From the time I was 7, my mother instructed my older sister and me that if anyone asked how Joel was doing, we should tell them he was “fine.” Joel, my older brother, stayed in his room when people visited and didn’t go with us to see family. I didn’t feel comfortable having friends over because of how he slumped on the sofa in his sleeveless undershirt, staring into space, laughing to himself.
Lying in bed at night, I listened to my brother’s mysterious soundscape in the bathroom. His mumbled speech and snickering filtered through the thin wall between us. He spoke to an imaginary audience in a language I couldn’t understand and hissed like he was talking with snakes.
Covering my ears with pillows and sinking deep under the covers proved useless. I feared that whatever was wrong with Joel might be waiting inside me, that it “ran in our family.” I never asked my parents why Joel hardly smiled and why he bragged about his plan to swim the English Channel in record time.
I knew these topics were not to be discussed. My father wanted his only son to become a doctor, a highly esteemed profession for Jewish Americans. His disappointment and anger at Joel’s poor grades resulted in frequent scoldings, including “You idiot, why can’t you just be normal?” During the 1950s and ’60s, schizophrenia was regularly blamed on the mother’s parenting style — her rejection of her child during infancy and the years afterward.
Because of my parents’ continual denia.
