In the 1950’s, when I was in the sixth grade at Sheridan St. Elementary School in  the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles, California, Mrs. Horowitz lived in the bottom unit of an apartment building next to our house with her elderly mother. They seemed to yell at each other very night, starting right after dinner like clockwork. We could hear them through their closed windows. I could see into the sitting room of their apartment, through the pale gauze curtains. I could never understand what they were fighting about in that stifling, frayed yellow apartment with old and tattered furnishings. The gloom I felt looking at the tiny apartment could easily be inhaled.