WHEN I WAS thirteen, my grandfather died, and we moved into his house on Thirteenth Street, an old row house with stained glass, dormers, a front porch, a fireplace, and, to this day, certain smells that remind me of my grandparents. My father spent several months of evenings and weekends renovating. I was excited when my father and his friends knocked down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room; it was bold, a gesture, also disturbing and sacrilegious. I remember how much my dad, with his hair full of plaster dust, resembled my grandfather.
The wall was removed to make a downstairs room for Mike and Bob. It was a simple project: Dad sectioned off half the dining room with a frame of two-by-fours covered with inexpensive paneling and fitted with louvered folding doors. The other half was just large enough for two cots and the commode. We also built a ramp to fit tightly over the back steps for my brothers’ wheelchairs. Dad built this mostly by himself; my job was to sort through a coffee can of nails and straighten out the bent ones on the sidewalk. “Nails don’t grow on trees,” my father said. When the ramp was finished, with raised wooden slats for footing in the center, we painted it gray. We made other changes at the house before we moved in: paint, wallpaper, panelling, a dropped ceiling, carpeting on the stairs, but we were especially proud of the small room and the ramp.
My brother Mike continued to scream. Sometimes he screamed at what he saw on television; if anyone started shouting he’d begin to shriek and rock and bang his head.
Probably what Mike feared most was the lift: an ugly cast-iron derrick which transferred him from bed to wheelchair to commode. Heavy chains hung from the crossbar and hooked onto pieces of canvas that made a precarious seat. When you pumped a lever, the jangling chains tightened and lifted and swung him over the commode. He cried and trembled. My father sympathized with him and swore at the “god-damned fuckin’ thing”; he hated it for other reasons. It took too long to place the canvas properly, hook up the chains, maneuver the whole thing and slowly release the pressure; then the canvas had to be unhooked and pulled out from under. It was much easier and faster simply to grab Mike or Bob under the arms and heave.
I remember my father coming in the front door, pulling off his coat. “Come on. Let’s go! Come on.”
“I don’t think I have to go,” Bob would say.
“Well damn it, you’re gonna sit there then,” my father would say, slapping off the wheelchair’s brakes, and pushing him into the small room. Mom would tell him, “Careful of your back,” and he would snap at her, “What do you want me to do—you want to lift him?—then shut up for god’s sake.” I’d get angry. Bob would say, “I’m sorry. I can’t help it.” Mike would cry. Joe most times would go out on the porch or upstairs to his room. Dad would come back later in the evening, long enough to take Bob off and put Mike on the commode. On some of his jobs he had to have someone lie for him to get the twenty minutes.
In high school I involved myself in every activity I could, mostly sports but also the orchestra, the school newspaper, and the chorus. Joe was still very young but old enough to carry the pot upstairs, dump it in the toilet, and rinse it under the bathtub faucet. One day I was walking down the street and saw Joe come out of the house, slam the door, and stomp down the front steps, wiping his eyes with his wrists. When I walked in the house, my father was lifting Mike back into his wheelchair from the commode. “Your brother thinks he’s too damn good to have to help around here,” he said. One thing you never said around my father: Why do I always have to be the one to do it?