AUNT BLANCHE-UNCLE ERNIE-AND CARLA

In my mind, Aunt-Blanche-Uncle-Ernie-and-Carla are almost one person, because I rarely think of one without the others.

It's 1948. I’m being bathed in a kitchen sink, and I’m kicking up a mighty splash. My Aunt Blanche’s soapy hands hold me, slippery but secure. I’m babbling and chortling, and I’m twisting because I don’t want to take my eyes off the brightly painted clock on the wall above the stove. I know at any moment that funny bird will pop out of its little door and cluck “Cuckoo, cuckoo.”

Aunt Blanche lifts me up and points out the window to direct my attention to a real bird fluttering in the backyard birdbath. My focus is solidly on her fingertip, so she wraps a towel around me and, holding me snugly in her arms, steps outside, the screen door slapping — a loud slap followed by a shorter softer slap — behind us. We sit down on the worn red-piped cushion atop the squeaky metal glider, swinging back and forth a few times until my aunt brushes her feet on the grass and we come to a gradual stop. The sun is warm, there’s a soft breeze, and we sit quietly and watch as butterflies, dragonflies, and hummingbirds waft, flit, and beat their wings in the small garden. A calico cat trots over and weaves its way in and out of Aunt Blanche’s legs and she bends down to pet it, scratching under its neck.

Aunt Blanche is heavyset and florid, her face an intricate pattern of red spider veins. She wears a patterned head scarf and a short-sleeved housedress made of a silky flowered fabric. I quietly play with the skin under her arm, wiggling my fingers to make it waggle back and forth. I love her sweet scent of roses and beer.

The screen door slaps double again, and Uncle Ernie joins us, frosty beer can in hand. He lowers himself onto a padded metal chaise and takes a long gulp. Uncle Ernie is a house painter and almost always wears either white coveralls or light-colored pleated pants and a clean white T-shirt. He’s tall and lanky, almost bald, and has a friendly yet serious face with a quick, shy smile. He’s soft-spoken and gentle, and in time he will teach me how to stand on my head.

Another slap-slap and here comes my cousin, Carla, a cocktail glass with ice cubes clinking in one hand, a cigarette burning in the other, my seersucker sun-suit tucked under one arm. Carla, a petite beauty with curling dark hair and a wide smile, was a dancer until she lost an eye. Towards the end of the Second World War, during a blackout, she was a passenger in a car that careened under the truck in front of it and the top of the car was sheered off. Most days Carla wears trim black slacks with a wide belt, a colorful top tucked in, and color-coordinated Capezio slippers. She’s rarely without lipstick, or a cocktail, and she flirts and (as I would years later hear) even more with the delivery boys, offering at least one of them a drink, then inviting him in, and then disappearing with him into her bedroom at the end of the dimly lit hallway. Now she kneels down in front of me, takes me into her lap, and helps me into my sun-suit.

All attention is focused on me. I am clearly loved and adored.

I know this house by heart. It’s actually more of a bungalow, with whitish exterior stucco walls and a brick-red tile roof. It sits at the front of a small courtyard, and I am often brought onto the little front porch where I sit in my wooden high chair and watch the world go by.

Inside, my favorite room is in the back of the house: a sewing room with two dress forms, a big table, and all the tools of the trade — patterns, pinking shears, pins, needles, and threads in a rainbow of colors. Aunt Blanche is a seamstress. She has made a dolly for me. Dolly is tightly stuffed, with yellow fuzz for hair and a simple painted face, and she wears a soft white eyelet pinafore. Sometimes my aunt sits me down on the floor, removes the lid from a large round cookie tin filled almost to the brim with buttons, and places it in front of me. Mesmerized by the cool feel of hundreds of buttons of different colors and sizes streaming through my fingers, I run my hands through them endlessly.

Tucked away deep, deep inside me is the quiet, unconditional love that flowed between me, my aunt, my uncle, and my cousin. It has been there for as long as I can remember, and it’s still there, even though I have no idea what happened to them. They were there, and the next time I thought about them, which may have been decades later, they were gone. Poof.