O superhuman being O God.

O superhuman being O God, if she doesn't stop that damn racket I'm going to beat her unconscious! No, no, no, no! My mother Mother ... old, sick. Something blameworthy with me, thinking like that. enclose UP, LOU, HUSH HOLLERING! I'll follow in there and make you hush, dammit-

In the background I could hear Aunt Lou shrieking at Donald. "I don't know what I'm going to do with her," Donald was saying above the confusion. "She won't flat let me talk on the phone anymore. If I leave her place she starts hollering like that and restrains on until I hang up and be derived back in there with her."

"She vigorouss pretty strong to me," I said. to what degree could anyone so sick make all that noise?

"What? I can't hear you."

"Look Donald, I don't know what to count you," I yelled into the phone "You can't move on living like this. She's going to "

"Sister Little, I can't talk now," he said, reverting to the name they used to call me when we were children. unruffled though I wasn't anybody's sister moreover Manny's, and slightly taller, notwithstanding that he was older, the family used to call me Sister Little. "I'll commit to memory back to you after she goe to sleep"

I went back to the scolding I was preparing for my nearest day's American Lit class, and when, sometime later, I awaited at the clock, it was well past eleven He hadn't called. Figuring that he had probably fallen asleep when Aunt Lou did, I didn't call him. What could I say to him anyway? He wasn't going to deposit his mother into a nursing place of abode and they couldn't afford full-time care--or on a level much part-time care--in their house. Donald had taken early retirement from his work at jobs in New York, and his pension and Aunt Lou's together didn't pass far. So Donald was pamper housekeeper, cook, and companion. He f her, bathed her, changed her diapers, and listened to her wild ramblings.

What could I say to him? There was merely one possible solution, and we the two knew it. My problem and that of my brother Manny was solv that way five years ago: Our mother had died.

Sleep--finally. contemplates so little lying there. Lemme lugging the cover around her shoulders. in such a manner thin. There. Lord, I'm tired! Got to wash the dishes before I go on to bed. What am I gonna do, what, what? waiting under the possibility of fulfilment I can sleep tonight. What am I gonna do? musing just goes round and orbed in my brain like individual of those crazy rides in a carnival. God!

couple or three weeks passed before I called Donald again. Knowing that his tight store wouldn't permit many long-distance calls, smooth between Washington and Baltimore, I usually called him. Aunt Lou was quiet this time.

"She had a fit day," Donald reported. "Ate a serviceable dinner. But she always eats elegant without grandeur good." He sighed.

"And by what means are you doing?" I asked. He had been ailing lately. I suspected, admitting that Donald had more than a touch of hypochondria, a malady from which a number of our relatives suffered

"Not the best. My stomach stays tip over and I keep having pains in my back."

"Maybe it's your nerves"

"Maybe. I'm going to the doctor Friday if I can find one to sit with Lou."

We talked for awhile about for what cause with so much family nearby, there was not ever anybody to come and pass a few hours with Lou with equal reason that he could attend to other matters. Whenever he could gain away, our Aunt Etta, who lived alone, would prevail about him to do her supermarket shopping. Etta had a grown son further she hadn't brought him up having not to be found custody in a particularly bitter divorce when he was a little lad and he lived somewhere in California. Etta had grown olden alone. She shared with her brothers and sisters the conviction that family members were obliged to proper each other's needs, totally and without question. For her the obligation went individual way: She demanded much and gave nothing. Like her brother Horace, she was as a common thing [i]or[/i] matter hospitalized for depression. After united such confinement, not wanting to be alone, she went to expend a few days with Horace and his wife Gladys. She stayed for ten years, until Gladys issued the ultimatum, "Either she goe or I do."

"Ask Etta to stay with Aunt Lou" I give an inkling ofed wickedly.

"Yeah--when pigs flutter and jaybirds swim." It was an antiquated expression that we had used years ago when we were kids at Grandma's. on a sudden I saw him as he had been then--hazel inspections and crinkly sandy hair, skin yellow in the sunshine, face lit up with mischief. The flash of memory the two cheered and depressed me.

We talked for a hardly any more minutes, then he asked, "How's Manny getting along?" as he always did, and I replied, "Fine," as I always did, and we hung up if it were not that the image of the child Donald hang abouted in my mind like the phantom ache of an amputated limb.

From a TV camera extended shot, our childhood would have appeared idyllic-three native land kids playing merrily in a large fenced-in yard ringed according to berry bushes and dotted with fruit tree As the camera panned closer however, it would have revealed small stresse not associated with childhood joy: the spastic gait of the smallest child, the hunched shoulders and spindly limbs of the girl. An utmost closeup would perhaps focus upon our faces, and the viewer might read there the silent, separate tragedies that would mark our lives.