Just like our summer days had their routine when Dad wasn’t around, school days did as well. I’ll talk more about school shortly. But for now, suffice it to say that while the days of the school year had a strict regimen, there was a brief respite period between the end of the school day and when Dad would get home.
The 2:30 bell would ring, and two by two we would exit school in an orderly manner. Then, once clear of the nun’s “jurisdiction,” we’d burst down the street, greedily sucking in the fresh air, literally and figuratively.
It was often the same group of us walking down the hill. My siblings and I, some of our friends from the neighborhood, and usually the two brothers who lived down by the corner of our road.
We were always careful to watch over the younger one. He had Cystic Fibrosis and was fragile, whereas his older brother had a robust loudness that couldn’t be easily contained. But still, he, too, had a gentle soul and worried about his brother.
On one walk home, the younger boy just passed out cold. I still remember the thud of his head against the ground, like a melon against asphalt. While we gathered around him, his brother ran full-speed down to his house, yelling for his Mom. I was grateful for his ability to scream on that day, because she came running up toward us before he’d even gotten all the way home. Fortunately, in spite of the fall, he was okay.
Generally, though, our walks were more relaxed. Everybody was chatting about something from their class that day, or just joking and giving each other some good-natured ribbing. At those moments, especially in the fall, I would tune them out and pay more attention to the sensory delights around me.
Shuffling through the leaves, I could feel the dry ones crunch under my shoes and hear the way they crackled at that moment. And there were the wonderfully sweet smells of the rotting earth underneath the leaves.
The sidewalks were like old friends, with each rut and crack a familiar landmark on the journey. I anticipated each one as I approached, their locations imprinted in my brain from years of walking that street. The yard at the top of the hill had jagged, thin cracks in the pale cement sidewalk, unlike the yard halfway home that had the broken asphalt-and-sand driveway, ruptured by tree roots.
I loved how the chilled air felt against the skin in my nostrils. It was the reminder that winter’s cold would arrive soon enough, and that would mean we’d be bundled with boots, scarves, hats, and gloves.
As we reached the crosswalk at the bottom of the hill, we all split up to go to our respective houses. Unlike the summer when we stayed outside playing, the fall meant it would get dark early, and everyone had homework to do.
At home, Mom was usually watching TV at that point, and was a stable presence we never doubted. School shoes and uniforms came off, and the play clothes went on — Mom let us have time to burn off energy, before starting homework and helping with dinner.
For me, I liked to go back outside. The freshness of the cold air smacked away the school-day sluggishness. And outside meant daydreams.
On the surface, I just looked like I was wandering the small yard, running from the cellar door into the garage to the top of those dark garage stairs where I loved to crouch and peek into the locked attic. Then it would be off to crawl beneath arches of overgrown weeds covering the embankment tucked behind the garage, near the garbage cans. Within my mind, though, I was spying on an unseen enemy, heroically tracking and battling warriors, and journeying to far-off places, past, future, and imagined.
Too soon, though, daylight waned, and Mom would say the words that chilled my heart and knotted my stomach: “We need to get things ready. Your dad will be home soon.”
Those words never failed to trigger waves of fear through me. That whole sense of wishing Dad wouldn’t come home that I felt when I was younger never really left. Even now, late afternoons still fill me with a sense of dread. He would be home soon, and it would be “his time,” And you could never tell what his time was going to be like.
I lived for the supper times when Dad was on the second shift at work. He was gone before we got home and wouldn’t get home until we were asleep in bed. Those evenings would be relaxed — no worries for Mom about fancy dinners or desserts. Sometimes we could even convince her to let us have TV dinners. That would never fly when Dad was home.
But those “Dad-would-be-home-soon” nights? I hated them. And the minute he stepped out of the car, I would scrutinize his face for a clue as to how my night might go.
If he had “that look” on his face, my stomach would tighten and I would start thinking up answers to all the questions he might fire at me, hoping to avoid trouble.
And even if he looked happy, which he was sometimes, it still wasn’t a definite thing that he was in a good mood. Sometimes he was smiling because someone was out in the yard, and he just did his “act” until the coast was clear. That look could switch faster than you could blink, once the door to our apartment shut behind him.
It was only then that we would know for sure which face we would get and what the night would hold. Because Dad had two faces…..
Soul Mosaic 
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