Portrait of a Queen

Digital art collage by Stella Kalaw

“Cookinyeh!” my grandmother envelops me in a hearty hug as she greets me at the door of her basement apartment. It’s our weekly jaunt to the Brown Derby restaurant in Montreal, just down the street. Already in her coat, she’s eager to get out of her dingy, tiny place.

It’s the early 70s, and I’m living close by, also in a small one-room basement apartment. Unlike my grandmother’s place, my bathroom is up the hall, shared by two more tenants. But it’s affordable for a university student, close to bus lines, and best of all, close to Bubby.

On these mornings, anyone looking at us chattering and laughing as we stroll arm-in-arm on our way to the restaurant sees a twenty-something enjoying the company of her grandmother. The girl has dark hair falling in waves down her back, a bag slung over one shoulder, wears jeans and a spring jacket. The elderly kerchiefed woman, half-apron filled with Kleenex and candies, stockings rolled halfway down her legs, old wool coat, has eyeglasses magnifying her tired but lively eyes.

We talk about what Bubby did the day before — “A little bit of sweeping the floor, mopping. Dusting a little bit.” This, after looking up and out her window at the picture show of people walking purposefully by.

“I see planes passing by. I saw five planes, one after the other. I stay in the window a long time. Then I sit on my chair, close my eyes, and I’m far away.”

My first memory of my grandmother is blurry. I must be three or four and my mother and I are living with her in a different basement apartment in Montreal. It’s the late 50s; my mother is single and has to work. Perry Como is crooning “Catch a Falling Star” on the radio in his mellifluous voice.

The Château Laurier—the apartment building we’re living in—is rundown and not nearly as fancy as its namesake in Ottawa. I have a distinct memory of a thunderous noise cutting into Perry’s song; the ceiling plaster in the hallway of our apartment has toppled onto the floor.

In all my memories, my Bubby looks like she just got off the boat, with her English as poor as it was when she landed in Montreal in the early 1920s.

“I was a greenhorn!” she says, as we make our way to the Brown Derby. “No writing. No education. No nothing! Just wash floors. Now, I’m a queen! I have everything, thank to the Heaven!”

The past is still vivid for her, as if it all happened yesterday. Bubby reminisces about having left Grzymałów—then in Poland, now Ukraine—to come to Canada and a better life. In Grzymałów, water froze overnight in pails in the tiny house she lived in. Her parents lived on handouts, sending Bubby out to babysit early on. So when her mother’s brother in Ottawa offered to help his niece find a job and a better life in Canada, my grandmother was sent over.

Bubby’s uncle, twenty years her senior, had left an adulterous wife and two children in the United States years ago to settle in Ottawa and now had two furniture shops on Clarence Street. He’d been sending money to his sister in Grzymałów and had promised to help Bubby get established.

“We thought, in the old country, that in Canada, everyone finds money on the floor.”

And so my grandmother left for what she thought would be a better life in a new country. But instead of being set up, my grandmother was set upon: her uncle seduced her almost as soon as she arrived. Her subsequent pregnancy forced a hasty marriage, and my grandfather started gambling away his money, blaming Bubby for his bad luck. He died of cancer when my mother and her twin sister were six.

Left close to destitution again and with two children to care for, not having learned much English, all Bubby could do was keep house for the wealthier Jews in the area. When her daughters were old enough, she sent them out to babysit.

Then, at 40, she found love. She had come to work for a chicken-dealer—her job, plucking feathers before the chickens were sold to butchers.

“I never looked on love because I spit out the love of all the men, but from him came a big, big love. He came deep in my heart.”

The fact that he was married didn’t stop the chicken-dealer from taking Bubby to Montreal on trips, where they could be discretely alone.

“He took me out to the best shows, the best kosher restaurants,” she tells me. “Used to be real actors from America, and I used to love it.

My grandmother and her wealthy paramour maintained that relationship even after Bubby moved to Montreal, up until he died. He never divorced his wife.

We’ve finally arrived at the restaurant, and as always, there’s a lineup. Somehow, Bubby inveigles her way to the front of the line, telling the hostess how hungry and thirsty she is, and that an old lady like herself can’t stand in line for too long. I follow behind, secretly cheering her on, as we’re given a seat.

“Yoohoo, Missie, I’m hungry!” she waves and shouts at a waitress bustling by. It’s close to lunch hour, and the restaurant is packed. We don’t wait long for the food. I slather raspberry jam on my toast and take a big sip of coffee; Bubby bites into her bagel and cream cheese hungrily, sipping her tea and lemon once it cools off. All conversation has ceased, Bubby spent from all her recollections.

Back outside—Bubby’s pockets stuffed with sugar and butter packets, and fancy napkins, maybe a few rolls from the bread basket—tummies comfortably sated, we resume our chatting.

“Cookinyeh, who knows what tomorrow brings?”

I tell her about my worries.

“Shayneh meydeleh [beautiful girl], we have to make the best! Don’t you know what I did for a quarter in Ottawa? What kind of work? Floors and dishes, I don’t know what! Now, I’m a queen! Thank to the Heaven, I get my pension from the government. I don’t have to work. I’m a queen!”

And then we’re home. I bring her in and help her remove her coat. I check the radio and make sure it’s set on her favourite station. Before I leave, I make sure Bubby is set for dinner (a Meals on Wheels container in the fridge confirms that). We’ve picked up the Yiddish newspaper, The Forward, on the way back from the restaurant. She’ll spend the afternoon reading it, closing her eyes for a bit in her chair, standing at the window watching the world go by. At five, she’ll turn on her TV for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, maybe Love Boat.

I turn to go, and we embrace. Folding into each other, I feel the warmth of her breath as she whispers fervently in my ear, “Cookinyah, you’re deep in my heart.” And I leave my queenly Bubby at her door. Once outside, I turn to look back at her standing by the window to see her regal wave and smiling face.

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