WEBVTT - World Class Liars 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:04.160 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:07.880 --> 0:00:11.160 Without the contents of the shopping bag, I could never 0:00:11.240 --> 0:00:15.280 have crowds opened the marrow bones of my parents' secrets, 0:00:15.840 --> 0:00:21.279 decoded their conflicts, their zigzagging passions, the craggy map of 0:00:21.360 --> 0:00:26.520 their marriage, their letters to one another, answer questions I 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:28.000 didn't know enough to ask. 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:35.480 That's Letty Cotton Pogribin, a founding editor of Miss magazine, 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:41.639 writer lecturer, social justice advocate, and author, most recently of Shanda, 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:46.120 a Memoir of Shame and Secrecy. Letty's story is like 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:50.680 one of those Russian nesting dolls, secrets within secrets within secrets, 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:54.520 each one giving way to the next, and Letty unearths 0:00:54.520 --> 0:00:59.680 them tenaciously and courageously, discovering one after another until she 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:13.759 finds arrives at the tiny, hard kernel of what is true. 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:17.720 I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:20.200 that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, 0:01:20.520 --> 0:01:22.800 and the secrets we keep from ourselves. 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:31.559 The landscape of my childhood had, you know, very few 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:34.760 hills or valleys. It was just a sort of flat 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:40.200 plain of pleasure in my everyday life, except that I 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:43.959 had very very very unhappy parents. They argued every night 0:01:44.000 --> 0:01:48.920 after dinner. I was raised in Jamaica, Queens. My parents 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:53.920 moved there from the Bronx. When they moved, they imagined 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:57.080 a land, hired, new life for themselves. We lived next 0:01:57.160 --> 0:02:00.960 door to my aunt Hillie. My mother's very close to 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:03.760 a person of my life, and I was a street kid. 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:05.320 I mean I went out in the morning and didn't 0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:06.600 come back until dinner time. 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:07.880 We played stickball. 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:12.000 Jamaica was really like a suburb at that point, and 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:14.400 it's in the Borough of Queens, but it felt like 0:02:14.440 --> 0:02:18.040 it was long island. I went to Hebrew School from 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:22.120 age three until I graduated from Hebrew High School, and 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:26.280 in between I went to the Yeshiva Central Queens for 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:29.640 two years, and my dad was the president of the shool, 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:32.360 which made him what we call a big Maha, which 0:02:32.400 --> 0:02:35.240 made me the daughter of a big macha. So I 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:37.320 sat on his lap on the bema and I got 0:02:37.360 --> 0:02:38.400 a lot of privileges. 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:40.840 Tell me about the mother of your childhood. 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:45.320 The mother of my childhood was an omnipresent mother. One 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:48.960 would call her a helicopter mom. I guess she didn't 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:51.799 work outside the home at that point. She was devoted 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:55.639 to me and my father and the house and making 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:59.920 it beautiful and cooking and decorating, and eventually she was 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:04.200 an amateur painter. She always took lessons, she was always 0:03:04.200 --> 0:03:05.360 going to adult education. 0:03:05.639 --> 0:03:07.280 She was the kind of woman who. 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:10.680 Had a majon group and on a bridge group, and 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:13.280 she and my dad were sort of leaders of the 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:18.160 Jewish community. My synagogue was quite an institution way back 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:21.799 when synagogues were many of them very small, and then suddenly, 0:03:22.120 --> 0:03:24.840 you know, they burst onto the scene when Jews left 0:03:24.840 --> 0:03:29.079 the cities and formed these communities where they were kind 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:33.280 of constructing palaces that matched many of the churches they 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:33.800 had seen. 0:03:33.960 --> 0:03:35.480 And my synagogue had a. 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:40.160 Bowling alley in it and a big ballroom and you know, 0:03:40.200 --> 0:03:43.520 a chapel as well as a very large sanctuary. 0:03:44.200 --> 0:03:45.760 And so I hung around there. 0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:49.360 I played sports there, I went with horror classes there, 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:52.320 and it filled my life that I went to public 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:56.200 school PS one thirty one. Then I went to Jamaica 0:03:56.280 --> 0:03:59.680 High School and entirely public school educated except for my 0:04:00.240 --> 0:04:03.840 education Jewish education. And I will say that my home 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:08.280 was what you might call today high conservative. In my house, 0:04:08.480 --> 0:04:12.440 you know, we did Shabbat in a full blessing fashion. 0:04:12.480 --> 0:04:15.560 In other words, my father didn't just say the one 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:17.920 line prayer over the wine. He said the whole kiddish 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:20.920 that type of thing. And my mother lit the candles 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:24.000 and we had a holla, and we usually had chicken 0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:29.440 soup and chicken or chicken and brisket, and my mother 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:34.159 made crispy potatoes and overcooked green vegetables because who knew 0:04:34.440 --> 0:04:38.520 she was really used to making Jewish food utol mush together. 0:04:40.440 --> 0:04:46.560 So there was the culture of Jewishness and you're very 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:49.560 much steeped in it. What did faith feel like during 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:50.520 those years? 0:04:51.160 --> 0:04:51.480 Faith? 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:55.360 You know, God was a white man and a long beard, 0:04:55.560 --> 0:04:58.240 and I had to behave because God was watching me, 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:02.719 and I had to behave because the whole family was 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:05.600 watching me, and they were watching I mean, I'm one 0:05:05.640 --> 0:05:09.520 of twenty four cousins on both sides because my parents 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:12.080 were each one of seven, so we had a huge 0:05:12.120 --> 0:05:17.000 extended family. Everybody was sort of checked the box of 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:21.360 a different incarnation of Judaism. We had our stream left 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:25.800 wingers who were atheists militant atheists, and we had our 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:29.359 Orthodox who wouldn't let you use the same think for 0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:32.640 a very spoonness for a folk that had been in 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:36.880 a piece of roastbeed. If you think fill around the roof. 0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:40.200 That's my mother's town. She came here when she was 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:43.000 seven or eight or nine, I'm not sure, because she 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:45.360 lied about her age among all the other things. She 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:49.480 lied about as required by whatever was going on in 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:53.520 her life. And I think my relatives were performative in 0:05:53.560 --> 0:05:57.000 the sense that they wanted to be real Americans and 0:05:57.000 --> 0:05:59.720 they had to figure out what that meant. So of 0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:03.640 course it meant losing your accent, and it meant not 0:06:03.960 --> 0:06:07.919 over doing your Judaism publicly unless you were in a 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:11.479 safe space where some of my uncles and aunts were. 0:06:11.520 --> 0:06:14.480 They were in very Jewish communities in this country. 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:15.599 Others weren't. 0:06:15.640 --> 0:06:19.720 They were integrated into the larger worlds. And some of them, 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:21.919 you know, looked like they came right off the boat, 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:27.880 and some looked like Petty Lamar or Betty Hutton. And 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:32.599 the only thing that was like uniformly wonderful, warm and 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:38.320 go moochlat, you know, like really homie was our meal times. 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:41.840 Everybody was talking. I loved our meal times. 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:42.520 You know. 0:06:42.560 --> 0:06:44.840 They would always just pull up a bench or a 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:47.279 chair or open a bridge table. It was always room 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:52.599 for everybody, and during the conversations I just learned about life. 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:55.680 I mean, they'd had arguments about which bridge to take, 0:06:55.920 --> 0:06:59.440 you know, between queens and the province, or whether you 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:03.240 said or kigel to pronounce to pronounce the correct Yiddish 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:06.160 word for noodle pudding, And it was just full of 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:11.000 laughter and jokes and arguments. I learned to argue. One 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:13.040 of the things that I, as a feminist, have always 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:17.840 felt comfortable with is disputation, because I learned it at 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:19.920 my family dinner tables. 0:07:20.000 --> 0:07:24.680 In your nuclear family growing up, you also had a 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:27.720 much older by fourteen years sister named Betty. Can you 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:29.920 tell me a little bit about Betty at that time 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:31.160 and your relationship with her. 0:07:31.960 --> 0:07:35.360 Betty was, for me, as a child, the most glamorous 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:38.360 teenager on earth, and it was during the Second World War, 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:42.280 and she had a dressing table with a tool skirt 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:43.440 and a bit mirror. 0:07:43.920 --> 0:07:46.200 She had a room of her own full of your. 0:07:46.440 --> 0:07:51.200 Nineteen forties teenage stuff, record albums and pictures of movie 0:07:51.240 --> 0:07:55.120 stars and movie star and magazines. So Betty was my 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:59.960 ideal woman and she never resented me. She taught me 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:02.320 to tell time when I was like. 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:05.960 Four or five. She taught me to read. 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:09.000 I mean, she just was a dream sister to me. 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:12.480 I never missed having anyone my age because I had 0:08:12.520 --> 0:08:13.640 so much more I felt. 0:08:15.480 --> 0:08:19.600 It's nineteen fifty one. Letty is twelve years old. It's 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:22.680 a very cold Sunday in March, and Letty and her 0:08:22.680 --> 0:08:25.280 family are at a cousin's bar Mitzah, which is being 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:28.520 held at a seaside community on the north shore of Boston. 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:32.120 Letty's playing Gin Rummy with some of her cousins while 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:35.439 the adults congregate in the kitchen. Letty beats a much 0:08:35.520 --> 0:08:40.360 older cousin at cards, and that cousin, in retaliation, blurts 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:41.240 something out. 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:44.360 And she threw the cards at me and pushed the 0:08:44.600 --> 0:08:47.679 bridge table over at me, and she screamed, you think 0:08:47.720 --> 0:08:51.360 you're so smart. You know your mother wasn't even in 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:55.120 our family until your father married her and brought Betty. 0:08:55.200 --> 0:08:57.720 And you know, I'm the oldest cousin, and Betty is 0:08:57.760 --> 0:09:00.800 like pretending to be the oldest cousin. And she just 0:09:00.960 --> 0:09:05.120 was shrill and insistent, and I just leapt out. I 0:09:05.120 --> 0:09:07.720 couldn't take it in. It just was, you know, too 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:11.000 much to absorb. And when I woke up. My parents 0:09:11.080 --> 0:09:13.920 were kneeling on either side of me. My mother had 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:16.040 a wet wash glove to my far and my father 0:09:16.200 --> 0:09:18.560 was smoking, you know, one of his lucky strikes. And 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:21.920 they somehow managed to pull me up off the floor 0:09:21.960 --> 0:09:25.080 and put me in my toddle pote and they took 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:28.680 me walking out on the beach and they said, we'll explain, 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:32.920 we'll explain, and they did, and we walked and walked 0:09:32.960 --> 0:09:35.560 and walked and slobbed in this wet sand, with this 0:09:35.760 --> 0:09:39.120 plustery wind and the crashing of the waves. My poor 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:42.120 mother was still in her barments for dress up and pumps. 0:09:42.640 --> 0:09:45.360 And they told me they had each been married before 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:49.240 that my mother had a daughter who was my sister Betty. 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:54.360 And eventually it told me my father had a daughter too, 0:09:54.800 --> 0:09:57.680 that he hadn't seen her since she was twelve. He 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:02.320 had kind of loust track of her when he married 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:05.800 my mother. So I was extremely confused. It was all 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:10.760 like an avalanche of information. And my father's he was 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:13.320 a lawyer, and he liked to be extremely logical and 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:16.240 very rational, so he said, just listen to the chronology. 0:10:17.280 --> 0:10:20.720 Mom and I were each married in nineteen twenty three, 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:25.199 mom's daughter was born in nineteen twenty five. My daughter 0:10:25.280 --> 0:10:28.719 was born in nineteen twenty seven. And soon after that 0:10:29.160 --> 0:10:33.360 each of us got divorced from our first spouses. And 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:36.160 we met each other in nineteen thirty seven, and you 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:38.560 got married in nineteen thirty nine. And of course this 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:42.120 was no easier to absorb than anything else. So he said, 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:45.000 I'll draw it for you. I'll draw a family tree. 0:10:45.360 --> 0:10:49.280 When he took a stick off the detritus on the shoreline, 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:52.200 and he drew like an a tree by barbells, and 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:55.240 on one round side he put his name, and on 0:10:55.320 --> 0:10:57.520 the other side he put my mom's name in Then 0:10:57.760 --> 0:11:01.600 he drew her husband first us Joe Holtzman. 0:11:01.960 --> 0:11:02.720 And on the other. 0:11:02.640 --> 0:11:06.760 Side of his name he drew his first wife, named Paula. 0:11:07.679 --> 0:11:10.400 And then he ruws a line down from my mom 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:13.400 and Joe, and he puts a little circle and he 0:11:13.440 --> 0:11:15.160 puts Betty's name in it. 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:16.680 Fine, I get that now. 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:19.720 And then he puts with a long line between the 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:22.360 two of them, he puts my name down from their 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:25.200 bar bell. I'm with him, I'm actually with him. I 0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:27.480 see my sister came from the first husband, and I 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:31.080 came from their marriage, and he brought a line down 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:35.880 from his bar belt with Paula, and he writes in Ena, 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:39.120 and that's how I found out I had another sister. 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:42.680 It turns out my parents had met each other when 0:11:42.760 --> 0:11:45.520 they each of them separately, had put their daughters in 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:49.960 a quote very fine boarding school, the best boarding school, 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:53.480 Jewish boarding school in the country. That kept saying, and 0:11:53.600 --> 0:11:57.680 Reena and Betty had become friends. And Reena and Betty 0:11:58.080 --> 0:12:02.520 plotted to get my parents together, except they used to 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:05.840 come on separate visiting days. So they made this elaborate 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:08.679 reason why my mother had to come on the day 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:11.840 my father did, or vice versa. And they just said, 0:12:12.080 --> 0:12:13.480 and they're going to fall in love and they're going 0:12:13.520 --> 0:12:14.520 to get married. 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:16.240 And they did. So. 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:18.720 I mean, this was a wonderful story told in a 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:23.960 horrible context, and I was like trembling. And at the 0:12:24.040 --> 0:12:27.440 same time I realized that I had been lied to, 0:12:28.360 --> 0:12:32.600 that they had constructed and lived in the Queens, as 0:12:32.640 --> 0:12:34.520 I said, they moved from the Bronx to Queens to 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:38.280 start a new life, and they lived this lie. But 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:42.280 worst of all, they lied to me. My sister also, Betty, 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:47.040 also lied to me. One time I was looking up 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:50.000 a word and I opened her dictionary and it said 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:53.440 the word Betty Holtzman in the fly leaf, and I said, 0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:54.840 who's Betty Holtzman? 0:12:55.320 --> 0:12:55.560 Oh? 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:58.240 Oh, oh, she said, you know, I mean, looking back, 0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:02.680 I realized she was talking, you know, feeling panicked to 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:04.840 fill in, you know, some kind. 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:06.959 Of believable story. 0:13:07.000 --> 0:13:09.600 And she said, when I was in high school, I 0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:12.360 had a boyfriend named Holsman, and I wanted to see 0:13:12.480 --> 0:13:15.160 what my name would look like if I married them. 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:17.040 That was very quick witted of her. 0:13:17.559 --> 0:13:20.400 She was quick witted, to be sure. She was as 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:24.280 much of a prevaricator as my mother. They everybody learned 0:13:24.280 --> 0:13:28.480 to lie because they had to keep things nice, They 0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:32.479 had to keep the perfect family saga intact. 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:40.760 I understand why your parents kept it a secret and 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:43.880 intended for it to remain a secret from you. But 0:13:44.400 --> 0:13:47.880 I'm wondering, why do you think Betty, even as she 0:13:47.920 --> 0:13:51.520 became a teenager and a young adult, that she also 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:55.800 for all those years she was part of that deceit. 0:13:56.480 --> 0:14:00.000 Because my parents instructed her that I couldn't be told 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:02.080 because I was too young to be trusted to keep 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:04.880 the secret from all their friends, from the Rabbi, from 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:09.200 the counter, from everybody so Betty had to keep the secret. 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:14.679 Everyone knew it, and everyone was onto it. They kept saying, 0:14:15.000 --> 0:14:18.560 everything's fine. People accept us as we are. We're just 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:22.560 we're a family. We're a nice Jewish family. With Betty, 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:25.200 I said, well, you know, come to think of it, 0:14:25.280 --> 0:14:30.200 didn't anybody notice that we're fourteen years apart? She said, well, 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:33.200 people didn't ask. Most people didn't ask personal questions. But 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:36.400 when some of my closer friends did, said why they 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:39.800 what happened that they're fourteen years apart? I told him 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:43.880 I had trouble conceiving. I mean, my mother had it 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:50.280 all figured out. My mother was a past master at invention, reinvention. 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:58.360 She created a perfect facade because she wanted to be perfect. 0:14:58.720 --> 0:15:03.400 She thought all Americans were like that. Shanda means shame 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:06.640 in Yiddish. Everything was a shonda in my and my family. 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:09.920 You know, if somebody had mental illness, it was a shonda. 0:15:10.000 --> 0:15:13.240 I mean, divorce was the worst shonda, except for cancer, 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:17.320 that was worse. So my mother had been a divorced 0:15:17.560 --> 0:15:20.640 single mother. There was no such thing. There was no 0:15:20.720 --> 0:15:24.440 label single mother. That's why my mother. It turns out 0:15:24.920 --> 0:15:27.600 I didn't know this, of course, said Betty, took board 0:15:27.600 --> 0:15:31.520 in school at age three. She did it because she 0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:34.120 had to go to work in a sewing machine factory, 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:38.120 and she would have had to leave Betty with her parents, 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:40.640 who still had a lot of the kids are still 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:41.000 at home. 0:15:41.080 --> 0:15:42.120 My mother was the eldest. 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:45.520 They lived in three rooms in the Lower east Side 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:48.120 classic if you think of Hester Street movie, that's how 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:50.520 they lived. If you've ever been to the Lower east 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:54.560 Side tenement Mesion, that was their life. And my grandparents 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:59.360 couldn't speak English more than you know, rudimentary English, and 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:02.280 it was kay us there and it was a toilet 0:16:02.280 --> 0:16:06.080 in the hallway for like forty people my whole family, 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:09.640 and two or three other apartments. So she didn't want 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:12.640 Betty to grow up there. And my grandparents didn't read 0:16:13.000 --> 0:16:16.240 the New York American books or now New York goes, 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:19.240 you know, classical music stations, the where my mother had 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:24.160 learned to do. And so she always told Betty, you know, 0:16:24.680 --> 0:16:26.840 that's why I put you there, so that you would 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:31.200 grow up become a real American and a lady, which 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:34.880 Betty did. They had lived through the Shanda, the power 0:16:34.880 --> 0:16:37.800 of shame. So my mother when she made new friends, 0:16:37.840 --> 0:16:39.800 she told them she was single, and she never said 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:43.520 a word about For ten years, she never said a 0:16:43.560 --> 0:16:46.760 word about having been married, or that she had a daughter. 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:51.640 And I, who, as I said, had a helicopter mom, 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:55.080 a mom who you know, did drawings with me and 0:16:55.160 --> 0:17:00.000 built little structures with me and teach me to plant seeds. 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:04.359 Mother put her child in boarding school. It's so beyond me. 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:09.400 It's cognitive dissonance, but it's true. So I have to 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:10.360 make sense. 0:17:10.160 --> 0:17:13.840 Out of all that. Where do you think that this 0:17:14.000 --> 0:17:19.679 capacity to lie so seamlessly and keep secrets? Where do 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:21.080 you think that came from? And your mother? 0:17:21.680 --> 0:17:23.800 My mother was great liar because she was raised by 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:27.800 a great liar. She had a mother who kept secrets 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:32.840 pretty artfully and thoroughly. My grandmother was betrothed to a 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:36.160 man completely inappropriate for her, much too old for her, 0:17:36.960 --> 0:17:38.679 and she had to help bear her parents. 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:41.520 So she got married. But in the bridal. 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:45.360 Chamber, while he was going and changing into whatever Orthodox 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:48.399 men put on for that first night, she tied the 0:17:48.400 --> 0:17:52.560 bed sheets together and she shinneyed out the window. She 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:56.920 was a runaway bride, and nobody ever knew it because 0:17:56.960 --> 0:18:00.840 when they came to America, my grandparents both my grandparents. 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:02.960 She went and ran away to the man who she 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:06.520 loved was my grandfather, and when they came here, they 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:08.760 just blotted it out. 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:11.000 They never told anybody that. 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:14.120 She'd ever done that, that she'd had this marriage. They 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:16.960 were desperately afraid that it would be such a shanda 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:20.760 that nobody would marry their kids because in the tightly 0:18:21.119 --> 0:18:24.080 organized Jewish ghettos of New York, to put it that way, 0:18:24.600 --> 0:18:26.800 on the Lower East Side, everybody knew each other, and 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:29.280 everybody knew, you know, where they came from. They were 0:18:29.359 --> 0:18:32.280 just deathly afraid that somebody would know this story and 0:18:32.320 --> 0:18:34.879 then they would be shamed, and they couldn't make a 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:38.479 shit off, which is a match with their seven children 0:18:38.560 --> 0:18:42.040 and any other Jews seven children. So mom had seen 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:45.440 My mom had seen this, and my mom did this 0:18:45.480 --> 0:18:48.280 with her childhood. She faked her high school graduation a 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:50.760 photograph by going to a studio and paying a guy 0:18:51.040 --> 0:18:53.800 so she could go into the prop box and take 0:18:53.880 --> 0:18:57.000 out a signon to where to make her look older, 0:18:57.040 --> 0:19:00.359 and I rolled up diploma and have a picture taken. 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:04.600 And she tithed herself from her salary as a sewing 0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:07.959 machine operator to pay back this photo studio guy, so 0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:10.159 she could put that up and make people think she 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:14.199 was a high school graduate. She was extremely creative in 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:14.720 her line. 0:19:17.920 --> 0:19:35.560 We'll be right back. When Letty is fourteen years old, 0:19:36.000 --> 0:19:37.960 just a couple of years after her father has drawn 0:19:38.119 --> 0:19:42.919 their revelatory family tree in the sand, Rena, Letty's older sister, 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:48.440 shows up. It's nineteen fifty four and Rena needs help. 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:51.480 Opened the door and there was a woman with a 0:19:51.600 --> 0:19:55.080 very long braid, facing away from the door, and she 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:58.040 flipped herself around and she stuck out her hand and 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:02.840 she said, Hi, bunny, that was my childhood name. I'm 0:20:02.880 --> 0:20:04.399 your sister, Rena. 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:05.520 That's how I met her. 0:20:06.119 --> 0:20:11.120 She had come to us because my father was a lawyer, 0:20:11.359 --> 0:20:14.560 as I said, and she needed a lawyer to be 0:20:14.640 --> 0:20:17.440 able to get a marshall to allow her to return 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:21.000 to her mother's apartment and retrieve her stuff. My mother 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:24.200 was so happy to see her. My mother didn't abandon her. 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:26.960 It turns out my mother knew her when my mother 0:20:27.040 --> 0:20:27.879 married my father. 0:20:28.240 --> 0:20:31.320 Rena was part of their life. So my mother was really. 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:33.359 Glad to see Rena, who was a friend of Betty 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:36.280 when they were children. They all sat on this lime 0:20:36.359 --> 0:20:39.919 colored half seat. Love's seat. We had two of them, 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:43.040 and I never forget it. Rena just plopped herself down. 0:20:43.160 --> 0:20:46.479 My mother came downstairs in her bathroom and it was sweet. 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:49.520 Brina sat down and there there two of them were 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:55.040 talking and I find out she's a PhD in anthropology, 0:20:55.560 --> 0:20:59.000 and she was left with a mother who was really psychotic, 0:20:59.200 --> 0:21:00.800 and she had become so violent. 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:02.240 She had cracked right. 0:21:02.200 --> 0:21:05.679 Rena's glasses and she had pushed her torso out the 0:21:05.720 --> 0:21:10.320 window and threatens to throw her out, and Rena had escaped, 0:21:10.520 --> 0:21:13.399 but she had all her you know, scholarly materials. She 0:21:13.440 --> 0:21:16.480 was writing a book on her thesis in that apartment. 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:19.520 So she needed my father to be able to get 0:21:19.840 --> 0:21:22.600 that stuff. And that's why she had come back to us. 0:21:23.440 --> 0:21:26.400 My mother had her live in and we had an attic. 0:21:26.960 --> 0:21:28.199 A different housage make up. 0:21:28.359 --> 0:21:30.639 My father had earned a little more money and it 0:21:30.720 --> 0:21:33.679 had a finished attic which Betty and her whole family 0:21:33.680 --> 0:21:36.439 would come in with their kids and stay in. And 0:21:36.480 --> 0:21:39.879 now here was Rena in this attic. Betty lived in 0:21:39.920 --> 0:21:43.000 Westchester at the time, so she wasn't living there, but 0:21:43.040 --> 0:21:45.320 she came for you know, weekends, and now Rena was 0:21:45.400 --> 0:21:48.399 up there and I had this new sister, and she 0:21:48.600 --> 0:21:53.480 was fabulous. Her dissertation was on the Machuaya, who happened 0:21:53.480 --> 0:21:56.719 to live on Upper Broadway, and she did all her 0:21:56.720 --> 0:22:00.399 field work on Upper Broadway. And while she was living 0:22:00.440 --> 0:22:03.440 with she would slept me up there to visit with 0:22:03.600 --> 0:22:07.040 this tribe. And these were people who if you see 0:22:07.240 --> 0:22:10.760 fortune tellers and doors in store windows and so on, 0:22:11.520 --> 0:22:14.720 that's the sort of tribe they belonged to. They called 0:22:14.760 --> 0:22:18.040 themselves Romany. And I was at their feasts and I 0:22:18.240 --> 0:22:23.520 was sitting and watching them do people's futures and crystal balls, literally, 0:22:23.600 --> 0:22:26.240 And I'm fourteen years old, and this person, Rena, has 0:22:26.320 --> 0:22:30.200 dropped out of heaven and I am besodic with her. 0:22:30.680 --> 0:22:32.280 I have a sister, Betty. 0:22:32.600 --> 0:22:35.160 Who is a Ladies Home journal prototype. 0:22:35.520 --> 0:22:35.760 You know. 0:22:35.920 --> 0:22:40.280 She makes lambshades out of potholders, and she cooks, you know, 0:22:40.520 --> 0:22:45.280 dinners from Good Housekeepings recipes, and she mends things and 0:22:45.359 --> 0:22:49.680 she's wonderful and smart. But here's this genius. My father 0:22:49.800 --> 0:22:53.000 was quick to say she's a genius. Her IQ is 0:22:53.000 --> 0:22:54.959 one hundred and eighty as if he made you know, 0:22:55.000 --> 0:22:59.280 he made her this IQ, and she is now suddenly 0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:03.200 this with this long braid a part of my life. 0:23:05.920 --> 0:23:09.040 When Letty's fifteen, her father sits her down and offers 0:23:09.040 --> 0:23:13.399 her a lucky Strike cigarette. This is highly unusual, a 0:23:13.480 --> 0:23:18.159 clue that he's about to tell her something serious, something huge. 0:23:18.480 --> 0:23:20.840 And then he tells her that her mother has cancer. 0:23:21.400 --> 0:23:25.440