The sale bill hangs on the diner’s bulletin board. Even from across the lobby, even partially covered by a handwritten looseleaf advertisement for babysitting, I’d know that house anywhere. I see it in my dreams sometimes, even now, decades later. Shannon and I climbing the back porch steps after school, playing fetch with her dog in the yard, or studying at her big dining room table.
“They’re selling it,” I say out loud.
“There’s no one left,” Shannon’s voice says, but that can’t be. She’s gone now. Gone from rooms, gone from grass, gone from a house that dreamed us.
Tag: childhood
Day 75: Girl
Rana is a tiny, blond eight-year-old with persistently bruised knees and a lisp. After church, we sat in a Sunday school classroom coloring cardboard Easter eggs with markers. We talked about her favorite book, how unfair it was that her brother went to the dinosaur museum, and what she wished she could have for supper.
“Ice cream!” she shouted.
A murky memory surfaced of myself at her age, lighting our gas oven with a wooden match.
I studied her hands with their fragile fingers streaked with Spring colors, thinking: give her all the markers. All the museums. All the sweets.
Day 67: Bluejean
When I was ten, I practically lived at my best friend’s house. She had an attic bedroom with three big windows, and a blue parakeet in a cage she’d cover at night.
I told my parents I wanted a parakeet, too. We’d had to give away our dog, who’d bite everyone who wasn’t my mom, and cats were out of the question.
My dad said no. He thought I was just copying my friend, which was probably correct. But when I look back, I can so easily see that our house was no place for the innocent energy of animals.
Day 15: Elementary
Your walk to school has chapters.
The first chapter tells the neighborhood story,
Streets named after girls,
Where you Big Wheel and roller-skate and
Kick horse chestnuts with the frigid toe of your loafer.
The second chapter tells the city story,
With its gridlocked traffic square.
Conversion van, station wagon, or Chevy Camaro,
They pay you no mind.
The third chapter tells the public school story,
Where the high-diving kids go,
The ice cream eaters, the ones who wear jeans
And spit on your knee-socks.
Chapter four, finally, is
The story of your daily invisibility
Behind the tall brown door.
Cynthia Hamill 