I followed the attendant into the small room in the insane asylum in Taunton, Massachusetts, and took the heavy chair she offered me. The place brought back horrible memories, memories I thought I had buried deep within my mind, thought I had forgotten. They came again to haunt me as I sat and faced my sister.

Marla's empty voice spoke through twisted lips: "I had a lot of nightmares last night. I dreamed that Ma was a big lion, and I was a little kitten. There were people all around me, surrounding me. They kept repeating the same words. `As long as you stay with me, you'll be safe. As long as you stay with Ma, you'll be safe.'"

I smothered a lump in my throat by swallowing hard. The wire mesh on the window on top of the only door reminded me of a prison. It was a cell—no pictures, no lamps, bare walls. A plain gray table separated us.

The pungent smell of disinfectant penetrated my nostrils, causing my eyes to water, but it was Marla's eyes that made me wince. She wore the dilated look of a tortured soul, that look I knew so well but never could get used to.

Why? I asked myself. Why did this have to happen? I wanted to know, needed to know. I searched my mind for reasons. A clue. Anything.

She had always wanted a child, but she had become that child. Was it her fears that had stood in her way? I used to blame her for the times when she would lay in bed for hours on end, for the times when she would overdose on drugs, although it wasn't the drugs alone that had made her ill. I used to blame her for making Mother her slave. Now I'm not so sure. Now, although I will always love her, I let God judge her.

I fought to keep back the tears; sometimes I tried not to believe it. She was a stranger to me now, someone I was seeing for the first time. Although she was two years younger than my fifty years, Marla looked ancient. It wasn't the wrinkles alone that made her look so old. Her thin lips revealed yellow teeth with big gaping holes, and years of taking medication had thinned her hair and turned it gray before its time.

There were craters in her face where blackheads had taken over, and a protruded belly was framed by limp arms—the same arms that had battered my mother more than once, smashed chairs, and shattered dishes.

I blinked back fresh tears when I remembered she was once pretty. I could still picture the blonde ponytail and innocent expression in blue eyes. I remembered too the many nights when I had prayed for my baby sister and the pain I felt when I realized slowly, through the years, that she would never recover.

As I listened to her, I was acutely aware of an old proverb that repeated in my mind: "There but for the grace of God—."

* * *

She was baptized Marla Olga Stephanie Midsummer, the youngest of four children born to Leslie and Jack Midsummer, our mother and father. Theirs was a wild courtship. He was only five feet six, but powerful, handsome and clean-cut, with reddish hair and a hint of freckles that displayed his Swedish inheritance.

"Wow" was all he could say when a friend introduced them, completely lost to the magic of love.

She smiled shyly, unaware at fifteen of the curves on her body or the heads that turned to stare.

He was four years older, had never used profanity, drank, nor used tobacco, but he loved the excitement of living on the edge. He took chances when he operated his bulldozer at work, coming a little bit closer than others to falling off the precipice, and people admired him for it. He was good.

And he was daring on his motorcycle. One day, as he was driving at high speed, he slid off a winding road on a sharp curve. He was lucky to survive the crash, which left him with a broken collar bone as well as a broken leg. Still, even though he was in formidable pain, that didn't stop his ardor. He limped for seven miles each day on crutches to see her.

When his fractures finally healed, he let her drive his "bike" on ladies' day at the cycle club. Dressed in black jodhpurs, her dark brown hair blowing in the breeze, she saw nothing but happiness in her future.

Work wasn't always easy to come by in Rhode Island in 1934, and Jack was happy when his job took them to Athol, Massachusetts during the first year of their marriage. There, the times they spent together were filled with joy, even though he had to trudge through miles of heavy snow to get to work. Her body began to swell with pregnancy.

When the job was over, they moved back to Rhode Island because the economy there was improving. And when her labor pains began during a New England nor'easter, he was aghast because they had to walk two blocks to the delivery room in Memorial Hospital in Pawtucket.

But she laughed and chided him innocently, "Why are you afraid? They're only going to cut a hole in my belly and take out the baby." No one had told her of birth and the pain.

She was knee-deep in snow, and dragged her belly over the top. The wind was fierce, and it caught the huge wide-brimmed hat she wore twice and tossed it into a snowbank. She thought it was all in fun when he had to chase it. A snowplow came by, and he tried to convince the driver to give them a lift. But he refused.

"No baby is going to be born on my plow. Besides, it's against the law."

* * *

The labor was long and hard, and she was swollen with toxic poisoning. He paced in front of the delivery room for twelve hours and smoked three packs of cigarettes. But she was young and strong, and their first child, a boy, was born on January 23, 1935. They named him Samuel after his brother who had been killed in a motorcycle accident and her brother who was hit by a train and died shortly afterward. They vowed this Samuel would have a full life. They would see to it.

"He's all boy," he beamed to his wife in the hospital. "You've made me so happy."

* * *

In spite of the love and the caring, troubles began to smolder like a sore that festered. He was under a lot of pressure at work. They demanded more of him—more chances, more stress on his already jagged nerves.

She was used to getting her own way. She was delicate like a gazelle, and he was young with lots of hormones, as is natural. The bedroom became an arena.

"Not again. It hurts," she would scream at his demands.

She avoided sex like an evil woe, which did not help to bolster his male ego. To ease the pressure, he began to stop in at the local bar nights after work with the guys.

She became pregnant again. More pressure. He got so angry one night he became violent and kicked her in the stomach when she turned away from him in the bedroom. She was crushed. Now he had threatened the baby, and for the first time she began to consider breaking off the marriage.

Even so, our family continued to grow. They had three more children. I was number two. My younger brother Jack came eleven months after me. We called him Junior. Marla Olga Stephanie was last.

Every Christmas, my father used to drag home a tree and decorate it with lights and balls and all sorts of pretty things. Then on the night before Christmas, he always told us to look out the window for Santa Claus, and he would pick out a tiny star I confess I could never see and tell us it was Santa.

"See those lights in the sky? He's coming! Quick, get into bed. If he catches you up, you won't get any toys."

Then we'd run for our bedroom and try to sleep. The next morning, the toys would be...