airplanes that would spiral down toward the toylike trees and the little cars far below. I remember collecting tinfoil, rolling it into balls and giving them to my mother for “our boys over there.” I didn’t know what war was, but it was fun to see how much foil I could gather and press together into a silvery ball. While we were singing cheery war songs like “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag,” and while millions of young men were dying in the war to end wars, the movies did their bit by cranking out propaganda films like To Hell with the Kaiser and The Woman the Germans Shot and sending such glorified patriots as Mary Pickford and Doug Fairbanks across the country selling Liberty Bonds.
More important to me was that the Irish immigrant maid wasreplaced by a beautiful and soothing woman called Wilma, who was slightly darker than the rest of us, like my cocoa after she had poured a little warm milk into it. I loved my mother and my father, but I don’t remember them in those years as vividly as I do Wilma. One of my earliest senses of pleasure was of her color, as she would lean over my crib and over the small yellow bed with the elaborately carved headboard into which I was graduated when my sister Sonya arrived. I was four years old then, and in that short period from 1914 to 1918 it had become bad taste for babies to be born at home. Home births were for immigrants and peasants, for the poor. I remember my mother returning to Riverside Drive from the hospital with Sonya, and Wilma paying a great deal of attention to the little intruder, and my worrying that I was going to lose her to the homely little thing in the cradle that everyone thought was so cute.
Wilma must have handled this well, for Sonya remembers her lovingly, while I also felt reassured that Wilma had not deserted me. Mostly I remember her gentleness. I remember my mother and father telling me they were going off on a trip—I think it was to Atlantic City to a motion-picture exhibitors’ convention—and my asking, “Is Wilma going, too?” And when I was assured that Wilma would stay right here with us, I said something like, “Then I don’t care when you come back.” I remember Wilma’s face, gently disapproving, and my mother’s tears.
One day when Sonya was nearly two, Wilma set her on the park bench and began to chat with some other nurses. I was busy feeding a squirrel. Suddenly Wilma ran up to me: “Isn’t little Sonya with you?” When I shook my head, Wilma raced around looking around bushes and begging the other nurses to join the search. She was crying and that made me want to cry, too. We searched for half an hour, with Wilma becoming more and more hysterical.
When we hurried back to the Riverside Drive apartment to break the news, Mother screamed at her, then phoned B. P. at the studio to call the police.
“How could you let our little girl out of your sight?” Mother was accusing Wilma. And Wilma was sobbing, “If they don’t find her I’ll kill myself! I swear I’ll kill myself!”
A few minutes later Father came rushing in. Movie people were looked on as overnight millionaires, and he was terrified that Sonya had been kidnapped. The cops questioned Wilma and me but we were very little help. Sonya simply had vanished into thin air. I pressed my headagainst Wilma’s heaving breast and sobbed, “I’ll never see that little face again!” It sounded like a subtitle from one of Father’s photoplays. But what I was really crying about was the fear of losing Wilma. For Father was angrier than I had ever seen him before, and the more he shouted at her the more she cried out that it was all her fault and she wanted to die.
If Wilma died, who would take care of me? I wanted to die too.
Then one of the policemen looked up from the phone. “One of our boys just found her—at the edge of the park!” My parents rushed out. There at the 125 th Street police station was little Sonya, perched on the sergeant’s
More important to me was that the Irish immigrant maid wasreplaced by a beautiful and soothing woman called Wilma, who was slightly darker than the rest of us, like my cocoa after she had poured a little warm milk into it. I loved my mother and my father, but I don’t remember them in those years as vividly as I do Wilma. One of my earliest senses of pleasure was of her color, as she would lean over my crib and over the small yellow bed with the elaborately carved headboard into which I was graduated when my sister Sonya arrived. I was four years old then, and in that short period from 1914 to 1918 it had become bad taste for babies to be born at home. Home births were for immigrants and peasants, for the poor. I remember my mother returning to Riverside Drive from the hospital with Sonya, and Wilma paying a great deal of attention to the little intruder, and my worrying that I was going to lose her to the homely little thing in the cradle that everyone thought was so cute.
Wilma must have handled this well, for Sonya remembers her lovingly, while I also felt reassured that Wilma had not deserted me. Mostly I remember her gentleness. I remember my mother and father telling me they were going off on a trip—I think it was to Atlantic City to a motion-picture exhibitors’ convention—and my asking, “Is Wilma going, too?” And when I was assured that Wilma would stay right here with us, I said something like, “Then I don’t care when you come back.” I remember Wilma’s face, gently disapproving, and my mother’s tears.
One day when Sonya was nearly two, Wilma set her on the park bench and began to chat with some other nurses. I was busy feeding a squirrel. Suddenly Wilma ran up to me: “Isn’t little Sonya with you?” When I shook my head, Wilma raced around looking around bushes and begging the other nurses to join the search. She was crying and that made me want to cry, too. We searched for half an hour, with Wilma becoming more and more hysterical.
When we hurried back to the Riverside Drive apartment to break the news, Mother screamed at her, then phoned B. P. at the studio to call the police.
“How could you let our little girl out of your sight?” Mother was accusing Wilma. And Wilma was sobbing, “If they don’t find her I’ll kill myself! I swear I’ll kill myself!”
A few minutes later Father came rushing in. Movie people were looked on as overnight millionaires, and he was terrified that Sonya had been kidnapped. The cops questioned Wilma and me but we were very little help. Sonya simply had vanished into thin air. I pressed my headagainst Wilma’s heaving breast and sobbed, “I’ll never see that little face again!” It sounded like a subtitle from one of Father’s photoplays. But what I was really crying about was the fear of losing Wilma. For Father was angrier than I had ever seen him before, and the more he shouted at her the more she cried out that it was all her fault and she wanted to die.
If Wilma died, who would take care of me? I wanted to die too.
Then one of the policemen looked up from the phone. “One of our boys just found her—at the edge of the park!” My parents rushed out. There at the 125 th Street police station was little Sonya, perched on the sergeant’s
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