“Funny thing, the past. It isn’t”
“Still of the night” by Kathy Fujimoto
This day though, this one day, I was not that observant
I’m listening to Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” and thinking back to my childhood, my love of plains-swept, crescendo-operatics; early B&W cowboy and Indian television programming, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, and of horses, of pounding hooves, and rugged (there were never any bathrooms), raw emotions pumping across America… of composers and orchestras, and for some reason, one small incident with my little sister, a sister such as Nelson Algren called “his own, the doll of his world.” Not I. Not me. But she, his sister, even though he would ask me to marry him, penning me a proposal poem and sketch of the dress I would wear and how I would appear, in white, walking towards him – a Jewish ceremony, et al – “a merry japes from Long Island” he called me. But it was his sister, his sister, who was the doll of his world, just as my little sister was mine. I wonder if Nels’ sister ever knew. Much to my mother’s relief (he older than she), I didn’t marry him, and I knew…
My little sister Norma “remembered” the incident through my telling of it, 40 years later. And sometimes I wondered if it was real, if I had dreamt it or if I made it up, to test her, her loyalty, like the faithful Tonto to the Lone Ranger, my younger sister to me (I, the middle daughter), and at that time, thankfully, the bigger. At least while I was nine and Normie, just five…
I, the middle child adventurer, wherever I went, took her with me. It was my job to look after her that summer, and tossing my own wild black mane, I pranced ahead of even myself, unfettered and free, to range the new lands of our new home, and the area of Long Island that was fast being built up by post-WWII suburbia. Certainly, Great Neck was a few giant stairways up from, say, Levittown, also in the works further out on the once potato- and Revolution-rich island, but the Levitts moved in near us, later on (and not in his own planned development, of course). Yes, even the Great Gatsby’ed Great Neck had a brand new development or two. Mine was called Saddle Rock. Perfect.
Running for hours, I rode horses, eventually my own; I skated on the old grist mill’s frozen pond, biked, scrambled down the cliffs into the waters of the Long Island Sound below, and climbed and crawled through, over and under things left untouched for so long on the former Matinecock native land. I was hoping, nay, praying to discover something long-forgotten, something that spoke just to me, for me, a reward for my carefully honed, keen tribal skills of observation, I, the outdoors one, the middle daughter, the one with dark, tanned skin and knee scabs, straight black hair – the one nicknamed ‘Rags’ – I, stretched flat on the earth, my ear pressed hard against its Indian past, connecting, listening for the hoof beats of unshod ponies long ago. I was SO nine.
This day though, this one day, I was not that observant, although my instinct for survival – at least for my little sister – was put to the test. And, actually, this is where, looking back, Normie and I began our separation, where her somewhat reluctant Tonto to my Lone Ranger began its nibbling, sibling asunder, not then, not at that time, but at the retelling, years later, when the thought of being punished, either by her or others, never entered my mind. Not for risking my life, but hers. She was five, and I was nine. I was me, invincible, dark skinned and black maned -saddled between my strawberry blond, nearly blue-eyed sisters, knowing I could handle any situation that came up. And that day, I did, but later, as adults, in my recounting of it to our children, she listened through and then added her perspective. And it was so very Normie: check the weather, the water, the depth and currents before tip-toeing – not plunging, not ever plunging, not ever throwing oneself right into the middle of it. Any “it.”
We were going to explore The Mansion, it standing silent watch over what was left of the still deserted acreage; and further up the hill, the stretched string and pegged lots, plots and parcels to be. We were the first family to move in to Saddle Rock, and I knew I had a special relationship with the earth, turned and unturned, and the deserted Eldridge mansion, and 1600s old Grist Mill, at the bottom of the hill, both hidden from view.
The Mansion had once ruled my symphonic landscape, overlooking the Sound, the Island of Manhattan across it, overseeing the mill and the fields, the town two miles away. I loved to explore through the Mansion, its broken windows letting me squeeze in between the hanging shutters. It was so silent. I always carried a flashlight in my dungarees, on my hushed, secret rounds. Through the upper storied, centuries-old and slightly sinister wavery windowpanes, a thin seepage of yellow-gray light filtered through tear-streaked, encrusted years of neglect and abandonment. My flashlight let me search a few feet ahead, up the staircases from the grand rooms at ground floor and up the three storeys, into afterthought, later addition closets, and down the darker, small-windowed topmost servants quarters and narrow, scarred hallways. Climbing a near-dead tree, I’d squirm through a dormer window, slipping on the broken slate roof, searching for secrets still hiding, waiting for discovery just by me, its special friend, I thought…
That day, I helped Normie climb in through a ground-level window someone else had recently provided breaking, being careful not to let her drop to the floor inside or get cut on the broken glass.
Holding tight her soft, still-dimpled little girl’s hand, we climbed the main stairs, gingerly, they ominously creaking beneath our dual weight of probably ninety or so pounds. Several slats were split, and the creaky banister, increasingly less substantial the higher we climbed, was best left alone as we slowly climbed, me clutching my little sister’s hand all the way, our backs hugging the wall.
Up to the servants quarters this time, the hallway narrower and ceiling lower than those below, it feeling somehow darker than I remembered, we crunching unknown bits of things, mice and other nameless droppings, I searching for just one more thing left unturned, unfound, waiting for me, when Normie let go of my hand, and went an unusual bit without me, a surprising few-steps adventure of her own. Leaving the weak circle of flashlight, she stepped carefully out and into the long, narrow, hallway, dusty twilight failing at either end. From the corner of my eye, I saw her across the hall, reach for a door, and as she attempted to turn the knob, she pushed forward, pitching inward, when suddenly, not knowing why, I sprang, leaping at her, stretching for her, grabbing at her, the straps of her little-girl overalls, even as she began a scream in the midst of a wobbling, off-balance dance with death, a slow-mo forwardness into a pitch of dark nothingness, Algren’s “Black Hole of Calcutta.”
With a speed and strength even I didn’t pride my tomboy self with, I leaped and pulled her back – not yet even yet up – so fast, so furious, was my response. She hadn’t had time to fall, was pitching on a forward tilt when I caught her, with one hand, her little girl overall straps, and pulled her back, back to the hallway, back to the floor, back to me. Away from an empty dumbwaiter shaft I never knew the Old Mansion had, a secret it had kept from even me…. And I hugged her to me and held her, and yelled at her for going somewhere without me, for letting go, for the nearness of it, and the terror of the deep, the black, the seeming doorway to forever, so far below.
Normie was wearing a striped polo shirt that day, pink and white with a ruffled collar, and overalls, the wide shoulder straps crisscrossed in back to keep them from slipping off little shoulders. It was my adventure and she was too young. She was supposed to be in my control. The Tonto to my Lone Ranger.
I don’t remember ever going there again, my own private adventure land. There were other adventures not far off. But I lost something that day. It was the almost understanding of losing of my little sister. My doll of the world.
I lost an end slice of the unblemished portion that was mine: the total, unblinking confidence I had in my self. It had been my best friend, my bravery – or was it bravado? — and, at that time, my biggest asset as far as I was concerned.
Years later, I recounting stories of childhoodisms to our own kids, Normie suddenly screamed at me, how dare I be so careless with her, how dare I take her on such dangerous adventures. She was enraged. But she was all right. She hadn’t gotten hurt, she never got hurt with me (Well, once.). But, on the way home that day, she collecting weedy flowers in the darkening fields, chattering about this and that, I knew she was okay. She hadn’t had time to get scared. I got scared, not she. She didn’t even know what had happened.
As we grew, I had to teach her about opening new doors and walking into blackness, about not waiting to see if there was enough light to move forward, to test for solid footing the floor beneath your feet. Like the testing I never wanted to do, never would do, from jumping off horses to climbing trees and swinging upside down, out over the ragged, rocky cliffs high above the Sound, damn the ocean, its uneven depth and currents, swells and lightning and thunder. Precautions I was telling her to take, that had always preceded her life, her cautiousness, even then. But just one slip… hanging upside down to see the world of fish and horseshoe crabs in the swirling murk below….
Did I instill it so badly she never came out of it? Did I make her so cautious she has to process the pros and cons of salves and smiley face band aids – her son’s injuries practically scabbing themselves over by the time she and her husband – six graduate degrees (of separation..?) between them – make their decisions?
And why have I, having delivered such a scare of ‘making sure’ to her that day, continued my own plunges through life, mistake after mistake, still chalking it up to experiences?
I was completely thrown off guard by Normie’s outburst at the retelling that day. I figured it was delivered to impress her own impressionable young son, an only child and the youngest and last of we three sisters’ children, the danger and foolishness of his middle aunt’s impetuous, often reckless – in her words – behavior. I was also angered. I had saved her life. The sister assigned to babysit her the whole, no-other-children-long summertime, I led her on adventures few girls, or boys, ever experience. Certainly not Carol, our fairest-skinned and outdoor-disdainful big sister.
And, really, other than one miserable Normie failure, a tumbling stunt I’d seen on an Ed Sullivan show, and successfully replicated with our own athletic mother, when I attempted to teach it to Normie, she, of course, landed flat on her face. Bellowing with outrage and pain, I got slapped across the face by my father for hurting her. As though I wanted to. As though I didn’t feel her pain, too.
Ah well, punished by Normie for taking her with me. Punished by him for hurting her. And punished by me for remembering.
Life is interesting. Like a poem about a marriage you never have, one that is published and becomes owned by people you never met, in places you’ve never been. Like Calcutta.
Funny thing, the past. It isn’t. ER