Neighborhood Neighborhood

Our brick houses had one floor, storm windows to install in October, heavy brass doorknockers, screened-in patios, lawn jockeys, and front porches with wrought iron railings. The rusty bicycles flopped on the driveways, the smell of peat moss in wheelbarrows, the hum of fans from Sears Roebuck, sidewalks turning the color of grocery bags when wet. The luck of a clover with one appended leaf. We had board games like Monopoly shared by three families, the little green hotels disappearing just like the old market and the Bargain Center. The braided oaks with crooked tree houses, the burnt leaves, black fish swimming in air. And on an unseasonably sunny day in late October, I found my mother's floral umbrella and went strolling into the breeze under its spinning canopy, sucking a lemon.

Mar 20, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Judith Harris