Overheated bat mitzvah girl trapped with Dorothy Hamill hair and crocheted bikini, eyes darting around a saltwater pool teeming with zaftig blondes frowning in freakish fuchsia. I ponder the physics of it all: how do their torpedo tits propel above the water? Mom warns me away from the ladies, no swimming, no talking. One splash toward their Aqua Net helmets and we’ll be banished from the Sea Air Towers pool.

Looking toward the sea, I spy a gauntlet of stone which leads to the sandy Hollywood shore. There are Portuguese Men-Of-War littering the ground with their glass-blown bodies. “No,” Mom says. Their tentacles lay deep and hidden, and someone will pee on you if you get stung.

So, we sit: Mom with her New York Times crossword and her fizzing Tab under a fading beige umbrella, and me, slathered in Bain de Soleil, glowy and steaming in the Florida sun. How grown-up do I feel? Not very. I shift, my sweat soaking through the towel onto the plastic chaise.

At once, she struts toward us. She is thin, thin, thin, and brown, brown, brown in her glamorous strapless maillot. Who is this? Her cigarette dangles as she clutches her plastic beach bag, her eyes obscured by dark Ray-Bans. Lainey, her elderly mother, a brassy redhead from the Lower East Side, trails her. She is my Great Aunt’s friend, so she stops to greet Mom and me and introduce her daughter. Mom’s smile tightens, taut and tangled; I hear her tell them we were about to return to my grandmother’s apartment.

This is news to me. “Mom?” I start.

“Sshh.”

She prods me to gather my suntan lotion and book. We race into the building lobby, where everything goes black. My eyes regain focus as elevator doors open, a riptide of Chanel Number Five and cigar smoke pulling me inside.

That’s it. I’ve had it. I’m a bat mitzvah, for G-d’s sake, a newly minted Jewish adult woman. I stomp my foot. “I can’t go in the pool. I can’t go to the beach. And now, I can’t meet Lainey’s daughter. What’s the point?”

Mom’s eyes blink, her lips contort. I deduce the meaning. A zillion words fly within her head but will never escape. Not now. We open the apartment door. Grandma cooks lokshen kugle. “How was the pool?” She stirs raisins into the bowl, bum-bum-bumming a happy tune.

Mom interjects before I have a chance. “Lainey and her daughter blew in so we came right up.”

Grandma’s eyes sink from smiles to somber and lock with Mom’s.

“Mom made me leave immediately.” I’m Grandma’s girl. Surely she will side with me.

“As she should. Go get dry clothes on and help me get lunch ready.” I pout-trudge toward her bedroom, perplexed. My haftorah Zachor, is all about remembering evil. I resolve to never forget this pre-teen harrowing moment and bring it up one day.

Which I do, in my twenties. Mom’s words flow more easily now. “Lainey’s daughter was in the mafia.”