Erin Kirsh
Conversations with My Grandmother
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In a bungalow in Toronto in the late 50s, a time
mostly significant for its proximity to the end of the Holocaust a lamp breaks again. Another one? Mr. Arthur, informal neighborhood electrician asks and my Grandmother laments how she didn’t have daughters, not even sons, she had tigers, twin tigers, rabid both, one worse than the other. There are many bungalows off Bathurst Street they are sprouting from the fallow of farms, inside the bungalows are families young and bankrupt and shellshocked. All the yards have one proud tree, the street infested with kids, whooping, playing road hockey, or baseball, any number of games that break lamps, bend mailboxes, smash windows. The mothers in the kitchens make kidney beans, chopped liver, cow tongue, sweet bread, listen to radio programs, smoke whole packs on front porches when the streetlights flicker on and the youth scurry back like rats after the piper. The neighborhood women feed or chase away the stray cats, remainders of the farms. Minnie Etkin tries to trim their whiskers, my Grandmother dislikes her, says she’s got no sense at all, which is the worst thing to lack. Grandma misses it all the time, even if TV is better now. Things were simpler then, she says, wist an afghan over her sloped shoulders. More racist. More sexist. I say. Judge Judy scolds in the background, a jab of vocal fry to make the defendant feel small. Why is this on, I say, don’t look up from my phone. Because it’s easy, Grandma says. I was taught easy was a silverfish, common, gross, prone to lurking in dark corners, but I did not raise twin tigers, didn’t cook liver and the cheap meats, didn’t try to market it so children might eat it, I do not spend nights awake, worrying about family in Europe, though of course I have none left. Instead, the luxury of quiet, no children shout on my street, no errant ball breaks my window. I am young, (relatively.) I do not have the perfect clarity of retrospect. I never knew so many worlds. She has two houses, my Grandma says nodding towards the screen at Judge Judy. Who needs two houses? I say. We shake our heads identically. |
Biography
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Erin Kirsh is a writer, performer, and funnyman living in Vancouver. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in The Malahat Review, EVENT, Arc Poetry Magazine, CV2, QWERTY, subTerrain, and Geist, where she took second place in their postcard short story contest. Her greatest accomplishment to date is the time she painted her nails without getting polish everywhere.
Website: www.erinkirsh.com Twitter: @kirshwords IG: @the.losing.game |
