The year was 1950. I was five years old. There was barely room for my mother, much less me, when we moved into my grandmother’s small, crowded apartment on the 9^th floor in the Ansonia Hotel on 74^th Street and Broadway, where my mother had lived before marrying my father.

When she and my grandmother moved after my grandfather’s death, from what I imagine to be a much larger apartment on West 110th Street, they must’ve brought with them everything they owned and jammed it into this small one-bedroom. My mother and grandmother were incapable of getting rid of anything.

When you opened the door to the apartment, you walked into a small foyer. On your far right, you’d see the bathroom door. Straight ahead beyond the foyer was the small square living room with a window on the far wall looking out on a bleak interior courtyard. The window faced Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler, the retired couple who lived across from us. I can still see them smiling and waving as they sat facing us at their table by the window. We were their TV.

“Don’t look at those busybodies! I don’t want them knowing our business!” my grandmother would say, stamping her foot till I stopped waving back.

The Wheelers were one reason she kept the rooms dim but they weren’t the main reason. Though she had lamps of all shapes and sizes, she rarely used more than one or two and bought low wattage bulbs.

“Electricity is expensive!” she’d say.

I wasn’t allowed to sit on the slip-covered sofa under the living room window or the slip-covered armchairs. But when my grandmother wasn’t looking, I’d kneel on the verbotensofa, press my face hard against the glass, and look all the way up just to see a speck of sky.

If she caught me, she’d yell, “Get away from there! The window’s dirty. Don’t put your face against that glass!”

I wasn’t allowed to touch anything in the living room. My mother and grandmother were afraid I’d knock something over. The room was full of antiques, curios, ashtrays (though no one smoked), and knickknacks. Their eyes followed me like spotlights following a dancer onstage. 

Every shelf in the bookcase was stuffed, not only with books but also with junk mail. A doily protected every tabletop. An antimacassar draped the arm of every chair, even the ones with slipcovers.

If you looked to your left, you’d see the mantel, too high for me to reach, which held 19th century statues in bronze, jade, and marble, and a large 18th century gilded clock. In the locked mahogany breakfront against the opposite wall, she kept valuable silver, cut-glass vases and decanters, and a collection of hand-painted china that I couldn’t disturb with “my paws.” Two faded 19th century German landscape paintings in gilded frames hung on the wall near framed photographic portraits of several generations of her well-to-do German Jewish family who’d settled in Cincinnati before she was born in 1878.

My grandmother’s sister, my Great-Aunt Josie, was short and stout, but she had elegant manners and silky white hair, perfectly coiffed. With everyone it seemed, but Bertha, who was her older sister and my grandmother, she was gracious, charming, and kind.

For more than three decades, she’d been decorating the homes of Westchester socialites, starting her own business at age thirty-five, after her husband’s death. On cruise ships, she’d traveled the world by herself.

Shortly after our move, when she came to visit in her chic Bonwit Teller suit, her jaw dropped as she looked around the living room.

Excitedly, she said, “Bertha! How can you live like this? And with a child! You have to get rid of this stuff!”

My grandmother, hands on hips, said, “I don’t have to do anything!” As the eldest of seven siblings, she didn’t like being told what to do.

——–

When my grandmother’s back was turned, I’d try in vain to raise the heavy living room window just high enough to let in a sliver of air. She always seemed to read my mind. “Don’t you dare go near that window!” she’d say. “How many times have I told you that the air outside is full of germs! Do you want to catch germs and get sick?”

If you turned left in the living room, you’d find yourself in the small alcove that was my grandmother’s kitchenette. My place was a corner of the old formica-topped table where I would draw for hours.

When I drew pictures, I didn’t miss my father so much. Sometimes I forgot him completely, but not on Sundays.

That formica-topped table divided the living room from the crowded alcove where my grandmother cooked. I shared that table where we also had meals with mismatched salt and pepper shakers, Heinz Ketchup, Ritz Crackers, Chock Full ‘O’ Nuts Instant Coffee, food coupons, and articles on health, snipped from Woman’s Home Companion.

Turning right from the living room, you’d come to the door of the bedroom. Opening it, you’d see a smaller room, a little longer than it was wide. Facing you would be the large double bed. On your right, the chiffoniere.

On your left, a tall window looked out on a wall with a ledge a few feet away where pigeons nested. That wall and ledge obscured part of the courtyard from the living room too.

Sometimes, when I’d sneak to the living room window, I could make out a baby pigeon in the nest, its mouth open, waiting to be fed. Pigeons were another reason she kept the windows closed.

“Pigeons are such dirty filthy birds!” she’d say, scrunching up her nose. “They carry diseases.”

Though my grandmother compulsively dusted, swept, mopped, vacuumed, and straightened up, it was never enough. In the dim light, objects beyond her reach gathered dust. 

The oversized dresser to the right of the bedroom window was not beyond her reach, but the large slab of glass that covered the top was never cleaned. At night, she’d open my folding cot and squeeze it between that dresser and two sagging faux wood closets in the corner, bulging with clothes. Hat boxes, perched precariously on top, threatened to fall, but they disturbed me less than that slab of glass, which was rife with scummy spills, long gray hairs, and dust that stuck to the surface. Perfumes, lotions, and creams in a profusion of bottles and jars of varying sizes and shapes shared space with stray hair pins, jeweled pill boxes, elaborate hair combs made of tortoise shell and bone and ornate jewelry boxes, the sparkly contents of which overflowed into that same slime and fly-paper stickiness.

From my cot, which faced the window, I’d watch my grandmother at night unpin her chignon. While looking in the large mirror over the dresser, she let down her coarse gray hair. It fell far below her waist. Each night, she’d brush it one hundred times For a while, its sickly, sweet smell would overpower other female odors marinading in that room with the window she always kept locked.

Sometimes, I’d only pretend to be asleep while she and my mother were curled up in bed, always whispering, sometimes in German. I felt most alone then. Here, I was the interloper. The one who didn’t belong.

Lying on my cot, I’d wonder what I’d done to make my father leave.

I’d think about the time in Riverside Park I let go of his hand and ran away towards the West Side Highway. I’d crouched in the thick bushes near the speeding cars and covered my mouth so he wouldn’t hear me giggle. How funny it was to see my father scared! From my hiding place, I watched him, frantic, as he looked for me, calling out my nickname, “Butchy! Butchy! Where are ya?” When I couldn’t hold in my giggles, he found me. “Don’t you ever do that again!” he said, angrily, as he pulled me up.

Then there was the time he was pushing me on the seesaw in the playground by the boat basin. A cold, blistery day. I was laughing, happy to be with him even though we were alone there. I wanted him to be happy, too. But when I looked at him, his face was dark. What did I do to make Daddy unhappy? His darkness spread like an ink blot over the playground, the park, the river, the sky, till everything I saw was dark.

Where was he? I wondered. Didn’t he know we’d move in with my grandmother? He knew my mother couldn’t care for me by herself. At night when I had trouble sleeping, I’d try to picture every object in her living room. Darkness scared me.

***

A Tennessee Williams Fellow in Fiction, Roberta Allen is the author of nine books, including three story collections, a novel, a novella and a memoir. Her stories have appeared in such magazines as Conjunctions, Epoch, recently in New World Writing and upcoming in the Evergreen Review. Also a conceptual artist, her work is in the collections of The Met and MoMA. Most of her art has been acquired by The Smithsonian Archives. Her writing papers have been acquired by the Fales Archive of NYU. See robertaallen.com