Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir

by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith

  One night, a young girl, visiting from West Hartford, was sleeping in her aunt’s house. She saw Bob Malm coming in the window and screamed, and he ran off. A police cruiser nearby was dispatched to search for a tall sailor. Bob was arrested in uniform.

  The girl’s parents refused to press charges. They didn’t want her terrorized further and they wanted her back home right away. But the state’s attorney trumped up a charge of robbery, which didn’t require the child to testify but rather her uncle, who agreed to do so. The state claimed Bob Malm had stolen money from the house.

  Bob was found guilty and sentenced to one year in prison. He was undesirably discharged from the Navy “due to trial and conviction by civil authorities of robbery.” (An undesirable discharge, as opposed to a dishonorable discharge, connotes violations that are felonies by civil law.)

  Bob’s mother and sister, upon hearing of his discharge and jailing, told his lawyer to relay a message to him. They never wanted to hear from him again; he would not be welcome at his home in Los Angeles upon his release from prison.

  nine

  Tyler and Mickey with cousin Paul

  NILAN STREET. My own bedroom. I am overjoyed and the number of nightmares I have goes down. There is wallpaper with pink roses on the wall, the pattern almost as beautiful as the internal red glow of the coal furnace that I will never see again. Now my father turns a little disk on the wall to heat the house instead of shoveling coal. The outside of the house is clapboard, unlike Pippi and Grandpa’s houses, which are sided with something called asphalt shingles, rough thin squares with edges that curl up in the hot summer sun. The floor is wood instead of linoleum. I touch the wood with my fingertips taking in the pattern of the oak grain.

  We have a new chair, a wingback upholstered in a pattern of grapevines. Its back is velvet, the color of wine from the grapes. I sit behind it and feel the velvet with my fingertips. I feel the cover of my favorite book, Silver Pennies, too. Silver Pennies is a collection of children’s poems, many of them having to do with fairies and several of them written by Yeats. The cover is midnight blue and there is a girl on the cover sitting in the grass reaching up into the night sky. She is reaching for the silver pennies embossed on the cover spilling down upon her. I feel the small silver disks. They are cold and smooth.

  Tyler has the other upstairs bedroom under the dormers of our cookie-cutter Cape Cod house. I am not a good sleeper even with fewer nightmares because I am afraid of the dark what with all the previous primal sex I witnessed four feet away from my crib. Night lights are verboten because they are a waste of electricity. In the fifties, you are aware of wasting electricity, wasting food, wasting water. Wasting time is not a negative phenomenon; if you have time to waste, it means you’re happy and doing well. Waste all the time you want. Afraid of the dark means I must pull my hands and feet in close to my body because if my foot hangs over the side of the bed, a blade will come down and slice it off. Perhaps Joseph Ignace Guillotin, the French physician who proposed the concept as a method to execute people, was afraid of the dark. (Mary Warburg will tell me she was afraid of the dark so her father gave her a loaded gun to keep by her bedside.)

  What soothes me in the night is Tyler’s voice, across the hall.

  He is always in conversation with his “critter,” a mangy, one-eyed stuffed animal, its fur entirely worn off. It might have been a teddy bear once. When I am an adult and I see the critter lying on Tyler’s bed, it reminds me of a swarthy five-month fetus.

  Sometimes Tyler calls: Sister, come tell a story to the critter.

  Autistic people don’t like to use real names. He calls our mother Lady and our father Pop-pop.

  The stories he prefers are anecdotes that chronicle some trouble he got into when he was little. I am happy to run to his bedroom and get into bed with him and the critter because Tyler is not the least bit afraid of the dark. How could he be when he has far more serious things to be afraid of—like clouds of needles lodging in his face.

  His favorite story is the commandeering of the elevator at G. Fox, Hartford’s twelve-floor department store. We call G. Fox, Fox’s. Before Fox’s is forced to close when malls are invented, you might need a new blouse to pep up your old suit so you’d go to Fox’s, get off at the ninth floor, where the entire sprawling space is devoted to rack after rack of blouses organized by color. Bring the suit along, and a sales lady finds the perfect match immediately.

  I am with Tyler that day at Fox’s, the day the elevator story is born. He is nine and I am four.

  My father is shooting the breeze with a friend he meets on the lobby floor by the elevator. (In the days of the big department stores, the buildings are so otherworldly that they have lobbies like the Plaza Hotel, a place that actually no longer has a lobby but rather a shopping mall. Ironic.) My father’s friend’s name is Abe Lieberman. My father calls out to his friend, Hey, Abe, you Jew bastard!

  Abe’s face breaks into a grin and he calls back, Yutch Tirone, you sonofabitch no-good wop, how the hell are ya?

  They smack each other on the back, shake hands, and then get down to the business of comparing notes as to which horses should have won in the fifth at Narragansett yesterday, as opposed to the one that did, which they didn’t have, goddamn it. Abe says, My nag stopped to take a leak at the clubhouse turn.

  Tyler and I slip away into one of Fox’s elevators. It goes up. Once the last passenger is ushered out at eight—Shoes—the elevator operator always steps across the threshold to hold back the shiny, bronze accordion gate in case it malfunctions and crushes a dawdling customer. Tyler pulls the gate out of the operator’s hand and throws it shut. Then he swings back a lever closing the back-up metal door. He presses a special button that means the doors won’t open no matter who is outside hammering away at all the floor numbers. Down we go.

  We ride up and down pretending we are in a flying boxcar, transporting the troops across enemy lines. Tyler keeps saying to me, You’re a fine soldier, Sergeant. Where did you train? Hickham?

  I say, Yes sir, I did.

  A maintenance worker is called to the scene by the elevator operator, who tells my frantic father there is nothing to be done but to wait us out. My father knows it’s an extended combat mission Tyler has planned on so he asks Abe Lieberman to go see if Lukey Welch is working that day. Lukey Welch is our neighbor in Charter Oak Terrace. I call him Daddy Welch and his wife, Mommy Welch. I don’t know why but I do. Lukey Welch is Fox’s head painter. Abe finds him and brings him to the lobby floor elevators.

  My father says, Jesus Christ, Lukey, Tyler’s stuck in the elevator.

  Lukey Welch says, Where the hell’s Mickey?

  She’s in there with him.

  Jesus Christ!

  We have landed the flying boxcar back at the first floor so we hear all this. Tyler makes a slashing gesture to his throat which I know is a signal not to speak so I don’t. I am a fine soldier trained, after all, at Hickham.

  Lukey Welch says to my father, Can Tyler handle a bump on the noggin?

  My father says, What choice have we got here, Lukey?

  None.

  Lukey Welch doesn’t concern himself with my noggin as I am the normal one expected to handle any problems with panache never mind that it’s not normal for a four-year-old to have that kind of je ne sais quoi.

  Lukey Welch says to the maintenance worker, What in the Sam Hill are ya doin’ standin’ there like some kinda fuckin’ wooden Indian? Go get a plank and we’ll stick it into the shaft between the floors.

  The maintenance man says, We’ll burn out the motor if we do that.

  Lukey Welch says, The only other choice is to shut down the electric power and if we do that, Mrs. Auerbach will take a shit and fire every goddamn one of us. Now go get a fuckin’ plank!

  Mrs. Auerbach is G. Fox’s granddaughter, who now owns the store.

  Tyler hits twelve, Men’s Furnishings, and up we go. Then down to the main floor again. Then up, and our elevator hits the plank. W
e come to a jarring stop and our heads bang into the ceiling and we land in a heap. I don’t cry, of course.

  Tyler and I disentangle and get to our feet, come out, and there is a crowd gathered. Lukey Welch is standing in front of all the people in his paint-covered overalls. As I am rubbing my head, I say, Hi, Daddy Welch.

  He picks me up.

  The crowd applauds, which sends Tyler running for the hills. Abe catches him and he and my father get him into our Ford parked out on Main Street. My father takes off but Tyler gives an order to reconnoiter because his heroic gunner, who trained at Hickham, is missing in action. My father does a U-turn on Main Street, and Lukey Welch is standing there on the curb in front of Fox’s still holding me in his big freckled Irish arms.

  All the way home, my father says, Don’t tell your mother, either of you.

  Tyler says to me, Name, rank, and serial number, Sergeant, that’s it. Then he says to my father, But don’t forget to stop at the Lincoln Dairy, driver.

  We get ice cream, we don’t tell our mother, but Daddy Welch tells Mommy Welch, who does tell my mother, and there is hell to pay. Tyler doesn’t pay, my father does. And me. My father gets the silent treatment for about a month, and I am deprived of Big Brother Bill, my favorite radio show, which I listen to on Saturday morning, while Tyler is still asleep so it won’t bother him.

  When I finish telling Tyler his favorite bedtime story of the Fox’s elevator, he knows the deal is that he has to tell me a story, too. But first he shares a three-month-old chocolate chip cookie he’s rationed. He gets it out from under his rug.

  I request Cinderella. Here is Tyler’s version of Cinderella: A lady goes to a ball and a prince wants to marry her but she runs away. She loses her shoe, which is made of glass. The prince finds it. Luckily, no breakage. Cinderella’s wicked stepsister tries it on because the prince says he’ll marry whoever the shoe fits. She puts her foot into it and . . . grunt, grunt: Fail-ure! Then her other stepsister tries and . . . grunt, grunt: Fail-ure! Then Cinderella tries and . . . grunt, grunt: Suc-cess!

  Mommy and Daddy Welch

  We giggle. My father yells up the stairs, Mickey! Are you in Tyler’s bed?!?!

  I scuttle back to my room on my hands and knees and call out, No, Daddy.

  Tyler also calls out, not to our father but to me: Continue your watch, soldier. No enemy made it through our lines tonight due to your diligence. I’ll be seeing to your commendation. Count on it. And remember, first and foremost, we must protect the antiquities.

  Aided by Tyler, the critter salutes me.

  I hear my father’s distant voice a moment later. He is reporting to my mother. He says, They’re both in bed, for Christ’s sake.

  My mother says, All I know I have a member-guest first thing in the morning.

  I hear Tyler say, Over and out.

  ten

  BOB MALM began his jail term on August 8, 1946, and was released a year later on August 18, 1947. In the middle of the night of August 18, a New London resident caught him outside the bedroom of his thirteen-year-old daughter. Bob clambered down a fire escape, the father screaming from the window, so the people on the street held Bob down until the police arrived. He was arrested again less than twenty-four hours after his release from prison. He was brought to the New London courts on charges of breaking and entering. Since he hadn’t stolen anything or hurt anyone, he was given a suspended sentence and one year’s probation for breach of the peace.

  eleven

  Paul, Mickey, and Auntie Palma at Burgey’s Barn

  TYLER NOT ONLY has the bigger of the two upstairs bedrooms in the new house he also has a “den,” the room downstairs that is supposed to be the master bedroom. My parents sleep in what should be the dining room off the kitchen. My brother earns these privileges because A, he’s retarded, and B, he now has twelve hundred books, which take up a lot of space. It is wise planning. My father buys him three books a month. My brother reads books twelve hours a day, listens to polka music on his record player two hours a day, and plays Crazy Eights, War, and Slapjack with me when I get home from school. It is difficult for Tyler to get more than four hours sleep per night because he also has to fit in his daily “rounds.”

  Rounds are what he must do to negate things that rile the demons in his head. Besides noise, Tyler cannot tolerate the color red—might as well look into the sun at high noon as gaze upon a red sweater. He can’t tolerate being touched, either. He cannot look in a northerly direction—my mother has mirrors placed strategically on all south walls so Tyler can see a reflection of what is to the north; his demons allow for that, sports that they are.

  Once assaulted, he must go through a series of rituals—rounds—to exorcise the reverberations of a touch, a noise, a glimpse of red, or an accidental glance out the living room window instead of the mirror facing it. He repeats the word kish over and over. Hs kishes while sitting in his chair, and then he taps his right foot with his left hand and then his left foot with his right hand, over and over and over, kishing the whole while. Then he goes up and down the hallway, which runs six feet between his den and the kitchen. Up and down, up and down, he goes, a zillion times, kishing and tapping until he is finally finished though sometimes he can barely remain standing from the exertion of it all.

  A PRIEST COMES to bless our new house and he arrives while Tyler is on his rounds. We sit in the living room—the only time I remember my mother, father, and me sitting there—while Tyler becomes a flying blur past the doorway every few seconds, kishing wildly. The priest does his best to ignore the performance, which is not unlike trying to ignore a chimpanzee turning somersaults on your coffee table.

  He says to my parents, Tyler is a cross to bear. Because of your cross here on earth, you will have two free tickets to heaven. There are chairs in heaven with your names on them.

  My parents stare at him.

  Tyler, he says, is a blessing in disguise. He has opened a deeper spirituality within your family that people would envy.

  They stare.

  Tyler’s life has a God-given purpose.

  Then the priest opens his satchel and takes out a golden ball with a handle sticking out of it. He reaches in again and out comes a Hellmann’s Mayonnaise jar of holy water and a golden bowl. He pours the holy water out of the jar into the golden bowl. He dips the golden ball into the water and shakes it on us as well as the house. Since he shakes it on me, I hope I now have a free ticket to heaven, too, where there will be a chair with my name on it. My mother, father, and I will have a room in heaven sort of like the living room of the three bears. Goldilocks will not come in and break up my little chair though I won’t be surprised if Tyler does. The priest doesn’t shake the golden ball at Tyler. Actually, he aims the ball once toward Tyler’s flyby and Tyler shouts out:

  Schnell, schnell! Mortar fire!

  Sometimes, Tyler is the enemy. Today he is the Desert Fox though his German vocab is limited.

  The priest then hightails it out of our house, leaps into his T-Bird, which he has left running in the driveway so as to be sure to make the flight to his vacation home in the Bahamas.

  My mother leaves to go shopping for a new purse and my father goes into the kitchen to make himself a pot of coffee, which he drinks constantly since he gets so little sleep. Both my parents are sorely disappointed though they’d never say so. Asking the priest to come and bless the new house was a ruse. They were hoping the priest would do something when he met Tyler—come up with a solution to what is becoming an unmanageable problem, Tyler at twelve. He’s big. I have overheard the term wet dream. One morning there are two sheets on the clothesline, mine and Tyler’s too. He’s on the sharply cutting edge of adolescence. But advice from the priest is not forthcoming, and his version of comfort utterly useless. So my parents will continue to raise Tyler without a clue as to what is best for him or for them either. Me, they don’t worry about. If I gripe about anything at all, my father says to me, Mickey, you get down on your knees and thank God
that he didn’t make you like he made Tyler.

  I picture God sitting around with his Dutch Masters disciples, angels, and all the saints shooting dice; if snake-eyes comes up, the next baby born is seriously touched in the head. I hate to think God makes these decisions more deliberately than that.

  When I grow up and come to fictionalize Tyler in my first novel, a writer from Boston calls me to ask if I will agree to be interviewed for a book about the effects a sibling suffering from a mental illness has on a brother or sister. Her own sibling, a sister, is schizophrenic. The writer says to me, I’d come home from school and my mother would ask me to pitch in with cleaning up the kitchen because my sister had, yet again, slit her wrists. My mother and I would start wiping up all the blood. My mother would say, Let’s have this all cleaned up before dinner. As if my sister had spilled the sugar bowl.

  The writer finds that children who are raised with mental illness in their homes develop a wonderful coping mechanism that will affect them favorably all their lives. The good that comes of being raised in a loony bin is our ability to weather the most awful of crises—remain calm and take care of business. In other words, we do not say a word, just wipe up the blood and move on like nothing ever happened.

  TYLER FIXATES on World War II because his early childhood is enmeshed in the news of war. He lives for the delivery of his weekly subscription to Aviation Week and his two major Christmas presents: Jane’s Fighting Ships and Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft, two books published annually in the U.K., each weighing maybe fifty kilos apiece.

  The Jane’s covers are the same navy blue as most women’s dresses of the fifties, but their titles are embossed gold. Just as with the silver pennies, I run my fingertips across the cold smoothness of the J, the a, the n, and then the e, the apostrophe, and the s, and become generally transported. I am always looking for ways to be transported out of the bedlam that is my home. I depend on school, outdoor play from dawn to dusk on weekends with the neighborhood kids, visits to my countless cousins, and summers at Chalker Beach on Long Island Sound. When literal transport isn’t available, feeling something tactile is helpful.