But the next time they went back, when his mother wasn't looking, his grandmother pulled him aside. She looked at me, and she put her finger over her lips and like sort of motioned me into her bedroom, which was right off the kitchen. And she pulls out a box of Chiclets, and she pours a couple in my hand, Auslander recalled. And says, Shhh, don't tell anybody. It's just gum.'
For the 7-year-old Auslander, that tiny act of defiance, by a matriarch of the family, felt like a revelation. "It was this sort of like crack in the wall of the prison for me, Auslander said. Because here was this somebody who knew what she was doing, but felt that in a way, happiness was more important than keeping kosher than God himself.
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