Gramma swore a lot, sometimes at me. She cooked a lot of German food, smelly things like bratwurst and wet cabbage soup dumplings that smelled like toots to my unadventurous olfactory sensibilities. “Eat it!” she’d say, slamming seconds down onto my plate.
Most afternoons, Gramma sat in the big bar stool with the crackled yellow cushion. She’d talk on the phone with the windy yellow cord wound around one finger and the other hand ashing a cigarette.
Sometimes she painted her nails a pearly shade of cotton candy pink, or eggshell white with the Revlon nail polish she kept tucked away in the fridge. The bottles were located in-between the eggs and shrimp cocktail, which I was forbidden from eating because apparently shrimp are very expensive and you need a certain skill to eat them so they can’t just give them away to us kids.
One summer, Dad got cable. I saw some commercials about how bad smoking is for you, but when I tried to tell Gramma about this she just cackled and said, “Want one?”
She pushed the white box across the kitchen counter. It was wrapped in shiny plastic, and there were fancy gold letters across the front. I put my chin in my hands and kicked the cabinet hard, trying my best not to look interested.
And I kind of did, want a cigarette that is, because everyone in the Salem ads on the back covers of her National Enquirer Magazines seemed to be having ‘the time of their lives’ as Mom sometimes said about people and experiences: so cigarettes seemed to work magic on some people apparently.
Except the part I never could understand was why the perfect people in the ads weren’t smoking? Was it because it’s hard to keep a cigarette lit on a speeding yacht, or when biking on the boardwalk with your twin sister, for example? Or maybe people just don’t use cigarettes when they go on vacation or something.
But the real truth was, besides the fact that no one should smoke, like ever: I didn’t understand what the big deal was. So instead of make myself look stupid, I just said no in the most disgusted way I could muster.
Later, we did puzzles and watched Wheel of Fortune before the 5 o’clock news. She let me help her clean her prized collection of porcelain birds, except once the worst thing that could possibly happen happened.
I was being careful in my cleaning, but a tiny wing broke off into my hand anyways. I preemptively flinched, but Gramma didn’t get upset. She just said “that’s okay” – and took the bird, the wing, and set them aside.
Gramma yelled at everyone except for me. She loved yelling at the neighbors, but this may have just been the way she preferred to communicate.
And she swore a lot, at everyone and at no one in particular: mainly the universe, like when a pot on the stove boiled over and hissing water went everywhere, or when she stubbed one of her pink knotted toes on the edge of the yellowed marble coffee table and had to sit down for awhile.
The only times I really got it when I was being whiny for whatever reason or if I couldn’t finish my dinner, which was actually a lot because to tell you the truth I really just didn’t like cabbage.
One day we were sitting on the front porch swing, a soft wooden bench that creaked as it went. I stuck my fingers inside the silver chain links and stared up at the sky.
I was wearing my favorite t-shirt of all time, Mickey Mouse.
Across the red-bricked street, a group of kids my age were playing whiffle ball. “Hey mickey,” called out one of the boys, “Want to play?”
I could feel my face start to burn and pretended not to hear Gramma’s cackling laugh. “He likes you,” she said, as I ran inside and hid behind the window, the screen door flapping shut behind me.