TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 75

[Tobie Shapiro]

November 30, 200000000006

Dear Every One,

	I got up awfully early this morning. 
Just opened my eyes and started the day.  You are 
hearing from a woman that has already cleaned the 
cat box, made Meyshe's lunch and set out his 
pills for breakfast.  (not in that order).   I've 
gone over my e-mail accumulated from over night 
(V*iA*Gra cheap).  I have viewed my step 
grandchild, Zinnia, of Atlanta (Cummings, 
Georgia) in her bonnet and with her paternal 
grandparents, sitting among the orange and black 
things, staring off blankly into the camera.  I 
should respond to the pictures posted on the 
internet.  These babies today are widely visible. 
They are catapulted to stardom over the world 
wide web with their own sites.  They have bank 
savings accounts for college in which you are 
encouraged to put a few pennies, here and there. 
It's a secure site.  It's still early folks.  Put 
in your good word in the form of silver and gold. 
I wish I had plenty of gold to spread around, buy 
me a fine house to live out my days in, donate to 
all the causes, even the ones that call up during 
dinner time.  But my earning capacities are 
diminished.  The government sends me disability 
and I make do.  The ex sends me child support and 
spousal support, and I make do.  The kids get a 
pittance as auxiliaries to my disability and I 
make do.  But all that changes after the house 
sale goes through.  Frankly, I'm scared.  It will 
be quite a cut.  I'll have a bundle of cash and 
no cash flow.  I hate money worries.  They're so 
real.  So basic.  So consequential.  It makes me 
want to hole myself up in some cave in the middle 
of a jungle and survive on berries and roast 
squirrel.

	The middle of a jungle.


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Sherry's House

	Rock Creek Forest Elementary School in 
Silver Spring, Maryland was right at the edge of 
Rock Creek Forest.  I don't know how big the 
forest was, nor where exactly it was, because I 
was only eight when we left Maryland, and the 
geographic awareness of an eight year old, this 
eight year old, was minimal.  But I do remember 
that at the edge of the playground of Rock Creek 
Forest Elementary School was the forest, and 
right there at the edge was a smaller playground, 
bordered by a wooden stake fence that made it 
look like  a corral.  Inside the corral were 
wooden horses on poles and we could climb up into 
the saddles and ride them.  I had a favourite 
horse, and when I mounted the horse, my name was 
not Tobie Shapiro anymore, it was Sugar.  Sugar 
rode that wooden horse everywhere, with or 
without company.  Beyond the corral was the 
forest, itself, and we had been told not to go 
into the forest.  I imagined what the dangers in 
the forest could be.  There could be wild 
animals: bears, or buffalo, hyenas, lions, or 
snakes.  I never thought that there might be wild 
people in the forest.  I had not yet heard of 
wild people.  And I listened to the warnings not 
to go into the forest, and I obeyed.

	There was a girl in my second grade class 
whose name was Sherry.  She always came to school 
with a little bit of soft boiled egg around her 
mouth from breakfast.  Sherry and I were playing 
on the horses in the corral after school and she 
got down off her horse and told me she had 
something to show me in the forest.

	"We're not supposed to go into the 
forest, " I reminded her.  "There are animals in 
it."

	"I'm not afraid of animals.  There are only birds."

	"But there might be other dangerous things in the forest."

	"Like what?" she challenged me.  And for 
the life of me, I couldn't think of what else 
there could be in Rock Creek Forest, so I agreed 
to follow her.

	We headed off directly into the forest, 
through a path through the trees that were thick 
and tall, blazing with colour because it was 
autumn, and the floor of the forest was covered 
with leaves.  We crunched through, I following 
Sherry who certainly seemed to know where she was 
going.  There was no hesitation in her step and 
she acted as if she were on her way home, a tried 
path.  After a while, we came to a little house 
in the midst of the trees.  It was a one room 
house with two doorways, a front doorway and a 
back doorway, I suppose, although either could 
have been either.  There were no doors, just the 
gaping openings.  There were four windows, one on 
each of the four walls, without any window panes 
in them.  They were just framed holes in the 
walls.  I don't think it was dusty or moldy or 
abandoned.  It looked lived in.  There was even a 
telephone lying there on the floor, which was 
grey linoleum tiles.  The floor was uneven, but 
that telephone was perfectly balanced.  Sherry 
went directly to the phone, picked up the 
receiver and dialed a number.  She was calling 
her house.  She talked to her mother on the phone 
and told her she'd be home soon; she was just 
showing Tobie the house.  And that was all she 
said, before she hung up.  So I asked if I could 
phone my mother and tell her I'd be home soon, 
that I was just visiting Sherry's house.  But 
Sherry said the house didn't belong to her except 
that she'd found it, so she could use the phone. 
But I couldn't.

	I walked around the little house, and 
noted that the only things in the house were the 
linoleum tiled floor, the telephone, and one 
chair, a rickety chair with a broken woven seat. 
Then Sherry led me back out of Rock Creek Forest 
and through the corral back to Rock Creek Forest 
Elementary School.  I lived only a half block 
from the school.  She said she had to go home. 
Her mother was expecting her.  We said goodbye 
and went our separate ways.

	I never told my mother about the house in 
the woods.  I figured that she wouldn't believe 
me.  I never went back to the house, never saw it 
again.  Never told anyone about it 'til now.


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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net