Memories
Memories of Flying Braids and Frying Eggs
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Behind me a yellow mini-apartment rises where Charlene Pieri's house used to be. Charlene of the flaxen braids. Charlene, my best friend, who used to yell over to me: "Protestants are better than Catholics!" as I hollered back: "Catholics are better than Protestants!" to the amusement of passers-by. Two-story duplexes screen my view of the domed hockey stadium where one night Charlene's mouth was cleft with a flying puck when she was 7. That year, 1947, we moved to the States -- the "land of stars and strips" (my version).
The street is quieter than I remember it. A block away, the yellow-tan brick grade school and cathedral still stand. The convent where I went to kindergarten has become posh condos. I tilt my head far back to see the tops of the front-yard firs that used to be shorter than the child-me. I laugh. Am I that old? Their shadows darken the veranda my father built for my mother. A lush red geranium used to revel in the heat of each windowsill. |
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"There must be some mistake -- how can something so pretty smell so bad?" I'd asked once. "It's just the way things are," my mother had said, laughing.
To the right hung the blackboard where my father gave up teaching me long division. I was certain I'd understood what he said -- it seemed so logical written out on the board -- but when he asked me to do a problem by myself, to my surprise, everything flew out of my head.
Left of the inside door sat an old brown daveno. In the living room we had a chesterfield, and Charlene's house had a sofa. My 4-year-old self would run, braids flying, from one to the other, measuring them with my hands and examining them carefully. "Why do we call them each different names when they all look the same?" I'd demand to know. "And what is a 'couch'? Some people have couches. Why don't they just call them all 'couches'?" That was one more thing to which there seemed to be no answer -- a scary proposition in the black-and-white '40s when grown-ups were always right and things were either good or bad with no "maybes." |
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The gravel has escaped from its place in the dirt alley; sidewalks sport cracks like those we jumped over to save our mothers' backs. I note the exact spot where Charlene and I tried to fry an egg to determine the veracity of a radioman's "it's so hot" report. When only the egg whites congealed into the striated grooves, we were stymied -- to whom does a child report an untruth by a grown-up?
I'd been shocked at how easily the wet rag shredded and the cement bit my knuckles when, at my mother's insistence, I scrubbed egg out of the hungry hollows.
Hooked metal footholds (the same ones?) hang on the old brown telephone pole across the alley from the wooden stoop where we hung out wash and drank water from the rain barrel. Next to that, Gordon's shed, where he built his boat, is gone. "Not to be critical," I'd said timidly to the only grown-up we were allowed to address by his first name, "but wouldn't it be more logical to build this closer to the lake?" Gordon's deep laughter roared, "Why, yes, it would." He'd wiped his eyes. "But it'll work out -- trust me, eh?" |
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Our old wading pool is overdraped with branches; the picket fence has been replaced by Cyclone. Down the block a cigar store sign hangs over the candy store where Grandpa walked us for jellybeans, licorice and hard yellow candy for the grown-ups. I love the man-on-the-street (photographic) image of Grandpa coming out of that store. Since I've driven this far from Oregon, I debate whether to knock on the door and maybe see the house. But after a moment I start the car, preferring to keep my own memories. |
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By Marie Therese Gass 
