An Incident in the Family
Published in Issue #19(Excerpt from a Novel)
subscribe to unlock the full story
I was born Tamma Millerman. Tamma is a Hebrew name that means “without flaw”. In 1935, I was almost ten years old.
My father often said about June in Southern California that it was a disappointing month: unrelentingly overcast. Every morning at the breakfast table, I kissed my father and mother goodbye, and prepared to kiss my younger sister, who would soon be six years old. I leaned over the chair in which she was strapped so she could not fall out, and kissed her on her drooly-smeared cheek. She always grabbed at my already slightly wrinkled dress and I’d pull away. My lunch bag was on the kitchen counter. I took it and ordinarily left my parents still hunkered over breakfast remnants of cream of wheat and buttered bagels, and marched toward the front door. As I reached for the knob, I would hear my parents resume their arguing and fussing over my younger sister. But this morning, my father and sister were not at the breakfast table.
Walking to school along the residential streets started out quietly. I trailed my pencil against a chain link fence and listened to the clacking sound echoing over the neighborhood and watched the cats jerk their heads and the dogs bark. Eventually, I passed Doreen’s house, and she joined me. We were two and then came Marsha and Rhoda, and we all walked on together carrying our lunch bags and avoiding stepping on cracks in the sidewalk until we neared the school. The bell...
Subscribe now to keep reading
Please enter your email to log in or create a new account.