“Yes, you’ve just made me visss-ualize. Excellent.” Aunt led me away before the fellow caught us staring. “‘Kite Man.’ Yes, I’m seeing a distinct improvement over last year.” But she spoke through clenched molars. Aunt squeezed my hand with so much glee it made my decoder ring pinch. The better I talked, the deeper she breathed, the higher her color rose beneath its muting powder. My every metaphor, however crude, filled her with an enraged, encoded pleasure. The anger scared me but was, in fact, familiar as her eyeglasses to mine. She seemed to be grooming her Owl, first for articulation, then for revenge. But revenge on whom? And was articulation automatically revenge? All armored in her wishes and my kite tails, whom would I fight? Few schoolchildren are ever told what they’re being educated for. But I knew I had a will and aptitude for getting even.—I was, after all, a child who understood how it felt to be slapped full across the face by a sodden, jealous, moody father, half articulate and aptly sick of clever backtalk. I knew what it meant to be considered odd by neighbor kids; in a town like Falls, “original” is the synonym for “weird.” Aunt Muriel’s low-grade weekday rage drew forth mine. Rage at unfairness, at sloppiness and cruelty. Hers incited and schooled a little starter-culture rage all my own. I would guard her. By describing her. If need be, doctoring this or that. “Yes, ‘Kite Tail Man.’ Ever sharper, Owl. There’s no saying where-all you’ll … Limitless I should think. Yes,” she gloated.

I knew that whizzing beggars would never do as “Show and Tell.” I knew my parents would drive blocks out of their way to screen Brother and me from any unfortunate, much less a young one and in splashing distance. But Aunt, walking fast, urging me forward, felt enlivened by the joy my sixty-eight pounds gave her ninety-four. Muriel’s right hand—the one ungloved, kept bare for me—was dry and hard around my own. Mine sweated as with stage fright. Hers felt very callused. Fearing my disloyalty, I could shut my eyes and pretend I walked beside a pet, an animal, but something like a chimpanzee, trained up as nearly human. (I later asked my brother why he thought an executive secretary would have such a toughened grip. “Probably from all the time the old girl spent whacking her fat bald boss off,” he told me with gloomy pleasure. I think I left the room. It’s not clear he noticed.)

Always insist on seeing some of Chicago from the elevated tram. I soon learned to call it, with great insouciance, “The El.” Sometimes we rode for half the day, an unspecified part of my education. Given what a Chicago streetcar had done to Muriel’s poor mama, I felt how brave we were to risk it, forty feet above the pavement. I’d seen King Kong lift such a streetcar, like finger food plucked off a tray, its screaming passengers dangling. This ride seemed designed by Lionel to delight any eight-year-old. It skimmed near the tarry roofline of the silver city. It took us eerily hideously close to strangers’ kitchens.