"The House on Eighty-Third Street," by Dianne R. Carr

The House on 83rd Street looked like the house that was next to it and the house to the left of it when the ladies patrolled the street from windowsills feathered with fat plumpy pillows.

And the ladies would shout down—stretching forward—cushions lined up like smiling teeth in the face of a great black whale—“Hey! Nevaminda you play! Get upstairs beforra you fatha’ come home!”

But Ring-A-Levio was in the streets—snakes of children—winding and spinning—and the house on 83rd Street was silently watching and waiting.

And pony carts would come, and an ice cream man, and an ice man, and a man who sold rope, and a man who sharpened knives. And the little house opened its doors and closed its doors as I would climb step-by-step to the waiting rooms and the doors with the half glass tops and the fire escape that looked above and beyond to the church steeple in the blue grey skies with smoking chimneys that told me I was home.