Grandma Bea Gets Everything Right

The following is a true story, which happened last year.

When my grandma called my mom to tell her she was feeling dizzy and faint, we rushed out the door and hailed a cab to pick up Grandma Bea and take her to the hospital. The second she entered the cab, my mom struck her typical autophobic pose, her body twisted, her head facing backwards, her left hand clutching the door handle to her right. She occasionally looked forward, before wincing in fear and resuming her default passenger pose. Compared to the hysterics that possessed her when my father would, while driving, clap his hands to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or pick up a journal article, this was calm. Alert to the machismo that affected most men and most cab drivers, my mom had developed a technique to implore caution without emasculating speeding drivers or directly challenging automobile-related chauvinism: "Sir, can I ask you to slow down a bit?" she would ask. "I have a broken back." The cab was gaining speed, and I waited for her words.

But tonight was different.

Half way down my grandmother's block, my mother started shouting, "Look out, you're gonna hit that garbage bag." And sure enough, a full and shiny garbage bag was heaped in the middle of the street. My mom and I got out of the cab to move the bag to the curb so we could move on to Grandma Bea's. All of a sudden, in a Gabriel Garcia Marques moment, the garbage bag started to move. As we approached the mysterious receptacle, it started to speak! It said, "Where were you? I was waiting for you?" It was a familiar voice with a strong Bronx accent. And then we made out a familiar face. The garbage bag was Grandma Bea, of course.

Impatient and hyperactive, she had ignored my mother's instructions to wait in her apartment, choosing instead to ride the elevator to the lobby and then to stroll down the middle of the street to meet our cab. Dizzy and faint, she must have fallen. In the dark of night, even up close, the shiny puffy jacket covering the collapsed heap that was Grandma Bea bore a striking resemblance to a stuffed Hefty Bag.

In the hospital, my mother and I were nervous. Grandma Bea was 85. For fifty years, she smoked four packs of Camels every day. Did she have cancer or some other systemic disease that had weakened her enough to fall? When she fell, had she banged her head and suffered brain damage? Or had a stroke and brain damage caused her to fall? The doctor, clearly worried too, hit her with a barrage of questions. Her name? The date? Her address? The day of the week? Each question, Grandma Bea answered perfectly. Then the doctor said, "Let's ask her something a little harder." I grabbed my mom's hand, awaiting the tough question that would tell us Grandma Bea was slipping from us.

"Mrs. Eisenberg," the doctor said. "Do you know who the president is?"

"Oh, that's an easy one," my grandma said. "It's Shithead."

We hugged her tight.

She might be a little dizzy, but Grandma Bea got everything right!