“This was it?”
“Yes. The fourth floor. You cannot count the times your grandmother would carry the bags up those stairs. Hundreds. Thousands.”
The girl looked up the block. A group of Puerto Rican teenagers sat on a stoop, boys and girls both wearing the same white t-shirts and baggy khaki pants. A boom box thundered out Latin pop, broken and distorted as it echoed off the high walls of the neighborhood.
The old man saw her face, its alarm tinged with disgust.
“A different neighborhood then. We called it our shtetl.”
She did not ask him for a translation.
Community is a curious and transient character.
Good piece.
Marvelous. Evokes so much in a lovely and subtle way.
Dear J Hardy,
This has to be set in Miami. ;) I love the subtlety of the use of shtetl, a word I’m intimate with. Well done.
Shalom,
Rochelle
I was actually thinking of the Bronx when I wrote it! Glad you like it. I knew you would appreciate the shtetl reference.:-)
The Bronx makes perfect sense, too. ;) I do like it very much.
Very vivid description, it was easy to visualize it. Great writing.
Very graphic, especially the music echoing off the surrounding buildings. Nicely done.
I already like that building. I wanna be there.
Well done! Had to look shtetl up of course! Could really see the scene! :-)
I could see her grandma and those bags. Not something I’d want to be doing into my old age. Interesting how the old man pulled her back from her disgust. Community is community. Enjoyed this one.
I can relate to hauling bags of shopping up flights of stairs. Times change and people and communities change, sometimes not for the better.
That took me on a nostalgic trip to my old city too.
Love this story. I remember going back to my childhood home a few years ago and it was so much smaller, the neighborhood dirtier than I remembered. You can’t go home again?
Going back is emotional no matter where you are from. Nice work.
Good story. We see changes everywhere, and with an open mind, we can even learn to appreciate them. The scene is so vivid, I love it.
Vivid imagery, felt as though I was standing outside too. I was waiting for Rochelle to explain shtetl, but I looked it up. Perfect.
Great feeling here. The details bring the scene to life, and the interaction between the two characters is convincing – there are a whole lot of things going on beneath the surface for both of them. Excellent.