Pint-Sized Stories

May 10 2016
Jack and Lois
Arkell Best Bitter-Wellington Brewing
Thai Peanut  Slaw & Kettle Chips

 

They think they’re so clever. They think they’ve invented the stupid wheel. I see them down there; walking around like it’s their street. Well it isn’t theirs. It isn’t even mine, and it’s more mine than theirs.

I sit here all day; all night. I see them, down there, short skirts, boys with buns, girls with tights they think are pants, little kids with clothes that cost more than my walker. I can’t be sure if they’re boys or girls half the time.

They don’t know what life is. They think they do, but they don’t. I know. I’ve been up here, watching; watching because it’s all that I can do now. I can get down the stairs if I’m lucky. Most days, I’m not. This was a hard winter. It’s drafty and cold up here. I hang more blankets on the window. It helps a little; not much. I see them looking up here. “Oh, it’s so run down. What a shame I could make that so nice,” they say. Oh yes, of course you could, I think. You’re young. You know everything.

They look up. They see an ugly old window. Behind it, behind the blankets, I’m just an ugly old woman behind my ugly old window.

They don’t know that I was beautiful, or that I had pretty curtains or that I used to run up and down these stairs. They don’t know that I had men who sang up to my window, who would bring me flowers and call up to ask me to dance. I did, you know. I danced. I drank wine and sang and danced and sometimes, I would bring one of those beautiful boys home with me.

They think I was born old and ugly, but I wasn’t.

This old window, hiding behind yellowed blankets now; it had music flowing out of it once. It had soft light from candles at night. I used to sit in the window; one leg in, one leg out. I would turn up the Victrola, smoke cigarettes, laugh, my red lipsticked mouth open, my head thrown back.

I was racy, way up here on the third floor.

I remember one night when my girlfriends and I were young. It was the most humid part of the summer. The sweat ran off of you, sitting still. None of us could keep our pin-curls curled or keep our makeup from running, so we didn’t wear any. We pulled our damp hair into knots at the backs of our heads and wrapped scarves around our heads to keep the sweat out of our eyes.

We broke pieces of ice off of a big block with a nail, because nobody had an ice pick. We drank gin with lemonade and we smoked our cigarettes out the window. We played our records and laughed and danced, like only young girlfriends can do, and we sang right along with Frankie and Elvis and with the boys on the street down below, and, well oh my! They really thought we were something; so did we.

I had a lot of nights like that. We did. I remember that night; our laughter and music and cigarette smoke drifting out of my window, into the air, onto the street, into that hot sticky night. We grinned at the boys and flirted with them from the top of the world.

One old lady walked along the sidewalk, pushing a little cart in front of her as she shuffled along in her support hose. We wore shorts with our shirts tied up, baring our midriffs, our faces and feet bare.

She looked up at us from under her scarf, tied beneath her chin, an old world Granny Lady. She scowled at us and shook her crooked, arthritic finger at us. I remember that moment because just then, the record finished, and I heard her. She said, “Meh, you think you’re so clever. Ah, there goes the neighbourhood.”

I look down now, at these young people. I hear them singing, laughing, full of beer and hormones. I sit up here and I look down and I remember.

It’s getting warmer. I might take one of these blankets down, if I can reach.