OCR Text |
Show in my father's house/ 246 I sensed a difference. Aunt Gerda, her three boys and my father rattled through the large rooms. The upstairs apartments once shared by Aunt Rachel and Aunt Elsa echoed emptily, with only a mattress and blanket in Aunt Rachel's old bedroom where one of her older girls, Annette, went to study or think, or weep when she missed her mother. I wondered about the forces that kept her Annette here with Aunt Gerda who paid for violin lessons though/could never play the violin for her mother. Annette and I wandered through the rooms gazing at walls preterite as old, naked bodies - wrinkled and cracked, with odd hollows and sagging woodwork. "Do you remember when my mother lived here?" Annette asked me. I nodded. "I used to love to play here. We could do anything and your mother didn't get cross about the furniture and mess." "Really? You liked to play here?" Annette's eyes filled. "Sometimes I feel...I feel everybody in the family thinks they're better than Mother's children." She made a choking sound. I hardly knew what to say. "You're as good as anybody else. Remember your mother's bread? I know some people who can't bake bread at all." We giggled, thinking of Aunt Gerda's bread which came like charcoal from the oven. "And you play the violin so beautifully," I added. "I wish I could." She nodded. "But it really doesn't make me feel any better. I'm sad almost all the time." I thought of that, and I thought of my mother. "You should talk to Mama. She will understand." From Annette I learned about Leora's hair and why Leora left Aunt Gerda's to live with her mother. |