GET THE BREAD

GET THE BREAD

White or rye?

† † †

I just celebrated my sixth birthday. As always, my moods fluctuated between quiet and rambunctious. I loved to read and could still for hours as long as the story amused me. Once I felt I no longer wanted to read, I wouldn’t think twice about tossing the book on the chair and running around the apartment teasing my brother – or sometimes, more often than not, just getting underfoot. With the exception of reading, I hated being still. My brother, being two years older, much to my parents’ dismay, always encouraged my animation.

My grandmother tried desperately to motivate my writing. “Margaret, you have a wonderful imagination. Can you write me a story?”

Sometimes I would comply and if I felt fidgety, I’d reply, “Later, Nanna. I’m too busy.”

Busy? How on earth could a six-year-old be too busy. My grandmother didn’t know what to do, but then, neither did my mother. My father had long ago given up. “Women! Doesn’t matter what age they are. They were created to drive a man to drink!”

Mom would laugh and reply, “Let’s hope she grows out of these crazy moods.”

Dad would often shrug his shoulders and I could swear I heard him think, “We can only hope!”

One June morning, June 3, 1953, to be exact, my grandmother arrived at our apartment for her daily injection of her much-needed insulin. I was my loud, exuberant self and no matter how my mother tried to calm me down, it just wasn’t working. It’s not that I was disobedient or a nasty child; I was just wild. Everything I did had to be done with speed.

As soon as my grandmother walked into our kitchen, I started jumping up and down as if I were on a trampoline (which naturally, I wasn’t). My excitement took over and I began vigorously clapping my hands. “Nanna, Nanna! We had such a grand time.”

Well, that was odd. “Grand time?” Where did that come from?

My grandmother grabbed my hands to keep me still, or as still as possible, and said, “You certainly are excited. What did you do?”

To their horror (?), confusion (?), whatever you’d like to call it, my voice changed. I was no longer a little six-year-old from Brooklyn. In a voice that seemed to come from a child a bit older, and to make things even more baffling, I said in a very calm British accent, “Grandmother, mum and I went to England!”

Okay, that was even much weirder.

My grandmother smiled and deciding to amuse me, asked, “And why did you go to England?”

I gave her a strange, questioning look and said, “Why, Grandmother, to see the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth!”

And this was out of the mouth of a six-year-old!

My grandmother knew there was no way on earth (or elsewhere, for that matter) that my mother and I could traveled to England and back to the United Sates in a 24-hour period. Don’t forget, this was in 1953!

While my mother’s face paled, my grandmother was stunned. “And just where did you stay while you were there?”

She almost fainted when I answered, “With your cousin, Peter. He has the grandest home.”

Neither my grandmother nor my mother had ever mentioned her cousin. There was no way I should have known about him. There was no way I should have been able to describe his house in such detail. Yet, I did.

My mother gave my grandmother a very strange look and said, “Mom, all this started a few days ago. I didn’t say anything, hoping it was some weird dreams she’d had. But this is all new, and the accent? Where did that come from?”

As soon as my so-called revelation was uttered, I went back to being my six-year-old self with my own Brooklyn accent. “Mommy, since you’re making tea, can I have some? Please? Nanna, did you bring some scones like you promised? Mom, can we pack a lunch and have a picnic in the park? Mom ..”

“Margaret!” my mother said very loudly. “One question at a time!”

Even though my grandmother’s mouth never opened, I heard her tell my mother, “Mary, I don’t what to say but I have the feeling that this is only the beginning.” To which my mom mentally answered, “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Through the years, a few more crazy incidents happened and while they felt completely normal for me, they always caused my grandmother and parents to stop in their tracks and give me a very eerie glance.

I remember accompanying my grandmother to her doctor’s appointment. She started complaining of severe pains in her knees.

Without blinking, I described how the office looked, and while I had trouble pronouncing the diagnoses (after all, I was only nine years old), I told her she had arthritis.

When we arrived back home, I heard my grandmother who was a bit shaken, say mentally, “Mary, I do believe your daughter’s a witch. She knows things she should know.”

My mother looked at me but thought, “I know. She’s gotten a bit scary.”

Two years later, my mother took my brother and me across the street to the park where we could safely ride our bicycles. Me being me, insisted on going as fast as I could – that is until I hit a tree! Smack! Crash! Down I went on my left knee.

The front tire was a bit warped from the tree I hit, and my knee had to lacerations surrounded by a nasty group of scratches.

As my mother was calling my brother so we could hurry home, I said, “Mommy, I’m fine. I only need some bread and water.”

“You need what? Are you hungry? I’ve never given you bread and water for lunch. After I clean your knee, I’ll make lunch.”

“No, Mommy, not to eat. I need to put warm, damp bread on my knee so I … I … ah, to keep the germs out.”

“Where did you hear that?” She was beyond confused.

“Mommy, pen… pen… a silly pen comes from bread. It kills germs.” I was eleven and had never heard of penicillin but yet, I somehow knew what it would do and where to get it quickly.

My mother, not knowing what else to do, complied with my demands (yes, I demanded my bread and water). She boiled the water and poured just enough on the bread to make a sticky poultice. When it was cool enough to put on my skin, she then bandaged my knee.

The next morning when she told her mother, my grandmother said, “That’s such an old remedy. My mom used that very often when I was a small child. I won’t even think of how Margaret knew about this. She’s showing more and more signs of being like me. Poor you.”