It was during the week leading up to Christmas when my grandmother, standing in the middle of her living room while holding a large wreath, looking around for a place to hang it, farted.
December 25, 1983
1. Karma Chameleon, Culture Club
2. Why Me, Irene Cara
3. Break My Stride, Matthew Wilder
4. Time Will Reveal, DeBarge
5. Holiday, Madonna
6. Union of the Snake, Duran Duran
7. Twist of Fate, Olivia Newton-John
8. Joanna, Kool and the Gang
9. Islands in the Stream, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton
10. Love is a Battlefield, Pat Benatar
I was sitting on a step midway up the carpeted staircase, looking out between the wooden rungs of the banister to the living room down below, watching the decorating take place. My mother was sitting on the couch along with Carrots, the cleaning lady. She was called Carrots because, apparently, at an earlier point in her life she had had bright red hair. But when I knew her she was much older and her hair was dusty gray. It was curly and puffy, too, but thin. You could see right through it, straight to the other side of her head. She was short and liked to talk a lot and had a Polish accent. The word “that” came out as “dat.” “Three” sounded like “tree.” “He lived two, tree houses down,” she once said about a neighbor. My mother and I still say that sentence when we feel like imitating Carrots, who has long since died. But she was there the night my grandmother farted, and if not for her, my mother and I would have probably forgotten the whole thing.
Carrots had spent the day cleaning the house because my grandmother was planning a Christmas party for the club girls. Back when World War II ended and everyone started having babies, my grandmother, her cousin and a few other friends started a club. It was the mid-1950s and they were housewives in their mid-30s with babies and small children and husbands that worked, so they’d all get together, open up a card table and play Acey-Duecy. And every year they held a Christmas party, rotating hosting duties among the six or seven of them. The husbands came to the party, too, and the hostess would give a parting favor to the other girls as a memento. A santa mug. A candle. A small elf head whose body was a bell. My grandmother displayed these in her living room every Christmas. She would close the top of the grand piano, spread a cloth doily over the lid and set out the club favors. That’s what she called them. She stored them in a square white box labeled “Club Favors.” On the bottom of each favor she had written the name of the club girl who had given it to her along with the year. Helen 1963. Marian 1978. By the mid-1980s the club girls were still having Christmas parties, and in 1983 it was my grandmother’s turn to host.
She called in Carrots to help with the cleaning because my grandmother was working a full-time job. But she wasn’t about to let her busy 9-to-5 stop her from making a good impression, especially with the club girls. She stocked up on the Creme de Menthe, the Blue Nun, the Peach Schnapps. She cleaned the silver, the china, the Waterford crystal. She pulled out all the Christmas decorations that in other years would stay boxed in storage because they were “too much trouble.” The candle wreaths, the centerpieces, the stockings and the garland and the bows and boughs for the staircase banister. Everything was shaping up to be perfect. And so it came as a surprise when she stood there with the wreath, in her stockinged feet, on her gold carpeting, looking around her large living room with its Louis XIV chairs and couch, its cream-colored drapes trimmed with gold fringe, dripping with tassels, and farted. We all heard it. And we laughed. Except my grandmother. “Oh, oh...” she uttered, horrified. She quickly moved, acting as if she had a found a place to hang the wreath, trying to put the event behind her as quickly as possible. And as I said, she may have succeeded had it been just myself and my mother. But Carrots was there.
“Oh, dat was cute, Marge,” she said. My grandmother was doubly horrified. Not only was Carrots calling attention to the fart, she thought it was endearing. “You know,” Carrots continued, “my Joe, he used to fart all da time.” Just the sound of the word made my grandmother flinch. She didn’t know what to do with herself, where to go. She was practically spinning in circles. “They called him Farty Joe,” Carrots said. My mother was doubled over on the couch. She and I both knew how my grandmother felt about farts and here was Carrots, talking about them as if she were telling us what she had for breakfast. I could tell by look on my grandmother’s face that she wanted to tell Carrots to just shut the hell up, but if there was one thing my grandmother hated more than the farts it was rudeness. So instead she tried pretending none of it existed, the conversation, us laughing, her fart. As Carrots kept right on going. “You’re supposed to let it out, you know, they told him dat in da hospital, my Joe. They said, ‘if you hold it in you’ll get sick.’” My grandmother would have gladly contracted tuberculosis if it meant she never had to fart in front of others again.
My mother and I told this story for years afterwards, and the look on my grandmother’s face was always the same. “Oh for God sakes,” she’d say.
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| My grandmother, Marge, in her dining room, not farting. |
My mother and I told this story for years afterwards, and the look on my grandmother’s face was always the same. “Oh for God sakes,” she’d say.
