Sit still. Stop squirming. You have beautiful wavy hair—nicer than your sisters’.

Indeed, I had my mother’s hair. So she liked to claim.

How I hated my bossy mother!—scolding, fussing. Slapping me (lightly) to sit still.

But when Mom finished brushing and combing my hair it did look much improved. Had to admit.

Recalling too how Mom would casually wet her forefinger and smooth my eyebrows!—even in the presence of others. A gesture of exasperating intimacy, such as only a mother might inflict upon a child, and that child likely to be a daughter.

But now there was no one to touch me so intimately. No one to so care about me, as if I were herself.

Aunt Irma could not speak assertively to anyone and certainly not to me. It was rare for her to contradict her husband and if she was obliged to disagree with him, she so managed to contort herself, to speak in circumlocutions, the husband had not a clue. To me she spoke timidly even when commenting on the weather. Her requests were uttered not in a firm bossy voice but as pleas. My aunt had no hope of commanding me as my mother would have done for my aunt desperately wanted to be liked.

This is the great weakness—wanting to be liked, loved. You give up all pride wanting to be liked, loved.

It suffused me with contempt, that an adult woman should apologize to me rather than scold me, speak sarcastically to me. For was I not a rat, and worthless? Should I not crawl away somewhere and die?

Instead Irma would flutter her hands—Oh Violet, excuse me . . .

Violet, dear, wait a minute, I’m sorry . . .

And then I would overhear my aunt on the phone talking to a friend when she didn’t think I was within earshot. I would hear my aunt not timid or hesitant but baffled, resentful—She won’t even look at us! It’s breaking our hearts! She was never like this before. She has changed. How long has it been now—six, seven months! She should be trusting us by now. But she isn’t. She’s up in her room all the time . . . Like someone on an iceberg drifting off to sea and you call after them and call after them and finally . . .

Quickly I edged away. I did not want to hear how these indignant words would end.

Turnip Face

EACH MONTH, FIRST MONDAY OF THE LAST WEEK, MS. DOLORES Herne of the Children’s Protective Services came to check up on me in the beige-brick house on Erie Street, Port Oriskany.

Because I’d been removed from my family and released into the custody of relatives, a county social worker was mandated to visit me at regular intervals.