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When Jane was sixteen, she recalled the time their grandmother used to live
with them. The day her mother moved out (she had no idea what the new
arrangements were), her father returned with her Granny. The three little
girls were explicitly told to obey her, and above all, to remember that her
legs hurt.
They would tiptoe around her, staring at her legs. She seemed to get about
very well, but her legs had funny green and blue webs all over. They
sometimes looked as though a spider had been caught in them - maybe it was
the spider that hurt her legs at night, the eldest child thought.
Every Friday afternoon, when the girls came home from elocution or ballet
lessons, the smell of cooking and baking enticed them into the kitchen to
peep into the pots and pans. The table was laid for dinner, candles were
lit, and Granny was dressed regally in her black dress with white lace
collar and cuffs that she had brought to South Africa from Russia many, many
years earlier. She wore an embroidered snow-white apron around her huge
waist - the embodiment of Jewish pride and dignity.
After years of confusion the small children were, for the first time,
enjoying a life of tranquillity. Their Granny had come into their home - to
feed them, hug them, and love them.
It was especially fun when she took out a stocking from an inner pocket, and
lo and behold, there was a surprise. Sometimes it was sixpence to buy
candy, sometimes paper dolls, and there were times when the gift was so
large that the children begged to see what else she had hidden in her secret
pocket.
One day, when they were visiting their cousins, the youngest child came into
the living-room, where the adults were having tea. Sobbing, she expressed
her dismay at finding her most precious doll in her cousin’s room. Granny
had given it to Myra. As the story unraveled, everyone discovered that the
money and toys that had just disappeared into thin air had, in fact, had
been taken by Granny.
Whenever she visited one of her grandchildren, she couldn’t come
empty-handed, of course, so she would take something from one and give it to
the other. She would take an expensive item if the family were rich; if
they weren’t, she would just take a candy or a piece of fruit. This object
would then become a gift for her next visit.
Granny always had gifts for her thirty-two grandchildren. Did it matter how
she got them?
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