mouth was set as tight as it could be given her lower teeth overlapping her top teeth. She looked at me. The iris, normally brown, was practically all black, which meant she was having one of her “nervous” feelings. She opened the kitchen door and walked over to the stove. I trailed behind her. The big black line on each of the burner and oven dials pointed straight up in the off position. One by one, Margie grasped each dial and made the motion of turning it to the right. She repeated this two more times.
“I’d better make sure the front door is locked,” she said.
I waited in the kitchen while she went to check the door we used only on the rare occasion of the doorbell ringing. I heard the lock slide back and forth three times. It was always three times. Margie returned to the kitchen. Beads of sweat sat on her forehead. She blew air up from her mouth.
“Anne, are the lights all out?” she asked.
“I think so,” I answered.
“I’d better check.”
We passed through each room of the apartment: the living room with its dark green brocade-covered couch and little black-and-white television on the rolling metal stand; the dining room dressed with my mother’s cherry table, chairs, and hutch; the room my mother and I shared with our twin beds pushed too close together for my liking; Margie’s bedroom with its mahogany bureaus and double bed. Margie pushed each light switch down, as if to make it more off than it already was. She checked every unlit lamp. She pressed the dials on unmoving window fans to their off positions. She performed all these checks three times. We returned to the back door. Margie paused. “I forgot to check the window locks.”
I tried to keep my face placid. I was sweating but I knew that if I complained about how long this was taking, Margie would start her routine all over again. This time I waited by the door. Hopefully she’d remember to check the faucets on this turn around the apartment. Her routine never wavered: stove, front door, lights, window locks, faucets, back door. In the summer, she added the fans.
Margie appeared again. She opened the door and started to go out.
“Wait,” I said, “I have to go pee-pee.”
“Well, hurry up, then,” she said.
Finally, we were outside. As we walked, I scanned both sides of the street to see if any of the kids from school were around. I hated meeting my classmates, afraid they would laugh at me or point out my fatness. But I also felt proud to be walking with my aunt. I wanted the world to see that an adult loved me enough to spend time with me.
We didn’t meet anyone on our journey. We had left the house at nine o’clock, after the morning commuter rush, so we had seats next to each other all the way to the beach. I loved sitting close to Margie. Neither the streetcar nor the subway train were air conditioned, so my fat little body must have made Margie even hotter, but she didn’t seem to mind and even let me put my hand in hers. I couldn’t kiss her in public though—she said it wasn’t right.
At the beach, Margie spread out our old navy wool picnic blanket and put something heavy on each corner so it wouldn’t fly away. We stripped to our bathing suits, and I ran toward the water.
“Anne,” Margie called after me, “don’t go in over your knees.”
“Okay,” I yelled back. I didn’t understand this rule. At the YMCA summer camp I’d attended for two weeks, I was the best swimmer of the Minnows. My fat body floated very well in water, which made swimming easier for me than for most of the skinny kids.
But I knew better than to argue with Margie. The water petrified her, along with heights, open-slatted stairs, bridges, cars, planes, thunderstorms, fires, horses, speaking to strangers, and electricity. My mother’s fears were more about health—every symptom, ache, or pain portended immediate death. My own fears were a mixture of theirs and some of my own: being sent away, my mother, speaking to strangers, speaking in public, other kids, boys, men, being sick, spiders, and bees.
My later decision to become a doctor might have derived from an innate desire to heal my mother in order to heal myself. I felt so powerless as a child, so dependent on my mother’s moods. If she was angry, I flinched. If she was sick, I fretted. If she was frustrated, I tried to do better. In my immature mind, I connected these together. She was sick, therefore, angry, therefore, frustrated with me. I wanted the power to cure her illness, calm her anger, and heal her frustration. A healthy mother would allow me to be a healthy child.
Margie sat on the blanket, smoking her Chesterfield cigarettes and reading a paperback novel. She looked up and smiled every time I called her to watch me. I emerged only for lunch and to build sand castles with the pink pail and shovel we had brought with us. Later in the afternoon, we strolled along the boardwalk, chocolate ice cream cones in hand. After five minutes I was covered with sticky brown residue. Margie wiped what she could with the single-ply napkin the clerk had wrapped around the cone.
“You’ll have to go back in the water to wash off,” she said. I didn’t complain at this. Too soon, Margie called to me that it was five o’clock and time to go home.
“Please, can we stay a little longer?” I pleaded.
“I need to make dinner for your mother. We don’t want to keep her waiting.” She had that nervous look again, so I didn’t protest.
On the ride home, I leaned against Margie and enjoyed every minute of it. She made me feel safe and protected on our outings. With her, I could be a little girl.
Screams woke me one October evening in 1959. I lay there listening, my thoughts as thick as vanilla pudding, not knowing where the screams were coming from. If I’d still been at Rosary, my first guess would have been the seven-year-old girl whose night terrors we mostly learned to sleep through. But I had been living with my mother and aunt for the past year and a half. I realized the screams came from outside my bedroom. Looking over at the other twin bed, I saw that my mother’s form was missing. I sat up in bed and listened while I decided what to do. Suddenly my mother’s voice loudly declared that she’d go get Mr. Reilly. Her footsteps passed my door, down the hall that led to the rickety back porch and stairs to the landlord’s first-floor flat. I cracked the bedroom door open to hear better. My mother didn’t have to knock very hard or long; Mr. Reilly was a fireman and could wake easily even when medicated by a six-pack of Schlitz.
I stepped into the hall. Light streamed out of the bathroom. I crept toward the light and found Margie bent over next to the toilet, her hand pressed down on the plush toilet cover that almost matched the sky blue bathroom rug.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“There’s a rat in the toilet. I almost sat on it.”
Margie had the wide-eyed look on her face I’d only seen during thunderstorms, when she’d unplug the phone and all the electric appliances and make me sit still, away from windows and doors. I didn’t understand why she’d fear a small animal. I’d never seen a rat up close, but if it fit into our toilet, how big could it be? I bent over to peer in the crack between the lid and the toilet bowl. Was that a whisker sticking out? I
