Called Out of Darkness Page 0,12
row of volumes called the Har-vard Classics which my father one day threw away. There were many other interesting books in that alcove. Since I wasn't a reader I never read a single one.
I think my older sister, Alice, whose IQ was on the genius level, probably read every volume. It was said that she read everything in the Children's Library, and that is why she was sneaking upstairs into the Adult Library before she was old enough to do it. That I can believe, and I snuck up to the Adult Library with her.
The house was peculiar. Most of the floors were painted wood and bare. There was a linoleum carpet on the living room floor with a bright flowered pattern, and there were four antique rocking chairs on the four edges of the carpet, and an old studio couch with a pleasant pattern of ribbons and feathers stood against the closed door to my mother's room. Flowered wallpaper covered the walls, and a lovely white marble fireplace and mantel surrounded the small iron gas heater - like almost all the heaters of the house - on its curled legs.
And there was a constant flow in and out on the screened porch, which was considered as private as a room.
My grandmother sat on the screened porch to shell peas in a colander in the evening. I remember stringing peas with her, and shelling them. I remember painting with an easel on this porch later on. Screened porches are all but lost to the world today, but screened porches were wonderful rooms.
The soft breezes were always moving through them, yet one felt safe and private from the outside world.
Other things I recall mark this as the end of an era. For example, I recall the iceman rushing up the back steps, with the block of ice on his leather-padded shoulder. I remember the first electric refrigerator that actually kept things cold.
Garbage wagons were pulled by mules, and so was the wagon of the "banana man," invariably black, who sang "Bananas" as he passed.
Laundry was done in tubs in the kitchen, and on a wash-board by my grandmother and my mother. I helped lift the twisted sheets out of the wicker basket for my grandmother to hang on the backyard line. There were old clothespins without springs and new clothespins with springs. There were two kinds of soap, Ivory and Octagon.
An old wiggling, shimmying three-legged washing machine with a wringer on it made its way into the house after my grandmother's death. It could waltz out the back door and down the steps if nobody kept watch.
I recall a small portable vacuum cleaner being introduced in later years, but then it was given away to a cousin. The beds had no spreads, only sheets and blankets. They had simple metal headboards. I don't recall anyone ever buying a towel. We had the same towels for fifteen years. I don't recall anyone ever buying a piece of furniture. My mother's wedding china and crystal was broken by us bit by bit as we played with it. We drew on the walls when we wanted to. We cut out paper dolls and pasted them on the walls.
My mother believed in complete creativity; she gave us no chores. She wanted to protect us from chores. My father worked two jobs for months at a stretch, as did most men in those days, and there were long periods when he was seldom there.
Sometime after my grandmother died my mother started to drink in mysterious bouts which involved complete unconsciousness for days. Presumably, she rose in the night, found the liquor she'd stashed away, and drank it until she passed out again.
In between those bouts, she was brilliant and interesting, and for years nothing was said about this "sickness" of hers, except now and then that she was "sick." By the age of eleven or so, I knew she was dying of this, and I knew that the only way to live was to pretend it wasn't happening. But before I came to this conclusion, I had a breakdown which is worth recording.
I took to my bed for days and refused to get up. I was terrified by visions of the house burning down, of my little sisters trapped in the flames, and my mother, drunk, coughing, unable to get them out.
This must have been summertime when I had this breakdown, because I don't recall anyone saying "Get up and go to school." I remember people