My earliest memory is of myself, sitting on a stool in Aunt Ida’s kitchen in the Bronx. It is a round stool and seems very high to a two-year-old. The kitchen has red and white linoleum and a table with a plastic cloth. I am afraid of Aunt Ida. She is a sour, white-haired lady who speaks with a Yiddish accent and yells. I do not understand why my parents have abandoned me.
I jump off the stool and hide underneath the table, where I have an extended conversation with my best friend Buck-A-Bick. I am the only one who can see him. He is invisible to grown-ups, but we have a wonderful time chasing one another over and under the kitchen chairs. Usually, he lives in my house, but for today, Mommy said I could take him to Aunt Ida’s. Aunt Ida offers me milk and cookies if I sit still and behave.
The next day I discovered why I had been left with her. Daddy takes me back home. My mother introduces me to my new baby brother Nathan. The baby has a red face and smells of sour milk and poop. He cries a lot. Even worse, his crib is in my room. I am not prepared to share.
Our apartment in the Bronx has only one bedroom. Mommy and Daddy sleep in the living room on a roll-out day bed. There is a kitchen with a table where we eat all our meals, and a foyer cluttered with furniture that doesn’t fit elsewhere. Mommy says she is sure I will take good care of my little brother.
A few weeks later I have my opportunity. My parents are going to a family wedding. I have rarely seen Mommy so dressed up. She wears a black dress, heels, an elegant hat with a veil, and a pearl necklace. My father wears his only good suit. They have engaged a neighbor, Abe, to watch me for the evening.
He puts us to bed and retreats to the living room. I tiptoe out of bed and position myself under Nathan’s crib. Then, I begin to kick the mattress from underneath. Nathan wakes up and begins to scream. I kick harder. Abe opens the door and tries to pull me out from under the crib. I scream as well. I have mastered the art of the tantrum.
How dare my parents bring this unwanted stranger into our family? I want them to take him back. Abe tries to quiet me, but I am not cooperating. Finally, he calls my parents, and they come home early. Mommy is very annoyed.
“I hope one day you have a little girl, and she behaves like this,” she says. “It will serve you right.”
My parents refuse to take Nathan back and eventually, I get used to him. He is a gentle, sweet-natured little boy who is always well-behaved. He is such a goody-goody that I always get blamed for everything. He follows me around like a puppy dog. I find this annoying when I have friends over, but otherwise, he is a good playmate.
On weekend mornings we sit on my bed with my doll collection and make up plays. Sometimes we draw together, roller skate on the sidewalk, or play handball against the walls of the police station down the block. We go together to Leo’s candy store around the corner and buy comic books and chocolate egg creams.
Neighborhood elementary school boys play stickball in front of our house. Two of them live in our building, Norman who is very dumb, and Billy who has a face full of pimples. Nathan avoids them, but they don’t ignore him. They are always picking on him, calling him a sissy or a Mommy’s boy.
One day Norman picks a fight and shoves Nathan. I am outraged. No one gets to beat up my little brother. I am tall for my age, and overweight. Without considering the consequences I punch Norman in the face and his nose starts to bleed. His mother, who watches out the front window, yells at me. Nathan and I run gleefully up the stairs to our sixth-floor apartment.
My brother and I attend the same elementary school and walk together in the morning. Nathan is two years younger and gets to have all my former teachers. This is rough on him because I am always the smartest kid in the class and a hard act to follow. Fortunately, junior high is sex-segregated, and he goes to a different school.
When I am twelve we move from our one-bedroom apartment to a two-bedroom palace on the fifth floor. It has a sunken living room, a large foyer, and a bathroom with a separate shower. We strip the old maroon carpet to bare the wood floors, and I get into the shower with Comet and a toothbrush to clean the grout. Mother and Dad have a room of their own for the first time.
Our parents decide that Nathan and I are too old to share a room. Mother does not think it is decent for Nathan to see me walking around in my underwear. By twelve I had acquired breasts and a bra.
Nathan is relegated to the foyer with a sleep sofa and a desk. For $15 Mother buys an old oak rocking chair. Years later, we discover it is a Stickley.
When Nathan is twelve, he has a growth spurt and is suddenly much taller than I am. I decide to stop fighting, as I no longer have the edge in height or strength. I am starting high school at Bronx Science. All the smart kids in New York take tests for the special schools, Science, Hunter, and Music and Art.
Having been brainwashed, I firmly believe that as a girl, I will have no abilities in either math or science and can’t compete with the smart boys. Nevertheless, the school is only a few subway stops away, so I enrolled.
To my surprise, I am excellent at math, better than most boys, and I fall in love with chemistry. Two years later, Nathan follows me to Bronx Science, although his talents lie in other directions.
Nathan has only one or two friends and is not very social. Senior year he starts dating a pretty girl named Jenny. I’m not quite sure what she sees in him. Although Nathan is tall, good-looking, and nice, he doesn’t project that male sex appeal I notice in the boys I’d like to date.
Neither one of us gets to go to an out-of-town college. Even with scholarships, there is simply no money. I attend a women’s college in Manhattan on scholarship, and Nathan, two years later, attends City College, which is free. He wants to major in art, but Mother is convinced he won’t be able to make a living, so he switches to English instead.
During my senior year in college, I was given a teaching assistantship, and move to a dormitory near campus. Nathan gets to take over the second bedroom. I see him only on occasional weekends when I come home for dinner.
After college I left New York for graduate school in California, maintaining familial contact through weekly phone calls and frequent letters. Nathan moves west as well, two years later, enrolling in a graduate program in Chicago. Much to everyone’s surprise he becomes engaged to a fellow student named Tina and brings her home to meet the parents. They do not like her, complaining that she has a bad complexion and is not pretty.
I met her shortly before the wedding and found her warm, kind, and smart. I berate my parents for their short-sightedness. The two are married in a small ceremony in Tina’s parents' Chicago apartment on the Gold Coast.
The following year, the two of them moved to Seattle. Nathan enrolls in architecture school, a pathway back to his real love of art. My parents are relieved. Architecture is a respected profession, almost as good as law or medicine. Nathan will be able to support himself. He graduates, gets a job, and purchases a tiny house.
Tina tries to finish her master’s thesis but gives up. Finishing things is a problem for her. She fills her time with temporary jobs. She is searching for something she can’t identify.
I am busy with my life, school, marriage, and finding an academic job. Neither Nathan nor I have much money and rarely get to visit more than once a year, but we call frequently. This is how I realize that Nathan is not happy. I visit to see for myself.
Tina is unkempt and has gained weight. She refuses to leave the house, even to go out to dinner. Shortly afterward, Tina’s father dies, leaving her a trust fund. She immediately cheers up, purchases tickets for a six-month round-the-world trip for herself, and invests the remainder in a tuna fishing fleet. Not surprisingly, the money evaporates. While she is gone, Nathan decides he can’t stay in the marriage any longer and experiments with other relationships.
He plans to ask for a divorce when she returns, but she beats him to it. She has had an affair during her sojourn, and decides that Nathan isn’t the right man for her. They separate.
Shortly afterward, Tina develops psychotic behaviors and Nathan brings her to the local psychiatric hospital for admission. They diagnose her as manic-depressive and start her on Lithium.
This will be the first of many hospitalizations. Nathan files divorce papers and sells the house. Our parents are sad for him but can’t resist reminding us they never liked her.
Nathan finds a position that fits his passions and allows him to teach, lecture, and write books and articles on design and architecture. His books are beautiful and have pride of place on my coffee table.
One afternoon he called me with an announcement.
“I think you should know that I’m gay.”
My jaw drops. Then it closes. Why haven’t I figured this out before? The clues were all there.
“Are you sure?” I ask. “When did you figure it out?”
“When I was twelve. I’d go down to Greenwich Village, walk around, and ask myself why I was attracted to boys. It scared the hell out of me, so I dated girls and got married.”
“Have you told Mom and Dad?” I ask.
“Hell no.”
Within a year Nathan moves into a small basement apartment in a restored Victorian house that belongs to Warren, a doctor he is dating. Soon, he and the doctor become a committed couple.
During this time I have been changing my career, have finished my residency, and started my medical practice. Our parents moved to Tucson. This makes it easier for both of us to visit them. Nathan brings his “roommate” along, but never tells them the truth.
Mother goes to her grave never knowing. Dad suspects but doesn’t want to know. Nathan and Warren have a daughter, whom they share with a lesbian couple. Dad is convinced that Warren with his biological daughter can’t be gay. I do not enlighten him.
Dad passes away in his sleep at the age of eighty-nine. Nathan and I, Warren, and my husband arrange the funeral and clear out the apartment. I contemplate the ironies of parental desire. Our parents wanted Nathan to be a doctor and me to marry one. Who would have imagined, it would be the other way around?
Gay marriage becomes legal in California and Nathan and Warren plan their wedding. They have been together for thirty years. I walk Nathan down the aisle and give him away. It makes me so happy. Lest you forget, I attempted to give him away at birth. Mother refused to take him back and as usual, she was right.