Street Life
The thick braided rope whipped the ground with a slap as her small bare feet beat up and down on the black cement. In the sunshine, her hair didn’t look quite as dull. Some of the natural luster came through her woven braids, almost like the copper showing through an old, tarnished penny. And when her feet popped up you could see why she wasn’t getting burnt by the asphalt. Thick calluses molded the balls of her feet and heels. Shoes wouldn’t have been optional for most eight-year olds playing in the streets, but for Jean they weren’t even an option.
Since the market hit the floor, eleven million Americans were out of work. Steel, automobile shops, and coal mines shut down and seemingly disappeared. With two kids and no husband, Mama wasn’t working either. Even in the summertime, Mama would read a tattered copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas to Jean and her brother before they went to bed. Her fingers would cross each word as she droned through the story, leaving a brown hue behind the black text. Though it was the only book they had, she wanted to keep them reading day by day so that one day they might be able to go back to school. Mama would tell the kids that they lived in Whoville, but what she really meant was Hooverville. A shantytown of cardboard boxes stacked up almost like a play fort. Newspaper blankets would crinkle in the evenings, except for when it rained.
Her feet kept pounding away on the ground. “One, two, three,” until she got to ten. Then she’d start over from one and count back up again. She probably would have gotten to over a hundred if she knew how to count that high. But that didn’t concern her. The repetition was comforting and there wasn’t as much pressure to see how many jumps she could get in a row. After one cycle through ten, all of the numbers became equivalent, and it didn’t matter if she missed the jump on a one or a ten. It was all about the sensation of time and how long she felt she was jumping for.
There was no true time of coming in for dinner. It was more of a come in when Jean and her brother were tired or when the sky faded into a deep smoky colour. Tonight, the two gleamed in the streetlights walking home. The sweat was sticky on their bodies, but they didn’t care or know the difference. Jean knelt down on the still-warm concrete before the box opening. Her knees scuffed lightly on the ground as she crawled inside. It was quite the collection of boxes, more like a maze than a home, and it was shared with a bout of neighbors. In between the larger boxes were smaller ones that acted as crawl spaces dividing one family from the other. Cinder blocks pushed the corners of the boxes taut and cedar planks provided splintered stability.
Next to Mama sat a small carton of cans, one loaf of slightly moldy bread, and bruised fruits. It must have been Monday or Thursday, because those were the days she would go to the soup kitchen in the mid-afternoon to pick from the donated goods box. On days when our personal supply ran out, we’d have to wait in line to get a watery pour of soup. If you were at the end of the line, there wasn’t meat or broth, just boiled vegetables. Jean was hungry for the first time in a while, and tonight was a good meal. Mama cracked the can of cold chicken noodle soup to share between the two kids, and she would take what was left over. Mama said there were no bad days. She didn’t even complain about the soup kitchen. Maybe someday you can complain, she used to say to Jean when she got picky.
As Mama read, the single candle dripped slowly onto the newspaper underneath them, “What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store.” The light burned dimly on her already wrinkled face. The air was damp and warm as it was in Indiana summers. It stuck to you like shrink wrap. When she blew out the candle the smoke blew up onto a dirty black patch on the cardboard ceiling. She’d have to get a new candle to light soon.
Jean laid her head down onto a tied-up New York Times. She couldn’t read it but Mama said that was a good copy. She said it was from 1922 when things were real good and she said things would be like that again soon. Mama’s ribs felt a little sharper to lean into tonight, but her body was still warm. She thought about tomorrow, and the sound of the rope slapping the ground, and how long it would be until she could count past ten.
March 2018