Whatever Grandma Wants Grandma Gets
The “high” life never left her behind, yet she was a woman who shined
My brother Logan and I were obligated to visit our 70-year-old Grandma Nina weekly in her new apartment near downtown Miami. Nina and my mother, Eleanor, had made a deal that if she got to move out of her rank South Beach apartment into a newer more modern one, she’d never nag Eleanor again about moving in with us. After searching for several months, Eleanor found a brand new apartment built by the state government for seniors.
With nothing else to do, I’d tag along with Logan, surfing on the mediocre waves of Miami’s South Beach. But first, we had to stop at Grandma’s. We’d take off in the hand-me-down-from-mom yellow 1965 Dodge Dart GT from Sunrise Harbor in Coral Gables, at the time a middle class enclave near Biscayne Bay.
The three of us formed our own connection, one that softened the blow of having a sibling who had done better in school, who attracted prettier women, and who spoke softly, his voice never rising as high as Eleanor’s or mine.
Logan ruled our day with a solid hand. If there were to be excesses or any type of compulsive behavior, it would not be on his time. “Marvin, quit eating and get in the car, we have to go to Grandma’s before we go to the beach,” he said just above a whisper. I lifted my bowl of Sugar Pops and drank the milk and leftover candy cereal.
“I’m coming,” I gurgled.
Bursting at the seam from a bloated stomach of corn puffs, I realized by looking at Logan as he walked out to the car, his brown hair draping down to his shoulder flowing like feathers and his brown eyes spread far apart like those guys in the Pepsodent TV commercials, he was an object of desire.
For the females that didn’t capture his interest, I was next in line, the brother who received the hand-me-downs. My gratitude lies in that I never accepted anything less than second best.
On a warm afternoon in May, clouds puffing overhead, wind sneaking in from the ocean, Logan and I go to Nina’s small apartment in The Claude Pepper Towers, one of many tall buildings for senior citizens in the center of Miami. As the ambulance sirens’ blasted below at busy Jackson Memorial Hospital’s emergency room, we cupped our hands over our ears while we walked by the long row of doors in outside hallway of the sixteenth floor.
Logan whacks on apartment number 1649, Grandma’s house. I stand in the back of him, seeing the top of his head filled with straight hair. “I’m taller than you,” I teased, cementing our contentious, yet loving, relationship.
He baited, “ How’d your hair get so frizzy? Did you stick your fingers in an electric socket?”
Logan slugged me. “I’m stronger,” he said. “Baby” he called me. I hated that!
We waited a few minutes as we picked at each other incessantly, as many brothers do. We realized that maybe she overdosed again and is passed out. She’d been in the hospital two times for that.
Eleanor had informed us that Grandma was still going to Cuban doctors for more pills. They were giving her Parest, a generic name for Quaaludes, a well-known drug that made your body feel like rubber. She had taken these pills with barbiturates and whisky on several occasions and we were worried she might do it again.
Grandma, smart as she was, kept up with all of the younger generation’s trends, especially when shopping for drugs. She discovered that the popular Quaalude could be had by physicians in her neighborhood under the brand name Parest 400, which was basically a double dose of the drug in a large capsule.
Finally, after several minutes, we hear Grandma fiddle with the door.
I ran past Logan, spreading my arms for one of her glorious hugs.
“I love you!” I gasped.
“I love you too, baby.” She grabs my wiry hair and strokes it. “You’re my beautiful baby. How’s school?”
“Great, Grandma! I got braces last week,” I say, showing her my metal-lined rows of teeth.
“Wait a minute, baby. I have to get my teeth.” She slowly gets up, grimacing with pain as she grips her left breast.
“Are you alright,” Logan asks, seeing her in such agony.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay.”
We wait several minutes while watching her mirrored reflection through an open door.
We listen to the clinking and clanging of her mixing the Fixodent, a concoction I had played with when I had been younger, and turning on and off the faucet to adjust the temperature of the water.
She plopped her make-up her lily white face with surprisingly few lines and haphazardly applies ruby-red lipstick to her thin lips.
In the background, the roaring ambulances remind us that the days of Nina’s independence are few. A goose bump-producing chill erupts, a message of concern, a message of impending doom. My brother and I wait, both of us moving our heads from Grandma’s bathroom mirror to the ceiling, silent.
Nina emerges a new woman, gray air bundled on top of her head, red lipstick smeared almost evenly across her lips, and a smile that catches the two of us.
Grandma sits deeply in my heart her multiple personality flawed, a rock-picker digging deeply into Himalayan ground, a level of orneriness that matched her feebleness.
Yet, she adored her grandchildren, much more than her daughter and son-in-law who had refused to let her live with us. I had always been on Grandma’s side. I let her know that she could even share my bedroom with me.
She sits down nimbly in her rocker as we both sigh in relief at her renewed vigor. The squeak of her rocker pierces the air as she slowly hums a tune and then sings the lyrics “Whatever Lola Wants Lola Gets” from “Damn Yankees.”
Whatever Grandma wants
Grandma gets
And little man, little Grandma wants to feel good
Make up your mind to have no regrets
Recline myself, resign myself, I’m through
I always get what I aim for…
“Nice song, Grandma,” Logan utters.
“Yeah, nice Grandma,” I repeat. She moves much more slowly out of her rocker than it seemed when she did to get in it. She steps into the hallway, opens the closet door, and pulls out a wooden cane. I take a peek inside. She has a whole closet full of assorted wooden, steel, and aluminum canes.
The one that stuck out was red, white, and blue. She called that her “Yankee Doodle” cane.
“Your mom told me you’re taking me shopping.”
“That’s right,” Logan responds.
The three of us leave the small apartment without saying much. Nina takes my arm on one side and Logan’s on the other. We take the bus downtown and walk to Burdines, the department store.
Grandma wouldn’t get in a car. Her dependence on the Miami Transit System had her taking bus to bus everywhere she went, even a long ride to Sunrise Harbor near Coconut Grove.
At the store, I fought with the five-dollar bill that lined the bottom of my pants pocket. I don’t want to spend it.
I wanted to save it to go see Jane Fonda in Klute with my best friend Dominique who was our next-door neighbor.
Logan walks in front of me, fingers on everything he passes. I follow. “Boys, stop touching everything,” Nina scolds. “You can get sick that way.”
Logan and I stop and peer into each other’s eyes. “What?” I ask.
Nina stops behind us, shuffling through the blouse rack, tens of items hanging over her left arm as she slides the hung items on the discount rack in search of that special bargain.
“Enough of this, boys! I need some shoes. Let’s go to the shoe department.”
We walk to the shoe department and Nina hands me the blouses that she’s selected. I sort through them carefully, occasionally looking up to see where I’m going.
A lime green button down with a revealing neckline,
a cherry red sleeveless pullover with orange polka dots,
a purple striped see-through,
“…Gawd!!” I mumble, “What was she thinking?”
I thought, “It’s great to have a flower-child grandmother.”
Logan eyes me. “What are you doing, looking at all of her dresses? You’re not a girl.”
“So what if I was?” I snapped back. He punched me then we both started laughing.
“Stop it, boys,” Grandma scolds.
In the shoe department the music changes to the Beetles song, Let It Be. Nina hums along as she tries on several different pairs of shoes.
She peruses over to where another lady a decade younger is browsing and fixates her gaze on the same pair of God-awful shoes that interests the both of them.
The lady takes one of the shoes and examines it. Nina picks up the other, bends over, and slides it over her stocking. “Perfect,” she mumbles as the other woman glares at her.
My neck turns at the pitch of Nina’s larger-than-life voice. An annoying crack shatters throughout my body.
“I want to buy this shoe.” Nina requests as the other of the pair has been held hostage.
Logan and I stand there in disbelief.
“Lady, you can’t buy one shoe.”
“Why not? I’m willing to pay the full price for the pair.”
Hair flipped up in the back so much you could’ve ridden a skateboard inside the curl, the middle-aged lady holding the other shoe of the pair looks over deceitfully at Nina while shaking the lonely shoe. It is the same bright orange as the radioactive orange paint on Fiestaware dishes. She dashes toward Nina and the clerk, hair not moving a bit.
“Look here, I want that shoe, lady,” the angry woman said to Grandma while doing a dance with the other shoe as her partner.”
“Oh, no you don’t, Aquanet woman; they’re mine! I’ve already bought them.”
“Give me that she, now!” the angry shoe patron blurts, “I want that shoe, give me that shoe…”
Nina pays for the shoes, explaining that she needs to get the other one from the rack.
The clerk reluctantly takes the money.
“Hey, lady!” Grandma quips, approaching her as an animal predator would its prey. “Give me the other one! They’re mine now.”
Aquanet woman conceded while vibrating the shoe high in the air, her body quivering like ice in a blender.
Nina reached up and grabbed it. She handed over both shoes to me and grabbed my hand as Logan followed.
We rushed away.
“Whatever Grandma wants…Grandma gets,” I said to my brother.
Grandma’s life was bittersweet. Her overdoses continued. After a few short months after Logan and myself had our last visit, she moved to the Lutheran Medical Center in the southern part of Miami.
It wasn’t all sad, though. Her story continued for 14 more years. Our Sunday visits switched to the nursing home until my brother moved to San Francisco.
My family and I were proud of Grandma. She worked daily in the lobby gift shop. Her work in there impressed us, as she knitted booties and blankets and sold them along with the other residents’ handicrafts.
She went on to be the first Jewish woman to become Queen of the Lutheran nursing home.
Grandma was a proud senior who didn’t care much how she dressed, or how she looked, really.
She was very funny, too, as when she had her left breast removed to cancer in the hospital when on hiatus from nursing home, she joked with her roommate in the room who had her right one removed.
“They will make a beautiful pair!” she quipped to my mother and I on a visit there.
I’ve inherited not caring much about my clothing, it isn’t always becoming, it’s just me, along with the sense of humor, I believe I have, even if everyone around me isn’t so sure.