”

“Trying to get these shrimp out of this water.” We said in unison.

“You guys are going to get it!” she said.  “We can’t mess with that stuff.”

“Help us save these little ones.” Sue said.

Patty got a spoon and filled a clean jar with water; she began to lift the small fish from the green to the clear water.  Some seemed to be swimming.

Old Amos, our gardener, poked his head into the kitchen and asked, “Who’s been fooling with this yard food?”  Then he noted the three of us with hands and arms stained green.

“Lordy, you chillen, get away from that stuff.  That stuff take my breath away, make my hands itch, and work on my nerves.”  He walked into the den calling,

“Miz Alice, Miz Alice.”

 

Mama, always calm, walked into the kitchen, caught sight of us, and in one motion grabbed us all and rushed us outside.  Old Amos turned on the hose and began spraying our hands and arms.  Sue started coughing and her face became swollen and red.  Mama turned pale, picked up Sue and carried her inside.  She put Sue into the bathtub.  Patty and I, who felt itchy on our hands and arms, had no other complaints.

Dr. Johnston was called.  Suddenly everything turned upside down.  Daddy arrived; he, Mama and Sue left for the hospital.  Only Mama and Daddy came home.

 

Here my life divided into chapters.  The lucky part ended that morning when Sue had a fatal reaction to the “Feed Don’t Weed” we had been using.  The doctor thought she swallowed some of it and the poison had caused her to go into shock; she couldn’t breathe and she died.   The unlucky chapters—my life without Sue—began that day.   I remember sleeping in her bed and wearing her clothes that fall.  I started first grade that year and I remember thinking that Sue was starting in heaven.  I didn’t know which was worst.  I stared out the classroom window at the colors of leaves and wondered if she missed me in heaven..  I couldn’t begin to explain my grief and beneath it my perpetual sense of guilt.

That year we moved from the yellow cottage with the wraparound porch into a standard white clapboard, black-shuttered house—its rooms often chilly.   Patty went off to boarding school leaving Joey and me to sit like adults in the back seat of the station wagon.  Rather than shouting out songs from the tailgate, we now spoke in soft tones with our parents.

Our father and uncle, devastated after losing Sue, were shocked when they realized their product could cause untold harm.  They closed the business.   A decade after our tragedy, everyone was talking about Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and the hazards of DDT but my family already knew too much about toxic chemicals.

 

Like a great tapestry, the story of Atlanta continues to grow, but we—the Grahams–have lost the sense that we occupy a special place in that picture.  Looking back we see the years of Sue’s life as our own Eden where life glowed rich with promise.  When she died, our family tapestry was ripped apart and rewoven–drab in color and design.   Years later, I still think about life in the yellow cottage and I know the others do too, but somehow we never talk about it.

 

Eileen Brener:  As an appellate court staff attorney in my pre-IRP days, I wrote proposed opinions and occasionally taught—lord help me—legal writing.  Now, thanks to IRP, I’ve left lawyerly letters for fiction—dark stories and light poems.

A personal essay by Ivy Berchuck

In recent years over a hundred people have acknowledged that I’m getting old. I object on principle, but the evidence can’t be disputed.

These finger pointers are not mean or ill spirited. On the contrary, they are kind and they smile as they single me out for preferential treatment. Regardless of the crowding in the rush hour subway I won’t be standing for long. A seat will be offered with a deferential gesture of concern for me, an elder who has been unwillingly identified.

It’s not as if I didn’t look in the mirror in the morning. I did, carefully and was satisfied. With the right lighting and before I put on my glasses there wasn’t a wrinkle anywhere. Add a touch of makeup, walk briskly to the subway and I am ready to start my day.

 

It is the tail end of the rush hour. No seats are available , but there is room to stand without being jostled. Some of the seated heads are bobbing in half slumber…That bunch will surely ignore my presence. The well dressed types reading the Wall Street Journal are above noticing the likes of me. Whatever their mothers taught them about courtesy departed when they entered the hedge fund crowd. I scan the others and within minutes one of the seats is mine. I’m full of gracious thank yous, but my mood is ambivalent. Didn’t the woman standing near me look as decrepit as I did? I’m being typecast…Face it I’m an old lady.

 

In the beginning I tried to deflect the attention .by registering surprise “Who me?…”How kind of you, but are you sure that you’re getting off soon?”…and then the worst thing I ever said  …”Do I look that awful?” The young man laughed. His response was wonderful…” You look fine…I’m just not from New York. .I always give seats to women.”…Notice…no mention of my being an older woman.

So I sit dawn and then the good feelings start. The train is now fuller, and the standees look uncomfortable. I take out my book and have a pleasant ride from Forest Hills into Manhattan….

 

Like dealing with grief, there are stages to this life situation. After the stage of humiliation comes acceptance. No matter how favorable was my response to the morning mirror, I now accept the deterioration of my looks between home and subway station. I appreciate  my good fortune getting a seat and have begun to love New Yorkers more than ever.

So now I have arrived at Stage three and this is the most interesting….developing a strategy.         Once I have accepted the designation conferred by the strap hanging community, I want to ensure the fastest success on every trip. Now when I scan the seats, there is demographic research in my head, a compilation of data from all the seats awarded prior to this trip. I want to stand near candidates likely to make me an offer. Best bet are twenty- something Latino men. This group has proven that they have enduring love and respect for their mothers and grandmothers. As soon as there is eye contact one will jump up and I slither into position. Middle aged African American men are an alternate choice, but only if they have not become part of the Wall Street Journal crowd. And I must not forget older Asian women, because they’re not on the train for the long haul, but will get off in Jackson Heights to do their shopping at the ethnic markets….and that is just one stop away. Younger well dressed women will never give a seat, but poor, disheveled types not only offer seats, they manage to dispense coins to the unfortunates looking for a handout.

 

So where do I take it from here? Is there another stage? No, but I can put my training towards some public good. With all those baby boomers reaching retirement age there is an entirely new population in need of my advice. And I am the one to do it. So watch for my lecture series on “ How to age successfully while riding the subway” The only problem is, where do you think I can teach it?

 

Ivy Berchuck wrote stories in high school and college and forgot to continue until sherediscovered the joy of writing in the IRP. The support of participants in the Memoir study group has encouraged her to forge ahead.

A memoir by Ivy Berchuck

There are non-verbal messages that pass between my mother and myself, so I watch her carefully. Her face registers no more than the blue milkiness of her blind eyes.    Nothing is said. We just sit there in her kitchen, waiting.

I had been trying to tell her about the wedding. I try again. “I thought that you liked him, mother. I thought that you were happy for me, or at least relieved that I’m getting married again.” She clears her throat, a preamble to serious talk. Our small wedding is two weeks away. His children, my children coming in from colleges, even the one in London, flying home. Just family, champagne in the garden, a simple supper to follow.

She speaks. “I’m surprised at your lack of consideration.” I’m stunned. Where is this coming from? “Yes?” I say, so she will know that I am listening. She continues, “It does not matter that you are now middle-aged. You are still a bride, and I have never been introduced to his father. It’s not appropriate behavior, not the way things should be done” I don’t believe I’m hearing this. I’m almost in my fifties. Irving is a fifty-five year old widower. His father lives in a senior residence where half the people are in wheelchairs. “Mother”, I reply as calmly as I can, “I’ll talk it over with Irving and we’ll see what we can do.”

He is already home when I walk in the door. “I have a problem with my mother”. He looks up from his newspaper. ”What’s the matter? Is she sick?” “No, nothing like that” I respond. “She’s upset because I’m marrying you and she hasn’t met your father before the wedding” He looks at me incredulously.  After a moment of reflection he says, “You know something, she feels overlooked. I can understand that. Let me call Pop and tell him we’re bringing her over on Sunday to meet him.” Then he laughs. “Actually, this makes me feel young and groom-like.”

Now he’s into the spirit of it. He tells me later that that Jake really liked and understood the idea. “But,” I say, “What about her blindness? Does Jake know? How well can he handle it?” Irving reassures me Jake understands. “ He thinks it is great that she hasn’t given up because of it. He likes her already.”

I call my mother. Her mood is conciliatory now that I’ve remedied the lapse in etiquette.  She’ll be ready at 11:00 on Sunday morning. When we arrive she’s sitting in the kitchen, coat on, handbag in her lap.  Irving takes her arm. “I see that you’re ready, Jeannette. You look wonderful.” Her smile radiates happiness.

 

The senior residence is affiliated with a hospital. The grey façade communicates hospital more than residence. She can’t see that, but her nose registers disdain as we enter the lobby. We take the elevator to the fourth floor lounge where ambulatory clients visit with their guests. Jake is what Irving will look like in thirty years. He holds himself straight and has a winsome, crooked smile. Introductions take place. Jake takes my mother’s hand , gives her a hug and mumbles some endearments in Yiddish.  She laughs and is charmed. We all sit down and Irving tries to extend the conversation, but Jake is in no mood to lose control.

“Jeannette”, he says, “How would you like to see our dining room?” “Why, that would be wonderful Jake” she says. For a moment I think he doesn’t understand about the blindness. I tap her shoulder, our code for standing up. She rises and Jake takes her arm and puts it through his. They take off down the hallway. She is the coquette, laughing at whatever he says. Irving whispers to me. “I’m sorry this wasn’t our idea. It was the right thing to do.”

 

I’m thinking . On trips with my mother to art museums she makes you describe every detail of every painting. She’ll drive that old man crazy. They are gone for a long time. When they return he is telling her stories about Irving always being the smartest boy in the class. She responds with a catalogue of my awards from PS206 onwards.  He walks her to a chair and I touch her arm to indicate that the seat is directly behind her. She sits and starts to describe the dining room. “What a place.” she says,  “Like an elegant hotel. Perfect taste, with long drapes in a floral pattern against an ivory background. And the tablecloths echo the colors of the flowers. A restful, beautiful room.”

On Jake’s face I read confusion. He doesn’t know my mother. How she asks leading questions and remembers everything you’ve said. How she embellishes your words and makes them her own. How she once gave a lecture to her blind elderly group on a Picasso exhibit, bringing tears to the eyes of the social workers.

Finally, Jake can’t control himself. “Irving,” he blurts out, “I thought you said she was blind.” I shrivel in pain. Irving looks embarrassed, but not mother. Her face is illuminated by triumph. Once again, she has vanquished the blindness. Sitting upright and proud in the chair, she smiles. The mother of the bride.

 

Ivy Berchuck wrote stories in high school and college and forgot to continue until she rediscovered the joy of writing in the IRP. The support of participants in the Memoir study group has encouraged her to forge ahead.