Phase the Seventh: When I was in fifth grade, I spent my first summer at Trails End Camp because my mom went there when she was a kid. I hated it for a while and then loved it.
My mom is seventeen, sitting at her kitchen table
giggling with my aunt and drying pink nail polish
on her splayed fingers.
My great-grandparents are glaring at them from across,
across the room and my great-grandma’s
viscous Yiddish accent drips down the walls accusatorily –
“Why you put all this paint on yourself?”
“It’s just for fun, Grandma Belt” my mom replies
hesitantly. She calls her Grandma Belt though her
real name is Berthe with an “r” that is too thick,
like peanut-butter on the roof of your mouth,
which is why her granddaughters call her “Belt.”
Grandma Belt snorts like a cow, yet her
anxious glances towards Grandpa Solomon
belie the way her voice rings
like a confident bell.
When Grandpa Solomon doesn’t respond,
because he is not listening to anything she is
saying, Grandma Belt smacks his arm
with her purse that she insists on holding all the time.
So Grandpa Solomon starts yelling at Grandma Belt
in Yiddish –
a voice that usually sounds like freshly cut diamonds
and dark chocolate when telling stories and jokes
but that turns into the
clatter of horse hooves
on cobblestone
when Grandpa Solomon yells at Grandma Belt.
