Two days after Gretel Samuelson’s grandmother moved in with them, Gretel discovered her down on her knees in the kitchen, looking up past the chandelier, as though she could see through the ceiling, right into heaven. To get a true cleanliness fanatic like Grandma Frieda onto a floor which hadn’t been mopped for a month was some sort of inverted miracle in itself. Usually, Frieda would have attacked the sticky traces of jelly and tomato sauce with Lestoil and a scrub brush. Now, she didn’t even seem to notice the dirt. Right away Gretel thought heart attack. She thought stroke. She thought I really cannot go through this again.
In the past eight months Gretel’ s father had left and remarried, her mother had been stricken with cancer, and her brother had opted for a job in the deli department of the local Food Star rather than accept the scholarship Harvard had offered. People were going crazy, or so it seemed, and joining in seemed the best protection. In a show of self-mutilation and despair, Gretel had chopped off most of her hair and dyed it a horrible lifeless black. Ever since, her hair had refused to grow back, and she feared she’d be left this way forever after, looking more like a rooster dipped in coal dust than a real live girl whose heart had been broken.
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