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Show Moon - 37 At bedtime, my mother sat on the cot and sang me the Christian Science hymn: Shepherd show me how to go, o 're the hillside steep, how to gather, how to sow, how to feed thy sheep. And then she had me say the child's prayer along with her: Father/Mother God, Lovingly, Guard me while I sleep. Guide my little feet up to thee. When she left, dropping the yellow curtain behind her, I could rock myself to sleep like a bird in a hanging nest. On winter mornings, the radiators hissed and groaned, but always too late for getting up warm. My mother would wrap me in my blanket and sit me in the kitchen in front of the open oven. She gave me toast spread with butter and honey and a cup of hot chocolate. Then she'd run a bath for me in the communal bathroom down the hall. I wonder now why she didn't stay with a very small girl in an almost public bath. That would have been the normal thing, but I think she had very little to go on, having had a mother who would stow a blue baby under the sink. Almost every time I was in the bath I had to call her for something-either the water was pouring in too hot, or a cockroach was crawling down the wall. I wanted not to have to call for her, preferring already to handle things by myself. It was expected that I not be too much of a bother. Once an old man walked in while I was in the tub. He frightened me and I screamed. I felt sorry for days afterward, remembering the sadness in his face as he mumbled, "Pardon me," and hurried away. I started kindergarten that year, and every morning my mother took me to the bus stop, gave me my dime, and said, "Remember, get off at Queens Boulevard." I'd look up at her, trying to hide my worry, but had to ask, "And then?" She'd smile down at me and squeeze my hand,. "The school is right |