Sometimes bad things do happen to bad people; let’s call it karma or poetic justice. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a sick man who sexually molested his eldest daughter Helen. Some years later he suffered a paralyzing stroke which landed him permanently in a wheelchair without the ability to move a single muscle. He had to be fed like a baby a spoonful at a time. But the universe often appears to have it’s own twisted and ironic sense of humor; the daughter who ended up taking care of his every need following the stroke was none other than Helen. I learned all this when I was a teenager but when I first met Grandpa Ed I was only 5. It happened this way…
Growing up I had an uncle who, of all his nephews and nieces, seem to favor me. Of all my aunts and uncles, Manny, was the only adult around who seemed to know how to have fun with a young boy and he took to picking me up in his cab on weekends and taking me to activities like bowling, miniature golf and Cubs baseball games at Wrigley field where we would indulge heavily in peanuts, popcorn, hotdogs and root beers. Afterwards we followed up by hitting a greasy spoon where we stuffed cheeseburgers, grilled onions, fries and chocolate phosphates down the old pipes. He was just like a big kid himself.
Manny was always looked down upon by my father and our other relatives who thought that driving a cab for a living was a lowlife job unworthy of respect. I thought of him as goofy, fun and generous with his time. He was quite a character and my favorite uncle. Manny was known as Red to the grownups. I was never sure whether it was because of his hair color or the fact that his left arm was lobster red all year long from hanging it out the window of his cab as he drove hour after hour under the midwest sun. He always had a large cigar parked in his mouth which he chewed far more than smoked. Over the course of the day it would grow shorter and shorter as the sloppy wet end of it melted into syrupy brown spittle which he launched out the taxi window onto the street.. As a consequence I learned that spitting was cool and got pretty good at it myself, even without the cigar.
He had a belly. I mean a big, round, pregnant woman-sized belly which looked and felt like it had been inflated with air rather than from beer or over eating. At times he would dare me to sock him in the stomach as hard as I could and when I did, my hand would actually bounce back as if I’d punched a basket ball. Another peculiar habit of his was to remark when he picked me up, “Howza my boy” followed by a quick pinch on my cheek and a half dollar reward in my hand. He was a character for sure and described in Yiddish lingo by the adults as “mishigas” which translates to crazy but not in a dangerous or unhappy way but rather in a goofy or unpredictable way.
I loved him. Perhaps that made me a mushugana as well. His jokes and riddles were lame or impossible. My favorite went like this; “How long is a Chinaman’s name?”, he’d ask and I’d reply, “I don’t know”, so he would ask me again, “How long is a chinaman’s name?” Each time I’d answer he would ask me again and again and again until he was shouting the question out but no longer as a question-but rather, as a statement of fact. “Ohhhhhh!” , I’d moan and groan finally ”getting it”, while he laughed and laughed, concluding by spitting a hefty wad of cigar juice out onto the street. Yes indeed, How Long was a chinaman’s name.
Our occasional Saturday afternoon outings evolved into overnighters which is when for the first time I met my frozen, mute, crippled grandfather. The first time I saw him I was very spooked. He was very thin and gaunt, his eyes were sunken deeply in his pallid forehead while his nose was hooked like the bill of a hawk. My Aunt Helen saw me standing still and staring cautiously from a distance.
“You don’t have to be frightened honey”, she said. “He can’t talk or move at all so he could never hurt you. You’ll get used to him,”, she said and I did. I came to be so used to him that I hardly gave him any more thought than I would a lamp. There were more important things to give my attention to at their house and first among them were their two fox terriers, Boots and Lady. Lady was Boots’ mom, older, slower and more sedate while Boots himself was in his prime-active and playful. I would spend hours in their back yard with him playing toss and fetch.
Part of the challenge for me was the tug of war we had each time he’d return with this rubbery bone in mouth. There was no way I was able to pry it loose and he wasn’t about to drop it at my feet so I had to come up with a strategy to trick him and I did just that. It went like this; after pulling and tugging for a few moments I would feign defeat. I’d keep a hold of my end of the rubber bone , shake my head, shrug my shoulders, look up and say , “I give up Bootsy. You’re too strong for me” . Then I’d drop my head in defeat, wait until he adjusted his grip at which time I’d yank the toy free of his mouth and fling it once again across the hedge separating us from the neighbors’ house. Boots would take off like a rocket, easily clearing the bushes and quickly come flying back over with the toy in his mouth. Then the tug of war would repeat and again I’d throw it over the hedge into the neighbors yard and once he retrieved it, we’d wrestle once more and continue playing until my aunt finally called me in to dinner.
Although it was only my aunt, uncle and grandfather living here, the dining room table could seat eight people easily. It was a long dark wooden table. My uncle sat at the head with me alongside him and grandpa at the far end of the table where he awaited Helen to hand feed him. When and where Helen herself ate, I have no idea. I don’t recall ever seeing her eat.
A typical midwest meal of meat and potatoes was quickly consumed. I want to get back to the backyard to play some more with Boots while the summer sun is still up and it’s light out. Helen cleared the dishes and just when I’m about to bolt she returned with green jello.
“A little something special for you tonight Harvey” she said. I do love jello. What kid doesn’t. While I’m turning the jello back into a liquid by pressing it back and forth through my teeth with my tongue, Boots came bursting through the little doggie door and skided to a halt on the wooden floor, rubber bone in mouth. As we’d done so many times before, he dropped the bone at my feet. I bent down and as soon as I got a hand on it, Boots grabbed onto the other end and the tug or war began once again. And just as I’ve tricked it out of his grasp so many many times before, I did so again. Then I held it above his reach just to taunt him a bit and then flung it as hard as I could one more time. The only problem was that I had temporarily forgotten where I am. I did, however, remember where I was not. I knew I was not in the backyard.
The moment I released the bone I realized my error and screamed, “Noooo!” as I watched it spin through the air speeding directly toward my grandfather’s head. I am frozen in shock. Time slowed down but not enough for me to catch up to the bone and modify the trajectory of this 10 inch length of hard chew proof rubber.
I remember it was powder blue and it struck my grandfather in his left eye. I watched in horror as the eye left it’s socket, bounced once and began rolling across the floor. Boots is now distracted by the rolling eyeball and not sure whether to go for the familiar bone or the fascinating eye. Meanwhile my Aunt dropped the plate she was washing in the sink and raced to capture the errant eyeball.
As I continued to stare at the unfolding scene I could not move nor make a sound. . Helen rinsed off the eyeball at the kitchen sink and returns to grandpa whose normally blank expression looks different to me now. He looks horribly surprised and terribly angry. He wasn’t very kind looking to begin with and now as I observe Helen slipping the eye back into it’s socket, I can only imagine his inner rage and the fact that he can’t do anything about it.
Aunt Helen now turns her attention to me. “It’s okay Harvey. It’s only a glass eye like a marble. Grandpa is fine, everything is going to be okay.”
I am walked upstairs and helped into a bed. Minutes later she returned with a cup of hot chocolate with those tiny mini marshmallows floating on the surface of the drink. She sits down next to me on the bed and pets my head and coos at me like I’m a frightened dog. In time and with enough of her assurances I dozed off only to awaken several times throughout the night. In this nightmare I watched as my grandfather stands up and turning towards me begins limping slowly, dragging his foot mummy style in my direction with a monsterly fury etched on his face. Oh my God-he’s going to strangle me to death I thought and that’s when I kept waking up. Sweating… profusely. Somehow I make it through to the next day.
At breakfast I don’t have much of an appetite. Uncle Manny is grinning and finally can no longer subdue his laughter. He wails and pounds the table. Oh I woulda loved to see you knock old Ed’s eyeball out!
“How can you laugh at this,”, I said, stealing a quick look at my grandfather. He seems to be the same as ever. Uncle Manny claps his hand on my back and says, “Someday, you too will laugh about this,” and he was right. Every time I told the story I would laugh and more than once.
