“By the next summer when I went down the back stairs . . .”

By the next summer when I went down the back stairs out the side gate onto Thorndale and around to Magnolia, past the stoop where the mothers sat, I could barely picture her at all.  Memories flickered, seeped out of my consciousness.  How did I know they were real? . . .

They did not speak of my mother—my father or Leila or the other mothers or Robbie.  Robbie just looked daggers at Dora.  Robbie slammed his door and didn’t come out.  Or he went outside and played ball for hours, even by himself, even with no one to play with, instead of doing his homework.  I was afraid to slam the door, and I didn’t know how to play ball. 

The mothers didn’t talk about how it had been before.

I didn’t think about it jumping rope.  You really can’t think of anything while you’re timing your jump to the rhythm of the ditty and the slap of the rope on the ground. You’re singing the rhyme and counting the jumps, jumping double-time and speeding the rope at the end—whether you’re jumping by yourself or it’s a long rope and other girls are swinging it.  It comes so fast, you’d trip if you weren’t quick enough.  Or roller skating, with the motion carrying you along, free almost from gravity (friction, my father would explain).  You had to watch so you didn’t catch your skate or lose your balance and fall.  The sidewalk didn’t slope except at the corners, but the pavement could be uneven.  You had to look out for tippy slabs of sidewalk, and you had to slow down at the corner.  You could skin your knee, I did it many a time.  You don’t think about anything.  You just feel how fast you’re going and try not to fall. 

You could get out of breath jumping rope, and roller skating too.  You gasp for air when you are done.  That's when the thoughts could come--when I was resting, kids were talking and laughing, mothers too.  Letting the day cool down, the evening fall before going inside. 

The air was mild those afternoons when we played outside and the mothers sat on the stoop, speaking in low confidential tones.  I preferred winter, with the bitter winds that sting your skin and produce puffs of condensation out of your mouth.  Then there was a reason to feel the burning, the shortness of breath, the knife-sharp cutting of your lungs.   

Soon they would stop sitting there. By the next summer we were old enough to play by ourselves. We could cross Thorndale and Magnolia and even Rosedale, the next street over, though not Broadway, only on the way to school, when there was a patrol boy.