The Kingdom of Brooklyn by Merrill Joan Gerber

big double bed are tightened and tucked, pulled and pressed to icy smoothness.
    They bring in a new baby carriage—my father bumps it up the stairs to the bedroom and my grandmother cleans it with ammonia, shines the very spokes of the wheels. I have heard that the baby who died was a boy; this new one is a girl like me. Why we need two girls in a house is beyond me. I walk down the hall and kick Bingo. He snarls and bites my leg. I love the pain, I could hug him for giving it to me. The wound bleeds, much too serious for iodine. They—Gilda and my father—run with me to see Dr. Cohen down the street, who hurts me even more, with stitches, with an injection. Oh, how the body hurts. How inconvenient it is to have one, how dangerous, how delicious. To live in one is the biggest risk in the world, and the more dangerously you live in it, the more attention you get. I wish Bingo had torn out my eyes! Then I would be the queen, they would shine the spokes of my wheels, they would adore me.

    But as it is, no one cares that I have eaten crusts. I say it over and over—as my mother comes creeping in the front door, leaning on my father. I say it to the nurse who comes in carrying the package of the baby. I shout it while they climb the stairs to the bedroom. I tell it again and again all that afternoon—while the nurse is doing something to my mother’s breasts, while the baby is wailing in her new carriage, while my grandmother is stirring chicken soup. I come right up to my mother’s ear and shout it at her, right in the opening of her ear: “I ate my crusts!”
    And she slaps my face.
    â€œStop that, Issa! You’ll wake the baby!”
    I do wish they had died. I wish they had all died in whatever ways were possible—choking to death or drowning in the tub or being killed by bombs, any way at all. Then I would have been left alone to freeze to death in my bed. It would have been better than this, any day.

CHAPTER 7
    Because the baby is here, everything has to change. For one thing, the house has to be cut in half. My mother argues with Gilda for days before Gilda will agree to the plan to have a carpenter convert the house. My mother wants Gilda and my grandmother to have the top half, and we the bottom half. There will be a staircase with doors that lock, top and bottom, so my grandmother can’t get down and I can’t get up, at least not without knocking or ringing a bell. There will finally be—right here in Brooklyn—this thing everyone wants so badly: privacy. Doors and locks and keys will be between my mother’s scaring me and my reaching Gilda’s side. The ladies and the shampoos and haircuts will be upstairs; the stories and busyness will be upstairs; the chicken soup will be upstairs, Bingo will be upstairs—and where will I be? Downstairs, with liver flaring on the grate, with nothing to do, and with…Blossom.
    For that is the name they have given my sister—Blossom. The lilac tree that I love, with its sweet purple blossoms, now is spoiled because she has a name like its fragrant parts. My sister (I have to call her “my” sister although I don’t want her to be mine) has a red, screaming tongue that vibrates day and night with anger. It flails in her little open mouth like a flipper. Why do they all hold her in their arms and look into her face? Hot steam comes up from her mouth—she’s a small, wild furnace.
    â€œI can eat crusts!” I shout, going from one person to another, pulling on their arms, punching their thighs, “Watch me chew!”
    Nothing looks the same. The upstairs bedroom where my mother and father slept is now becoming the kitchen-living room of the upstairs apartment. The beauty parlor is staying the beauty parlor, but the bathroom where I had all my stomach aches is to be used only by Gilda and her customers and my grandmother. We, downstairs, will have our own, new bathroom—free of