Sometimes, as a great treat, I was allowed to remove Nursie’s snowy ruffled cap. Without it, she somehow retreated into private life and lost her official status. Then, with elaborate care, I would tie a...

Men demand much more than you think,” she would tell her enigmatically. “There’s a lot of cooking, a lot of sweeping, a lot of suffering over little things beyond what you think.

She would seize every opportunity to dive into the bathroom, in a swirl of white towels, and once in there she was as hard to dislodge as a limpet from a rock.