The Golden Willow by Harry Bernstein Page A

indeed, as she began to grow and mingle with other children, he assumed a watchful and protective attitude toward her and seemed always anxious about her welfare. He was the perfect big brother.
    Shortly after the arrival of Adraenne, when Ruby had to go back to work, this time as a secretary in one of the local grade schools, one fortunately nearby, there was still another addition to the family in the form of Edna, our new housekeeper. We could not have made a better choice. She was a jolly, good-natured black woman.Her laughter brightened our household, her cooking was good, and her care of the baby passed Ruby's closest inspection.
    I myself remained watchful. I still read manuscripts when Edna first came to us, and my room was upstairs in the finished attic that had made our house so desirable when we first bought it. However, despite the privacy it gave me, I could still hear noises from downstairs, and one morning, shortly after Ruby had left the house and Charlie had gone to school, I heard the baby crying, and immediately I rushed down to find out what was the trouble.
    For the first time I saw anger on Edna's face as she turned from the baby toward me.
    “Mr. Bernstein,” she said, putting her hands on her hips, “we might as well understand each other right here and now. Either I'm in charge of this child or I'm not, and if I am, I don't want you or anybody else interfering. And if you can't trust me, then I'll be packing my things and be on my way.”
    It was the last time I ever did that again. Edna was faultless, the best of all the housekeepers and maids we'd ever had, and there had been several before her. But she could only be with us, we soon discovered, for relatively short periods at a time. Her home was in South Carolina, where she had a husband and children—she never told us how many she had—but when she got tired of her home, she came north to make a little money and to have some fun, as she confided to us.
    There was no question about the fun. She had friends in Harlem, and one of them frequently called for her at our house. He was a tall, amiable black man, and he came in a very large, fancy-looking car that he parked in front while he came calling. They were soon gone, the two of them, Edna waving a cheerful good-bye to us and grinning widely. She came back the next morning,always on time, looking a bit tired and sleepy, but as cheerful as ever.
    I suppose she got tired of the fun too, eventually, and of us also, I guess, and so back she went to South Carolina. For several years she came and went, her return always welcomed by us.
    During her absences Aunt Lily often pitched in to help with the children. She and her husband had rented an apartment in a house owned by friends of ours in the neighboring town of Rosedale, and it was a ten-minute walk to us, making it easy for her to come and go. Both Adraenne and Charlie grew fond of her, and for her they might have satisfied her own yearning for the children she'd always wanted but never had.
    For Ruby and me, she gave us the chance to break away from the house and our responsibilities and visit friends or go places, while knowing that the kids were well taken care of. Ruby and I had almost forgotten what it was like to be alone together, so immersed had we been in all the changes that had taken place in our life. So it was good to be together again and have a taste of what it had been like when all we had to think about was ourselves and no responsibilities hung over us.
    Thanks to Aunt Lily we were able to take a trip to England, to see the town where I had been born, and about which I have written in my book
The Invisible Wall
. I told how we arrived one rainy afternoon to find the street on which I had lived in the process of being torn down to make way for a public housing project. We stood under our umbrella for a while, looking through the drizzle at a deserted street, the two rows of empty houses without doors and windows, feeling