Of all the talents a kid would want her grandmother to have, cursing her with The Evil Eye isn’t one of them. My grandmother (my mom’s mother), Mémé, trudged through life like a character in a Dostoevsky novel. She didn’t believe in optimism. She was Catholic and Finnish—a discouraging combination when hoping for a grandmotherly type along the lines of Grandma Walton, Aunt Bee Taylor, or even an inanimate Grandma Doll. Golly, Aunt Bee was swell in every way. She cooked and sang for Opie. My grandmother cooked for and cursed me. But it was for my own good.

Mémé told her life story as a series of calamities rather than adventures. To little girl me, her life sounded exciting; to her, it sounded like she’d ridden the Tragedy Train to Dead-Endsville. Her only goal in life, it seemed, was to prepare her grandchildren for the inevitable wretchedness most people call “life.” I think she wanted to toughen us up for our own good—either that or she was just miserable and she was looking for company.

My sisters and I knew Mémé’s Evil Eye well. It was a multi-faceted gift technique involving stock-still, narrow-eyed glaring, and an impeccably timed head-then-shoulder pivot resulting in reducing us to quivering masses of invisible guilt. After a vague amount of time passed, she expected a sincere apology. I prayed for clairvoyance to know when to approach her and what to sincerely apologize for. If I didn’t finesse this part, I was in for more scowling and cold-shouldering.

We didn’t have to do anything wrong to be cursed with the Evil Eye. Sometimes just being a kid was enough. I was never sure what would provoke my grandmother’s disapproval. She seemed to enjoy the element of surprise a lot more than I did. In her mind, the list of kid crimes was extensive and varied depending on her mood, and her mood was as unpredictable as a cat high on catnip. A tardy “good morning” or failing to put some potentially dangerous item like a salt-shaker back in its proper place was an Evil Eye Actionable Offense. Often having too much fun pushed her over the brink. Those girls…they’re at it again, playing and laughing and, Dear God, moving things! I must put an end to this insanity.

Life with Mémé wasn’t always precarious.  I know she loved us. We were family.  Mom was her only child and we were her only grandchildren.  She made a delicious Sunday dinner every week, always eaten together at her table.  I learned my lifelong love of sewing from her.  It’s just that Mémé had to have things her way, or else.  It boiled down to feeling in charge over one part of her life, a life in which I think she felt almost everything went wrong.

Because we eventually became adept at avoiding Evil Eye Actionable Offenses, she found another way to control us. Pity was her fallback position. Mémé was one sick woman. When I wasn’t afraid of her, I was feeling sorry for her because she looked and sounded like a wounded wildebeest on Wild Kingdom after a frantic hyena attack. “Oh. My head. It breaking,” she lamented weekly (and weakly) in her broken English.  As a change of pace, I would sometimes hear, “I having heart attack,” as she clutched her ample bosoms.  The whole family was convinced she was going to wake up dead any day. She lived to 93.

She was a migraine sufferer, so maybe she always felt like death was looming.  There was no telling what would bring on a migraine, but stiffness in her neck was a common cause.  Nearly everything made her neck stiff, but air currents were the most often cited culprits–drafts, wafts, gusts—moving air of any kind were her foes.  Her home, unfortunately, was improperly insulated and was situated in an open field.  She was a sitting duck for any prowling breeze.  As a result, she spent a lot of time lying down with a hot water bottle, which is not nearly as pleasurable as it might sound.

While she lay in repose with her trusty hot water bottle, my sisters and I were limited to the fun and frivolity permitted in a Buddhist monastery.  Had I been handier around the house, I could have put my summer vacations to better use by insulating her house and replacing her drafty windows.  Unfortunately, my forte was reading not operating power tools. I knew that nothing good would come of me trying to DYI ourselves out of any Mémé-related incident. I once tried to pry open a stuck dresser door. I pulled and jostled it for all I was worth. I got it open alright … and smashed my nose so hard that I still have the bump on my nose as a reminder to avoid all home improvement projects.

Thus, survival became a matter of defense, not offense.  We all catered to Mémé when she was sick; we obeyed her rules the best we could to avoid the Evil Eye.

There were times, however, when unanticipated dynamics converged to shatter the rules, thus creating mayhem.

*****

In the mid-1960s, we took car rides on Sunday afternoons.  Gas was cheap, stores were closed, and riding around the countryside seemed better than not riding around.  Mom would drive her two-door Ford Fairlane 500 with Mémé as co-pilot and the three of us girls would ride in the back seat—no gadgets to entertain us, just the promise of “lovely scenery” and maybe an ice cream cone if we were good.

When the “Ride-for-Fun” program began, Lisa was seven, I was nine, and Tina was eleven.  We were three chubby back-seat blondies in a row with dreams of ice cream dancing in our heads.  The car was black with a gray vinyl interior and the only thing automatic about it was the transmission.  I remember one ride particularly well, not because of our destination, but because of what happened during the ride.

Mémé was wearing a hat.  Every time she went outside, summer or winter, a hat completed her outfit. The hat was prophylactic. It was intended to protect her from menacing migraine-causing drafts.  As an extra precautionary measure, all the windows and vents in the car were closed.

It was a sunny day and the interior of the car started heating up.  I was sweating in the back seat, the vinyl sticking to my fleshy young thighs.  I looked to my right and to my left.  Beads of sweat were trickling down my sisters’ foreheads.  I picked my leg up and it made a ripping sound.  My sisters noticed and did the same.  It sounded like we were tearing open Christmas presents.

“What is going on back there?” my mother said, her narrowed eyes looking at us through the rearview mirror.

Not being ones to suffer in silence, we thought it wise to alert the adults regarding the situation brewing in the back seat. And she did ask.

“Can you open a window, please?  We’re really hot!”  I pleaded, remembering my manners.

Mom said, “You know an open window wouldn’t be good for Mémé.” Mémé stared straight ahead, but I could see her slight imperial nod of approval.

We automatically produced a collective sister sigh.

Mom continued, “It really isn’t all that hot. Be still and enjoy the beautiful scenery. Think about what flavor ice cream you want at Howard Johnson’s.”

The ice cream bait was a clever diversionary tactic.  But I could see her flushed face.  We were all trapped in a rolling crematorium.  She felt it, too.

“But it’s boiling back here!” Tina argued.  We were sitting fleshy shoulder to fleshy shoulder, radiating body heat like three over-stuffed hot tamales.  I was sure that one of two things would happen in that black car on a sunny day with no air circulation:

  1. We would die of some heat-related disaster before an ice cream cone could possibly save us.
  2. We would fuse together and have to join the circus as the newest addition to the “Freak Show” Exhibit: Conjoined Triplets.

Either way, these two women in the front seat would have a whole lot of explaining to do down at the police station if things didn’t change in a hurry.

Maybe if Lisa begged, they would show some mercy.  “Please, can’t you open the window even a little bit?”  She was good.

This request was tantamount to putting a “hit” out on Mémé, but desperate times called for desperate measures.  Three adorable Rubenesque blonde girls with their whole lives ahead of them versus one old miserable woman who was endlessly ill—who would you pick?

Mom looked at her mother with that how-about-it look. Sitting in the middle of the back seat, I could see Mom’s eyes in the rearview mirror. I knew pleading when I saw it.  Mémé heaved a heavy sigh and rolled open her window about four inches. I smiled when I saw the window rolling down.  Relief was on the way.

What happened next remains a mystery.  Perhaps a NASA scientist could explain the astrophysics of it.  Before any heavenly rush of cool air ever reached the back seat of the car, Mémé’s hat was sucked off her head and disappeared out the window.  Unless you count vacuum cleaner mishaps, I’d never seen anything like it.

We were immobilized. My sweat stopped in mid-drip. I couldn’t believe what just happened. This was like a miracle; only miracles are supposed to be good.  This was definitely not good.  There was Mémé: hatless, white hair askew, a dazed look on her wrinkled face.  Mom gasped.  She continued driving, but she kept looking over at her mother, trying to comprehend what happened.  We never tried to get the hat back.  It was probably sucked into the Twilight Zone. Trouble doubles when you enter the Twilight Zone. And we didn’t need more trouble.

We each got Mémé’s best Evil Eye. I think she assumed we knew what would happen to her precious hat if the interior air pressure of the car was suddenly disturbed.  She totally overestimated our aptitude in science class.  If only we had allowed ourselves to spontaneously combust in the back seat of that Ford Fairlane 500, things would have been so much better.

We didn’t stop for ice cream.  I would’ve had two scoops of maple walnut.  Instead, I got grandmother-cursed. Again. That never would’ve happened to Opie.