Emma is my grandmother.

My mother stayed in California for ten years. Her grandfather left her to his wife, Emma, a severe woman who wore black dresses and resented and ignored my mother. Emma discouraged visitors and rarely allowed my mother to attend parties or other functions. One Halloween, when she caught my mother trick-or-treating with school friends, Emma decided to confine her to her room for an entire year, except for the hours she was in school. She forbade my mother to eat at the kitchen table or linger in the front yard. This cruel punishment went on for months until Emma’s sister came for a visit and put a stop to it. By the time my mother turned fourteen, she could no longer bear life in her grandmother’s house. She found work as a mother’s helper, caring for two young children in return for room, board and three dollars a week. She had little time for the extracurricular athletics and drama that she loved and no money for clothes. She washed the same blouse everyday to wear with her only skirt and, in colder weather, her only sweater. But for the first time, she lived in household where the father and mother gave their children the love, attention and guidance she had never received. My mother often told me that without that sojourn with a strong family, she would not have known how to care for her own home and children. B.