short story

Georgia Bertholet




Shifting Gears

I'm seven years old. I live on the fourth floor. The public housing where I live has been a pretty nice place for us kids to grow up. Although I once heared an adult say what a terrible town it is to raise your teenagers. I'm not sure why. And I don't care. I'm too busy enjoying the pool infront of my building, and the games of hide and seek we play (I always hide in the garbage chute near the elevator). My favorite passtime is building forts in the field next to my building. I couldn't believe it when I heared that they're planning on building houses on that land and putting up a high fence to seperate them from us. Right now I don't see much of a diffenerence between the kids who live in the houses on the street behind us from us kids in the buildings. Except maybe that our games involve more imagination than theirs and that they spend more time inside than we do. Sometimes the building kids and the wealthier kids make it a point not to get along but just as often, everyone spontaneously forgets that they don't like each other and play together at the park.

Today all my best friends from the building are inside because their social worker is coming to visit. They live on the first floor. They're a family of five kids. I love them, they are like my second family. But it's not fun at their appartment on the days that the social worker visits because their mom, who's name is Beverly and who's like my second mom, turns off the horror movies we watch and puts on boring stuff. She doesn't let us blast loud music and eat kentucky fried chicken either. She makes us stay inside and clean and even study the bible. yuck. Even Devonte, who is the oldest brother and who never usually does what he is told, is on his best behavior today. Yesterday Devonte stole some CDs from someone's house that Beverly was cleaning. He took out all the paper covers from inside them and lit them on fire. Later on he burned his younger brother Devin's neck  with the lighter. I heared my mom say that it was wrong of Beverly not to bring Devin to the hospital. She talked about how Devin is such a nice kid and how it's crazy that she's more worried about Devonte getting into trouble than Devin's neck. But today Devonte is helping Beverly by doing the dishes. I'd rather go play at the park untill the social worker leaves. I tell my friends that I'll see them later. I don't like that social worker lady. She tells Beverly that the kids need to see their dad. But things seem starnge when he visits. I only see him on the nights that I sleep over there, because their dad almost only visits late at night. I hear him yelling at Beverly, something about her having a cracked head or something but I don't understand what exactly he's so angry about.  Well anyway I'll just go to the park till that bossy social worker leaves, they'll probably come meet me outside once she's gone and we can all have fun again.

Most of the kids at the park right now are from the houses on the river road behind our buildings. Only one of the kids from the buildings is there. Her name is Faith. She's younger than I am. She's an only child and she lives on the second floor. She's always the first one outside in the moring because her mom doesn't like it when she makes noise or turns the lights on. People say her mom is a prostitute. I'm not sure what that is but I think it has something to do with her boobs. One time she didn't have money to pay the rent. Faith said they were worried that they were gonna have to move. But then she said her mom got a funny idea. When the guy passed by to complain about the rent, faith's mom showed him her boobs. He gave her extra time to get the rent money and he wasn't angry anymore.

Faith has brown eyes and her hair is somewhere between blond and brown. People say we look like sisters. A few days ago my mom made a brown eyed daisy club when I was walking the dog and picking flowers with her in the field with a few other girls.  My mom said it was a club for pretty girls with big brown eyes. Trina was there but my best friend Shondelle, which is Trina's older sister, wasn't there because she went with Beverly, her mom, to Super C which is the grocery store that they go to but that I don't like because I still remember the time that there were maggots in the box of kraft dinner that they bought from there. Even though I love Shondelle's whole family, Trina does get on my nerves sometimes, but I guess that's what little sisters are for. Trina's best friends with Faith and when they get together they like to annoy me and Shondelle sometimes. But they were being pretty nice that afternoon and when we played the Brown Eyed Daisy club Faith and I were the King and Queen and Trina was the princess. they said I had to be the king because I'm a tomboy. I was happy Alana wasn't there because she's the only girl around our age who lives in the building and has blue eyes and she'd probably feel left out and that would be bad because she's a crybaby. Later when Shondelle got back and I ditched Faith and Trina,  Faith wrote in the dirt with a stick that I'm not as pretty as her because I have red hair. Next to that she wrote that she was exotic. It had become a popular word ever since we had heared her mother use it and we knew it had something to do with being a pretty woman. Shondelle scratched it out and wrote that Faith still wears diapers. 

while I'm waiting for Shondelle and the rest to come outside, me and faith start a game of tag with the kids from down the street. But that gets boring pretty fast. Then faith says she has a better idea. Ther's a car shop next to our building, and the cars that they're working on in the back are usually left unlocked. She thinks it would be fun to go play inside them and pretend we're driving. So we go do that. Everybody thinks it sound like a fun idea. We take turns sitting in the driver seat. One of the mechanics comes out the side door of the car shop. He shakes his finger at us but he has a smile on his face. He asks faith if she's old enough to have a license and laughs when she says she's only six and a half. Then he tells us to go play somewhere else and to stay out of trouble. I get hungry and go home to eat and watch tv.

The next day as soon as I wake up i go knock on the door where Shondelle's family lives on the first floor. We go swim for a bit and then play hide and seek. Then we get bored. I tell them about me and faith and the kids from down the street and how we played in the cars, So all of us go  over to the car shop to play in the cars again. Even Devonte comes with us. But this time I don't even get a turn playing behind the wheel. Devonte is still playing when one of the mechanics comes out the side door. He looks really angry. He screams at us at the top of his lungs. We run out the car. It's way more fun than tag. The youngest kid, maybe two or three, is crying because he can't run fast. I pick him up and run with him in my arms. We throw the side door of our building open (good thing it's always broken) and slam it shut, the mechanic is just behind us. All six of us pull on the handle so he can't get in. When we realize that he's not trying to get in we let go and burst into laughter, I've never had so much fun. But then confusion sets in. I turn to Shondelle. I ask her why he was so mad this time when yesterday he didn't care about me and faith playing in the car. She tells me he thought her brother was trying to steal the car. I ask why he didn't think me and faith were trying to steal it last time. She laughs and points at my pale arm. I'm even more confused. I ask her if her brother really was trying to steal it. She shrugs. then she says maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. She says that all the mechanic saw today was a bunch of black kids in his car so it doesn't matter what was really happening. It dawns on me for the first time that people will never see me as part of this family.