*

Sara declines Perela’s next Shabbos invitation. “I have a thing Motzaei Shabbos,” she says, shifting from foot to foot in front of Perela’s desk in their school office. “I don’t think I can sleep over.”

“Zeidy can bring you home right after Shabbos,” Perela says, aware that she’s pleading. “Sara, you used to love spending Shabbos with me. Remember our Uno games? And my famous chocolate chip cookies for Shabbos party?”

“Bubby, I’m really too old for Uno,” Sara says kindly. “And I don’t eat chocolate anymore. It makes me feel bloated. Why don’t you invite one of the younger kids instead?”

There is something so simultaneously degrading and devastating about being patronized by a fourteen-year-old. Perela slumps at her desk as Sara shifts away and disappears into a crowd of girls.

A few students wander into the office, shooting glances at Perela and whispering among themselves. For a paranoid moment, she’s sure that they’re talking about her failed attempt to win over Sara.

But the snatches of conversation that she catches don’t seem like it. “—there’s no way.”

“—It’s the same one, look—”

“—Don’t you think we’d know?”

“Like they’d call an assembly to tell us? Totally,” the last girl says scornfully, then she peers at Perela swiftly and flushes, twisting back to the others. “Deenie’s wrong.”

“I’m not wrong.”

They filter out of the office, still arguing among themselves, and Perela watches them, bewildered. Strange.

Not as strange as when Mrs. Glassman, the general studies principal, walks into the office at ten o’clock, pauses, and says with a wide smile, “And here’s our SuperBubby!”

Perela blinks at her. “What?”

Mrs. Glassman waves, already disappearing into her office.

The phone rings, and Perela turns her attention back to work. She enjoys working behind the desk at the Bais Yaakov, and the students all seem to like her. See, Sara? I do just fine with other teenage girls. She watches wistfully through the office window as Sara meets up with a few friends at lunch, as Devora runs to a class with textbooks falling from her arms, as Avigail laughs so hard at something her friend says that she almost falls over.

When Avigail straightens, her eyes are wide, and she says something quick and runs off. Once upon a time, the person Avigail would run to with some new realization was Perela. Now, though, it’ll be another friend, or her sister or cousin in the school—

Sister and cousin, it seems, because the three of them are in a frantic huddle when they reappear outside of Perela’s office window. Devora is shaking her curly-haired head in disbelief, and Sara squints at Avigail through her glasses. Perela can’t resist, even though Avigail had begged her to stop doing it three years ago — she knocks once on the office window to get their attention.

They all turn and stare at her as though they’ve seen a ghost, and Perela falters. Is it really that humiliating for their grandmother to say hello during the school day?

Maybe not.

“Bubby!” Sara says, bursting into her office. The apologetic expression from earlier is gone. Instead, there’s a flush on her face, an enthusiasm that Perela hasn’t seen since the last time she’d taken Sara to the trampoline park, six years ago. “Bubby, is it true?”

One of the girls in the office says, “Mrs. Kramer is your grandmother?”

Avigail speaks for the other girls. “Of course she is.” She sounds proud, and Perela peers at the girls, even more confused than before.

“Whoa,” the girl says, and she shoots them an envious look before she disappears from the office.

Avigail turns back to Perela and echoes Sara’s question. “Is it true?”

“Is… what true?”

“What everyone’s saying! About the other day!”

Perela blinks. She has no idea what everyone’s saying. The office has been surprisingly quiet today. “I’m… not sure?”

Devora looks impatient. “Bubby, don’t tell me you don’t know.”

Perela can feel her sudden status upgrade beginning to drift away. Quickly, she says, “Of course I know. I just… didn’t know that you knew.” Is this about a school policy? The new elevator passes, maybe. She has a whole stack of them in her desk drawer.

Sara bounces on the balls of her feet. “Everyone knows! It’s the biggest news in the whole school! In the whole Jewish world, really!”

Probably not the elevator passes, then.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Avigail demands. “We could have helped. They don’t even know your name yet! There are going to be interviews and articles and—”

“Zeeskeit.” Perela can feel a headache coming on. “What are you talking about?”

Sara answers for her. “Bubby, you’re viral.”

She holds up a ragged-edged slip of newspaper, an article torn from the rest of the paper. Perela squints at the tiny print. Sara says impatiently, “Can you believe it? Faigy said that it was everywhere.”

The article is titled SUPERBUBBY! JEWISH GRANDMOTHER CAUGHT IN HEROIC RESCUE.

“There’s this live video of some reporter talking about… I don’t know, the new dumpster rules in the city,” Avigail explains. “But in the back of it, you can see this woman saving a kid’s life. With just her cane!”

She unfolds the article, and Perela sees a blurry still from a video. She recognizes the boy before she recognizes herself: she’s holding up the cane like it’s a sword, poised in a pose that looks almost… heroic. “SuperBubby,” she repeats faintly.

“It’s everywhere,” Sara says. “The video has over 400,000 views! The local news keeps running stories about it. They’re, like, literally obsessed. That’s how everyone recognized you.”

“You’re going to be famous,” Devora says, eyes wide in awe.

“Famous,” Perela echoes faintly. She has never dreamed of being famous. She dreams of her family all around her, of moving to Yerushalayim one day, of a shidduch for her youngest nephew, who’s so picky—

She has no designs on fame and fortune. But surrounded by her granddaughters’ enthusiastic faces, she can only smile right back at them.

*

By the next day, she’s been identified. At least, she’s fairly sure that’s why, when she peers out of the doors to the school that afternoon, she finds a dozen reporters camped out in front. Mrs. Glassman is striding toward them, warning them off filming the girls, but Sara puts a hand on Perela’s back and says, “You should talk to them.”

“Maybe I can take the back door.” Perela’s hand is brittle around her cane.

Avigail shakes her head. “Imagine the kiddush Hashem,” she says imploringly. “The whole world can see what even an old — an elderly — a frum woman did. Frum people are never in the news unless it’s something bad!”

“We’ll walk you home.” Devora sounds firm, and that promise is what makes Perela agree.

On Avigail’s first day of ninth grade, Perela had tried to walk her home and Avigail had looked aghast. I’m fine, Bubby. I can get home by myself, she said before fleeing in a rush. Perela has never tried to leave school with her granddaughters since.

Today, Devora’s hand is in hers and Sara still has a comforting hand on Perela’s back. Avigail walks beside her, head high, and pushes the door open.

And then, chaos. Flashbulbs erupt in Perela’s face, and reporters leap forward, as close as they can get without being on school property. “Mrs. Kramer! Mrs. Kramer! How did you see that truck coming?”

“Mrs. Kramer, do you need that cane to walk?”

“Pearl, over here!” Perela’s head swings toward the shout, in shock at their nerve, and the photographer snaps a picture.

“Mrs. Kramer, I’m with the New York Post and we’d like an interview—”

It’s that reporter that Avigail turns to. “She’d love to do an interview,” Avigail says with confidence. “Here.” She’s holding a stack of little index cards, decorated with curlicues of highlighter green, each with an email address on them. It’s not Perela’s. Perela doesn’t have her own email address other than the one that she shares with Yanky. She knows just enough about computers to sit behind one without destroying it.

“I asked Ma to set it up for you,” Avigail explains once they’ve broken away from the reporters. A disturbing number of them have been granted index cards. “You don’t want to do your interviews by phone, right?”

“You can be a little chatty on the phone,” Devora says, wrinkling her nose. “We’ll help you write out your answers.”

“This is way too much for you to do alone,” Sara agrees. “And if you do any video interviews, you’ll definitely need us. Oh! You need some new outfits. We should go shopping.”

“I’m coming,” Devora says instantly. “We need to get you something more with-it. Something that says less Bais Yaakov secretary. You’re basically representing the whole community, you know?”

Perela thinks that she’s being insulted, but she isn’t quite sure. The main gist is that her granddaughters want to go shopping with her. They haven’t wanted to shop with her since she bought Avigail and Devora those matching corduroy jumpers when they’d been seven and nine. “I need a new wardrobe,” she agrees, and three teenage girls turn the full light of their smiles on her.

She feels like an iguana basking in the sun.

They go to three frum fashion stores before the girls are satisfied. “That looks perfect,” Avigail declares. “You look like one of those women who do hair and makeup for weddings.”

“I’m sixty-eight,” Perela says weakly. She likes her no-nonsense blazers and mid-calf skirts. But the dress that Sara has announced is perfect is very nice, and she’s seen some of the younger mothers in shul wearing similar ones.

She pays the exorbitant price on the tag when Devora jumps up. “Makeup! We need to get you makeup!”

“I have makeup,” Perela protests. The girls give her dubious looks.

“Chapstick isn’t makeup, Bubby,” Sara says.

“There’s a place where you can go in this store. They’ll show you what looks good on you and then you can decide what to buy. We took one of my friends for her birthday last week.” Avigail points to a department store across the street.

By the time the makeup artist is done, Perela feels like a clown, over-painted in that way that she hasn’t been since her youngest daughter’s chasunah. But the girls swarm around her making awed noises, and she buys every single thing that the makeup artist recommends.

She hobbles home along with the girls, who are laden with bags and flushed with excitement. “We should hang around in case someone emails,” Avigail decides. “Devora, you’ll monitor Zeidy’s computer. I’m going to organize Bubby’s closet.”

“Does anyone want to bake cookies with me?” Perela tries.

Sara perks up. “I have a great recipe,” she says. “There are these sweet potato-base cookies where you use all-natural ingredients — let me see what organic food you have—”

One trip to the store later and they’re baking together, though the orange paste in the food processor doesn’t look much like any cookie dough that Perela’s made before. Sara is still enthusiastic about it. “My friends think you’re so cool,” she says. “And I have to be like, no, that’s just my Bubby, and she was the best before she was famous.” She laughs. “It makes fitting into ninth grade much easier, though.”

“Are you having trouble?” Perela frowns. Sara always seems to be with other girls, moving from group to group.

Sara shrugs. “I mean, it’s not like anyone’s shutting me out. But I’m not like Devora who came into high school along with her elementary school clique. My best friend went to Bais Chava, so it’s a little harder for me, you know? And I don’t want to cling to Devora just because we’re in the same school now.” She lowers her voice, a tint of pink on her cheeks, “It was nice to spend time with her today, too.”

“Cousins are great,” Perela says, adding the jackfruit juice that the recipe calls for and trying not to gag at the smell. Sara smiles up at her, and Perela remembers Sara and Devora as happy seven-year-olds, confiding in her about their friends and school over the mixer. “Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me.”

The cookie dough tastes like sawdust and cat vomit. Sara pronounces it perfect with a squeak to her voice.

Perela eyes her. “How about we make some chocolate chip cookies, too? For Zeidy,” she adds quickly.

“For Zeidy,” Sara agrees, and Perela doesn’t comment when Sara takes little swipes of cookie dough to taste.

In Yanky’s office, Devora is studying for Yedios Klaliyos with an eye on the open email account. “I could test you,” Perela offers. “I photocopied enough of those tests over the years to have a pretty good sense of the material.”

Devora looks up gratefully. “Could you? I keep forgetting which Rishonim were born when. Sara can memorize it all in a second. But I don’t have her memory.”

“You could ask her to study with you sometimes,” Perela suggests. “One of the perks to having a cousin in the same school.”

“We don’t hang out much in school.” Devora looks unhappy about it. “Sara’s way more social than me. She likes to spend time with everyone.”

“Hmm.” Perela keeps her thoughts to herself, but she’s pleased when Sara drifts into the room, too, and teaches Devora one of her memorization tricks. The girls used to be best friends at her house, inseparable, and it’s why she dares to say, “You know, the two of you are welcome to spend Shabbos here together.”

They glance at each other, then her, the rejection already on their lips, and Perela says, “You know, in case any reporters try to catch me on the way to shul.”

“Oh, definitely.” Sara jumps up. “We’ll need to ask Zeidy the halachos of that. Like, can you be interviewed on Shabbos if you didn’t ask for it?”

“She can’t be interviewed on Shabbos!” Devora says, aghast. “They’ll just have to come back some other time. Or take one of Avigail’s cards. Or—”

The computer chimes, and the girls stop short and rush to the computer. “It’s from the New York—”

“Post?”

“Times!” Devora’s face is flushed with excitement. “That’s a way bigger deal. Do you think they’ll want pictures?”

“I don’t want my picture in the newspaper any more than it already is,” Perela says, alarmed.

“They have a list of questions. They want you to tell them about yourself.”

“You should talk about your job.”

“You should talk about your cane.”

“You should talk about your frumkeit.”

“You should talk about your grandkids.” The girls look at each other and laugh, and Perela laughs with them, the exhilaration of their enthusiasm contagious.

They settle instead for a quick summary of Perela’s fateful walk home, and Avigail comes down to put her writerly touch on it. In my community, we put a strong emphasis on looking out for others, Jewish or not. I did what any Orthodox woman would do in my position.

“That’s good. You should say lots of good things about the frum world,” Avigail says, squinting at the next question. “They want to know if your life has changed at all since you went viral.”

Perela looks at her eager grandchildren, gathered around her, and wisely doesn’t say what she’s thinking. “I have much more style,” she says instead, and the girls grin with pride.

*

There are more interviews to respond to, one after the other, though none quite as prestigious as the first. That one hasn’t made it out into the world yet, though the rest have trickled out one after the other.

“I didn’t think you’d like this much attention on you,” Yanky comments. “You didn’t even agree to a big sixtieth birthday party.”

“Yes, well. It’s been… fun.” The interviews aren’t fun, and Perela can’t bring herself to reread her words in them, but Avigail put one up on her locker door and Sara spends her class time writing little blurbs for future interviews.

Perela even does one video interview, not quite intentionally. It happens while she’s out with Devora, grabbing some pizza before they tackle another email request, when a tall brown-skinned 20-something accosts her on the street. “Pearl Kramer!” he says, a phone trained on her. “SuperBubby, right?”

Perela blinks at him. Devora says, “Yep, that’s her!” Her hand slips into Perela’s, and Perela holds it tightly.

The man turns his phone to face himself. “We’re going to do a quick question round with SuperBubby herself! Hey, SuperBubby. Coke or Pepsi?”

“Coke?” Perela says uncertainly.

“Puppies or kittens?”

“Kittens.” She isn’t an animal person, but cats seem less terrifying.

The man shoots out another question, rapid-fire. “Pop or country?”

Perela feels a little more confident in this answer. “We go up to the country in the summers. The humidity is much lower there.”

The man doesn’t pause, though his eyebrows shoot up. “Democrat or Republican?”

Perela really doesn’t follow politics, not like Yanky. “Whoever my husband tells me to vote for.”

The man pauses. “Whoa,” he says, flipping the camera again so his audience can see his incredulous face. He turns it back to Perela. “Israel or Palestine?”

Perela squints at him, perplexed. “Is that even a question?”

“Okay, great interview,” Devora says, tugging Perela back toward the pizza store. “But we really need to go. So nice talking to you.”

“Yeah, sure,” the man says. He sticks out his hand.

Perela tightens her grip on Devora’s. “Oh, I don’t shake hands with—” she begins as Devora drags her away. The man is still filming as the door shuts behind her. She waves lightly at him and says to Devora, “Maybe the back door?”

“Definitely,” Devora says fervently. “Hey, Bubby, do you think you can help me study for my bio test? I did great on Yedios Klaliyos, thanks to you.”

“Of course.” They go back to Perela’s house, where Avigayil is already camped out on the living room couch, knees up and a pillow resting between them and her book. It’s like a scene from when she was ten and used to spend every afternoon with Perela, and Perela feels a heady wash of joy at the sight of it.

By the end of the evening, Perela is worn out with that lovely, satisfying exhaustion that always follows Bubby time.

The next day, Sara comes over to check Perela’s emails and winds up making dinner with her. They had to run out to get a rubbery plant-based pasta for the ziti, but it’s still mostly edible and Sara pronounces it perfect. “I missed cooking with you,” Sara admits shyly, eyes averted. “Like, I know that I was busy with high school and all, but this used to be our time together.”

“It still could be,” Perela says. Careful, careful, like approaching an easily spooked deer. “I still bake challah every Friday afternoon after school. I’m sure that your mother would appreciate fresh challah. She works so late on Fridays.”

Sara’s face lights up. “Okay,” she says. “It’ll be our weekly date.”

One of Devora’s new friends lives down the block, they discover, and Devora talks excitedly about sleepovers and Shabbosos together at Bubby’s. “It’s just so convenient, you know?” And Avigail comes over some afternoons without asking about the emails, content in the serene quiet of Perela’s home.

“The girls are coming back,” Yanky observes, casting an eye at a flour-covered kitchen table and a mess of pillows on the floor. “I thought it would take them at least until after high school before they remembered their grandparents.”

“It’s this SuperBubby thing,” Perela says, leaning down against her cane to snatch one of the pillows. “The girls decided that I’m cool.”

Yanky laughs. “A rare thing for a grandmother.”

“I know,” Perela admits. “I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. But until then, I’m going to enjoy this. How many teenage girls want to spend this much time with their Bubby?”

“You are a pretty wonderful Bubby,” Yanky says, smiling. “One might even say… a SuperBubby.”

Perela rolls her eyes. “I just keep waiting for the media to get tired of me. Isn’t that how these things go?”

“Sometimes,” Yanky agrees. “There is one other way for it to end, though.”

One other way.

The other shoe drops.

*

Perela doesn’t read the news or follow any of the social media nonsense. So she doesn’t notice that the tide has turned until she sees the looks darted her way when she walks into school one morning.

“I’m so sorry,” the mechaneches says to her. “We know what you’re really like here.”

“Really like?” Perela echoes.

Girls walk through the office, speaking in hushed tones as though they’re attending a funeral. Perela’s granddaughters didn’t even visit the office today.

It’s so baffling that Perela does what she hasn’t dared to try once in the past few weeks: she Googles her name.

An alarming number of results pop up. The first is that human interest piece from the New York Times, that article that had never surfaced. It was published yesterday, apparently, and it’s titled THE TWISTS AND TURNS OF SUPERBUBBY.

SuperBubby. For weeks, Pearl Kramer has been a media darling, a Haredi Jewish grandmother who saved the life of a young girl. She’s been subject to adulation and admiration, a shining star in her community. But cracks in her facade began to show when she refused to shake the hand of an influencer after an interview, a black man. Was it racism? Internalized misogyny? Whatever it might be, it isn’t the only time that SuperBubby has shown some questionable judgment.

Some research has shown that Kramer has visited Israel on six separate occasions since the controversial Operation Protective Edge a decade ago. When asked about her stance on Palestinian rights, she reacted incredulously. And she informed an interviewer that her political decisions are made by her husband, in what seems to be a typical attitude in the patriarchal Haredi community.

When approached for a comment on her actions, Kramer is defensive. “I did what any Orthodox woman would do in my position,” she tells the Times.

This is a disaster. It would have been better for Perela to fade into the background, replaced by some new viral moment. Instead, there are a dozen think pieces about Perela, about her nefarious motivations in saving the girl, about the many flaws of chareidi Jewish women.

Even the older brother has been interviewed, and he seems less sure of Perela now. “I don’t know,” he says, shifting from foot to foot. “I thought that she was trying to help, but did she really have to hit my sister with a cane? Poor Allie had a bruise for days.”

A new article has emerged since that interview. “BRUISED FOR DAYS”: SUPERBUBBY’S FATAL SWING.

Perela is officially canceled. Maybe soon there will be something new to attract the masses: a video of a cute kid saying some cute thing; a horse who is best friends with a puppy; a billionaire who doesn’t recycle. Right now, though, the media has turned to their very favorite topic — the countless flaws of frum Jews.

She almost wants to apologize to every woman and girl who walks through the office today for being such a chillul Hashem. But Mrs. Glassman puts her concerns to rest in her authoritative way. “You did nothing wrong,” she says. “The media is always looking for reasons to take us down. You’re still Mrs. Kramer, beloved secretary at Bais Yaakov, and the rest is background noise.”

“Thank you,” Perela says, but there’s an ache that comes to her when she scrolls through the increasingly critical articles. SUPERBUBBY IS SUPERBAD?? SUPERBUBBY AND THE PATRIARCHY. SUPERBUBBY: NO SURPRISES THERE. It had been nice, she thinks wistfully. Not the fame — she could have done without that — but the rest. Sara huddled over the computer. Avigail color-coding her bookcase in case she ever does a video interview. Devora flushed with excitement about the possibilities, thrilled to shepherd Perela through it all.

Her granddaughters don’t visit during the school day today. It’s a busy one — there’s an assembly that runs into lunch and she knows that they all have big tests — but it’s beginning to feel like the far more mundane and lonelier days before she went viral.

She’s gloomy by the time she makes it home. There are reporters along the way again, though this time, their shouts are more adversarial.

“Mrs. Kramer, do you often refuse to speak to black men?”

“Mrs. Kramer, what do you say to the daily death toll in Gaza?”

“Mrs. Kramer, is that cane the weapon used against poor Allie Marquez?”

She keeps her head down and hobbles as quickly as she can to the bus.

It feels as though every person who glances at her today is hostile, as though she can see the judgment in all of their eyes. She tightens her jaw and tries not to think about it, squeezing her cane like she’d once squeezed Devora’s hand. The few frum people on the bus give her sympathetic looks, and she buries herself in her Tehillim until she returns to her quiet, lonely house.

She pushes the door open and heaves herself to the chair in the living room with a sigh.

“Rough day?” Avigail says from the couch.

Perela jerks. Looks up.

Avigail is perched on the couch in her regular position, book in her hands. Devora has notes spread out on the floor, leaning against the wall and scribbling into a notebook. And there’s the distinctly pungent smell of Sara’s sweet potato cookies filling the house.

“You’re all still here,” Perela says disbelievingly. “I thought you… I thought you’d stop thinking that I was interesting now that the media hates me.”

“Are you kidding?” Devora’s eyes are bright. “You got canceled! It’s the coolest thing you ever did.”

“You’re, like, a real villain now. They’re writing all these hit pieces about you.” Avigail sighs. “It’s amazing. They’re obsessed.”

“Being famous is fine,” Sara says, poking her head out from the kitchen. “Being infamous? Way better. Cookie?” Perela takes a nibble and does her best not to spit it out. “Besides, we like being here. We always liked being here, Bubby. We’re your girls, remember?”

“I remember,” Perela manages. She feels weak, unsteady, overwhelmed with affection for these precious oldest three grandchildren of hers, teenagers or not. “And you’re always welcome here, even if I’m not famous or infamous anymore.”

“It’s almost over,” Devora says reassuringly. “I just heard about this video of a cat that can play piano. Everyone’s talking about it now.”

“Until they find out that the cat is an evil rodent eater,” Avigail says, grinning. She sits up and pats the couch next to her. “Come on, Bubby. I need to tell you all about what happened in Navi today—”

And as Perela settles down in the blissful, energetic cocoon of her granddaughters, eating terrible cookies and listening to their chatter, the media and the judgment and the constant beeping of new emails filtering in from Yanky’s study all seem very far away.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1033)