“His name was Zanetti,” my grandmother finally told us one afternoon in her humble apartment just north of the GW Bridge. For more than 60 years, she lived in this one-bedroom, rent-controlled apartment a block from Dyckman Street. It was a neighborhood that had changed significantly since she fled here from Europe in 1942.

A melting pot of immigrants seeking a safe haven, her unassuming apartment building was a revolving ingress of immigrants and refugees. First the Irish. Then the European Jews who fled the Holocaust—like my family. In the ‘50s and ‘60s, mostly Greeks settled here. Later, the neighborhood turned mostly Hispanic—Dominicans, Mexicans, Ecuadorians. Today, it’s gentrified, the high cost of rents driving recent Columbia grads and actors further and further uptown. “Dreamers” living cheek by jowl with former prep schoolers.

Though the fluctuating community experienced its fair share of turnover, the neighborhood youth consistently and affectionately referred to my grandmother as “Mommy.” As the last of the old timers, my grandmother had earned a degree of respect. When I came to visit my grandmother earlier that day, I saw a young, 20-ish looking man in a hooded black sweatshirt and baggy jeans helping my grandmother cross the street.

After parking our car, we reached her third-floor walk-up—3R—just a few minutes after she got upstairs. Once we sat down, I asked, “Grandma, who was that man?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she responded offhandedly. “Such sweet boys. They’re always asking to help me. They must have nice mothers.”

My grandmother sat demurely, her back straight, ankles crossed. She spoke from the worn armchair in the corner of her living room. Her blue tinged, densely veined hands resting on top of her navy skirted lap. She wore the grey wool sweater I bought her last year for Christmas. Even though we are Jewish, we have always celebrated Christmas. “Why draw attention to ourselves?” my grandmother used to say.

My husband, Tod, and I sat on my grandmother’s sofa, formerly a makeshift bed containing lumpy scabs of stuffing that had hardened over the past half century. For the first 14 years that my family lived in this apartment, my mother slept on this sofa. Living room by day, a dank, low-lit space between the kitchen and the single bedroom, it became my mother’s bedroom at night. The sofa my mother’s bed. The hutch her dresser.

My mother slept on that sofa, and sometimes with her mother when her father worked the night shift, until she married my dad, when both were just 21 years old. It was also just a month after they graduated from City College of New York and Columbia University, respectively Without much fanfare, my young parents were wed by a Rabbi in my great aunt’s apartment just a few blocks away from my grandmother’s apartment.

Many years later, each time I would visit my grandmother, a stench of urine wafted in the air. It hit me each time I visited. She had become incontinent, but refused to admit it. Often, the smell was so strong that it burned my eyes. But I never mentioned it.

Speaking in her thick Polish accent, my grandmother said, “Zanetti. He saved our lives. Everyone knows that the French don’t like to work, so Zanetti worked the farm. He was Italian.”

As my grandmother uncrossed and re-crossed her ankles, I noticed the run in her tan stocking. I could hear my mother in my head, complaining to her mother. “Would it kill you to buy yourself a new pair of stockings?” I pictured my grandmother waving off my mother.

“These are fine,” she would say. 

“We lived there, picking grapes,” my grandmother continued. “He had a dog that wouldn’t listen to anyone but Zanetti’s little boy.”

I beamed. I had never heard this story. I turned to look at Tod, who was listening intently just a few inches from my grandmother. We were living together, Tod and I, but not yet engaged. I hoped we would get married one day.

My grandmother wouldn’t talk about the War until she was well into her 90s. When she finally did, she spoke mostly to Tod. She knew he was a history buff, and he knew exactly the right questions to ask.

I had asked my grandmother countless times to tell me about her life in Europe, before and during the War, but her response was always the same.

“I don’t remember.”

It was the same response I received when I asked my mother to tell me about the boat ride from Lisbon to New York City when she was just seven.

“I don’t remember.”

It wasn’t until I was nearly 30—now roughly 20 years ago—that I learned that my mother and grandparents were on the very last boat that escaped Europe. It was commissioned by a Jewish organization from New York whose name they could no longer remember. They never talked about this time. The important part was that they were safe. My grandfather’s family was not as fortunate.

“Your grandfather was called to the work camps,” my grandmother told Tod and me. “But he was lucky. They told him if he could prove that he was working, he wouldn’t have to go. He asked Zanetti to sign a letter that he wrote. Zanetti couldn’t even read French, but he signed it anyway. Can you imagine? He signed it anyway. Those Italians are something,” and she chuckled.

I stole a glance at Tod. He was smiling at my grandmother reverently, his green eyes, reddish blond hair, and strong Roman nose fixated on my grandmother. I loved that Tod showed my grandmother such respect. My older sister’s boyfriend fell asleep when they came for a recent visit. He joked later that he was Grandma’s favorite, because, “I’m the only Jewish boyfriend.”

I didn’t bother arguing, because I knew better.

Tod was Italian.

“La Ligne di Maginot,” my grandmother continued as she broke into a laugh. “The French thought it would keep them safe. The Germans, they just went around it.” She made a horseshoe-shaped motion with her crooked index finger. “They just went around it!”

The three of us sat quietly, considering what this meant.

For me, I knew I had just received my grandmother’s approval. She didn’t care that Tod wasn’t Jewish.

He was Italian.

He was going to keep her granddaughter, her “Janella” safe.

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