Hope

When I was small, my parents who were very young and couldn’t rub two cents together, made the smartest decision ever. They bought a cheap house, planning to upgrade in later years. I must have been about two or three when we moved in and my very first memory is of my mother walking around the newly installed dining room table contemplating the possibilities of an otherwise bare room.

As you might imagine, the cost of buying cheap with the intention of upgrading later on, is that you don’t have your pick of neighborhoods. Our house was situated on the “South Side” of town. I’m sure you know what I mean by “South Side,” even if yours is located in the North, East or West.

I lived there until I was nine and don’t have a huge amount of memories from that place, other than the occasional image or feeling that will leap out before my eyes when I least expect it. I remember a neighborhood kid who was mentally handicapped and who had a permanent cut on his tongue. I think we might have convinced him that some dog poop was candy, although we magnanimously backed out at the end right before he was about to eat it.

I remember being chased by a neighborhood dog until I pounded on a stranger’s door to escape, and the Asian family that lived around the corner who made those fried shrimp flavored wafers from scratch. I remember walking to school with my brother, followed by some older boys who were pretending (trying?) to light my hair on fire.

And I remember watching a teenager do a handstand in the public pool, noticing that he had his sneakers on. This was well before aqua shoes, of course. I thought it strange, but some time later cut my own foot to the bone in the same pool by a piece of broken bottle that someone had thrown in.

I was a lifeguard in the summers between college in the same city district and each summer I would hope that I wouldn’t get my old pool from the South Side. It was not likely as I didn’t live anywhere nearby and didn’t drive. But I wanted to shut out those associations completely. Our lifeguarding staff would call the kids that came to horse around in the pool every day “pool rats;” I cannot imagine what they called us on the South Side.

I remember Hope. She was my best friend, my first friend that I spent loads of time with and who lived a couple of doors down. Her mother was black and her father was white. I remember him as a bit of a deadbeat, because every memory I have is of him lying on the couch in front of the tv in an afro and tight seventies shorts. I have no idea if my mind depicts a true portrait.

We discovered things about each other’s differences, but in such an innocent way – the way things are supposed to be, I think. When we would play with each other’s hair, my hands would always come up greasy and she patiently explained that her mother had to treat her hair in order for it to be healthy. I do remember her having gorgeous, thick and curly hair. In fact, that is the only difference between us I remember. In everything else we were the same and I’m forever grateful that my early childhood (and thereafter) was not marred by prejudice.

We played at each other’s houses, but I think I preferred hers because behind her house (in her very own property) was a junk yard. There was an abandoned car that we played on all the time and I thought it the height of sophistication.

We also took all the lumber we could find and built a shack to play in. We scrounged up whatever we could find to “play house,” including an old pot that we could pee in without having to leave the shack. Once you pee in a place you can really call it home, I guess.  (Or perhaps it was some force of nature at work causing us to mark our territory). Of course I got doused once when Hope tried to chuck her pee out the door and I was in the way. And the boards held their own danger with all the rusty nails sticking out. I punctured myself at least once and had to get a tetanus shot.

I remember lying in my back yard in the green grass, staring up at the blue sky as fluffy clouds rolled by. It may have been the same sky that everyone else stared at but it was from my own corner of earth.  It was my home.

In school the level was so poor that I had to make my own way. I was in third grade, leaving the class to join the sixth grade class for reading and the fifth grade class for Math. I remember winning the competition in the fifth grade class for being the first to memorize the multiplication tables. The prize was either a large container of malt balls or one of those pads you can draw on and lift up the plastic top to erase what you wrote. I claimed my prize and was surprised when a girl leaned over and said that I should have picked the malt balls because then I could have shared with them her. Who in their right mind would pick malt balls when you can have a drawing tablet that erases magically!

On the day my mom came to pick me up in the middle of the school day to bring me to my new home, they read my poem over the loudspeaker which had won the school competition. It was called “Red” and – move over Hemingway, let me tell you !  I collected my things and we drove off.

I was enchanted with the new house. It was much bigger and had a bigger property. The house was three floors and in the back had a shed with sleeping quarters over the garage that the gardener would have slept in when it was first built. There was a back yard and a “way back.” That’s what we called it. The fence was even down so we could keep pushing back further through the woods until we ran into the backs of other people’s houses. We would sled in the way back each winter and build sheds and chase each other around the house in the summer.

The new house was on the edge of one of the more desirable places to live, but considered just outside of it as it was situated on a very busy street. My parents were able to afford it due to the tremendous amount of work it needed, which we did ourselves over the years.

The school system was much better and I was surprised to find myself, not only not leaving the class to attend higher levels in Math and Reading, but feeling like I could barely keep up myself. So I was not as brilliant as I had assumed.  I remember the early days in the lunch room trying to make a place for myself, surrounded by kids who had known each other since Kindergarten. I finally found one best friend who I latched onto (and who promptly dumped me just before junior high so I would really be in deep water during my most formative years – thanks a lot Joanne!). Still, I missed the easy friendship I had formed with Hope and the familiarity of my old neighborhood, as undesirable as it was.

So once all the cubby holes had been explored and the “way back” forged, nostalgia really began to do its work. I felt lonely. And lost. I couldn’t figure out why we had moved at all.  By hard work and determination my parents had stuck to their plan and brought us to a better life, but all I could see was the unsettled lack of familiarity stretching before me.

My parents gave me a better future, but I had no Hope.

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