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“Pretty much from the moment we landed in this country we were shmatte people,” she said.

On most of them, it looks like a rag—a shmatte, Joe calls it—but on her it’s high fashion.

Hannah was momentarily speechless, then muttered under her breath, “It’s a rag, a shmatte. ”

“He’s a shmatte now,” said Hannah, remembering Rivka’s word.

In her black tennis shoes, white bloomers, red shmatte and strand of outrageously clunky pearls, Grandma commands Big Apple’s intimate single ring, conveying at once feistiness, mousiness, acrobatic grace, prankishness and a transgressive streak as wide as a clown shoe.