As If: An Autobiography

2. The Invisible Wounded and the Ethos of Depression

two The Invisible Wounded and the Ethos of Depression Each year, as commencement approaches, senior classes throughout America are hailed with the traditional advice about conquering new worlds and entering upon an era ‘full of forebodings.’” Thus, the opening sentence of the farewell editorial in the Senior Recorder, the year I graduated from Boys High School. As that year was different, the editorial went on to say, the words assumed a new, twofold signi‹cance: “First of all, upon us, the youth of America, will fall the task of conquering our enemies and establishing the peace; secondly, we must bear the brunt of the responsibility for the success of this peace.” As it happened, World War II started on September 1, 1939, only a few days before my class entered Boys High; unfortunately , it didn’t end with our graduation in June 1942, but rather a few days after my birthday, on May 7, 1945, the enemy ‹nally conquered, but with more or less foreboding, futures still up in the air. If we were still a little young to take responsibility for the peace, it seemed that nobody took responsibility, except my grandmother—in her devoutly enduring way, more than bearing the brunt—for certain failures of the peace after World War I, if not on the scale of the League of Nations, on the local and familial scene. After that war, too, there were futures up in the air, and if not left on the battle‹eld, others utterly ruined, what we now call—with the peace not even secured, returning from Iraq—the “invisible wounded,” the uncounted casualties we’re most likely to forget, and with them, too, the others whom they ruin. 32 P “ “What’s she doing up there?” I’d say, about my crazy Aunt Rosie, who lived, if you could call it living, up the staircase off Baba’s kitchen, where I’d stand, looking up, maybe climb a few steps, but—an unspoken prohibition, and woefully oppressive there—rarely go to the top. Even before I started reading Dostoyevsky, the ‹rst writer I ever read who could leave an invisible wound, I was fascinated by the idea that there was madness in the family , though I could also be embarrassed when it was out there on the street. If I said anything about that, Baba would wearily shrug her forbearing never mind. I could be sweating all over, midsummer, and Rosie . . . there she was by the stove. Of course, I knew what she was doing, nothing, or maybe rocking back and forth, in a fur-collared black overcoat and a red kerchief tied on her head, with all the burners going, turned up full all summer, which might have been winter to her. If I started to say she was crazy, as if uncovering the family secret, Baba would say “Shaa,” putting a hand to eye and brow, with an intake of breath suggesting, “What are you telling me, I don’t know, so much it breaks my heart.” There were other things to break her heart, like her eldest son Willie, out of the navy into an asylum, but Rosie was the neighborhood freak. When she did appear on the sidewalk, in the black overcoat, collar up, kerchief tight, over her greasy hair, she would walk in a mumbling staccato perfectly straight line, one step, two steps, three steps, stop, and if she had to make a turn, it would be, exactly so, in a perfect right angle, never to the left, which meant that if she had to move in another direction she’d be turning successive turns, right and right and right, or waiting to make the turn if some kid got in the way—which, more often than not, one of us deliberately did, including me. We all made fun of her, teased her, and lining up behind her, imitated her step, ›ipped up her long skirt, and one time, too, somebody ripped off the kerchief—when suddenly, ashamed, as if he were mocking me, I could have ripped off his head. How did Rosie get that way, the neatly attired young woman, sloe-eyed, with a nimbus of dark hair, in soft white blouse, string of beads, long black skirt, ruf›ed at the waist, pensive but self-possessed in a family portrait? The cause was my Uncle Jake, a short, tightly-muscled, bristled man, who was otherwise loudly good-natured, or at least he was to me...