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Father believed that families who ate together got excused together and anyone who veered from this cardinal family rule bordered on criminal behavior. Upstairs, Robert hung over the side of his bed reading a book. His dark hair shot up like his thoughts, abruptly and sharp.

“You’re invading my privacy,” he said.

“Dad wants you to come down.”

“I’m reading.” He rode the “r” until his lower jaw stuck out, then glared at his book.

“Just come down,” I said, in an attempt to offer an older sister’s advice, “or he’ll blow up again.”

Robert prickled and folded his shoulders to keep me away. But I knew if I stood still, he would calm down enough to reconsider. He shoved the book under the bed and followed me down.

By now it was pitch black outside and the large globe light above the table reflected off the windows like a bloated fish.

Robert stood in front of Father.

“You will not!” Father said, smacking Robert on the cheek, “leave the table without permission. Now you may be excused.”

Robert burst into tears and tore back upstairs. Father headed to his office and slammed the door. Elliot started humming. I didn’t move, paralyzed by my unintended betrayal of Robert.

“Elliot, time for a bath. Sarah, Peter, you have homework,” Mother said.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Peter said, shoving his chair out from the table.

I went upstairs to my desk and stared out my bedroom window at the weeping birch tree that hunkered over the driveway in the dark. Later that night, I knocked on Robert’s door to apologize but he wouldn’t let me in. He had pushed his bureau in front of the door.

“I’m really sorry,” I said through the keyhole.

I went to bed and stayed awake a long time waiting for sleep, for my raw stomach to settle down. The hall light shone into my room. I hummed. The vibrations of the notes calmed my nerves. Ahhh, ooooo, eeeee. Oh Lord, show me the bridge. I mimicked the way Luanne opened her mouth and felt the tone change on my tongue, then shiver along the path of my cheekbones.

I watched the treetops at my window, still figures watching back, and the long backyard curving up to the stars. The bright moon gleamed on the wooden floors and made my floor melt and become liquid as a pond. I felt a universe away from the clattering of my three brothers, the relentless pontificating of my father, and Mother’s voice responding to him in sounds that were edgy and cold.

Under my blankets I invented songs for company. I imagined standing solo on stage singing to an auditorium filled with understanding faces. Come and see what I see.
I sang to the moon, the hall light, the honey summer light when the low sun slunk into my room. I hummed. I changed the notes from high to low. I rolled them on my tongue. Singing was like eating. It filled a hungry feeling.

Chapter Three

In the kitchen, Luanne snapped green beans for dinner. She wore pink, pearl-like earrings and she was humming. She seemed different, more distant after a day off. For two nights of the week, she lived in Roxbury, a poor, black section in Boston that white people avoided.

“What you want, Sarah?” she asked in a Haitian accent. Her skin looked creamy. She had high cheekbones and moist, glowing eyes.

I sat next to the window overlooking the driveway. I could see my neighbor’s bedroom window through a cluster of fir trees. Dr. and Mrs. Fineburg had a son my age who went to private school. I knew when Mickey came home because the lights in his bedroom stayed on late and the house, a white Colonial with a red door, made different sounds. Doors opened and shut. The station wagon came and went at different times of the day.

“You’ve got some thought in your head. I can see it.”

“Isn’t it hard living somewhere else and coming back here?” I asked.

She nodded but didn’t say anything. When she finished with the beans she put a whole chicken in the oven and asked me if I wanted to watch television with her. In her tiny, darkened room beside the kitchen she had draped the small window with a blue scarf. On her bureau, she kept a paper cup filled with earrings. I sat on the linoleum floor beside a straw basket piled with pink rollers. She sat on her cot.

continued . . .