The dead end of the street was a fenced-in park that sealed off the street like a cork. The weedy lot was used by kids for baseball and running, by men for drinking and fighting, and as access to Goodman Plaza—a square of rundown shops, including a large grocery, a Laundromat, and a furniture store that sold pressed-wood dinette sets to neighborhood women on layaway plans. The pavement in the plaza was smooth, providing a good place to ride bikes and a cut-through to the old Italian bakeries where we bought sweets and pizzas when money was available.
Though I preferred to bury myself under a pile of blankets and read Nancy Drew and Greek mythology all day, Steph was always there, standing over me, pulling me from Persephone on a regular basis. Once she had me in her hold, she’d convince me to ride bikes to Tyron Park or East High School, or to find old sticks and a puck and start up a game of street hockey. Groups of kids headed to the park for sweaty games of baseball and football. We’d spend cool nights playing porch games—Mother May I? and What Time Is It Mr. Fox?—and street games of Spud, Kick the Can, and Hide & Seek.
Girls spent hours twirling bits of rope stolen from mothers’ clotheslines. We drew chalk lines and played endless varieties of hopscotch. An older neighbor would inevitably call the police when games went too late and the laughter failed to die and a blue and white patrol car would skim down the street and ask us to quiet down, which we always did, at least until the police car was out of sight.
We learned to look out for utility vans and police cars. The fact was, most people on the street didn’t drive, so any real traffic came from those who turned onto Lamont Place on accident. We waited as slow coasting cars made their approach. Strangers looked out from windows as if they were seeing ghosts and wondering where the hell they were. We hated having to suspend our play, and stood near the curb, balls set to rest in the dips of our waists, faces wet with sweat, staring into the cars as they finally realized their mistake, screwed up their faces, and turned back around in someone’s driveway.
There was nothing worse than a utility van coming down the street. They weren’t coming to repair lines and wires but, rather, to cut someone’s power off.
Very likely ours.
When my mother couldn’t pay a bill, she’d simply toss it aside, unopened, like a paper boat set upon a stream. As her ability to pay lessened, heaps of unopened mail accumulated on bookshelves and tables. Instead of throwing them away, she’d add each bill to the piles until they grew through the house like a mountain chain.
Utility vans rolled slow and steady toward our house. We’d see them coming, peek out from windows, and pray they wouldn’t stop at our house. When they did, and a uniformed man approached our door, we’d scatter like roaches.
“Shhhh,” someone always said. “If we don’t open the door, they can’t cut off our power.”
This bit of urban lore was true for only a few days. Eventually they’d access the wires from outside the house and we’d suffer the pity of neighbors who donated battery-powered camping lamps and snaked extension cords through their windows and into ours.
We learned to jump at knocks on the door, cringe when the telephone rang. When bill collectors called, I learned to say what they wanted to hear.
“I think she mailed that check out this week,” or “I’ll be sure and tell her to call.”
I became an expert at pretending to write down return numbers. What’s the point, I thought, since my mother won’t be calling them back?
I was caught once. Lying. By a sharp-tongued bill collector whose voice reached through the pumpkin-colored phone mounted to the kitchen wall and grabbed hold of my ear.
“Are you sure you wrote that number down, young lady?”
When I said yeah, she asked me to read it back. I stuttered and stalled; my face went red. I considered hanging up, but lacked the courage. When she asked for my name, I dumbly gave it, and she began to use it. Often, and with authority.
“Let’s be honest now, Sonja, we never wrote that number down, did we?”
My humiliation was thorough. Convinced she could see me through the phone, I felt real nausea as I admitted that I’d never written the number down. Even as I wandered off in search of a pen, I hated her for her tone, her use of the word “we,” the thoroughness of her power over me.
The phone’s ring was not a delight for me, as it was for other preteen girls. Instead a ringing phone was a police whistle, making me stand at attention, pointing at me like a finger.
I never knew who was calling. It could have been Rochester Gas & Electric, Rochester Telephone, or the man who sold appliances out of the back of his van—though he usually came in person to collect payment.
My mother bought a TV from him. Steph had done the math and told her it was a bad deal. She told her she’d be paying much more than it was worth, and was being cheated. My mother knew Steph was right, but was annoyed at her interference. She couldn’t have a child telling her what to do. So she bought the damn TV, and added one more person wanting money we did not have, one more van to look out for, one more reason to hide from knocks on the door.