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On Sunday, her day off, she wore white hoop earrings, purple lipstick and a torso-hugging blue dress with matching hat. She walked to the end of our street. A black man picked her up in a white Dodge Dart and brought her back late the next evening, after I was asleep.

“We’ll have dessert and coffee now,” Mother said to Luanne. Mother straightened her shoulders whenever she spoke to what she called the help. Luanne nodded and headed back to the kitchen.

“Hamlet was riddled with ambiguities,” Father explained, opening the book and licking his lips. “I’ll do the openers.” He took a deep breath and boomed out the first line, “Who’s there?”

“Leonard, don’t shout,” Mother said, tapping her ears.

“You do it, then,” he said, supremely offended. He pushed the book at me and I passed it over to Mother.

“I’d like to read Ophelia’s part.” She turned the thin pages. “‘Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?’” she asked. She over-enunciated the words ‘commerce’ and ‘honesty’ and it made her look pained. The pills she took before dinner made her eyes small and distant, her voice tied down by something I couldn’t see.

“Ophelia doesn’t hiss, Irene. Read it again.” 

“I’m not hissing. ‘ Could beauty, my lord…’”

Luanne nudged open the swinging door and placed a platter of oatmeal cookies in the middle of the table.

“Coffee?” Mother said, turning toward her.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I thought we were starting after dessert,” Elliot said. My youngest brother reached for the cookies but Mother stopped him. Elliot looked like Uncle Max. Soft around the stomach, and wide-faced, he was the baby but possibly the wisest of us all.

Elliot kept his deepest thoughts to himself, preferring sedentary activities, and was slow to speak. He gave the impression of excessive dreaminess.

“Just two, luv,” Mother said.

“I’ll read Orfeelya,” Robert said. Two years younger than I, he spoke in high grating tones.

“O-feel-ee-ah!” Father corrected him. “Say it.”

“I’ll feel ya,” Peter joked, grabbing three cookies with long, dexterous fingers. He was pale and light-haired like me. The oldest at fifteen, he sank into his chair, lanky—all arms and legs. A shadow of a mustache defined his lip.

Father pounded a fist on the table. “Enough!” The storm perpetually brewing beneath his skin surfaced and made his face turn red.

Luanne walked back in with two cups of coffee.

“Bring the coffee here, girl,” he said, fishing in his shirt pocket for a cigarette. He separated the cup from the saucer and used the saucer for an ashtray.

“Don’t talk to her like that,” I mumbled.

“Luanne, the ashtrays are in the cupboard above the refrigerator,” Mother said. She spoke slowly, a careful movement of her lips.

Robert jumped up, pressing his hands to his ears. “I can’t listen to this family!” He ran upstairs howling. Craven and overexcited, words spat out of his mouth from the time he had taught himself to read when he was three. We heard his footsteps and the bedroom door slam. Mother pressed her lips until they whitened.

“Give me the book, Irene.”

She obeyed.

“Sarah, tell Robert to come back down here. He was not excused.” He took a cookie and pushed it whole into his mouth. His cheeks changed shape, sticking out like miniature fists. The oatmeal crumbs settled on the corners of his mouth.

“Do it now.”

continued . . .