Danila Botha is a Jewish fiction writer based in Toronto, Canada. Her latest novel, A Place for People Like Us, was released in 2025. Previous books include Got No Secrets; For All the Men (and Some of the Women) I’ve Known, which was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, the Vine Award for Canadian Jewish Literature, and the ReLit Award; Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness; and Too Much on the Inside, which won a Book Excellence Award for contemporary fiction and was recently optioned for film. She teaches creative writing at the Humber School for Writers and at University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies.
When I turned twelve, my parents, who weren’t all that religious, decided I needed to have an over the top, lavish bat mitzvah. All the other Jewish girls were having functions and banquets, practically every other weekend, but I wanted nothing to do with it. It was my Nagymama, who as a little kid I just called Mama, who convinced me. She lived with us and raised me while my parents worked, so if there was one opinion I listened to, it was hers.
“In this life,” she said, in her soft Hungarian accent, “you never know what could happen. If you have an opportunity to celebrate, you must take it.”
We chose ballet as the theme. We convinced my parents to rent the performance space from the dance studio I practiced in. Instead of a fancy sit-down dinner, there would be hors d’oeuvres and music, culminating in a dance performance where I would be the star.
It took a lot of arm twisting, but I convinced her to participate too.
Before the war, Nagymama was in training to be a ballerina. Her older sister, Perla Markovics, had danced with the Hungarian National Ballet. There were photos of her in frames on Nagymama’s bedside table, looking impossibly elegant and self possessed, the kind of person everyone wants to be. She died heroically in the war, but it was the discipline and training she taught her, Nagymama insisted, that kept her alive.
She still had the slight build and gently sculpted muscles of a ballerina. She always sat perfectly straight, like she had a rod propping up her spine. When we had a barre installed in our basement so I could practice, she practiced with me. When she came to pick me up from dance school, she wore eyeliner, mascara, and blush. My teacher Oksana loved her the most. “She’s so elegant,” she said to me one day while she finished her cigarette before class. “Classic European beauty.”
My mom, by contrast, was zaftig to use Nagymama’s word. She had stubby fingers that were always greasy with eucalyptus hand cream, because she insisted they were dry, even in the summer. Nagymama said they looked sausages about to burst in a frying pan.
We decided to do Sleeping Beauty, because it had always been my favourite. I always found it hard to get out of bed in the mornings, and I often woke up with Nagymama siting beside me, stroking my hair, saying “Jó reggelt, Sleeping Beauty,” or if she was feeling extra affectionate, “Gut Morgen, Shayna Maidel.”
Nagymama didn’t speak Yiddish very often. She was the only person left in her family left after the war, and she trained and landed a place in the National Ballet. She lived on her own in Budapest for a few years before she met my grandfather and came to Canada. She didn’t want me to call her Bubbe because she was superstitious.
Between Oxana and me, we convinced her to play the Lilac Fairy.