Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN – MY FEELINGS’ TURMOIL
(How I hit my grandma)
Another flash, buried deep in my memory, concerns my bad deed. In any case, it cocerned an action that I condemned then and condemn now, but cannot deny, since I committed it.
I hit my grandmother.
Perhaps I did not hit her, but swung and slapped her on the shoulder. Perhaps not painful, but insulting and offensively. And whom? My favorite grandmother? Who nursed and protected us? And yet the answer is “Yes.” I can’t even remember all the circumstances of those events.
Often my grandmother rebuke me something: that I didn’t study well, and they would kick me out of school (she loved such hyperbolas), that I didn’t help my mother a lot or that I was too lazy to hone the technique of playing a musical instrument, or maybe that I didn’t read enough books to the child. Although all this couldn’t cause my anger and rage. A similar reaction, when a person is distraught, shaking in a rage and can bang other on the head, I saw some in of my relatives – the Neimans. But what caused it in me?
It could have been a confrontation in something shameful, but I was not involved in anything bad: I didn’t steal, I didn’t drink alcohol, I didn’t smoke, I didn’t masturbate. This bad behavior could be a protection of loved ones, but my grandmother never scolded dad, although she recalled that she was against Dina’s marriage, which broke her life. Of course, she didn’t scold Mom either. She lived for my mother. And in Mayka she doted on. Although our grandmother criticized her, like all of us, but with love. For example, she said:
“Who will marry this bandit-girl? She takes away the boys’ bikes and rolls away!”
I think the question was rhetorical. In such decisiveness, the grand mom saw herself hiding her beloved from the Petliurists at the risk of her life.
One thing is certain, that in some place she hit the mark, that is, she said something close to the truth about me, and therefore offensive. I suspect that it had something to do with my embarrassing escaping from the child got burns, my sister. And if she also accused me of an overturned pan, then, perhaps, this could cause my inadequate reaction.
I swung and hit my grandmother.
“You’ve got crazy!” – She said. “Did you raise your hand to me?”
There was no fear in her wide open eyes. There were only surprise and … love in them.
“Poor Nick, you are growing up without your father and picking up from these ‘hazeirem’ that a woman can be beaten.”
Grandma reached out and stroked my hair. Turmoil of feelings seized me. I was broken, begging for her forgiveness of my terrible sin.
“I’m not angry and still love you, but so that you remember your bad deed forever and never do it again, I promise to tell your friends, who will be the first to visit us, about this case.”
“That’s your right, Granny,” I admitted.
And soon Grandma Sofa kept her word.
It happened that Tina and Katya were visiting their mothers in a children’s outpatient clinic two blocks from my house and decided to come to me.
Perhaps they needed help with geometry, which was very easy subject for me. I cracked school geometry problems instantly, dictating them right off the bat.
With Tina, we had an educational relationship in the fifth or sixth grade. I usually went to her house, and she went to mine. Every time, waiting for Tina at home, I put on records, the music and songs on which I still remember, and imagined how we would dance and kiss, but nothing of the kind came up. Tina wrote me good short retelling for the Georgian language classes topic’s, which I learned by heart and received good grades. I explained geometry to her, and my Mom helped us with English. Mom studied English at the institute, but most importantly, she had a good pronunciation, which Tina immediately adopted, laughing as I pronounce “hiz” instead of “his”.
I don’t remember if Katya visited me before.
I closed the doors leading to the small room and kitchen, but it was impossible to hide for long.
Grandmother, like Themis herself, entered our world.
“I’ll interrupt you for a moment,” she said, “I promised Nick to tell his guests how he hit me to forever wean him offending women, and I keep my promise. This is not revenge, but correction.”
Perhaps my grandmother was translating from Yiddish in her mind.
The girls were dumbfounded. At first they could not understand, then they could not believe, then they began to look for extenuating circumstances for me.
“Nick didn’t want to, he accidentally hurt you.”
But the trial thus took place. As a result, I got the final word.
“Sorry grandma,” I said, “I love you and repent of my act.”
“I love you too, meine lihtiker (my darling),” Granny said.
The girls wiped away their tears and blew their noses into handkerchiefs.
Neither they nor Grandma Sofa ever again mentioned this episode from my sinful past, but it is obvious that the lesson was not in vain – I never forgot the shame I had suffered and had never hit a woman again in my life.
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