Growing Up In Half a Room
By: Lynn Zimmering
Tags: Bedrooms, Privacy, Teens, Parenting, Care

Growing Up In Half a Room

It always amazes me; I offered almost no resistance to my childhood living quarters. No matter how small the room, or how big I was at the time, someone was always stealing my solitude.

I was an only child for seven years until my brother was born. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment in the Bronx. During my early years, my parents had the luxury of having live-in help. Of course, the aid had to sleep somewhere, so it was in my room. It didn’t make so much difference to me since I was so young. The first girl was named Mary, and as a young child, I thought all the subsequent help was also called Mary.

So I named them all Mary.

Fast forward to my teen years, during which time we had moved to another two-bedroom apartment, this time in Washington Heights, the upper tip of Manhattan. The idea was to live in an area serviced by the “A” train (the best and newest subway.)

At first, my brother, who is emotionally handicapped, lived in my parent’s bedroom, the larger of the two. When we no longer had live-in assistance, I had the smaller bedrooms to myself. I loved that.

However, as soon as my mother felt that I was competent enough to take care of him (he was three, I was ten), I became his primary caregiver, and I moved into the more oversized bedroom with him.

Christmas time each year reminds me of these years:

My parents are toy wholesalers, so I see little of them from Labor Day until New Year’s Eve. That means that every afternoon after my school day ends, I pick up my brother from nursery school, entertain him all afternoon, make dinner for him and myself, and put him to bed.

Channukah comes and goes with no notice. It doesn’t matter. My mother has escaped from caring for my brother and me into my father’s business.

His nursery school teacher treats me as a parent, explaining to me everything wrong with him. My heart goes out to him, and I love him. I try my hardest to fix his problems, of course, to no avail. I carry that burden even today.

Taking care of him is suffocating me.

My friends know that wherever we go or whatever we are doing, my brother comes along. One time we all decided to take off our tops and bras to see whose new breasts’ jiggled more when we danced topless. I had to bar him from the room by shoving a chair under the doorknob. I feel guilty, not because of the bare breasts, but because I feel I may have hurt his feelings by excluding him.

I begin to realize I not allowed to enjoy privacy in these pre-teenage years. We live with each other in the same bedroom. My brother is always there and always chattering at me. He exasperates me every day.

When I start menstruating, my parents know they have to make some changes.

I need a domain of my own. Unfortunately, their business is failing, so we can’t move to bigger quarters. Instead, Mom and Dad have a wooden partition built, dividing our bedroom into two spaces. I have already found my secret garden inside my head where I live, most of the time, but I appreciate their effort.

The partition doesn’t go to the ceiling but is high enough not to see over. Each side has a window and ends up about 6 feet wide. The partition is long enough to accommodate a bed, and there is an area inside the open doorway with no division making for easy access to both sides from the room’s entryways. The separations have no doors that can create tranquility on both sides. It is as if my parents are allowing me some private haven but not too great a one. After all, I am still in charge of my brother and I can still hear him across this barrier. So, I set a boundary. He is banned from speaking to me after eight P.M.

I need something in that space to comfort myself. I happen upon a series of Henri Matisse paintings on postcards and buy them with my allowance.

I attach them with pushpins to my side of the partition at a level where my eyes would be while lying in bed. The beauty of these works of art draws me into another sphere of colors, shapes, and intricate patterns, each combining to create a new world. I transport myself temporarily and enter into it. That world is where beauty existed. I cling to the hope of rescuing myself to permanently live there.

Finally, I go to college, although I continue to worry about how my brother is doing. He is doing poorly. I graduate, and afterward, instead of then moving to an apartment, I return to my half of our bedroom. It is clear that my parents need me at home, and my mother and father want me back.

Unique circumstances create unique people. The old saying holds, “If something difficult doesn’t kill you, it adds to your strength.”