The Bronx had always been a temporary stop along the path toward upward mobility. Not a place where Jewish people living on our block wanted their kids to grow-up; it was too provincial, too poor, increasingly too Puerto Rican. On Saturday mornings, Grandmother sat on a chair by her window watching a family from an apartment building load their belongings into a moving van. Kids carried cardboard boxes while several men loaded mattresses, dressers, and tables. Each time they lifted another item onto a ramp, she cried. “Where are they going? Don’t they know?” Opened the screen window and stuck her head outside, waved at them on the street. “Run! Run!” They looked up at her and shrugged. Most of them ignored her. “Idiots!” She called. “You are going to die! All of you!”
Several of them gave her a finger. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Up until now, she’d always managed to keep her craziness inside the apartment.
Grandmother ran into my room and pushed me into my closet. “Hide! Quick.”
“Leave me alone!”
“You stupid child! Now look what you’ve done.” She ran to the door and began to undo the police lock.
“They’re moving,” I pleaded. “Don’t you understand? They’ve found a place to live.”
“They’ll all be killed.”
“No, Grandma.”
She demanded, “Why are they moving? Who told them to move?” She watched a family get into their car. “It’s the iron claw.” She clutched her stomach.
I was thirteen and in junior high. Her face was a web of creases. I told her about my friend’s cousin who lived on the next street and how they were moving to Long Island, which was about a two-hour drive from where we lived because they had a baby and needed more room. “For the baby,” I told her. “It’s too crowded in their apartment.” By this time, my class had read Anne Frank’s Diary. I knew my Grandmother was a part of that history. “Even Star wants to move. She said that she gets tired of running after tenants for their rent money.” My Grandma always paid on time. “No one’s forcing anyone. It’s their choice.” Don’t you understand? They want to move.”
“Want? How?”
“Come to the kitchen.” I coaxed her. “I’ll make you tea.”
“Star can’t…You tell her. Star can’t.” She sipped the tea and held a cube of sugar between her teeth. “You tell her she can’t move.” Before my Grandmother had become sick, Star had invited her to a bacalao party. She never went, but it was the only invitation she’d ever received. Star also helped with marketing especially on days when she wasn’t feeling well.
Moving vans weren’t the only things that made my Grandmother crazy. So did sirens. On this particular day, there must’ve have been a big emergency. Ambulances and police cars converged from several directions. Maybe it was a fire. All I know is that the noise didn’t stop. She muffled her ears with her hands and crouched by the window. The sirens got louder. I heard a car door slam outside our building. Her anxiety smoldered into a grey cloud.
“Did you hear that?” She pointed wildly outside the window, her finger moving separately from the rest of her hand. “The sirens. They’ve come to get us. Run!”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
She cried. “You must! I’mproteckingudarlink.”
“It’s a fire,” I guessed and turned off my tape recorder. “You are imagining things.” She wouldn’t listen. She dragged me into the elevator and hid me in the basement from the oncoming war, behind the washing machines that were vomiting suds on the concrete floor. The suds crept around our ankles while we huddled in the dim overhead light, a single bulb swung from the ceiling as the washing machine vibrated on its platform.
I kept trying to tell her, “Grandmother, please. There is no war!”
“They’re coming. I hear them. Hide!” She flung me across the room to the dryer and opened the door, gesturing for me to get in.
“I’m not.”
One of the tenants walked stood in the doorway with his dirty laundry. Grandmother ran out from behind the door and began to pommel him with her fists. “Go away. Leave her alone. She didn’t do anything. Run, tatala, run. Hide in the field! Under the hay!”
The man dropped his laundry. “I’m just doing my wash.”
“Quick!” She grabbed his laundry bag. Then she emptied the clothes in his face.
“Grandma, please.” I recognized the man from the other side of the apartment building.
“Seen some crazies, but this takes the cake.” He picked up his socks.
“She’s not crazy.”
“If you say so.”
“She’s sick.”
“Sick in the head, you mean.”