Bill Ogden lives in the house next door to ours, on the left, that is, if you’re looking from the street. The small porch is well protected from the sun, with ivy climbing up the side of the red brick wall. We go from the hot sun to the cooler shade and are told to take off our shoes before entering the house.

     Bill lives with his mother and grandmother; no brothers or sisters, no father even. We never ask why and he never talks about it. When his mother comes home from downtown where she works all day as a secretary, tired, she takes off her shoes and puts her feet up on the coffee table. The left stocking has a hole in it. She sits on the couch just where the grated afternoon sunlight passes through the venetian blinds behind her and prints a bright pattern on the side of her cheek. She closes her eyes to avoid the light and presses her body into the couch. Bill’s grandmother, Ninnah, who feels that if she is not always doing something useful they will tell her to leave, brings her a glass of coca-cola with ice cubes rattling inside. The glass sweats and beads up into a puddle of water and drips over the coaster. With her eyes closed, his mother reaches blindly for her purse, removes a cigarette from a case, and fumbles for the lighter that makes a pleasant ringing sound when she opens the lid. She squints at the cigarette tip held against the flame, the lighter rings shut, and the smoke of the lighted cigarette dances in dazzling silver through the incoming sunlight.

     We are just about to begin a game of Candyland. The colorful pieces of the game are scattered over the floor. Bill has heavy eyelids like his grandmother, a wide mouth, and a large dimple in his chin. As he sits on the opposite side of the table on his knees with his legs bent back, Ninnah comes in again and interrupts the complicated explanation of the rules of the game he’s giving illustrated by elaborate hand gestures. She adjusts the air conditioner behind the dining room table and makes the machine hum louder so we barely hear her say:

     “Beeel, why don’t yawl go outside and play? Yer mama’s tired.” This is almost routine: the tiredness, the endless unfinished games, the boredom, an over-ingratiating grandmother…

     Bill lacks experience at disobeying and reacts to the words as if under a spell. He is a strange mixture of spoiled and obedient. He picks us the board from the floor and scoops up the unused game pieces and pours them noisily into the box and puts the game back in his game-stuffed closet. Then we put on our shoes and go outdoors.

     Outside it is splendid; a clear autumn day. The sun is still warm and heats our clothes and skin but leaves the air cool and fresh, untouched. The light of afternoon is brilliant white and washes full-force over the roofs and streets, as if emanating from everywhere. The cicadas throb in pulsing crescendo beneath the ivy, hidden from sight. The heat brings out the fragrance of the dead leaves that move somnambulant, dry and crisp, crunching under our steps. Wisps of clouds with faint gray bottoms hasten before the high winds above, as if swabbing the dense indigo of space behind as they go.

     We find a place to play in the backyard where there is only dirt and bamboo. We have to think of a game this time, which Bill likes better than anything, since he can get any toy he wants just by asking his grandmother for it.

     I’m not comfortable, though, because the new shoes my father bought me for school pinch badly and the back has already rubbed away the skin and made a blister on my heel. They are hard shoes with a brass buckle on the top instead of shoelaces. I chose them quickly because I knew my father wanted to leave the store and I didn’t want to ask for a larger size or the tennis shoes I tried on first but didn’t like. This evening my mother is coming in on the train from Massachusetts with my newborn sister so my father is nervous and short of patience for anything but their arrival.

     My grandfather yells from the back door of our house. He’s standing in the doorway in a white shirt and blue trousers, his bad leg propped up against his cane. I remember when we had just moved in, since the movers had been delayed in bringing our furniture due to the hurricane that had swept over the Gulf, how he slept on a cot in the middle of the barebones living room during the night and sat upon his leather suitcase full of books during the day reading from morning to night, using a folded newspaper as a fan and deterrent against a persistent, resident fly.

     “Oye, it’s time to go to the station. Get ready. Your mommy is bringing your new sister.” Holding on to the doorframe he lifts his cane and points in the direction of the car and Bill and I see only parts of him through the vertical bamboo.

     Before going inside the house to get a piece of cotton to put over the painful raw skin on my heel and put on my old shoes, I tell Bill he can come over tomorrow and he can meet my new sister. With little enthusiasm he says “Yeah,” and returns to his house to see what his grandmother is cooking for supper.

     On the way to the station I see nothing outside the window of the car. I’m trying to imagine what my sister looks like, wondering what my mother will say when she arrives, what name my parents will give my sister, since that has yet to be decided, and how I won’t see my friend Bill again when we move to a larger house at the end of the year.

©Vincent Montenegro

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