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Show in my father'-a-;.house/3^. One point that was disturbing to me, even at the time, was my curious behavior toward Aunt Helga. I avoided her, but while she was at work and I home from school, sometimes I would go to her house, into her cool ttidy bedroom and use perfume or lotion from the bottles arranged on her dresser. I would examine her belongings - her gloves and nylon stockings, her stationary and scented soaps. Sometimes I would take something - a flowered handkerchief or a piece of jewelry. Usually, I would return it even if Aunt Heiga didn't come looking for it - unless it was lost in the meantime. While I was riffling through her things, a curious excitement, almost a passion, would course through me, leaving my knees weak and hands cold. I felt perverse. Why do you do this? I would ask myself, reddening with shame. What has Aunt . done to deserve you going through her private things; And then, I would answer myself from the heart, feelings that had not been understood much less put into words: It had something to do with the move, and something to do with the crushed, small feeling of having no privacy. I felt - though I could not say it - that she had taken all my private things away, mine and Mama's too. Some feared and now fearsome part of meA exulted in the violation of Aunt Helga's privacy. It has been said that when the taboos and mores involving family life fail, civilization automatically disappears. And certainly, it is true that we first learn of love and hate, of joy and sorrow, of anger and self-control at home. The dialectic between my mother's family and Aunt Helga had encouraged me to |
