no one minded the children
There were two black grand pianos placed back-to-back, the keyboards opposite from one another. The floor was shiny hardwood, and Girl’s and Brother’s three- and four-year-old feet echoed as they ran underneath them. Girl could run beneath the pianos without ducking. She and Brother ran up and down the room and laughed, even though they weren’t supposed to laugh, because this was a funeral. Mother’s only brother had died suddenly of pneumonia, a complication of chicken pox. He was thirty-seven. No one minded the children running beneath the pianos. Girl’s shoes were shiny black patent leather and she wore white tights that were too short in the crotch and constantly needed to be tugged up when no one was looking.
The moment the children missed when they ran under the pianos was the harsh record player screech of the words, “I am Mother’s lover/girlfriend/we are lesbians,” spoken by a woman to the mourning relatives milling around in the Jewish funeral home. Like a bell, the words couldn’t be un-rung. After the funeral, all the cousins leaked out of Girl’s life like water in a sieve, some fighting to leave faster, some dribbling slowly, until they all were gone eventually—all except Girl’s uncle’s widow. She and her children alone remained family. Maybe if Girl was sitting like a good girl on the sofa she would remember the sound of her relatives turning their backs on them.
Parsky Funeral Home was the only Jewish funeral home in town. There were deep blue curtains for the immediate family to sit behind if they chose, so no one could witness their grief. Mother did not pull the curtains when her father died when she was twenty-five, and she did not pull the curtains when her mother died two years later, but when her only brother died Mother pulled the curtains and stayed alone in her grief. Girl and Brother sat outside the curtains with a friend Mother would never name in the years to come—it was this nameless friend who outed her and chased all of her relatives away. Girl never pressed for details—she was too afraid of making Mother cry.
Stepmother liked to tell a story of two cousins who came over for dinner, holding hands and giggling uncomfortably on the couch. Stepmother said the word giggle with derision. Was it Mother and Stepmother who walked away from the extended family, disgusted by their discomfort? The cousin-couple did come to dinner. They were trying—was their effort just not good enough to make them worth keeping? Or did they refuse to return after that one awkward dinner?
When Girl was ten her family was invited back to the annual family reunions where everyone was nice to her but too old to be of interest. She was suddenly supposed to care about these cousins she didn’t know, people who still did not invite them over for holidays but always showed up at funerals. Girl always had trouble letting go of resentments.
Mother had a lot of cousins. Back in high school, Mother was forced to take a first cousin to her school dance, and had to wear knee socks instead of pantyhose. When she was first divorced, a female cousin moved in with her to help Mother with the children in exchange for rent. With the death of her brother, Mother became the only surviving member of her immediate family, and then was cut off by all the more distant relations with the utterance of that single word, “lesbian.” Only her brother’s widow and their children remained.
Girl had no people. They were lost to her when whomever they sat with on the day of the funeral outed Mother.
Years later Girl finally asked Mother, “Who did we sit with at Uncle Bear’s funeral?”
“You sat with me,” Stepmother said.
“It was Bonnie Mason,” Mother answered.
elementary school
the deconstruction of a male child
Brother was older than Girl, but somehow more fragile. He was afraid of dogs, and wouldn’t even hold their kitten unless she was wrapped in a towel. Because he was older, he had to do things like go to school first and alone. Because he was always in trouble, Girl’s transgressions were often overlooked as inconsequential by comparison. Girl got to trail behind in the wake he broke for both of them, but she made up for it when they were together. She made friends at the day camps they were sent to over the summer, in both New York and Alaska, and introduced them to Brother. She defended him and covered up for him at home. Girl even occasionally did his chores to keep life somewhat on an even keel. It was her job to take care of Brother—no one else was going to.
Stepmother hated everything about Brother. He was a weak little weenie, just as disgusting as that silly bouncing appendage he had between his legs. He wasn’t good at sports or making friends, and he wasn’t motivated to do his chores or his homework.
Brother was a scrawny boy-child, and he grew so tall and so skinny that Girl called him “the evolution of a pencil—proof that people came from writing implements.” He didn’t have many friends before high school, and someone was always chasing him or stealing his shoes or sitting behind him in class talking about all the ways they would disembowel him. When he got home, Stepmother constantly told him what a waste he was. “If I were a boy, I could have been a doctor, or a lawyer. You were born with all the privilege I never had, and you just squander it! You are an asshole, just like your father!”
But unlike Girl, Brother sometimes yelled back
