A Seat at the Table

A couple of weeks ago, Leonard Borden was telling me about his fight against kidney cancer. He would visualize his white cells as an army of samurai attacking the enemy cancer cells. That imagery wouldn't work for me. I would send a swarm of Polish housekeepers to clean and scrub and vaccum and polish every last cancer cell out of my body.

When I was 17 or 18 and home from college on vacation, my mother, my godmother and I went to visit the matriarchs of my mother's side of the family, a pair of sisters who owned a 2-flat at 2511 N. Springfield. Eugenia Cybulski Abrams came to America from Poland in 1907, at the age of 17, crossing the ocean alone, with no English, and making her way somehow from Philadelphia to relatives in Chicago, among them my mother's mother. Chicago was a real cow town then, with unpaved streets and few amenities. "I lost my shoes in a mud on Chicago Avenue," Eugenia told me once. "It was a much worse life than Europe. But I never made complaint to Europe once."

Eugenia's sister, Eleanor, joined her within a year, hoping to work for a little while, make some money, and then go back to Poland. World War I interfered. The sisters built a life here together. Eugenia worked as a seamstress for Hart, Schaffner and Marks, where she met her husband, Michael Abrams. The couple bought a 6-flat on Cornelia Street, lost it to the Depression, started all over again. Eugenia fought and won a battle with tuberculosis. Her husband Michael went out for a paper one day, was hit by a car and killed. Eleanor moved in, and the two women raised Eugenia's son and daughter together, much the way my mother and godmother raised me. Eleanor worked until the age of 75 making sandwiches for Harding's cafeteria. The sisters grew old and became Busia and Cioc, grandma and auntie, the much-loved heads of our family.

The heart of the sisters' apartment in the two-flat on Springfield was the kitchen at the back of the house, and the heart of the kitchen was an oval formica-topped table, with little flecks of dark and light grey, surrounded by aluminum-tube chairs with red naugahyde seats and backs. That day when my mother, godmother and I went to visit, the sisters must have been in their late seventies, my mother and godmother in their late fifties--my age today. Eugenia's daughter was there, and also a neighbor lady, maybe 90 years old, who sat to my left.

At 17, I was the youngest person in the kitchen by maybe 40 or 45 years. At one point I noticed that every woman there, including me, was sitting straight-backed and alert, hands folded in front of her and resting on the table. There was so much power in the room at that moment it would not have surprised me if the table had started to levitate. I remember wondering if I really belonged there, if I would ever be as strong as these forbears.

Just now I awoke from my first full-fledged night sweat. That kitchen table was at the front and center of my consciousness, all those women strong and clear. I did and do belong among them. I am one of them, and I have earned my seat at the table, and they are with me. I am facing a formidable foe, but I have strong allies, and I can do this. I can prevail.