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Show in my father's house/ 179 Isaac shook his head and turned away. I frowned and followed my mother into the kitchen. In the hours after school, I wandered through the house into the yard, driven outdoors by the aggravating repetitions of my mother's piano students. I watched the neighborhood children as they played together, loneliness stabbing my chest. But so many years of ready-made playmates had kept me ignorant of the tricks and halloos by which one child meets another. One day I rolled a ball across the street and ran after it, hoping to start something. One of the children picked up my ball. "Can't have it back. Finders keepers." My heart thumped and I took a deep breath. "We can play together." "OK." The boy threw the ball at me. We tossed it back and forth a few minutes and then began tossing bottlecaps against the side of the house. I heard my mother calling to me. "I have to go," I said and hurried across the street. "Don't play with those kids, Jeannie," my mother said. "I've heard the way they talk - such language! And that bottlecap game is no better than gambling." "But Mama, I have to play with someone." "Then play with someone else. Those kids are ill-mannered and bad examples." She went into the house and closed the door. Then I noticed how grey the boy and his brothers and sisters seemed, as though their clothing and bodies had not been washed >or months. Although our clothing was old and faded, it was always :lean and neatly mended. |