We’d known Carol Johnson and her kids since I was a baby. She was the one who had been so generous, the one who’d given me the black purse that started my wondering about money. We were no longer living on the same street, but the Johnson family was only a few blocks away, and we made frequent visits to their house on Lamont Place.
Carol had five kids, the youngest from the city bus driver she had recently married. Her older kids didn’t like him, and I lost my own impartial stance the time he and Carol took me fishing at Sodus Point. When I caught more fish than he had, he threw a tantrum on the stony edge of Lake Ontario, and Carol had to soothe him with touches to the back and shoulder. He was so upset about not having more sun-fish flip-flopping around in his bucket than a ten-year-old that he refused to eat any of the cream-filled and glazed we’d picked up from Donuts Delite on the way out to the lake. What an idiot, I thought, as I plopped his uneaten donut into my mouth.
The house on Lamont Place actually belonged to Carol’s father, who occasionally drove in from a nearby suburb to take care of things. The kids were close to my age and they had a yard. It was a recipe for success. We ran and played, sprayed each other with a garden hose, and made up our own version of golf, using baseball bats as clubs. Still, the Johnson kids had a love-hate relationship with me based on their mother’s uncontrollable urge to give me things.
Carol was a giver in general, but for some reason she had chosen me as her favorite recipient. Maybe I let my need show more than the others, or else she still thought of me as the screaming infant from a decade before.
My mother had first met the dark-haired woman while walking down East Main Street. I was just a few months old, and in my mother’s arms. From her porch, Carol called out, asked to see the baby. When she discovered that my mother didn’t have an infant carrier, she removed her son from his, and pushed the carrier toward my mother. My mother put up a good fight, but in the end, it was my small body that settled into the cushioned carrier that day, while Carol’s infant was relocated onto the porch slats.
It had been that way with Carol ever since.
She loved her own children, but taking from them to give to others was what brought her joy. She seemed happiest when she was giving us things—things her kids wanted for themselves, things her family could by no means afford to replace. Sometimes, I took advantage, saying, for instance, loud enough for Carol to hear, how much I liked her oldest daughter’s denim gaucho pants. No sooner had my words reached Carol’s ears than the item was stripped from her child and given to me, while the girls stomped up the stairs.
They spent most of their hate on their mother, but reserved a bit for me. I hung along the sidelines, guilt-ridden but clinging to the transferred object for as long as I could. Which was never long, because as soon as my mother found out, she’d make me return whatever item Carol had given that day.
“But Carol gave them to me,” I’d say while crying, knowing the giving was wrong, but wanting the thing just the same. I cried until my nose ran and my lips swelled. Carol couldn’t bear it. She wrung her hands, whispered for me to stop crying please, and promised to get my things back as soon as she could.
Kara was a social work student at a local Catholic college and had been assigned to Carol’s youngest son as a case study or field practice of sorts. The boy sat in his playpen without making a sound all day. He didn’t talk or cry or coo. Like all things her own, the son did not interest Carol nearly as much as those who were no part of her. He was nearly three and did not play. The social work student was concerned. So concerned, in fact, that she made herself into the backbone of the family, even arranging for the children’s move to their grandfather’s house. Their grandfather and Kara herself were appointed guardians; he would provide the resources, she’d provide the management.
The Johnson kids would have a new home, complete with new clothes and new furniture. I was jealous of their sparkly new lives, but knew somehow that a price had been paid and was cautious with Kara, especially when I saw her eyes closing in on my baby sister.
Carol lost her children quietly, and she and her bus-driving husband moved to another part of town. With the Johnson family disassembled and moved, the house at 10 Lamont Place became available. And when Carol’s father offered to rent it to my mother with the option to buy, she jumped at the chance. And once again, we packed our boxes.
We walked our belongings from Grand Avenue to Lamont Place in open cardboard boxes. Our mother’s car had never been repaired and there was no money for movers, so we pushed our washing machine through the city streets. People stopped and looked and wondered what the hell we were doing. It was the ghetto, but most people could find someone with a truck, or at the very least, a car and some rope. A boy ran up and snatched a sneaker from the box I carried and tossed it high in the air, laughing. Only a little older than me, the boy had no shirt on and his arms were the tight buds of muscle common to city kids. He taunted me with the sneaker, wanted me to chase him, but my hands were full and I was stuck. Other kids watched and wondered whether I’d be fool enough to try to reclaim my sneaker.
“Leave that white girl alone,” someone finally called out. “Don’t make her cry.”
I looked away, my face red. By then, I knew how to let things go and decided to focus on what was left in my box—a couple of books and few pairs of pants. I wrapped my arms around my remaining belongings, crossed the street, and headed to our new home on the tiny dead end.