Moms will do anything and everything to protect their children, but this time the knock was too loud.
I was too young to know what the word “repossession” meant, but I assumed it was bad when I saw a heavy-set bald
man driving away in our car.
At the time I didn’t understand how or why my mom would let this happen.
We walked a lot for the next two weeks, up and down Jericho Turnpike.
I started to understand and look at money in a whole new light – a dark one.
By the end of May, everything was “back to normal.” We got a jalopy, which until eighth grade I thought was a
name brand of a car.
I remember my mom, turning her head to me sitting in the back, her eyes filling with tears.
“There’s no AC, but, hey, at least we have a radio,” she said.
I didn’t care about that. I cared about figuring out an excuse as to why I didn’t need her to pick me up from school. I guess you could say I wasn’t too proud of the missing hubcaps, garbage bag window replacement and rust-filled door.
By the beginning of June everything went back to abnormal. This time it wasn’t our stupid black Toyota; it was our house.
Eviction, like repossession, had the same shameful tone to it.
It meant packing up the room I grew up in, every Beenie Baby, every Spice Girl T-shirt and every Backstreet Boy poster. I’d let out a cry between taping up boxes, but mom simply said, “We have no choice but to carry on,” quoting her beloved Crosby Stills Nash and Young.
We did just that, carried on. Our new apartment was nice –nice and small.
“We lost the yard,” my mom said, “but hey, you’ve never had a tub.”
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Check out the individual posts:
Bringing Home the Bacon by Zan Strumfeld
Next Day Air by Malcolm Harper
Bedside Manner by Keith Carroll