Once upon a time, I lived in this house. It’s the longest roof I’ve ever lived under consecutively, as a matter of fact. I was brought home from the hospital to this little yellow house and it was my home until I was three. That’s how old I was when my parents divorced and I spent the rest of my childhood bouncing between them every six months as they changed jobs and homes and lives. As an adult, I’ve always felt like a gypsy or a nomad and while I’d like to say that people who claim their childhood has that much of an impact on their lives as adults are exaggerating, I felt a bit of undeniable truth in the notion as I stood outside of what’s left of this place.
I went home over the weekend, or rather; I went back to where I’m from. I hadn’t been back to the Detroit area in three years, when I’d gone back for my grandmothers funeral. I drove with Mina past the houses on the block that this one was on and took note that nearly one in three was boarded up. In comparison, the garbage bag covered windows and the collapsing fence made this house seem like a hardened survivalist.
I visited the elementary school that I’d attended and Mina was shocked when I told her that the neighborhood that I’d grown up in meant that it’s doors were always locked except for when we would line up to enter the building in the morning and the principal would hold them open for us. She told me that if she’d arrived early in her little Texas town, she’d just go to the cafeteria or the library. She had no idea what it meant to be bussed past three closer schools for the sake of desegregation.
We walked across the graffitied asphalt to the playground, where I hung from the monkey bars and she swung on the swings while I tried to figure out how much effect time had on my memory of the place and if it was greater than it had on the place itself. Had the paint on every surface always been so stripped, faded?
