SISTERHOOD
In the same mystical, inexplicable way that three years earlier I had "known" I would have a brother, I felt sure that Mom's next pregnancy would result in a sister. I was nine and desperate to have her named "Ann" after an older girl in the building I'd had a crush on for months, the glamorous pre-teen sister of a casual friend. But I was forced to settle for "Julie Ann."
To allow Mom time with little Julie, I was sent to Beechwood Day Camp for two weeks. It was our compromise between overnight camp and staying home. I could walk to school in the morning where I'd catch a schoolbus. We'd head up West End Avenue and out of Manhattan way up to a park in Riverside with picnic grounds where we'd file off the bus and play games. Then we'd be herded around park tables to sit on benches, munch on Saltine crackers and sip juice from tiny paper cups and take the edge off our ravenous appetites enough to gather in a big room where we sang songs like, "Oh You Can't Get To Heaven On Roller Skates" and "On Moonlight Bay.'
I seemed to absorb every song instantly, and sang along enthusiastically with each one. Singing what everyone else sang was boring. The interminable "Down By The Old Mill Stream" dawdled along, each never-ending verse punctuated with little explanatory phrases. That and the ease of singing harmony made it bearable. Then we'd sing, "Ninety Nine Bottles Of Beer On The Wall" on the schoolbus all the way back to PS9. The arrangement was successful and so was I. Pop got a letter from the camp director singing my praises. I was a "... very good camper, quiet but enthusiastic and well-mannered," and they wanted me back, unlike the sleep-over nightmare of three years before when I cried the whole time.
Like her name, I accepted my baby sister without much fuss or attention, preoccupied as I was with the all-consuming events of my active, metropolitan life. But on weekend mornings Mom suffered her most difficult part of the day and before school it was my job to entertain both younger siblings so she could get herself together to face another day with the babies.
Before she moved out, Grandma had been charged with keeping me occupied when Pop left for work. I just wanted to be with Mom, but Mom didn't want to be with me or anyone else, especially Grandma, so we both steered clear of her until after she brushed her hair, drank her coffee with heavy cream, ate her thin slices of Pechter's well-baked, seeded rye bread lathered with thick layers of sweet butter, and topped it off with a Fatima cigarette.
When Grandma moved to Florida there was a lot less tension in the apartment, but Mom's migraine headaches could still send her to the small, dark bedroom by the front door, the single window staring out onto a brick wall. Inaccessible, she'd lay low for hours rather than the days her mother had logged in her dark bedroom years before, and it would be up to me to keep one, then two children occupied until Mom had fortified herself enough to take over.
Not a morning person myself, I grudgingly suffered through baby games and other grim entertainments, my sleepy eye on the clock as I wound the jack-in-the-box playing, Pop Goes The Weasel or played my favorite records like Tubby the Tuba, or Groucho Marx singing songs for children:
Laugh, laugh, laugh
At the gangling giraffe
He's a funny, funny sight to see
Half, half, half
Of the neck of one giraffe
Is just twice as much as it should be...
Seemingly overnight however, Mom's morning moods became history. Suddenly she had fewer migraines and became approachable before breakfast, sometimes even pleasant. Once she made up her mind to make an important, personal change there was no stopping her. She'd stick to a commitment like glue, astonishing intimates with her iron will and breathtaking transformations.
"I was unfit to live with and it just had to stop," Mom told me long after those awful mornings had faded from memory. "Oh, right," I told her, but actually I had forgotten all about them, just like I forgot that Mom ever smoked after she broke the habit years before the Surgeon General's report. It makes me wonder what else has slipped through the cracks of my apparently "selective" memory, and how much we change without noticing.