Just As I Thought by Grace Paley Read Free Book Online Page A

orange crate. They are wearing housedresses, flowered prints, large, roomy, unbelted, sleeveless. Each woman has a sweater on her lap, for coolness could arrive on an after-supper breeze and remain on the street for the summer night.
    The first mother says, Ellie, after thirty you notice it? the years fly fast.
    Oh, it’s true, says the second mother.
    I am so shocked by this sentence that I fall back against the tenement, breathing hard. I think, Oh! Years! The next sentence I remember is said about twenty minutes later.
    Ellie, I’ll tell you something, if you don’t want to have so many children, don’t sleep in a nightgown, sleep in pajamas, you’re better off.
    Sometimes even that doesn’t help, says the second mother.
    This is certainly an important sentence, I know. It is serious, but they laugh.
    *   *   *
     
    Summer night in the East Bronx. The men are inside playing pinochle. The men are sleeping, are talking shop. They have gone to see if Trotsky is still sitting on a bench in Crotona Park. The street is full of mothers who have run out of the stuffy house to look for air, and they are talking about my life.
    At three o’clock in the autumn afternoon, the American-born mother opens the door. She says there is no subject that cannot be discussed with her because she was born in this up-to-date place, the U.S.A. We have just learned several words we believe are the true adult names of the hidden parts of our bodies, the parts that are unnameable. (Like God’s name, says a brother just home from Hebrew school. He is smacked.) The American-born mother says those are the worst words of all, never to use them or think of them, but to always feel free to talk to her about anything else.
    The Russian-born mother has said on several occasions that there are no such words in Russian.
    At 3:45 the Polish-born mother stands at the kitchen table, cutting fine noodles out of dough. Her face is as white as milk, her skin is so fine you would think a Polish count had married an English schoolmistress to make a lady-in-waiting for Guinevere. You would think that later in life, of course.
    One day an aunt tells us the facts, which are as unspeakable as the names of the body’s least uncovered places. The grandfather of the Polish mother was a fair-haired hooligan. He waited for Easter. Through raging sexual acts on the body of a girl, his grief at the death of God might be modulated—transformed into joy at His Resurrection.
    When you’re home alone, lock the door double, said the milky Polish mother, the granddaughter of the fair hooligan.
    On Saturday morning, at home, all the aunt-mothers are arguing politics. One is a Zionist, one is a Communist, one is a Democrat. They are very intelligent and listen to lectures at Cooper Union every week. One is a charter member of the ILGWU. She said she would leave me her red sash. She forgot, however. My friend and I listen, but decide to go to the movies. The sight of us at the door diverts their argument. Are you going out? Did you go to the bathroom first? they cry. We mean, did you go for everything? My friend and I say yes, but quietly. The married aunt with one child says, The truth, be truthful. Did you go? Another aunt enters the room. She has been talking to my own mother, the woman in whose belly I gathered flesh and force and became me. She says, There’s real trouble in the world, leave the children alone. She has just come to the United States and has not yet been driven mad by all the requirements for total health and absolute sanitation.
    That night, my grandmother tells a story. She speaks the common language of grandmothers—that is, not a word of English. She says, He came to me from the north. I said to him, No, I want to be a teacher. He said, Of course, you should. I said, What about children? He said, No, not necessarily children. Not so many, no more than two. Why should there be? I liked him. I said, All right.
    There were six. My grandmother said,