HH6 Peggy 2 Adele Kurtz House on the Hill

In 1968, the narrator was quarantined with chicken pox and had to stay in their grandmother's bedroom. They were excited to have alone time with their grandmother and explore her treasures. However, their grandmother was upset that her belongings were contaminated and started burning some of them. The narrator also received bone broth and bread to eat. Their grandmother would talk to them from the hallway, sharing family updates and stories from soap operas. She warned them about rats and mice in the room and told them to eat all their food. The narrator felt punished and cried, thinking that their grandmother didn't deserve her pretty things. Their grandmother also made calls on a pink princess phone and talked about a sick Jewish friend. Let me take you into my grandmother's bedroom, circa 1968. My impression of this lovable Lugan lady changed while I was quarantined with chicken pox in the fifth grade. I got to know more of her secrets than she probably would have wished. I recall watching television in Peggy's parlor, alone, as I did not feel much like playing croquet with the other kids in the backyard. Other guests were scattered throughout the house, while I lay on the floor, scratching myself to high heaven. My mother stepped in and observed my lazy bones condition. She dropped to her knees beside me, looked into my pocked, reddened face, furrowed her brows enough to make two deep insect creases, unbuttoned my shirt, and rose up from the floor, all wordlessly. After pulling all the adults into another room for consultation, she announced that a decision had been made. For the next full month, I would be left alone with my grandmother, as I recovered from a highly contagious condition. I was ushered upstairs, into the only bedroom that could be adapted for sleeping and recovery, my grandmother's bedroom. Left alone with my thoughts, at first, I imagined that this would be a delightful opportunity to make curricula every day, tell stories and get to know my grandmother, without needing to share her with my siblings or cousins. Furthermore, I had always wanted to explore the house's nooks and crannies, the secret rooms, the forbidden basement and crawlspace. I would be patient until the time was right. If I was to be confined to just this one room for the immediate future, my grandmother's bedroom, I knew that its closets and drawers were stuffed with the greatest trove of lady treasures imaginable. I flopped onto her full-size bed, with several layers of the finest thrift store discoveries, and tried to make myself comfortable. It would not be easy in my tender condition. I lifted each layer one by one. A cream jacquard bedspread barely covered the next layer, a scotch woolen blanket that felt itchy to my tender skin, several crocheted throws, and mixed yarns that did nothing to soften the effect. I yearned for my more comfy blankies at home. My pimpled face could no better appreciate the textures of the decorative pillows, ranging from corduroys to lace and velvet. I felt like Goldilocks trying the assortment provided, too many, too hard, too soft, until I found one just right and squishy. I gathered enough energy to check out the closets and found a red satin Japanese robe. In this wrap of silk, I thought, I could cocoon myself nicely. Plopped upright, I could observe a large maroon velvet chair in front of a light-up mirrored vanity that stored my grandmother's makeup and other beauty treasures. Strands of scarves and feather boas dangled from the frame. My mind wandered to fancy flights of delirium. Even if I was sick, I imagined I could enjoy sorting through her mountains of collectibles and playing with her makeup, costumes, furs, and jewelry. As the tallest girl in my fifth grade class, my body had stretched to the typical height of many screen movie starlets. I could dress up in her sequined floppy dresses that no longer fit her bulging body, try on her feathered hats with their seductive fishnet eye coverings, and her fur boas with real animal faces, including eyes and sharp teeth, her mink stoles. She had a million strands of party beads overflowing her closets. She had several wigs in her closet, too. A month would be barely enough time to try everything on, and I thought, well, April is a perfect time to be confined here. Excused from classes and tests at school, I would be free to play in the best dress-up playhouse that I could imagine. And then, when the weather got better, and I did, I could play outside. I pictured my body rolling down her hill toward the street over newly green grasses with daffodils and lilies of the valley. Robins tugging on earthworms would watch my antics, and itty-bitty ants would stop their hard work to admire my tumbling performance. Good job, sweet child. Good night. My reveries shattered the following morning when my beloved grandmother stepped into the room, horrified that her treasures had been contaminated by a sickly child. Peggy immediately commenced rescuing the bed coverings layer by layer. The last sheet, whipped aside, revealed my frightened body, wrapped in her Japanese robe. I could see her hands clench, her arms twitch, her face monstrify. I embraced myself for a pummeling that she must have felt I surely deserved. Take that off, she demanded. Her arms were full of her collected treasures, thank God. She sensibly decided to step into the hallway to shove the cargo down the laundry chute across from the bedroom. I waited anxiously for her return, and I was getting hungry. After an hour had passed, I thought I caught a whiff of smoke, and padded out to the hallway to peer into the backyard to observe her throwing some of the pillows into a fire she started. Anything she could not sanitize properly was burnt. It must have devastated her lugan sensitivity to lose such craftily appropriated items in such a manner as the pox. She would be more careful to just leave food for me at my door and inquire as to my health from the hallway. How are your B.M.s this morning? I thought that was none of her business, but she persisted. When did you poop last? Not too much if you don't feed me solid food, I thought. To my disappointment, the food that she brought was not the crullers or kugla that I craved, but rather bone broth and bread. I had watched her prepare bone broth when she made her batch of dog food from bones that she would sweetly beg off the butcher. She explained that one could feed raw bones to dogs, which would be good for their teeth and provide marrow, but never cooked ones, because the shards would rip their guts out. After you have given the dog a chance to nibble all they want from the fresh bones, sometimes she would collect old chewed ones out of the yard or in the basement and just throw them into a pot. You let them simmer for a full day until they're mushy. You can collect the boiled water as bone broth, which is quite healthy for everyone, canine or human. Then you can take the mush, throw it in a grinder and serve it to the dog, along with other scraps, for a nutritious meal. I looked at the bone broth in front of me and remembered the bones I watched her collect from the yard. She must really hate me for poxing her pillows so badly she needed to burn them. Outside my room she would sing her song to entertain me. Or scare me. To think I was single again. Well I married another, oh then, oh then, much worse than the other, oh then. I married another, he's the devil's grandfather. And I wished I was single again. He beat me, he banged me, oh then, oh then. He beat me, he banged me, oh then. He beat me, he banged me, he swore he would hang me. He picked up a rope, oh then, oh then. Slipped it over my throat, oh then. He pulled his old rope, thank goodness it broke. Should have never got married again. Cause when I was single my pockets would jingle. Oh, don't ever get married my friend again. Don't ever get married my friend. Sometimes Peggy would talk to me from the hallway. I appreciated the company, at first. She would tell me about the goings on in my family. And then get into whatever else happened on one of her soap operas. As if that were an extension of the truth she had just revealed. Oh, your brother had a stomachache too. Just like that nice lady. Who didn't think anything of the fever her little girl had. Oh yes, oh she died you know. Yeah, that little girl, on Christmas Eve. Oh, the poor thing. Died under the tree with all of the package around her. Oh, you make sure you eat and get yourself better. You are not eating enough. I can't even give you solid food until I know that your appetite has returned. I would eat all her bread, it was delicious. But not much of the soup. So she tried another tactic. You watch out that you don't leave crumbs in your back sheets. Try to eat all the food that I give you, every crumb. She would warn me about rats that were coming to come. And nibble at my toes in the middle of the night. Since there is nothing to eat in the closet. If they bit me, I would surely die. So, I would lay under the covers listening to the mice scurrying across the floors and the closets. And then, imagine that when they came out, in the middle of the night they would come into my room drawn by the smell of the uneaten broth, searching for crumbs. And then, jump in my bed for more substantial meat, nibble my toes and I would die. I often felt so sorry for myself that I would cry. Why is the grandmother I love so much punishing me so severely? Just because I wanted to wear her clothes and put on her makeup? Play with her beautiful things? As I listened to the scurrying in the closet next to me, I thought it was a good thing that I was not permitted to touch her things. I didn't dare do so now. Now that I was being punished. I thought that she did not deserve to have those pretty things anyway. And maybe the mice would just nibble at her boas and rip her wigs and tap it at her shreds and that would be justice, I thought. There was a pretty pink princess phone on the bed stand with a very long cord attached in the wall. Peggy would ask me to leave it in the hallway propped atop a pile of boxes so she could make calls to her neighbor friend. Oh, a nice Jewish woman. Old, she informed me. Always be nice to the Jews. They have all the money. This one has no other friends, poor dear. Just me. And she's so sick she could just die any minute. See, I am always thinking. I'm not expecting anything. No, just thinking. She stood so close to my door I could hear every word. She paced nervously as she spoke in excited tones. Oh, yes, I know I can't go anywhere. I'm so sorry. No visiting for a while. Oh, I need to stay with this sick, poor child. You know, just lazing in bed. Oh, you know I would love to get out and roam about, but you won't let me, I thought. She could hear whenever I got out of bed from the kitchen below, and she'd yell up the stairs inquiring about my condition. The cold shock of her words cooled my fever and awakened my senses. Now, she probably didn't mean anything bad by her harsh use of labels and terms like lazy. I mean, it was just her manner of speaking. My mother had taught me that you never know what a person is. You know, one who is normally quiet will blurt when they have a chance. Tucked under the covers and not allowed to interrupt, I had no choice but to listen. Oh, you cunt. No, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, I'm no saint. Stop saying that. Peggy tried to sound modest. Oh, I caught my secrets, you know what I mean. If they wrote a book about me, whoo, I'd be as famous as the lady in red, you know. Yes, I'm just a DP like her. Mysterious. I liked the image of a mysterious lady in red, but I could not picture my grandmother wearing the color. Peggy's favorite color to wear was the opposite, green, which brought out her hair and skin colors. And I wasn't sure what a DP was, a deportee, I guessed, but I didn't think Peggy was ever deported or at risk of being such. I wanted to hear more. Lady of mystery, they will say. Oh, I'm now telling. Oh, no, no, no. No, no, no, not even you. All of my secrets. Yeah, it's good to have your mystery. Oh, please do tell, I thought. Oh, you know, the priest said I was the most beautiful bride and he's not supposed to think such things, you know. But boy, not much. There was not much to do. And how that hurts a soul, you know. If a Lugan can do anything, it's work. Nose to the grindstone, you know, it just kept us alive. Even after we were sent to Siberia. Oh, poor John, sick as he was with the runs and such, you know. Quiet as a mouse. The world's best worker. We started off without a pot to piss in, you know. Nothing but the clothes on our back. Mother here, yeah, a church goer. Maybe that saved us. The Lithuanian language, that's what stays alive in church. The oldest language, you know. They tried to keep it from us. They burnt our books, but we showed them. It keeps us together more than the catechism does and it helps us to tell us who we are, you know. Because our enemies all look the same, same as us. Our beautiful language is our secret code to separate those who look the same. And the better you speak it, the truer your soul. Oh, I know you have your own book, you know. Your ways to tell you one apart, you know. Same as us. We have more in common from what we shared in the old country. Yeah. That's probably why, you know, when it caught up in America, we were already used to it, you know. It was far worse back then and, you know. We know how to make do with what we got, you know. We're savers of pennies. It doesn't matter, Jews or Kulaks. We've never been show-offs. Oh, you never know. Nobody does, I guess, yeah. No, no, no, no. I don't ever really want much, you know. A few coins to jingle, you know. Pennies in my pocket, that's all the wealth I need. Best to hide anything more away for a rainy day. No, no. Listening to the chatter in the hallway, I strained my eardrum so much that my brain ached to keep things straight. My grandmother mixed time frames and used terms I did not quite understand. What was she talking about? When? And where? War times? Well, which ones? She spoke of Kulaks and Polaks and Bolsheviks, Lugans and Huns, Cops, Orientals, Colored Folks or Darkies. Her patter inferred a common understanding that I did not share and could only distinguish by her tone of reference. A lilt in her voice meant good. Sympathetic, I presumed. A scratch with an oi meant terrible. She talked about a little catering business she bought with her pennies in Bridgeport while prices were deflated and converted it into a small diner. That would be the one where she preferred to be called Rita. And then she slipped back to another time, you know. When Ruskies took over our property away, you know, when they took it all away. You know, Bolshevik times taught us that nothing is more valuable than that. We died for it. Hated, hunted, slaughtered. Hundreds of thousands. And then she switched forward, explaining that she needed to take residence above her workplace because she did not drive. I thought that would separate her quite a distance from her husband John and the two sons she had during this period. Quite unusual, wasn't it, I thought, for married mothers to keep a separate residence in the 1940s through 50s. Well, since she never shared these personal stories with me or my mother directly, and the men in question never spoke of their past, these details could remain unsolved mysteries. Yo, yo, yo, I knew them all. They all liked my place. Came into the bar. Italians always tipped well. Didn't drink as much as the Irish, of course, but they bought the most expensive bottles and they treated me like I was a queen, she trumpeted. The Irish, eh, not so much, especially when they show up in uniform, blue uniforms. They could switch on, it's just the simplest light from the nicest, you know, funniest people that you could ever meet, and then go into some fierce backroom brawlers scratching and kicking, and then waltz back in again, singing like nothing happened. She continued, Western Europeans, you know, Poles, Lugans, they'd never do that. That's the difference. They'd hold on to the insult, keep their heads down, and wait their turn. A lady's got to keep up her appearances when she runs a classy little place like mine in Bridgeport. It's not too fancy, mind you. Oh, they like it homey, small. That's why I kept my own little room above the bar and keep my secrets stashed and my head down. Literally under covers, listening through the walls, I could sense that she liked mobsters and robbers more than bankers and most politicians. She trusted few in authority, had sympathy for the downtrodden, the poor, even for ladies of the night. That's a shocker for me, since nuns were so big a part of my life. I could tell when her juicy tales were nearing an end when she started her capsule summaries that went like this. It's all the same, you know. Same wolves, different costumes, Ruskies, Huns, politicians on every continent, in every city, every town. Yeah, yeah, you know. Power corrupts. Absolutely. Mark my words, it all comes round again. History repeats itself. It could happen here tomorrow. That's why you gotta stay smart, keep quiet and don't show off. Yes, it's Maria. They'll rip off whatever skin they can use and throw your bones to the dogs. Then, as if a flash of lightning brought her to her senses, she would bring her listener to the here and now and slap something fresh on the table and that would wrinkle the Irish in my blood. Oh, I get out, you know, just to go to church and pray every day. A lie, I see. I wish she would leave this house to pray. Oh, not for me. No, not for my Donald. Poor Donald. God help him. They don't have a pot to piss in. My poor Donald could have had any girl. So handsome. Stuck with that skinny farm girl in her, you know. Oh, no one's seen any proof. But she's that type. And now she's saddled him with, like, too many children to take care of. Poor Donald and not a pot to piss in. Why is this? Why is it just when I was beginning to feel sorry for her, intrigued by her stories, that she has to just spoil it? Perhaps if I changed my wishes to prayers, better twists might happen. I thought, you know. I was hungry. The menu improved slowly, and I thought God was taking an interest in my case. There was one other caller who elicited a different reaction from my grandmother. I could not understand what she was saying to this unnamed caller because she immediately broke into her Lithuanian sing song, although I did not understand a single word. I enjoyed it when I caught her tone ringing with that cooing, soothing voice and sweet chuckle that I enjoyed hearing sometimes when we snuggled. Other times it would break into horrible outbursts that I had only heard when I was eavesdropping behind closed doors or when she thought I was out of earshot. Undercovers. Especially during these times, my thoughts would return to my mother, and I wished I could hear her voice instead. I knew that she would say, if she saw me in this stuffy old room, alone, straining to hear my grandmother's conversations for entertainment, you are wasting this precious day. Throw open the windows and let the fresh air in. Even on cool days, she believed that fresh air had medicinal properties and that we should be encouraged to walk as soon as we were able. Peggy only let me go as far as the bathroom for the entire month. Get out of bed, you lazy bones. I could hear it. Even when we were sick or pretending to be, if my mother caught me faking, which she often did, she would give me the benefit of the day off school. She would call in and say, Sorry, Adele will be out today. It appears she's coming down with something and could be contagious. If I had no fever, she would throw me out of bed and make me work around the house or in the garden, pulling weeds or hauling rocks for her. Never a lecture, mind you. Just hard work. It was more fun than I let on. One of my favorite chores that I pretended to hate was doing laundry. Working as a seamstress, she was able to finagle a discarded commercial equipment when her employer was going out of business. I got to work with an old commercial washer with giant rollers growing up. She let me release the lever down and pull sheets and towels between two 20-inch rollers down into the sudsy gray basin of water then up and through again and out. Double washing, she called it. And I got to take them while they were still damp to a big old ironing press consisting of a curved plate against a roller. I enjoyed the smell of laundered sheets and steam. Arum-pa-rum-pa-rum-pa-rum-pa Cheeeew! I would lean in close to the steam and sniff the vapor tinged with the sense of bleach and tide detergent. And that's what she would do if she were here. The day she would see that my pox was settling down and my appetite improving, oh, I was certain she would have sent me into the cool garage to do laundry. She would never lock me in this stuffy hot room filled with grandma's thrift store goodies, untouchable temptations, boring books and nothing to do. I mean, the only reading materials in the room that I could find were over a dozen dusty time-life encyclopedias about American wars hidden under the bed with an old pilsner box that was stuffed with yellowed papers. When I started feeling a little better, I preferred to play in my grandmother's velvet jewelry box instead. I'd twirl the chains and whip spirals in the air. Sometimes the chains would escape my fingers and end up in some corner of the room, but I dared not scoot across the floor because then my grandmother would hear me. Now, I could hear my sisters downstairs, but they were not allowed to see me. Oh, God, I felt so lonely. Please send them for something I can do all day. I got my urgent message through and Audrey came back the following day with an Aladdin's lamp coloring book and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Now that I was sick, I would rather be careful to color in the lines. Now, normally, this was a problem for my eager racing fingers to keep up with the visions that I see in my head. Well, truthfully, that's still a problem today. Stuck in bed alone, I was forced to take my time and grateful to be able to dedicate the next three weeks to careful coloring. Ten hours a day, seven days a week. By three weeks, finished, perfect. I could not wait to show it to my sisters and my mother. This was definitely my best work ever. I handed the book to Peggy on the very last day, proudly, as I waited for my family to arrive. She had never actually watched me work since she had been too afraid to spend any real time with me in the room. I hoped she would open my masterpiece, turn the pages, and chuckle, like she used to do when she listened to my stories. I was disappointed when I observed that she simply put the book on the tray that she was carrying out to the kitchen. Not long afterwards, I caught the scent of smoke once again. I opened the door to the hallway, crossed into the room with the forbidden balcony, and peered over the rail. I must have let out a horrible squeal as I watched her burning my coloring books. She looked up and scolded me for being where I did not belong, and then continued to prod the flames with a stick, muttering about pox and germs. I ran back to the horrible bed in tears and threw the covers over my head. A few moments later, I could hear her humming her song in the stairwell. Perhaps she thought that song would soothe me. When I was single, my pockets would jingle. Another version of her song rang in my ears and as I laid under the covers, it went something like this. I wish I was at home again, again. I wish I was at home again. For when I was at home, I was not so lonesome. I wish I was at home again. I got stuck with the fatty, oh then, oh then. Got stuck with this fatty, oh then. Got stuck with this fatty who'd beat me and bang me. Oh, I wish I was back home again. You ought to be single again, woman. You ought to be single again. The moment you die, I'll laugh till I cry. Oh, so glad you won't bug me again. Oh, friends, so glad you won't bug me again. You've come for another, oh then, oh then. You are such a bother, oh then. You're worse now than ever. You're a devil grin, mother. You ought to be single again. Oh, friends, go off and be single again. Bye-bye, go off, jingle, jingle again. I had never been so happy in my life to see anyone as I was on that last day of my quarantine. The feast my grandmother prepared was better than any Thanksgiving meal that I could ever recall. Coogula canned peas and meatloaf with powdered coolers and lemon bars for dessert. Yeah, my prayers had finally been answered.