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MY Aunt Betty holds out those thick freckled arms and exclaims ''Stevie!'' as if she hadn't just seen me the night before at my house in Roslyn Heights. ''C'mere,'' she says, pulling me nose first into that massive bosom. ''Oh my God, you're so skinny! Doesn't your mother feed you?'' Inside the suffocating cleavage, I hear the muffled, icy voice of my mother right behind: ''He eats just fine, Betty.'' ''Well,'' she cackles, ''we gotta fatten him up if we're ever going to eat him!'' And with that I am dragged by my bony 9-year-old wrist into a steamy kitchen stuffed with red-cheeked aunts in aprons: Miriam, Susie, Sylvia, Judy and some women, distant cousins I suppose, whom I've never seen. Aunt Miriam, a pint to Betty's gallon, turns from the steaming stove in her ruffled apron. ''He looks just fine to me, Betty. Now let him go play with his cousins in the backyard.'' The backyard is the size of my cousin Eugene's small bedroom up the narrow steps on the third floor. Miriam is an elementary school teacher in Queens and doesn't take orders from anyone except Uncle Mac, who smokes a big cigar. I try to yank myself away, but am stopped short like a dog on a leash. ''Not before you have some of this, young man,'' Betty says, her free hand swooping around with a forkful of juicy, oniony brisket. ''And this...'' as she makes me swallow something pruney and gloppy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]