But Eleanor felt herself to be a prisoner. When she was alone in the big house, isolated from other adults, time could glide by imperceptibly.
“Mommy, what are you staring at?” six-year-old Rosa asked. Her long black braids, her huge dark questioning eyes brought Eleanor her back to her senses, as she looked down at Aaron’s sock in her hand. It was wrapped in a wooden darning egg. She noticed then that her middle finger was throbbing with pain where she had repeatedly pricked it by accident as she sewed. A drop of congealed blood clung to her knuckle.
CHAPTER 4
ROSA
When I was little, I used to sit on your lap and try to push your lips into a smile. You would gaze past me, apparently immersed in another world.
I felt your sadness was my fault.
In an old photo you hold me awkwardly in your arms, as if afraid I might break. Your touch was tentative. I needed a firm grip. I needed your hands firm against my flesh. Bewildered, I reached out to you with all my force. Seeking to be you in order to gain your love.
Where did you begin and where did I end?
“What do you say, Rosa?” you would ask. “Please,” or “thank you,” I would mumble to a stranger. But in your voice I heard a hint of mockery. Something in your voice of coldness and contempt. Because you made fun of “goody-goodies” and I knew that in your heart you despised them.
I longed to be good, to say the right thing, but I was at a loss.
And so I invented two characters. One day I announced that I was Hilda, a Scandinavian girl with impeccable manners. This way, I protected myself. When I was polite, it wasn’t me but Hilda whom you could shower with contempt. (“Oh, how amusing she is!”)
Other days I was Carmen Miranda, the woman who sang “Chiquita Banana” over the radio. She was ba-a-ad. Carmen Miranda adored bright red nail polish and lipstick. She danced, sang, sparkled. In contrast to you, she wore bright colors.
I hated the drabness of your clothes. Your tweeds, your sensible low-heeled shoes, and your aura of sadness. I wanted you to be like Carmen Miranda, all gay and sparkling in bright flouncy dresses and filled with warmth.
Dad promised that warmth. Handsome, dashing, with an enthusiasm that captivated me. I would get up early in the morning to eat Rice Krispies or cornflakes with him before he left for his studio. When he embraced you, I would cry out “Hug me, too,” and would reach up to my full height and put my arms around both your knees.
I had the sensation of being inside a hollow eggshell. Sometimes you sang songs to me, you told me stories, in a soft, conspiratorial voice. But then there was that disturbing mockery.
I had nightmares of a witch with a long feathered hat like yours, the kind that women wore in the forties. At night in the darkness of my room I seemed to see her shadow—that silhouette of hat and feathers—a pattern of faint light on the walls.
Another old photo: you are wearing a silk blouse and pearls. Actually you look quite beautiful. But there is a sad look about you. Something in the eyes. A cold forbearance.
In that photo I see you longing for something that isn’t there.
CHAPTER 5
ELEANOR
As a child Eleanor had lived in the realm of her imagination, finding the physical world treacherous. She was awkward and uncoordinated. When she was four, they fitted her with eyeglasses and arch supports. At four and a half she learned to read under the tutelage of a governess, and she buried herself in fairy tales.
When she looked out through the glass pane windows of their library onto the spacious lawn bordered by trees and by Lake Erie, she would imagine fairies, elves, and magical sprites hiding in the foliage. They seemed to whisper to her, urging her to come out and play. In her dreams at night, the walls of the nursery dissolved and she entered their world. She played with them, as she sang and flew with transparent wings. She heard strains of music. She saw vibrant colors. And she felt their poignant love envelop her. When she awakened, the cold Cleveland world of the nursery, milk toast, scoldings, scraped knees, and all the rest of it seemed flat in comparison.
One night Eleanor’s parents came to say goodnight to her and her brothers, as was their custom, before they went out to a party. That evening her mother, Ruth, was wearing a navy chiffon dress with a silver belt. The dress was spangled with tiny glittering silver stars. Eleanor thought her mother was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. When she hugged her mother—she did not want to let her go—her mother scolded her for rumpling the chiffon. Eleanor felt enormously sad, long after Molly the nurse tucked her into her warm bed on the sleeping porch, which was freezing cold.
Perhaps they were not really her parents. Her real mother would certainly show her more love and would not foist Irish nurses or French and German governesses upon her children while she busied herself with civic causes.
Eleanor asked her mother to put a pea under her mattress in order to discern if she was like the princess in the fairy tale, whose royal blood was revealed after she awakened with a bruise caused by a single pea beneath ten mattresses. Alas, Eleanor failed the test!
“Am I pretty?” she once asked her nurse. “Handsome is as handsome does,” was Molly’s terse response. Some time later she overheard Molly speaking to the cook. “A pity she’s so plain,” her nurse said, while Eleanor hid in the shadows with her doll. “A pity her brother Frank has the chestnut curls and the violet eyes.”
Eleanor wept and hugged her doll, Caroline, close to her chest. When she read the tale about the ugly duckling, she dreamed of one day turning metaphorically into a swan. She wanted to be delicate with golden hair like a fairy tale princess. And she was grateful for any show of affection.
She loved her shabby old Caroline with her ragged body and soft yarn hair. But she also possessed a new, expensive doll named Nicolette whom she hated. Nicolette’s body was made of china, and she had blonde ringlets. Her blue eyes opened and closed. She possessed a miniature wardrobe of leather boots, shiny patent leather shoes, a woolen coat, a black velvet party dress trimmed with lace, and a plaid school dress. Beautiful as this doll was, Eleanor hated her. Perhaps it was the artificially red lips in a perpetual smile, the hard feel of the doll’s surface, or her newness.
During the last year of the Great War she and her brothers were asked to give their favorite toys to orphans in Europe. With an aching heart, Eleanor tenderly wrapped Caroline in her old brown doll’s blanket and placed her on the rug amidst the toys for orphans.
“Selfish girl!” cried their nurse. “You’ve given your oldest doll!”
Then Eleanor hastily retrieved Caroline, took Nicolette down from the cupboard, and cast that hateful creature along with her entire wardrobe into the heap of her brothers’ building blocks, worn-out stuffed animals, and electric train parts.
“What a good girl! Now that’s a generous girl!” cried their nurse, her face beaming, while the governess nodded in agreement.
This was her first lesson in the value of deceit.
Then there was the incident of the egg.
One morning Eleanor left a lump of cold fried egg on her plate.
“You will not leave the table, young miss, until you have eaten that egg. Think of starving children in Europe,” said their governess, a mean-hearted American, not like the amiable Mademoiselle or the kind Fräulein who had been with them earlier and taught them smatterings of French and German.
For what seemed like hours Eleanor stared down at that congealed lump. The thought of swallowing it made her nauseous. Her brothers had gone outside to play in the bright summer sunshine. Through the open window she could hear their shouts and laughter.
She stared at the egg.
Every few minutes the governess would check. “You will stay here all day if you must, young miss,” she said. “You need to learn a lesson.”
Finally in despair Eleanor pretended to eat, gingerly sticking bits of it into her mouth with her fork. She slid the morsels under the roof of her mouth.
Glancing at the empty plate, the
governess said, “Now there’s a good girl.”
Eleanor fled to the bathroom and spat into the toilet.
Such small cruelties she accepted as an inevitable part of life. Were her mother and father aware of them? Her parents seemed like distant deities.
A third incident deeply etched itself into her mind.
One day her mother invited two ladies for tea. The women discussed their daughters, with whom Eleanor had sometimes played. She didn’t like them because they had been mean to her.
“My daughter never lies,” said one mother. “Nor does mine,” said the other.
“I’m afraid mine does,” said Ruth in her clear voice.
Ruth alone spoke the truth. Eleanor knew that the other children lied and that their mothers were protecting them. How harsh her own mother’s honesty could be!
As a child, Eleanor had imagined that the doll could feel her affection and understand her speech. She longed someday to give birth to a daughter whom she could treat with the same tender love she felt for Caroline.
However, before Rosa’s birth, she had frightening dreams.
She dreamed of a doll in a cupboard, a doll stuffed with straw which caught fire.
She dreamed of a malign doll with ivory skin, Mandarin black hair, red cheeks, and Oriental eyes.
She dreamed of a crowd of children on the beach. They swarmed around her, except for one little girl, whom Eleanor particularly sought out. This child was downcast, withdrawn, would not look at Eleanor or speak to her, and shrank from her touch.
Rosa was a breech birth. When she first held the infant in her arms, there was a coldness in Rosa’s black eyes that made her shudder because it reminded her of her nightmares. She had a premonition that something terrible would happen between the two of them.
Her first-born was so dark. This disappointed Eleanor. She had wanted a child with blonde hair, which was somewhat absurd, she reflected, considering Aaron’s genes and her own. Was this baby truly hers? She seemed so unlike Eleanor, a fearsome individual at birth, but somehow at odds with instinctual survival.
One day several years later when Eleanor was walking with Rosa in Central Park, a woman asked suspiciously if the little girl were hers, as if Eleanor, a plain, big-boned woman with fair skin and gray eyes had perhaps kidnapped a Puerto Rican child.
Eleanor thought of old fairy tales about changelings.
CHAPTER 6
ROSA
You longed for mountains.
Mother, you longed for so much that was missing from your life.
Once after an unusually heavy snowstorm you found old skis in the attic. When the sun came out, you took me skiing across snow-covered fields outside town. During those few hours you glowed with happiness in a way I’d never seen before.
In our big house you seemed to be overwhelmed with work. I dreaded your scoldings. No matter how hard I tried, I was always doing something wrong. At times you would burst into tears. During dinner, while the rest of us devoured our food, you would sometimes gaze beyond our faces, as if seeing something invisible to the rest of us.
When I was seven, I broke my arm.
That afternoon Maureen, who lived on the next block, and I had been riding our bikes along the sidewalk. We sang popular radio songs in loud, jubilant voices. “Zippety do dah, Zippety ay. My, oh my, what a wonderful day. …” We sang louder and louder, hurling our voices against the empty air as we pedaled past houses with green lawns and fresh maple leaves, the air fragrant with blossoms.
When she left, I rode home, leaned my bike against the back door, and ran into the kitchen, still singing at the top of my lungs. “I’ll love you in buckskin. In shirts that I’ve homespun. But I’ll love you longer stronger where the folks don’t tote a gun!”
“Please Rosa, lower your voice.” Your face was stony, and there was anger in your voice as you looked at me with my disheveled braids and my jersey tucked clumsily into dungarees. You were holding a wooden spoon, and I could smell chicken stew cooking on the stove. “Go outside and play a while longer. Then come in and set the table.”
You disapproved of Maureen because she was loud, and because her father worked in a factory. Although you never said this directly, it was evident from the way you spoke of her. You clearly disapproved of my song, which you considered vulgar.
Once again I got on my red bike. It was like a friend. I wanted to bike no-handed, but I was scared to lift both hands off the bars. I was afraid of so many things. Shadows on the wall at night. Barking dogs. Putting my face underwater. But Daddy hated cowards. He wanted me to be a brave boy. To my right was a curb. I would be brave and ride straight up over it, even though it scared me. “Go,” said a voice inside me. “Be brave. Be like a boy.” I pedaled towards the curb. But at the last instant I panicked and swerved. Then I found myself pinned beneath my bike on the ground, my left arm twisted in a funny way beneath me.
“We don’t know if she’ll be able to use her arm again,” said the doctor.
“I rarely pray,” you said. “But that night I prayed for you.”
After the thick white cast came off, my pale arm with its thin dark hairs bent strangely in the wrong direction. It smelled strange at first, too, from being inside the casing for so long.
CHAPTER 7
JESSE, 1947
Two-year old Jesse screamed and threw his toys on the linoleum floor of his room. It was three o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon. Eleanor and Jesse were alone in the big house. Upstairs he continued howling, and Eleanor let her head slip down into her hands as she sat at the kitchen table. Let him howl. There was a safety gate on his door, so he couldn’t get out and hurt himself. On and on he howled. If she went to him every time he cried for attention, she would collapse from exhaustion. She was in the midst of writing a grocery list. They no longer had a housekeeper, and she still had to vacuum and dust and phone to schedule routine medical checkups for the children. Her own mother’s strict standards of keeping house, although based on having servants, were deeply imprinted in her. Let the baby howl! Aaron’s spirit filled that infant, and Aaron’s genes manifested in Jesse’s coal black hair. At the moment she hated both Aaron and Jesse.
Something crashed. Let the baby destroy his toys. He must learn to rely on himself for companionship. She could suffocate his cries with a blanket. Children were like kittens. When they were too much trouble, one should be able to take them to a pond and drown them, she reflected, and then looked at her clean, unpolished fingernails in shock. Those hands could kill. She shook herself and stood up. Whatever had possessed her? What terrible thoughts! She should go and tend to Jesse now.
Sometimes voices seemed to whisper to her. Sometimes it seemed so tempting to gaze off into space, letting the voices grow louder and assume physical shapes, leaving this painful world of household tasks and children behind her. But those sturdy feet Aaron admired, those sturdy bones of hers, and her mother’s strong voice from long ago were barriers holding her back.
She roused herself and climbed up the stairs, opened the latch, and found Jesse crawling over the linoleum floor, his wet, soaking diaper half unpinned, greenish brown excrement on the floor and smeared all over his buttocks, his belly, his tiny fingers and toes.
Holding her breath so she wouldn’t smell the shit, she gently picked him up, slid off the diaper, wiping off what she could with its wet edges, and took him into the bathroom to wash him off. He nestled into her shoulder, his face wet, mucus running from his nose, and he cried on and on.
“Stop it,” she murmured, holding him under a stream of warm bath water. Gradually his sobs subsided, as she washed and dried and powdered his soft baby skin. Then overcome with remorse, she rocked him in her arms and sang. “This little piggy goes to market … This little piggy comes home … This little piggy goes oink oink oink.” She cuddled her face against his belly. Jesse laughed with joy. Darling pink and white mottled babies. They could suck the life out of you, leaving you empty and overwhelmed with fatigue.
With a start, she looked at her watch and realized it was time to pick up Howard from Nursery School. Bundling Jesse into some warm clothing, for it was a raw November day, she carried him outside. They could not afford a car, and in these early post-War years they were still difficult to obtain. She used a woman’s bicycle with large tires to transport herself and the two boys around town. In front of the handlebars was a metal basket, and behind the saddle a child’s carrying seat. Now she placed a soft blue blanket inside the basket, plunked Jesse in it, and bicycled past blocks of houses and bare wintry trees toward the Methodist Church, which housed the nursery school. The pale sun shone like a dim beacon through clouds, and the cold air felt good against her skin. Jesse, enjoying the motion, gurgled to himself.
CHAPTER 8
NURSERY SCHOOL
The school was in the basement of the Methodist Church, with a small playground in back. Windows let in light from the street above. It had the gingery smell of old linoleum mingled with cookie crumbs, stale air, oranges, and faint diaper odors. There was one full-time paid teacher, Miss Bridges, who commuted from Queens. The mothers took turns assisting with the children, usually three or four mothers on a given shift. Most of them had also moved here from Manhattan after the War. They were, she thought, like colonials among the working class natives.
Gradually Eleanor became friends with the other women. They gave teas and parties, babysat for each other’s children, and brought over hot casseroles in times of crisis.
Still, Eleanor felt out of her element. She had no connection with her immediate neighbors except for pleasantries, nor did she encourage their friendship. Their world was too far removed from hers. As for the other nursery school families, most of them lived a mile or more distant, scattered through the town or in outlying districts.
When Jesse was two and a half he joined his brother, Howard, at the school. One of the youngest, he made his presence strongly felt. The children, two years apart in age, had markedly different personalities. Howard was more placid, with a cheerful sweetness that touched Eleanor. Of her three children, he was the most affectionate. “Mommy, I love you,” he would murmur, laying his head against her shoulder, smoothing her hair with tentative fingers. Howard had passed his first years in Saint Louis surrounded by Aaron’s attentive parents and servants, while Eleanor was pregnant with Jesse.
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