A short story
Grandpa’s 90. He doesn’t
move much anymore. He sits in his dressing-gown by the window and looks out on
the street. He used to read but he finds it hard now. We have the TV on but he
likes the sound turned down. My kids treat him like a piece of furniture mostly
but he doesn’t mind, he looks down at them, and now and then when he doesn’t
know I’m looking I see him smile at them.
This month’s been cold.
Really cold. It set in the day after Christmas. It’s the 15th now. The cops
just went round the subway and rounded up all the bums. You stay here, you’re
gonna die, they tell them. You’re coming to the shelter. Right now. And today
it’s snowing heavy, early lunchtime, and Grandpa’s looking out the window at
the cars going up and down East 94th Street and the new snow building on the
heaps already there by the side of the road.
“I ordered pizza for
lunch,” I called.
“Yeah pizza!” The kids
beat the carpets with their hands. The youngest starts jumping around. “Pizza!
Pizza!”
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US Customs and Border Protection |
“You want I turn the
sound up?” I ask.
“Nah,” says Grandpa. “I
know what he’s sayin’. He wants them all shot in the water.” He’s bellowing.
Grandpa always speaks loud because he can’t hear so well now. Says, “That guy’s
creepy, you hear me? That guy’s a major-league creep.”
“Take it easy, Grandpa,”
I say. I look over his shoulder into the street. There’s this guy coming up it
on a bike, one of those wrecks the pizza parlours use, with all the tape stuck
round them make them less worth stealing. He’s a short and squat with a dark
complexion and he wears a parka with a baseball cap worn back-to-front. On his
back he has a big square box. The guy’s nearly at our door when he skids on the
snow, must have been some ice beneath it. Over he goes and lies there a moment
and a yellow cab brakes behind him and skids a little and blasts him with its
horn and steers round him. Then he picks himself up and brushes the snow off
and he’s coming up the stairs and I open the apartment door and his face is a
mask. “Mrs Blaskowitz,” he says.
“Yep. One 12-inch cheese,
and an 8-inch Meat Feast.”
“You got it.” He slides
the hot pizza boxes out the satchel and hands them over. Then I hear Grandpa
bellow, “Hey son. You OK? Saw you took a fall off that bike of yours.”
“Sir, I’m fine.” He
isn’t really. His face is grazed. I reach in my pocket for a $5 tip. I add one
online but I know the pizza joints don’t always pass them on.
“Where you from?” asks
Grandpa.
The man hesitates. You
don’t ask these guys questions like that. Undocumented, I guess.
“Guatemala, sir.”
“How are things down
there, son?”
“They’re not too good,
sir. No rain, no corn. And trouble. Gangs. Narcotraficantes. Everywhere
trouble.”
Grandad nods slowly. He
reaches in his dressing-gown pocket and pulls out three $5 bills. He starts to
get up but I take them and I give them to the pizza guy. “Thank you, sir,” says
pizza and turns to go and then Grandad bellows out:
“I came from a shithole
too, son.”
The guy blinks.
“A real shithole. The
houses were wood and the roads were mud and they hated Jews.”
There’s silence for a
moment then Grandpa bellows:
“You hang on in there,
son. You’re gonna make it here. You’re gonna make it.”
The guy gives a sort of bow and mutters, “You take care, sir.” And he turns and goes down the stairs, he’s still got snow on his sneakers and he leaves a trail of moisture on the steps and I catch sight of his face and I think his eyes are glistening a bit. Then I pull the door shut and Grandpa’s sitting at his table with his chin on his hands and his sleeves have slipped down and I can just make out the number on his forearm.
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Leaving Home
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