My Mother's Closet

It might be light outside, or dark.  I don’t know.  I’ve fallen asleep in my mother’s closet again, the smell of camphor offsetting the mustiness that must have been there, in the old duplex on Cordova Avenue. I am safe in my secret space.  

The closet is deep, so deep that when I crawl to the shelves in back, behind the double hung wooden rods, I cannot hear movement in the house.  Even the whirring of Mama’s sewing machine sounds as distant as an airplane, though it is only on the other side of her bedroom, in its special cabinet covered with scraps of the fabrics she keeps in her closet. 

Mama lets me sit next to her as she sews dresses for herself and for me.  Sometimes they match, and with the scraps I can make something matching for my Barbie too.  I wind the pretty prints around my doll and sew them together with awkward fingers, the bloody little spots from needle pricks adding to the gay pattern of my couture.   “Tsk,” Mama says, seeing me suck on my wounded fingers.  She pulls open a hidden door on the sewing machine cabinet, and I can see treasures--spools of threads in different colors, shiny buttons liberated from old clothes, and the silver thimbles that will protect me. 

Now, sewing seems too much of an effort, and deep in the closet I adjust Mama’s favorite sweater, the one that I like to use as a pillow. Idly, I open her shoe boxes, examining the pretty kitten heels and sandals that she never ever wore.  “I’m saving it for when I need something nice.” She tells me in her thick Hungarian accent.  The unworn spoils of our bargain basement shopping trips are all around me, lit up with the faint glow of the single bare bulb on the closet ceiling; its brass pull chain casts dancing shadows on the white walls as I rifle through her dresses.  They fill the space with assurances that she will have enough, and promises of the good times she hopes will come.  Mama has a hard life, but she stuffs her closet with optimism.

Our shopping grounds.

Mamma is a legendary baker and cook, but does not want to be known for it.  We have a surprise party for her but she doesn't like the center pieces, brightly colored oven mitts grasping big bunches of flowers.  "It's just the time I was born, that's why I cook"  she says, and I wonder who she would be if she had more choices in her life.

Bringing a little bit of Bubbe to our parties.

Mamma does love flowers but does not like to see them die. “If you buy me flowers again, I will throw them off the balcony” she announces each time we bring a bouquet, then lovingly trims and arranges the blossoms in her very best amethyst glass vase, a 25 cent treasure from one of her endless garage sale hunts. Her house is a jungle of knick-knacks.  Twice a year  I wash them all in the kitchen sink, a towel lining the bottom so that the Depression Glass and Occupied Japan teacups will be safe from chipping. Oh, how I hate those knick-knacks, the porcelain Hummels smiling up at me, taunting me; the carnival glass threatening to leap out of my soapy fingers. 

At least it's not the middle finger.

Mamma has secrets.  One day she reveals to me that her grandmother married the wrong man by mistake.  “She had to” explains my Mamma.  “That’s who was there when she got to the Chuppah.” It makes perfect sense to her.  But her own mother’s match, she reveals in a low voice, was a love match.  Then she looks away.  Who is she thinking of, my Mamma?

"Er, do I know you?"

Mamma is always ready with good advice.  "Don't sell the cow!" she tells us girls, "or it's milk under the bridges!" We laugh and we tease her ceaselessly.  She is a good sport, but thinks we are stupid.

Pishen and shlofen she says to my little girl self, pulling the blankets up around my neck.  Shlofen and pishen I would reply mischievously, knowing it will make her laugh her big belly laugh, almost masculine in its heartiness.  Mama doesn’t smile too much.  Bad teeth from the war she explains, even after her teeth are fixed. It is a rare treat, and a worthy goal to make her smile and laugh, tears sometimes spilling over her sweet cheeks with her glee. My tears spill over with the remembering, and I am grateful for all of the secret spaces in my life where she still lives.

Olga Stern

May 15, 1928-May 15, 2000