Free Morning Is a Long Time Coming by Bette Greene

grandparents didn’t mean harm. I know that! Maybe it was only that they tried too hard to protect their sons and daughter from those across-the-Atlantic Polish soldiers and all other evils either known or imagined by man.
    And it’s these thoughts that keep burning at me, interfering at times with my feeling for my grandparents. Like last Friday—Thursday, it must have been. I was trying to figure out why their own children didn’t turn out all that well and while I was thinking, Grandmother said something to me and I answered her so sharply that right before my eyes, I saw my own grandmother shrink into an aged child.
    I chased away some black sheep thoughts, but they kept edging back. I don’t care what the black sheep says—my grandparents are good people! And they were the best parents that they knew how to be.
    And there’s something else you sheep must remember: With people, it’s not just what is given that counts. It’s also how what is given is received.

8
    O N T UESDAY , the last morning of my Memphis visit, I walked into the kitchen before eight. Grandmother waved in my direction, but continued to speak directly into the phone. “Wait a minute. Patty just came downstairs. I’ll ask her.”
    She held the receiver between her breasts. “Patty, it’s your Aunt Dorothy. Her best friend, Lois Glazer, has a daughter your age who’s having an open house tonight.”
    She then directed her comments into the phone. “What’s the daughter’s name? ... Yes, Iris ... Iris Glazer ... I’m sure Patty would love to go. ... Such a nice place to make friends.”
    Of all life’s possibilities one of the most unappealing, ranking only a hairline notch above being left to drown in a vat of pure castor oil, would be going alone to a stranger’s party. “Let me speak to her, please,” I said, taking the receiver. “Listen, Aunt Dorothy, I really appreciate your thinking about me and I’d really love to go, but I simply must get back to Jenkinsville tonight. But thanks an awful lot anyway.”
    Before the receiver reached its cradle, Grandmother intercepted, wearing a look of intense disappointment. “I don’t know why you have to rush back there. Haven’t you had a good time with us? We tried to give you a good time.”
    “I had a wonderful time, Grandmother. Honest!”
    “So why the rush? What kind of business, Gottenyu, do you have there? Among the goyim ?”
    I tried to think of something to tell her, something that made sense. “Well,” I said, falling back on the truth, “I do work in the store, you know. Keeps my parents from having to hire extra help.”
    Grandma bit her lower lip as though it were a pocket that suddenly needed buttoning. “Let your daddy and mother earn the living.” Then she nodded her head as though to convince herself that she was only doing right. “Let them at least do that for you.”
    I knew that she’d paid some sort of price, made some sort of sacrifice for those words and I wanted to reward them. “Okay, Grandmother, if you think I should.”
    And from that it apparently seemed clear to her that I was not only going to leave the burden of making a living to my parents, but that I had also contracted to go to the open house tonight. Exactly when and where did I say that?
    Grandma was dialing the long-distance operator. “Would you please be so kindly as to put this call through to number seventy-eight in Jenkinsville, Arkansas? ... Harry? ... Hello there, Harry. Is that you, Harry? Good ... Everything good? ... Gott’danken ... You got your health you got everything. ... Is Pearl there? Oh, she’s got a customer. ... So okay, I’ll tell you, Harry. There’s a party here that Patty’s dying to go to, wants to stay over an extra day.”
    Moments later, she pressed the phone against herself and gave me an affirmative nod. “Your daddy says he doesn’t care how long you stay.”
    We left the house before eleven to do, on this last full day of my visit, all the