Lemay and Charlevoix When I Was Four
Our house was the fourth house from the corner on a street of one-family homes, all painted white with straight-across porches and three unpainted wooden steps leading to the front door. Some of the doors had oval glass set in a frame of dark wood. Our house had regular rectangular glass. My mother liked it better than the oval, I don't know why, although Emily and Helen, high school girls who lived further down the street with their factory worker father - who wore large blue overalls and carried a "lunch pail" with a place for a thermos in the lid ( I thought it was very nice, to carry a hot drink like cocoa, although he had just coffee) - well, they had the oval glass in their front door and I thought it was because the father worked in a factory and so I reasoned that was why my mother didn't like the oval glass (my mother always had reasons for everything).
We had a backyard with bushes of white flowers and a wooden walk out to the garage and alley. Our father put up a tow rope swing in the garage, with a wooden plank for a seat. No one else had such a marvelous swing in their garage and that's how we came to know the Kappas family. The Kappas owned the grocery store on the corner of Lemay and Charlevoix. Mr.Kappas was tall and very handsome, with a mustache that curled up on each side of his upper lip and he had very deep set eyes that looked sad even when he was happy. Mrs. Kappas was also very tall and very pretty, with curly black hair that kept falling away from the many little tortoise combs she wore to keep her hair neat. Their sons were Joe and JoJo.
Joe was already six years old and his brother JoJo was five years old. They had a baby brother, too. My sister named him Blah Blah, the sound he made when he cried, she said. His real name was Freddy and he wanted to play with his brothers, who ignored him and so there he was, trudging along, with his baby bottle dangling from his dear little mouth, diapers all baggy and wet until he would fall on the sidewalk with such a wail. I loved him. I would pick him up and carry him as best I could back to the store. The mother and father Kappas were grateful for my attention to their little baby and would offer me a treat, a carrot or something like that. I really was hoping for grapes; they spoke in Greek and sometimes Greek and English together. I guess that is what is called broken English.
Their store was a place of exotic smells and beautifully displayed fruits and vegetables! Even the turnips and onions were events in themselves, piled together to show how delicious they could be once they were cooked. And the grapes! Red and green, blue and purple, fat bunches huddled together in large flat baskets. There was always time, while my mother talked about her groceries, for me to run over to the grapes and pick off one or two. Just to pop the grape into my mouth and bite down on the thin skin while the slippery juice slid down my throat was, each time, a suprise to me. A heavenly experience all in one little piece of fruit, the grape. I was in love with the grape.
But then, there on the counter, next to my mother's grouping of groceries, sat another treat, a basket of gumballs. (I thought they were gumballs; they were jawbreakers. I had never heard of jawbreakers) So with the deftness of a tried and true thief, I picked out a red, cinnamon flavored jawbreaker. No grape was ever so hard! My mother insisted I had turned blue, like a grape, she said, and Mr. Kappas grabbed my ankles and shook me upside down (very unfriendly of him, I later thought) . . . and then the red cinnamon jawbreaker tumbled from my mouth and bounced across the dark wooden floor all across the store. My mother was sorry that I had almost died, and she also told me to pick up the jawbreaker and throw it in the Kappas' garbage! I thought that was not very nice of her since I had almost died. JoJo heard about it and he told me I was brave and so we continued to be friends and I invited him to swing on our amazing swing in our garage. We locked my sister and Joe out and we took turns pushing each other to very high heights, all the while singing Baa Baa Black Sheep, the only song JoJo knew, much to my sorrow. I wanted to sing Tip Toe Through the Tulips but he didn't know the words.
Pearl, All In One Day
We had a backyard with bushes of white flowers and a wooden walk out to the garage and alley. Our father put up a tow rope swing in the garage, with a wooden plank for a seat. No one else had such a marvelous swing in their garage and that's how we came to know the Kappas family. The Kappas owned the grocery store on the corner of Lemay and Charlevoix. Mr.Kappas was tall and very handsome, with a mustache that curled up on each side of his upper lip and he had very deep set eyes that looked sad even when he was happy. Mrs. Kappas was also very tall and very pretty, with curly black hair that kept falling away from the many little tortoise combs she wore to keep her hair neat. Their sons were Joe and JoJo.
Joe was already six years old and his brother JoJo was five years old. They had a baby brother, too. My sister named him Blah Blah, the sound he made when he cried, she said. His real name was Freddy and he wanted to play with his brothers, who ignored him and so there he was, trudging along, with his baby bottle dangling from his dear little mouth, diapers all baggy and wet until he would fall on the sidewalk with such a wail. I loved him. I would pick him up and carry him as best I could back to the store. The mother and father Kappas were grateful for my attention to their little baby and would offer me a treat, a carrot or something like that. I really was hoping for grapes; they spoke in Greek and sometimes Greek and English together. I guess that is what is called broken English.
Their store was a place of exotic smells and beautifully displayed fruits and vegetables! Even the turnips and onions were events in themselves, piled together to show how delicious they could be once they were cooked. And the grapes! Red and green, blue and purple, fat bunches huddled together in large flat baskets. There was always time, while my mother talked about her groceries, for me to run over to the grapes and pick off one or two. Just to pop the grape into my mouth and bite down on the thin skin while the slippery juice slid down my throat was, each time, a suprise to me. A heavenly experience all in one little piece of fruit, the grape. I was in love with the grape.
But then, there on the counter, next to my mother's grouping of groceries, sat another treat, a basket of gumballs. (I thought they were gumballs; they were jawbreakers. I had never heard of jawbreakers) So with the deftness of a tried and true thief, I picked out a red, cinnamon flavored jawbreaker. No grape was ever so hard! My mother insisted I had turned blue, like a grape, she said, and Mr. Kappas grabbed my ankles and shook me upside down (very unfriendly of him, I later thought) . . . and then the red cinnamon jawbreaker tumbled from my mouth and bounced across the dark wooden floor all across the store. My mother was sorry that I had almost died, and she also told me to pick up the jawbreaker and throw it in the Kappas' garbage! I thought that was not very nice of her since I had almost died. JoJo heard about it and he told me I was brave and so we continued to be friends and I invited him to swing on our amazing swing in our garage. We locked my sister and Joe out and we took turns pushing each other to very high heights, all the while singing Baa Baa Black Sheep, the only song JoJo knew, much to my sorrow. I wanted to sing Tip Toe Through the Tulips but he didn't know the words.
Pearl, All In One Day
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6:06 AM
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