My early childhood in New Jersey was not a fable of fountains,
MICHAEL RUBY
MY EARLY CHILDHOOD
but of sucking in my stomach to avoid getting pinched by the snap on my
rubber pants,
the grease-tipped rectal thermometer left in my behind for more than the
promised three minutes,
riding in a Shop-Rite cart with Mom, dipping into a fresh box of Animal
Crackers,
Doors slammed on my fingers, but my brother Stephen somehow never to
blame,
resolving one day after lunch never to drink my glass of skim milk again,
no matter how fat I got, no matter what the hated Dr. Stattman said,
shouting "Hi Mr. Engineer" to the ticket puncher on the Erie Lackawanna to
Hoboken,
a throng of well-dressed adults in the living room, Essex County Citizens
for Kennedy,
the gross maroon borcht in the blender at my grandparents' summer house
near Tanglewood,
wishing I were a girl when I watched my cousin Evie Chayes braiding her
long blonde hair,
floating unwatched in a black inner tube to the deep end of the pool at
Mountain Ridge Country Club,
my baby sister Liz being rushed to the hospital again, this time with a
temperature of 107,
recurring nightmares about a whirlpool swirling at the foot of my bed, its
tiger stripes getting larger and larger, closer and closer,
a well-dressed prep-school recruiter in the living room talking to my
brother Johnny,
retching in front of the platters of tunafish on Fridays at Fawn Ridge Day
Camp,
noticing a group of campers with cotton in their ears, forbidden to swim,
and divining that I would be among them soon,
blood streaming from a gash on my heel after I slipped off the crossbar of
my brother David's bike,
burly exterminators descending on the rats in the cellar, leaving behind
brown plastic trays with white powder,
suddenly feeling dizzy and throwing up while the kindergarten Victrola
played "The Star Spangled Banner,"
a black plastic gondola with a red velvet interior that Mom and Dad
brought back from Venice,
my jealousy when Grandma Gert bought Liz an air conditioner after her
first kidney operation,
the remote lives of my oldest brothers and sisters from Mom's and Dad's
first marriages--Sandy motorcycling through West Germany after his
Harvard graduation, Alice acting at Bennington, Johnny running track
at Andover, Kathy wearing beatnik berets at Columbia High,
Grandpa Nat softening toward me, "Krushchev's nyet man," on a walk through
the woods to the Stockbridge Bowl,
stumbling on Liz's corrective baby shoes in the cellar and reasoning that
she didn't need them anymore,
proudly informing my Sunday school teacher at B’nai Jeshurun that I would
be visiting Johnny at Andover the next weekend,
dropping by Sandy's dorm at MIT and playing with Dad's Japanese sword from
the war, which I thought we ought to have at home,
our first-grade reading group hopelessly stumped by T-H-E,
Kathy telling me a story on rainy afternoons about a boy whose mother had
fallen down the stairs and died when she was pregnant with him,
well-dressed adults in the living room who weren't liberals or prep-school
recruiters, but people paying a condolence call,
Liz asking, "Is Grandpa Nat in heaven with John F. Kennedy?"
"The Little Rascals" on TV before school, "Popeye" and "Superman" after
school,
merciless teasing by my big brothers and sisters, who called me "fee,"
"feebar," "feyter" and other variations of feces,
the surprise visit from Liz's baby nurse Betty Bar, when I suddenly felt a
gulf separated me from the time when I was two.