FRESH YARN presents:

Frieda Tannenbaum -- The Toughest Broad in New York
By Laurel Ollstein

There was a time in my life where I felt I was hanging on by my fingernails. Tragedies in my family and personal life had piled up so high that I couldn't even talk about it anymore. I actually made my therapist cry. Really -- at any moment I could have let go and fell into the abyss. I knew it. But if I had let go, what I didn't know was how I would get back again. Or if. So, I went to the only place I could think of -- to the only woman who I thought could help -- my grandmother -- Frieda Tannenbaum, the toughest broad in New York.

We grandkids called her Nanny, although she was no cookie dough Grandma. Papa was the one whose lap you'd sit on; she would come in and scold him about keeping us up too late past bedtime, or making us giggle too much. Papa would grab your fingers and squish the ends -- he called it "sipping your fingers." It kind of hurt, but I would laugh anyway. And if there was too much laughter Nanny would yell from the other room -- "there's going to be crying in Israel." I have no idea what that meant, then or now. But you get the idea.

Nanny was a lawyer, one of the only women in her class at NYU law school, class of 1928 -- a law partner for 60 years with Sam Tannenbaum, Papa. Together they were Johnson and Tannenbaum, Copyright Law Firm, New York, New York, since Johnson had died soon after the partnership was made. Papa kept the name out of honor to the man, also kept paying his widow a percentage of the firm's earnings long after anyone thought necessary or even reasonable. Certainly my mother brought it up during any discussion of money. According to her there were so many ways that she should have been rich.

Nanny and Papa had their offices in the old Brill building, 1916 Broadway, in the heart of the old music district, on the 7th floor. There was a main reception area where my grandmother's desk was. She could keep an eye on everything from there. One door led to the file room -- packed with rows and rows of tinny gray file cabinets that were stuffed with books and songs and scripts and other brilliant, and not so brilliant, pieces of art. It was before computers. It was the real thing -- when you could hold an original genius in your hand. They had clients like Tallulah Bankhead. My grandmother didn't approve of actresses. They would sweep into the office with their bejeweled hands and wrists, with bright red lipsticked lips and high heels clicking on the tile floor. Nanny dressed in tweed suits that fit loosely around her chest. She had rather large breasts as a young woman, but because she had bound them for so many years, they now laid almost flat against her stomach -- a horrifying sight to me at a young age. She must have seen the look on my face when I had accidentally happened upon her naked. That's when she told me that she had bound her chest, so that she would be taken more seriously as a lawyer. I made a note not to bind my chest. She also didn't believe in wearing jewelry. When I wanted to get my ears pierced, my mother quoted her, "Only prostitutes and actresses pierce their ears." Since I wanted to be an actress I ran out and did it as fast as I could.

Papa had the corner office with windows looking out to Broadway. He'd be behind the big mahogany desk, fast asleep in his red worn leather chair, head titled back, mouth slightly opened -- a purring snore coming from his throat accompanied by some sudden loud snorts. Papa could fall asleep during a five minute cab ride. I used to think he was narcoleptic, but I think now he was just a good napper. He was also old by the time I really knew him. He was ten years older than Nanny. I thought of him as a Jewish Abraham Lincoln. He had a beak of a nose with a large mole on the right side of it, soft hazel eyes, and a kind smile. He was a hat man -- never went out without one. The hall closet was full of those classic New Yorker old man hats from the '40s. I inherited all of them when he died. Apparently we had the same head size, much to my brother's dismay.

When Papa died I was living in San Francisco. I was working as a voiceover actress for a local kids TV show. The characters were huge Muppet-like puppets, and I did all the female voices. It was a blast, by far the best job I ever had on TV.

I was sharing a house with two roommates on Potrero Hill. One of my roommates also worked on the show; the other was a serious Buddhist, always chanting -- always. One day I came home from the studio to find a note. The Buddhist had taken the message, and for all her chanting and great understanding of life and karma, she left a note on my pillow saying, "Your mother called -- your grandfather's dead."

I stared at the note for a long time before it sunk in. My father had died six months earlier, and I was busy trying to pretend I was okay about that, and now Papa. Of course the difference was that my father had been a 56-year-old man who took his own life, and Papa was 95, and died naturally.

Several days later I arrived at 430 East 86th St., the apartment that Nanny and Papa had lived in for over 40 years. Downstairs there had been a used bookstore, now just a storage area for the apartments. But when I was young and we'd visit from Los Angeles, Papa would say to my brother and me, "Go down to the bookstore and pick out any book you like." And we'd run down and comb through the stacks of dusty leather-bound books looking for just the right one. And then we'd show the old man behind the little cramped desk -- he'd nod and we'd run through the marble floored lobby to the tiny elevator to take us back up to the 14th floor. I always found my book first. My brother took forever. For everything. He could make opening a present an hour long activity. I'm a rip and forage present opener.

Papa's funeral was surreal -- the funeral workers were on strike. We had to cross a picket line to get into the Manhattan mortuary. They were on strike for, of all things, decent sick leave. The casket was open, and since all the trained workers were out on strike, no one was there to prepare him properly. He looked dead. No rouge or pancake, his skin was grey. Nanny kept saying how nice he looked. She also became concerned with the amount of chairs in the hall. Were there enough? We should get more chairs, she kept saying. The only people attending the funeral were our family. My mother said that he had outlived all of his friends. Nanny and Papa were never social beings; they worked and went home. So no one was there. But Nanny was still concerned that there weren't enough chairs. I started feeling like I was in an Ionesco play.

After a simple, and thankfully short service, we all piled back in cars to follow Papa to the Tannenbaum crypt, which was in a cemetery in New Jersey. Again, because of the strike, Papa's coffin was carried in the back of a baby blue station wagon instead of a hearse. My brother and I, and our three cousins, followed in one car. At one point we were all stuck in stand-still traffic getting onto FDR drive. Pedestrians glancing in the back of the station wagon seemed unshaken by the sight of a coffin. In our car, we lit up a joint.

Thanks to the slight buzz we were all on, the rest of the drive went smoothly. We arrived at the gated old New Jersey cemetery, piled out of the car grinning, and trotted to the family crypt. As they lifted Papa into the cement building, my mother suddenly lost it, and threw herself across the coffin, weeping uncontrollably. Everyone stopped and watched, unsure of what to do. I mean it was sad, but Papa was ninety-five, and these gentlemen were holding up a rather heavy coffin. Finally my Aunt walked over and peeled my mother off the coffin. As my mother wailed, "...Papa!" I'm sure she was crying more for her ex-husband, because at his funeral she didn't dare do that -- being that he was married to someone else for ten years. Nanny was unshaken and unimpressed by her daughter's emotional breakdown. She watched blankly while Papa was taken to his final resting place.

On the drive back to the apartment we drove by NYU, which was where my overachieving cousin, Nancy, was attending medical school. "I'm missing my anatomy lab," she announced. "It's right in there."

"You have your own dead body?" My cousin David asked while driving.

"Her name is Mona. I share her with three partners. Wanna see?"

Everyone paused and looked at each other. This was a dare.

And then my brother said. "Yeah. Sure."

"Perfect thing to do after a funeral," David said.

"I'll go," my other cousin Richard said.

I couldn't decide. On the one hand I found it extremely fascinating, and on the other -- the timing was weird. But I joined them. We left David in the car -- he decided against the visit as someone had to stay in the illegally parked car.

As soon as Nancy swung open the doors to the morgue, I was overwhelmed with the smell of formaldehyde. A classroom full of pimple-faced boys and a scattering of girls looked up as we tentatively walked in.

"Hey Nance -- hungry?" A doctor-to-be, who looked about twelve, said as he tossed her a liver.

"Funny, Jason." Nancy caught it one handed and tossed it back.

I gagged. Perhaps this wasn't the best idea, I realized, as another young doc-to-be showed me the muscles in the slit open forearm of his cadaver. I told everyone I'd meet them back in the car.

When we arrived at Nanny's -- we ate. We shared stories about Papa -- we ate. My mother cried -- we ate. Finally when all the lox was gone, the cousins went home, and my brother went to his friend's apartment. This left only me, my mother and Nanny. Three more different women you couldn't find. My mother always wanting a hug. Nanny -- not a hugger. Which is probably why my mother always wants a hug. Me? I'm a hugger under the right circumstances.

So there we sat, and ate some more. My mother left the next morning to return to LA, weeping and hugging. I was staying an extra day. It was strange being alone with Nanny for the first time in my life. I was a little afraid of her. I mean her husband and law partner of 60 years had just died and she hadn't even cried. I asked her how she felt. "Fine," she said.

Okay, so we watched Peter Pan on TV, and went to bed early, me in the fold-out couch in the living room and Nanny in her and Papa's room.

At around five a.m. I woke with a strange feeling of being watched. I opened my eyes to see Nanny standing over me -- in her flesh-colored nightgown, without her teeth, her grey hair loose and shaggy. For a moment I thought I was in a Jewish version of A Christmas Carol. She just stood there, looking down at me, not saying a word.

Finally I said "Are you okay?"

"Are you hungry?" she asked.

It was five in the morning, still dark out, and she was scary looking. I wasn't hungry. But I think it was the only question of concern and caring in her vocabulary. "Are you hungry, Nanny?" I asked carefully.

She shrugged, "I could use a little something."

So I got up and found a lone bagel, and surprisingly more lox that Nanny had been hoarding in the fridge.

I brought the snack with a cup of tea to the table where she sat. Still no teeth. We sat there for hours, she gumming her bagel, and telling me stories about the family. Still no tears. Just memories that she wanted to say out loud.

Finally it was time for me to go to the airport and I packed and dressed. She put in her teeth. We said goodbye. That was it.

I went back to my life in SF. And then over the next six months more shit hit the fan. In fact it seemed that the whole world was going crazy. First, everyone gay in SF started dying from a disease that the rest of the country said didn't exist. Then I lost my great job on TV as the show was cancelled. And then my boyfriend cheated on me. That was it. I started doing large amounts of cocaine, which certainly didn't help anything. I felt that my life was now to be an unending list of tragedy, and I was never ever to be happy again. I felt like I had nothing, like I was nothing. I was hopeless. And did I mention that I was doing a lot of cocaine? I was hanging on by my fingernails. I think I hung there for about three months. That's when I got on a plane to see the toughest broad in New York.

I didn't even call her first. Just got the first flight, which unfortunately had a layover in Dallas. I prayed I wouldn't lose my mind in the Dallas airport. Security would put me away somewhere in Texas, and I would never be heard of again. But I made it. Got to JFK, took a cab to 430 east 86th Street, went up to the 14th floor, knocked on the door of apartment B. Nanny answered. Unshaken by my raggedy appearance and surprise visit, she greeted me and said. "You don't look very good."

"I don't feel very good, about myself, about anything, I guess," I said truthfully.

She turned and marched into her bedroom. I heard typing.

I stood in the open doorway. Confused. Maybe I hadn't come to the right place. I didn't know if I should leave or what. This was not what I had expected. I wasn't sure what I expected, but this was definitely not it.

The typing stopped and she marched back in the room toward me and placed a three-by-five index card in my hand.

"Read this and get over it," she said simply.

I looked at the card, its title was…"Laurel Ollstein, Pluses," and it listed all of my attributes, according to Nanny.

"You have beautiful hair, you are very intelligent, you have a good sense of humor, you have a nice figure…" and on and on. It covered the whole card. A list of all the good things about me. Things I should be thankful for, things I was lucky to have.

I looked up at her; she motioned me into the apartment. I came in, she closed the door.

"You hungry?" she asked.

"I could use a little something," I answered.

I had come to the right place after all.

©All material is copyrighted and cannot be reproduced without permission