Bunny’s Vignettes – 3

To read previous vignettes from this fictional series, visit Bunny’s Vignettes.

Mrs Goldstein – 1967

My first teacher was tall and thin with a mop of grey curls and cats-eyed tortoise shell glasses. At least I think she was tall. At five, everyone appeared tall. But she definitely was thin, and that’s important because I could never figure out why I kept accidently calling her ‘Mom.’ The slim Mrs Goldstein resembled my grandmother more than my mother, but I never called her ‘Grandma.’

Mrs Goldstein would hug us when we cried and sing us to sleep at nap time. I don’t remember crying often, especially around adults. This was a direct reaction to being called a cry-baby by my grandmother. I had cried when my parents separated – or half-separated. My father refused to leave our apartment. My mother responded by bringing all four of her children to her mother’s apartment one storey up.

We lived with my grandmother for a couple of months, and saw my father once a week, usually on a Sunday. Then, one day he left. My sister, Franny, told me in whispers that he had found another woman and that he would come back some day. Brian, our older brother, told us that we would probably never see him again.

‘Says who?’

‘Says grandma.’

That ended the conversation. Even at the age of five, I knew that grandma would know because grandma knew everything.

One time I cried in front of Mrs Goldstein. A boy – whose name I’ve long forgotten – called me Bugs Bunny because of my buck teeth.  I’d already taken plenty of teasing. When adults weren’t around, Brian would jut out his two front teeth to talk to me. I didn’t like the nickname, but I loved the cartoon, so I tried to think it was funny.

Mrs Goldstein didn’t. She snapped, ‘That’s not very nice.’ And that’s when the tears came. If she said it was mean, then it must have been. She dabbed my face with a handkerchief that smelled of flowery talcum powder and pulled me into a hug. That hug felt warm and real. It wasn’t like the apology hug Franny had to give me for slapping my head – or like the dutiful hug my mother had to give me when she came home from work.

Everything about my mother going back to work as a secretary felt dutiful. She had to do it to pay the mortgage on the building – so we were told. The story was that he left without agreeing to pay alimony. He would only pay child support and his children’s medical and dental bills, nothing more.

He also left without saying goodbye.

Brian, Franny and me were at the Saturday matinee at the Granada Theatre watching The Absent-Minded Professor with Jerry Lewis. How I hated everyone laughing at his buck teeth. Being 13 at the time, Brian was in charge of the money for the movie and the ice creams afterwards. When we arrived at our street, it was nearly five o’clock. From some fifty yards away, we could see a policeman leaving our building and climbing into a police car that had driven off by the time we reached it.

Our mother was waiting for us to return. Something about her was different. Her voice was tired and robotic. Her eyes hardly blinked. She held Tina on her lap and handed the wiggling two-year old over to Franny while asking us about the film. In the conversation that followed nothing was said about the policeman. Brian and Franny exchanged glances. I knew not to ask. Soon we were gobbling down chocolate cake grandma had made – even though we already had ice creams and hadn’t eaten dinner yet.

While our mother was washing dishes and out of earshot, our grandmother told us that we would not be seeing our father that Sunday because he had left. No explanation. ‘Your mother is upset. Just leave her be.’

‘So, when can we move back into our apartment?’ Franny asked in a timid squeak.

Grandma bristled. ‘Maybe in a couple of weeks. We have to exterminate the place first.’

Later Franny – two years older than me and therefore an authority – explained that you exterminate to get rid of bugs and that our father’s habits brought in cockroaches. But Brian didn’t believe it – ‘Dad was spic-and-span.’ He spoke in the language of television commercials. I was baffled by this, unable to calculate even the remote possibility that grandma was being untruthful.

Summer vacation had just started and for the first and only time, the three of us were enrolled in summer day camps while Tina stayed with grandma. I didn’t say anything to anyone about my disappearing father – grandma’s phrase.  I was ashamed for reasons I didn’t understand.  I wished Mrs Goldstein were around. The camp leaders were college students, good at refereeing sports and handing out Band-Aids, but little else. Mrs Goldstein on the other hand knew how to hug. No wonder I called her ‘Mom’ by mistake.