A Look Back

 

“Hey, girl, c’mere!”

I looked up from where my four-year-old self was playing in the front yard – the front yard – to see a girl standing outside our side gate. She was bigger than I was – probably five – with brown hair the same shade as dirt. I thought if she got down on the ground grass might get confused and grow out of her head. I thought that was funny, but I didn’t say it because I didn’t want to be mean. Sometimes I said things I thought were okay and got yelled at for being mean.

I had never seen this girl before. I didn’t know her name, and obviously, she didn’t know mine. I didn’t know where she’d come from. She must be a street urchin, I thought. That was what my mother called children who roamed the streets instead of staying in their own yards.

“Girl, c’mere,” she said again.

I obediently walked over to the gate, resting my arm on the top. She didn’t smell, but she looked like she needed a bath, anyway.

“Can I come in to play?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I’m not allowed to let anyone in.”

She pinched me! I didn’t even know that word.

“Now can I come in?” Was she serious?

“No. I’m not allowed to let anyone in,” I repeated, thinking maybe she was stupid.

She pinched me again, and I ran into the house to tell my mother. She ran out and chased the girl to the end of our property, and told her to go home and leave her little girl alone.

Go home? This little girl had a home? I always thought urchin and orphan were the same thing. I imagined a truck coming down the street to collect all of the urchins when the street lights came on to take them back to the orphanage.

But the girl wasn’t an orphan. My mother even knew her name. She lived on the next block. But, my mother said, she was too old to play with me – she really was five – and my mother didn’t like the fact that her parents let her “run wild.”

Apparently, sometime later, one of her parents came over to complain about my mother chasing their daughter. My mother made no bones about what she thought of their daughter pinching me when I was only doing what she had told me to do.

The girl’s name was Veronica, and she became my nemesis a few years later when I started school, and she was in first grade for the second time.

Why I was in the front yard is a mystery. The sandbox, swings, and sliding board – and in summer, the little swimming pool – were in the back yard. That was where children played. Only on summer evenings, when my parents sat out in the front and my two older brothers and I dashed around catching lightning bugs in jars were we allowed in the front yard. And then my mother admonished us to keep our voices down so we wouldn’t bother the neighbors. Once the street lights came on, we had to set the lightning bugs free and go inside to wash out the jars and wash the ick smell of lightning bugs off our hands.

We lived on the corner. The high telephone pole with the street light on it was on our corner. Just before it was the stop sign. That was the big red circle with a lot of corners on it and painted letters. I didn’t know how to read, but I knew my letters – you had to to sing the alphabet song, although I thought elemeno was one letter.

The letters on the sign danced around when I looked at them. They were P-O-T-S or P-O-S-T or S-P-O-T or T-O-P-S or S-T-O-P. It was always different, but it meant stop. 

I always thought that was the most likely place the man in the big black car would pull up someday and say, “Hey little girl do you want some candy?” I would shout, “No!” and run into the house. But he never showed up

I had two older brothers, Eddie and Robbie. They had friends who lived across the street, Bobby and Jimmy, and they had a little sister, Nancy. She was still a baby, maybe two years old. That was the natural order: two boys and a girl. Sometimes when my mother went across the street to have coffee with Bobby and Jimmy’s mother and watch her smoke cigarettes, I was allowed to play with Nancy.

I don’t remember what we played, but she had toys I didn’t have, like blocks and rattles and a jack-in-the-box. Her toys were easy to play with. You could pretend they were all kinds of things until she took them away from you.

I knew about real names and nicknames, although I could never figure out what Nancy’s real name was. Nancy must be a nickname, since that’s what everyone called her. My brother, Robbie’s real name was Robert, so I thought Nancy’s brother, Bobby’s real name must be Bobert. But everyone laughed when I said that.

Several of my aunts and uncles – the real ones, not the neighbors we called aunt and uncle – had lots of children, and when they did, the first one was often a girl. I used to think that was so sad for them to be the oldest and a girl. If they didn’t have older brothers, who would teach them how to build snow forts, or catch frogs, or how to find the front and back door of a worm’s house? Who would squish bugs for them so they didn't have to get bug gook on the bottom of their shoes? Who would take them on adventures and pretend things with them or teach them how to climb up the slidey part of the sliding board? No wonder they were so girly!

But if you were only having three children, the first two had to be boys. It was a rule.

Our front yard had two gates, one on the front and one on the side because we lived on a corner. Our front steps and the walkway that led to the front gate, as well as the one to the side gate were made of flagstones that were cemented in place. The stones were all different sizes and shapes. My favorite was a light grey one that was bigger than the others, and roundish, with a hump in the center. It was a little sparkly, too. When I was allowed in the front yard and not catching lightning bugs or playing jacks on the steps, I was usually sitting on my favorite stone and pretending something.

When I was four I didn’t really have any friends. Nancy was still a baby, but I guess she was my friend when I played with her, even if she couldn’t pretend things.

There was also a girl who came with her father when he stopped by for the block collection for church. Her name was Patty, which was one of my favorite names when I was little (my other favorite was Debbie). When she came with her dad, she and I would stand there looking at each other and say hi. She was a couple of years older than I was. I didn’t know then that she had a sister who was my age – and no brothers! I thought of her as one of my friends since I said hi when she came to our house, and I sometimes saw her at church, and said hi to her there. I didn’t know where she lived, so we didn’t play together. My parents did, which I thought was amazing. But they said she lived too far away, and was too much older. I think she might have been six.

My brothers were in school, and had lots of friends. I knew the names of many of them: Jerry, Ricky, Skeeter, Benny, Frankie,  Joey and Glenn. When I was by myself I used to pretend to be those friends, even though I had never met most of them, and I would make up what I thought they were like.

When my brothers were at school or off with their friends, I played by myself. There was so much to do in our back yard I was never bored. Sometimes I would bring my dolls outside and pretend they were my friends. They always wanted to do what I did, and I thought that’s what it was like to have friends.

I wasn’t allowed outside my yard unless I was taking the dolls for a walk. Then I could walk along the side yard between the front and back, but not in the street. (There were no sidewalks in our town.)

A boy named Billy lived across the street. He would play in his yard, and sometimes he talked to me. He was my friend but I used to say he wasn't because I wasn’t allowed to have friends who were boys. I didn’t know why. He wasn’t allowed in the street, either, but sometimes he would run across the street to steal my dolls. That’s all he did; then he’d run back to his yard, so he wasn’t a street urchin. But I wasn’t allowed across the street, so I couldn’t get my dolls back.

Billy liked to take the heads off my dolls, fill them with stones and throw them back across the street. He didn’t actually throw them at me. He wasn’t trying to hit me, just give me back parts of my dolls. Sometimes he wouldn’t give the rest of the doll back, and I’d have to get my mother to make him give them back. She never yelled at him. She knew it was just his way of being friendly. She’d just say, “Come on, Billy, that’s not nice. Give her back her doll.” He wasn’t really mean, so he would – until next time.

One of the best things was when we went downtown to get new clothes. We would be all dressed up, and had to take the train. Before we left for the train station, my mother would say, “We’re going out. You’re to be on your best behavior. If I have to speak to you while we’re out, I won’t do anything then, but just wait till you get home!” She also told me not to contradict her when she told the train conductor how old I was. I knew contradict. It meant be quiet.

Knowing we had to be on our best behavior, I was shocked when I saw other children running around in stores and playing in the clothes racks, or screaming, or touching things they weren’t supposed to. Weren’t they afraid of what would happen when they got home?

But there were so many things to look at in the city, with sidewalks everywhere and buses and yellow taxis, I didn’t think that much about the other children. We were usually only there just before Christmas and just before Easter.

At the end of the day, we’d walk down to where my dad worked, and all the people in the office seemed happy to see us. They told us how big we’d gotten and how nice we looked.

When my dad finished his work for the day, we’d go someplace nice for dinner before going home on the train.

One thing my mother could never understand was the fact that I was convinced I was adopted. One of the children in the neighborhood was adopted, but I was never allowed to talk to him about it because I didn’t know if he knew that, and if he did, if it would hurt his feelings if I mentioned it. But from the time I learned about him, I was sure I was adopted.

I knew about orphanages. I had seen Shirley Temple movies. You got to sing and tap dance if you lived in an orphanage. I thought I might at least have a chance at getting tap dancing lessons in case my parents ever decided to give me back. 

My mother assured me I wasn’t adopted, and asked why I thought I was.

“I don’t look like the boys,” I replied. She looked at me like I was crazy. My brothers and I have a strong family resemblance. But that’s not what I meant. I’d seen them in the bath. I did not look like them.

I never got the tap dancing lessons, and they never gave me back, so I guessed I was supposed to be there.

It wasn’t always easy being four, but it was fun most of the time.