Encumbrances

Encumbrances Trisch Arbib They found my grandmother wandering on LexingtonAvenue and 79th street wearing a navy and white polka dot dress with her corset on backwards. The year: 1963. My grandmother was eighty-nine; I was sixteen. Bras and girdles were made of sturdy stuff. We called them foundation garments with good reason; one might as weU have been cast in concrete. Cumbersome and stiff, these babies had to be put on back to front, hooked up and then hoisted round to proper position in little, pinching, circular movements. My guess is that's why someone from the nursing home found Grandma with her corset on backwards; she got worn out halfway through the task and didn't have the strength to twist it about. Or, close to ninety and having embraced senflity, she may simply have forgotten to finish the job. My grandmother and I were outfitted by the same corsetière: her son. My uncle. Other families considered thirteen too young for such paraphernalia . In mine it was de rigueur. AU the women in the family (including the maid) were swathed in spandex. From the moment breasts dared to swell noticeably and quiver they were quickly captured and subdued. Not just the breasts. Exposed skin from the shoulders to the knees was promptly encased. My mother must have worn the family armor, but that is not how I remember her. Inviting and touchable, she had a freely moving, womanly form. Unlike her two sibUngs who never married and never left home, my mother was the chüd who broke away. She risked taking a partner, and was determined to have children (her first, my sister, at forty-two). In 1957, when I was nine and she was fifty-four, my mother died ofbreast cancer. She had been the buffer, protecting us from intrusive relatives. Had she Uved—or my father been more substantial—her brother, Julian, and her twin sister, Dottie, could never have been so meddlesome. 49 50Fourth Genre Angular and spare, Aunt Dottie had an ungenerous bony presence, too petite to wear even the smaUest manufactured size. My uncle had "the union girls" stitch speciaUy made bras and girdles for her from scrap. Probably anorectic, deeply disappointed with her life, she was saddled with the care ofaging parents. The polyurethane straitjacket she wore must have squeezed the last bit of niceness out of her. Dottie took me to Bloomingdale's in search of my first bra. After a brief consultation with a salesgirl ("Do you think she needs one?"), my aunt refused to aUow me the privacy of a dressing room. There, in full view of a Saturday crowd of shoppers, or heaven forbid, a passing classmate, my spinster aunt sUpped the straps ofa brassiere over my hands, up the arms ofmy long-sleeved floral cotton dress, over my shoulders and hooked it in place. She tilted her head back and with a half-closed eye, attempted to discern the fit. A boy my age walked by and smfled at the sight, my dress pinned to my chest by a white utiUtarian cotton bra. "What's the matter with you, Patrisch?" my aunt asked. "Nothing," I replied, humiliated. We left the counter, brassiere unpurchased. We were about to step onto the escalator when Dottie said, "Gee, Patricia, you used to be so pretty. What happened to you?" "Girls,"my aunt announced to my sister and me, "Guess what UncleJuUan's going to do for you!You're coining down to the office to get outfitted for bras and girdles." My uncle's company, Poirette—sales offices, factory—was at 136 Madison Avenue and 32nd Street, in what was formerly the Backer Building. The letters , etched in stone, are stül visible, just as Poirette, though no longer in business, is stül listed on the lobby directory. On visits we saw rows ofwomen, seated behind strings ofsewing machines, hovering dUigentiy over their work, manipulating spandex back and forth across the beds. Female faces glanced up, proffering warm, quick smües at the boss's nieces as we were ushered through. One of the last things an adolescent girl wants is some stranger viewing her in her...