Dah Mickey Mouse

I jumped up at the commercial, retrieved a wash cloth from the linen closet in the hall and brought it to her.

May 1963

She didn’t speak much English. I tried once repeating an Armenian phrase I heard my dad say to me. I wasn’t sure what it was but when I moved up very close to her one afternoon just after she came out of the bathroom and said, “Gera suss,” she yelled out something in Armenian and I got in trouble with Mom. Turned out I was telling her, “Eat it and shut up,” something you probably shouldn’t say to your grandmother. She was undeniably better at English than I was at Armenian.
“You watch dah Mickey Mouse?”
“No.”
“Why you watch dah Mickey Mouse?”
“That’s Felix, Grandma, he’s a cat.” Sometimes I believed she called all cartoons Mickey Mouse; other times I believed we were playing a game where she pretended not to know the difference and I pretended that I didn’t know that she did know. I was never certain, though.
“I don’t like it, dah Mickey Mouse.”
“Me neither.”
“You turn it off, Mickey Mouse.”
“It’s not on. How can I turn it off?”
“I don’t like it, dah Mickey Mouse.”
“I know, I know!”
“Bring it me dah washcloth.” I jumped up at the commercial, retrieved a wash cloth from the linen closet in the hall and brought it to her. She took it and covered her face with it.
“Now I don’t watch dah Mickey Mouse.”
“OK, fine.” But I couldn’t help looking away from the screen to see if she was really going to keep the washcloth on her face. She was lifting one corner up to her eye to peek out.
“You eh-still watch dah Mickey Mouse?”
“Yeah.” I laughed. She was becoming more entertaining than Felix the Cat.
“I don’t like dah Mickey Mouse!” she cried out in a playful, melodramatic voice, and covered her face again. She played peek- a- boo with the screen until I finally turned off the TV.
“Good boy. Now bring it me soda. Diet-Rite.” I went to the kitchen, found a bottle of Diet-Rite, filled a glass with ice, and then brought the glass and the near empty bottle to her. I handed her the glass and set the bottle on Good Housekeeping on the coffee table. She took three long gulps, let out a sigh and set the glass down next to the bottle. I stood waiting.
“What you want?” As if she didn’t know.
“Nothing.”
“You want dah little soda left in dah bottle?”
“Yeah, uh-huh.”
“All right.” She pointed at the bottle with her chin. Cola nuts and cyclamates tingled my palate. I put the TV back on. None of Dad’s rules applied when Grandma came over. She drank soda and she had ice in the soda. I figured it was because she was his mother. All was good, for a few minutes anyway.
“Frances!” she yelled suddenly, “Tree o’clock!” There was no response.
I went in the kitchen to find Mom standing by the cupboards, her hands on her hips, frowning.
“I’ll get it,” I said taking out the ice cream scoop. “You want any?”
“No.” She retreated to the den and resumed reading Readers’ Digest. I prepared a bowl of vanilla ice cream, found the jar of orange marmalade and put everything on a serving tray.
Grandma nodded when I brought the tray to her. I took her empty glass and bottle of Diet Rite back to the kitchen. At a little after five Auntie Sadie came to take Grandma home. Grandma’s visits to our house were as regular as our routine. Playing the Mickey Mouse game was our way of communicating our love for each other. Her only other method was offering food, which she did every 15 minutes which I was over at Auntie Sadie’s place where she lived.
“You hungry?”
“No, I just ate.”
“What you want to eat?”
“Nothing.”
“You like choreg?”
“Yeah.”
“You like ‘em you eat ‘em.”
“But I’m not hungry.”
“All right. Shut up.”
I haven’t met anyone ever who made the words “shut up” feel like the words “I love you.” She would inevitably bring the choreg anyway, and then some fruit, and a glass of water. We would sit together at the kitchen table, enjoying each other’s company without the convenience of words. We had successfully hurdled the language barrier and found a language of our own.