The sins of the father

Tue, 29 Apr 2003 15:27:00 +0000

My mother idolized her father, Chaim Melech Rifkin. Before I was born she painted his portrait in oils and hung it on the wall in the dining room next to the one she did of herself. He had small deep-set eyes like my mother's. In the painting he wore a fedora, the crown dimpled to the touch of thumb and middle finger, the brim dipped over his aquiline nose and closely cropped gray mustache. His skin was luminescent, as if lit from within. My mother's face had that same radiance. For her self-portrait she had gazed into the mirror and painted soft reddish curls heaped atop her head. The red of her hair was echoed in her lips, only the shade was a deeper crimson, like blood.

I called him Zeyde, the Yiddish word for grandfather. He was old by the time I knew him, short and frail looking, a yarmulke on his head. We lived with Zeyde and his third wife, Celia, in the upstairs of a brick two-family house in the Bronx, which he bought when my mother was 7. Celia was a tall, robust woman who towered over him. Her thick jowls set her face in a fixed frown.

Soon after their marriage Celia and Zeyde stopped getting along. They slept in different rooms. Celia had the large bedroom with two single beds in the back near the bathroom. Zeyde slept in a little room at the front of the house, right above the stairs.

Salon.com > Alice Elman

The sins of the father