Mr. Helen by Carla Sarett

Mr. Helen

America is such a different country from the one I grew up in, unrecognizable in many ways.  Even if the geography stays the same, the boundaries have shifted, are shifting, sometimes so dramatically that it's hard to remember where they once were, what they once meant, or didn't mean; so the very fabric of memory comes into question—because I wonder, could that ever have been so?  Was the world so different?

We had a woman who cleaned our house several times a week.  Actually, now that I think harder, she functioned more like a babysitter.  My mother went to a psychiatrist, a man she called Dr. Myerhoff twice a week, and because he was in Manhattan, and we lived on Long Island, her visits took up most of her afternoon, and she didn't return until dinnertime – at which point, Helen—our cleaning lady – had to be driven to the train station, to go back to her real home in a town called Amityville.  My father must have driven her since my mother never learned to drive, or maybe my parents paid for a taxi.

Now, strange as this seems, Helen was the only dark-skinned person I had ever seen, apart from, perhaps, another cleaning lady.  Our suburb was only white families, not rich, and we all lived in what was called a split-level development, in which all the house looked exactly the same except for their colors and, of course, their yards.  My mother, who thought of this modest house as her castle, had by  herself hauled huge glistening rocks from the nearby woods to form a circle, in the middle of which she had planted two young weeping willows—all of this, while Helen (whom I never called Mrs. Fosky, which was her real name) prepared meals and straightened the house. Since my mother never disciplined us, the house was more or less in a constant state of chaos; my older brother and his rowdy friends tore through it with astounding regularity.

But I was shy, and quiet, and I preferred sitting with tall, stout Helen. I felt safe with her. 

I loved Helen as much as anyone, and I loved to think of her in what I felt sure was the happy town of Amityville, where other dark-skinned people must live in houses (I felt sure) exactly like our own.  My mother had told me that Helen had her own family, her own children—a daughter my age, I think.  And so when I saw the cereal box for Cream of Wheat with a dark-skinned, smiling man on the box, I felt sure he must be Mr. Helen.  Who else could it be?

"That's Mr. Helen?" I asked her, as I ate the cereal, which was buttery and salty the way she prepared it.  I was a picky eater, but I loved Cream of Wheat, especially the way Helen made it.

I wonder what went through her mind when I asked that question.  Harmless, in one way, so poisonous in another.  I think of all the answers she might have given me.

But all she said, "Yes, darling, that's Mr. Helen."