Back Then

I grew up in the rust belt in Pennsylvania. We lived in a few places mostly near rivers. I can still smell the fresh water tang in my nose. The rivers were not dainty. We’re not talking Mississippi level but definitely not those small New England rivers that look more like creeks to me. When I was five we settled down in a steel town. The mill was already on its way out. The air from the coal plant downriver and all the steel mills between our small town and Pittsburgh filled the air with soot. I tested the window sills every summer morning. My thumb tip always turned black. It was a mafia town. High holiday masses were filled with mobsters. The incense wafting over the pews was a lovely counterbalance to all that soot. There were woods nearby. The smell of fallen oak leaves still makes me miss my father. I walked to primary school. There was no cafeteria. We all went home to our mothers at lunch. Once in a while we had an air raid drill to discover if we could make it home to our parents in time if Russia dropped the big one on us. In time to say goodbye, which I didn’t realize until I was older. I played Kick-the-Can and other street games with a passel of kids a few blocks down. I had to be home before the streetlights turned on. Outside we ran wild. Inside we had to be proper. My dad an engineer taught me how to fix anything with what I had at hand. My mother showed me the colors beneath the colors. She had no idea not everyone could see them. You need a special gene for that. Lucky for me, I had it. She never would have understood my inability to see what she could see. She never did. We made houses for our Barbies out of tens of cardboard boxes connected together in my friend’s full but unfinished basement. We spent more time on the carpet and wallpaper samples from my mother’s business than the dolls themselves. I learned to survive a vicious live-in grandmother and a mother who reeked of genteel narcism. “If Claudia wants you to sleep over at her house, her mother can come and get you. If Claudia wants to come here for a sleepover, her mother can drop her off.” In junior high, everyone else got a dime to call home if they got stuck downtown. My mother handed me a ten dollar bill to take a taxi so she wouldn’t have to be bothered. It just occurred to me now, as I write this, that I didn’t have any change to call a taxi.

Cinse Bonino
2023