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Show in my father's house/ 219 very much like Sarah's with the way she ran things and held it over us that she had married first, and my mother like a Hagar to her. Hadn't Aunt Helga essentially given my mother to my father, and hadn't it stung her when my mother went on bearing children while she remained barren for so many years? And like Sarah, hadn't Aunt Helga retained the special, coveted place beside my father, working beside him, given influence over him so that she was almost a partner, an equal? Even the other mothers envied her < position, although they affirmed Aunt Helga's special talent with the sick. And then, they had their babies, while Aunt Helga had only her work and her faith. And then, she had bloomed in her fortieth year, her body unfolding, her face full, her color at once high and delicate, her eyes bright and her manner youthful. Despite the hours of hiding in the back bedroom, the lack of sunlight could not dim her joy over the promise fulfilled, the dream come true. How quickly the hope could diminish, replaced by a rankling darkness! I said a silent prayer for Aunt Helga's baby as I asked the blessing. Poor Aunt Helga. She couldn't have seen the stretch of ice - though it was always there, formed by the dripping eaves - as she stepped out for her only breath of air in the pre-dawn light. I had a sudden, painful understanding of her feelings. There was a word for it in our health books: claustrophobia. I wasn't hungry anymore, but forced myself to swallow the last of my sandwich. Time and again we had been ordered to clean our plates, warned that the time was at hand when we would yearn for the crumbs wasted daily. The afternoon at school passed like a shadow. I felt the heaviness of the sky and the heaviness of Aunt Helga's fall to |