BRINGIN’ UP MAGGIE
More than any of the seasons, Fall bestows a sense of time passing. We turn inward, our mood gone to nostalgia for things we cannot recapture. This month’s offering: an excerpt from one of my short stories, written for the Fall Section of For All The Right Seasons. More memoir than fiction, it still brings a smile…and a tear.
BRINGIN’ UP MAGGIE
Bromley-Heath Housing Project, Jamaica Plain MA, 1946~1949
© Copyright 2017 by Jayne M. Adams
Maggie and I were what people called “Irish twins,” siblings born within twelve months of one another. That was pretty much where the “twin”-ness began and ended. My kid sister was petite, delicate, dark-eyed and brunette. I was tall, big-boned, and fair. When one is first-born, there is an undeniable urge to lead the way. I made it my job to take this younger creature under my broad wing and show her the ropes. The sheer size difference between us also engendered in me an overwhelming feeling of protectiveness towards the diminutive Maggie.
We began our lives together as nursery-mates in a post-war housing project. Our apartment was a third story walk-up in a dingy red brick compound surrounded by chain link fencing, in an industrial neighborhood with few pretensions. The complex provided few luxuries––our mothers hung wash outside in a community laundry yard while we played in the dirt at their feet. Our end of town was reserved for those who lacked money or political currency. Our parents had neither.
Maggie and I shared a room. Her crib––my old one––was on an inside wall. My bed sat on the exterior wall under the room’s only window, a spot which afforded me a magical view of the world outside. From there, I could monitor the comings-and-goings of neighbors, see who was playing on the playground, and gaze out over dozens of tightly-packed rooftops. Before I turned four, I was slipping out alone, compelled to explore what I could see from our room’s outlook. When Mama discovered my solo expeditions, the punishment was swift and harsh: spanking and solitary confinement for the rest of the day. But I remained steadfast in the belief that exploring was my job. Reporting my findings to Maggie was my passion. So I suffered the spankings and the lone wanderings continued.
During one foray on a rare sunny day, the glint of yellow metal caught my eye. I had happened upon a rundown factory of some sort, where piles of little brass buckles––the kind they used to embellish women’s and girls’ shoes––had been dumped in the dirt outside a back door. I stuffed my pockets with them and raced home to show Maggie all the “gold” treasure I had discovered. She giggled her delight and we dropped to the floor together, throwing piles of “booty” in the air and letting them rain down over us. The door of our room banged open. Mama stood in the opening, hands on her hips.
“Where did you get these things? Huh? Look at me when I talk to you! Have you left the yard again? So help me, I’d better get some answers fast or you’re in real trouble!”
I did some fast-talking, while Maggie delivered her best innocent-eyes-bigger-than-saucers look. Neither tactic worked on Mama this time. Another spanking and solitary confinement for me. Undaunted, I returned to the shoe factory again and again, looking for “gold” to bring home to Maggie, my searches ever-widening to bring her fresh discoveries. She never failed to reward me with her complete delight and total acceptance of whatever embellished travelogue I was selling each day.
Soon, she was captivated by the things that flew by our window and she babbled to me in the language only we understood: Would I undertake another assignment on her behalf? Would I find out what made all those flapping noises?
Say no more! I slipped out of the apartment, made my way up a dark hall stairway and out through the roof door. Dropping to my belly, I inched around the flat tarpaper-and-gravel surface to peer down into the project’s yard. Sheets flagged on sagging clotheslines in the enclosure below. Nope,that’s not it!
A huge flock of pigeons wheeled onto the rooftop. Their iridescent colors glowed in the sun. No two of them had the same markings on their feathers and they were a beautiful sight. This is what I came for! I stood and ran to them, waving my arms and laughing with delirious abandon. A nosy neighbor must have turned me in––maybe that lady whose door was near the stairway. I heard Mama’s screech a moment before her arms snatched me up.
The sentence was extra harsh that day. But it was worth everything just to see Maggie’s eyes widen when we lay in our room after supper and I described every detail for her. About how the birds flapped in, the huge rustling sound on our roof. About their colors and their shininess, and how they pecked and poked around in the gravel and seemed to find food. About how far I could see from up there. Maggie looked at me with undisguised adoration for bringing all of this to her. What was a spanking compared to that?
[the rest of the story will appear next month, on November 1]