by Wendy Joan Ungar

An excerpt from a novel-in-progress THE BOOK OF SAMUEL

I parked across from Bubbie Tillie’s converted Victorian duplex on Baldwin Street and shut off the engine. I sat for a moment, quiet, unmoving, nobody knowing I was there. Why does sitting in parked cars feel so safe? I looked into the rearview mirror, adjusting the angle to see my face. My eyes stared back. Tired. Brown. I didn’t like looking in mirrors—the reflection bore such little resemblance to how I felt inside. Did I really look like that? That pale? That old? Was I ever beautiful? Ken once thought so. Small lines started at the outer corners of my eyes and slanted down towards my mouth, carving themselves into my cheeks. They dug into me, twisting around my throat, constricting my chest, ending somewhere deep in my womb. My unused lonely womb. Who was this person changing, aging, in front of me? Outside forty, inside a constant twenty-six, barely an adult, confused, moving ever forward, guessing at the right direction.

I got out of the car and looked down the street. Winter was coming on. The colours of Kensington’s glorious fall had withered to November grey, accentuating how much the neighbourhood had faded over the years. Abandoned stores popped up on every block, large sheets of brown paper peeling off the inside of dirty window fronts, Yiddish letters barely discernable across the glass. A roti shop had replaced the fish market on the corner down the block from the synagogue. I could still smell the cod, though. Markowitz, the kosher butcher who all the families went to for slightly dry brisket and extra juicy gossip, had long since closed his shop. It had been replaced by a cell phone distributor advertising pennies-per-minute overseas plans and expensive phones to go with them.

I thought back to when I was a girl scurrying to Bubbie Tillie’s after school on Friday afternoons. From the moment I pushed open the school’s heavy wooden doors, I would run—past the corner convenience store where the teenaged gentiles loitered with their Cokes and smokes, past Fraidl’s Wig Shop where the neighbourhood’s Orthodox Jewish women flaunted their modesty with stylish artificial hair, and past the Motek Bakery, where they sold the sweetest cheese bagels with rock sugar sprinkled on top. I kept running, accelerating around the bright-red mailbox on the corner, crossing the street to the matching stop sign on the other side, and finally bolting to the end of the block to her duplex. I sighed. So much had changed.

Today was garbage day, and all down Baldwin, city-issued blue plastic bins were scattered along the curb with mouths open, waiting for their owners to close them and wheel them back to their hiding places. My grandmother’s bin was not on the curb but on the front lawn, pushed against the wall of the house. As I walked towards the bin to put it away, I noticed a rope of shredding twine dangling from the second-story kitchen window directly above. Attached to the end of the twine was a twist tie punctured through a piece of paper folded in two. I opened the paper to read a message written in immaculate script:

Dear Mr. Garbage-man,

Please take the bag but leave the bin and leave the cord.

Thank you and have a nice day,
Mrs. T. Rozenblum

I was about to remove the paper to question my grandmother but thought better of it and walked to the front entrance of the duplex. A red Metro shopping bag hung from the front doorknob. Tied to the top of the bag with a twist tie was another folded note:

Dear Mr. Delivery-man for the Toronto Star,

Please put the newspaper in the bag.

Thank you and have a nice day,
Mrs. T. Rozenblum

I climbed the stairs to my grandmother’s apartment, laughing to myself, and unlocked the door with my key.

“Bubbie?” I called as I opened the door. “It’s Hanna. Where are you?”

“In here, sweetheart. Come, give a hand.”

The familiar smell of garlic and pickles tickled my nostrils as I made my way to the kitchen. Bubbie Tillie stood hunched over the kitchen sink, orange rubber gloves covering her hands and forearms, expertly quartering miniature cucumbers and sliding them into mason jars filled with her special dill brine.

“Here, Hanna. Tighten the lid and put this jar behind the fridge.”

I took the overflowing jar and grabbed a dish towel to tighten the lid, trying not to get the pungent brine on my fingers, where it would inevitably stay until next Wednesday. After my grandparents moved into this house in Kensington Market in the 1940s, my grandfather Leib built a recessed shelf in the wall behind the refrigerator. It was the perfect temperature for pickling, according to Bubbie Tillie. The fridge, placed on wheels by the delivery men from Eaton’s, had over the years furrowed the linoleum floor where it had been repeatedly pushed back and forth against the wall. After my grandfather died the fridge remained at a forty-five-degree angle from the wall, suspended in mid-push, leaving little room to squeeze between the fridge and the counter. My grandmother had long ago perfected her kitchen waltz—gracefully removing items from the fridge, closing the door, placing them on the counter, reaching for jars on the pickle shelf, putting jars away.

“So how are you, Bubbie?”

“Oh you know, Hanna. This and that.”

“This and that? Well first tell me about this and then tell me about that.”

“It’s nothing. You know how I hate to complain.”

The three things my grandmother loved to do most were to cook, to make pickles, and above all, to complain. With the parry and jab of an Olympian fencer, Bubbie would force you back into silence, then tease you just enough to lean forward intrigued, until you finally begged her to speak and spare no details.

“Bubbie, please just tell me what’s bothering you. Are you feeling tired or light-headed? Are you taking your blood pressure medicine?”

“Yes, yes, I’m taking my medicine. Although, if you ask me, those pills are no better than a nice cup of Red Rose.”

I waited, not really in the mood for the usual back and forth. She said nothing.

“Nu, Bubbie, just tell me.”

“Okay, okay. It’s my knees.”

“Your knees?”

“And my back. My knees and my back. But just a little.”

Now I understood the notes and the twine. “Well, I see you’re dropping your garbage from the window. Is that because your knees hurt when you climb the stairs?”

“Not dropping! Who said anything about dropping? I very carefully lower my bag of garbage down into the bin with this nice piece of rope,” Bubbie said tapping the wild collusion of knotted twine tied to the metal handle of the window sash.

“And the plastic bag on the doorknob?”

“Well, that’s so I don’t have to call Search and Rescue to find the Sunday paper. That newspaper boy-man, he was always throwing it at the house like target practice. It would end up who knows where. So far, my system’s working pretty good.” Bubbie Tillie smiled, gently tapping her temple with her gloved forefinger. “I got seichel, eh?”

“Yes, Bubbie, you’re a genius. You should’ve been an engineer.”

“You know, your Zadie Leib used to say the same thing!”

“Let’s sit down at the table. You don’t have to stand here. Let me make you a cup of tea.”

“You? Make me a cup of tea in my own house? Don’t be silly, sweetheart. Look, you know I have to pickle over the sink. It’s such a messy business. One more jar and then we’ll sit.”

Thirty minutes and five jars later, we sat at the kitchen table, sipping Red Rose from my grandmother’s least chipped and most faded, pink-and-blue-flowered china teacups.

“So I’m planning to take a short trip to the States. It’s just for a few days.”

“What, Ken has some sort of medical conference?”

“No, I’m not going with Ken. You remember my friend Sigi? She lives in Boston and—

“Not going with Ken? What do you mean?”

“Sigi, my roommate from college, remember? She’s receiving an endowed Chair in Fine Arts at Boston University. It’s a big deal, and I want to be there.”

“So maybe Ken can get away for a few days to go with you? It would be nice for the two of you, no?”

“No, Bubbie. You’re not hearing me. I want to go alone. I want to see Sigi.”

“Hanna, I am hearing you. There’s nothing wrong with my ears. You don’t want to take a trip with your husband. You don’t want to spend the High Holidays with his family. You don’t want to be alone with him on your summer vacation. You have been so . . . faklempt these last few months. Look, I’m sure it’s none of my business—what do I know—I’m just an old bubbie. But what I do know is that Ken is your husband, and you need to be together.”

“We are together. I’m just taking a short trip. I’m telling you now because I’ll be out of town for a few days next week.”

“I mean together together. Together here,” my grandmother placed her hand lightly on my chest, “and together here,” she said, looking softly at me as she moved her hand to my forehead.

I pushed her hand away. I wanted to give her a reassuring squeeze and lie to her that everything was fine, but her hand felt bony and fragile, her flesh thin, and I wasn’t sure my words would convince her. And this was not the time to talk about what four failed in-vitro attempts did to a marriage. I sighed and looked down at the yellowing floor, gently tracing the arced groove made by the fridge with the toe of my shoe. I slid my chair back and stood up.

“I better get back to the house. Ken will be home soon.” Bubbie sat at the table, quietly sipping her tea. I pulled off a sheet of paper from the pad next to the telephone and wrote down Sigi’s phone number. I would have given her my cell number, but that meant I would have to worry the whole time that she might actually call.

“Well, please give Sigi my best.”

“G’bye, Bubbie.” I kissed her and hurried out. The smell of pickles was beginning to nauseate me, but mostly it was Bubbie’s truth—as spot on as an Olympian fencer.