56 Park Street

56 Park Street

56 Park Street was set in a row house that had 6 apartments. We were the second apartment from the end. The front steps landed on the sidewalk with no front yard. The backyard had six sets of clotheslines that filled up the backyard. We used to drape blankets over the clotheslines and hold the ends down with rocks, making big tents that we called “our forts.”

Our rent was $22 a week and our landlady, Doris, came to collect it every Friday. Doris was sort of a slumlord. She also owned Gill’s Alley and several other mill apartment buildings in town. She was old, unattractive, and smelly. Her belly stuck way out, but the rest of her was skinny. Her hair was a ratty mess and she always wore the same brown polyester pants. One day, my brothers figured out that the couch smelled in the spot where she was sitting. We were all grossed out about it and every week after she came to collect the rent, none of us would sit in the spot where she had been sitting. We would all be holding in our giggles when she visited. When Doris would get up to leave, my brothers would plug their noses behind her back and point to her butt. We would all laugh so hard. Even Mom would be trying to hold in her laughter.

Mom worked hard to make our new apartment warm and comfortable. She took a lot of pleasure in cooking for us and I could tell that she was coming out of her darkness into the light of a new life. She did a lot of sewing and sewed just about everything. She would buy material at Goodwill and make curtains, dresses, shirts, pillowcases, and couch covers. She also knitted hats, scarves, and mittens. She once knitted me the coolest poncho. It was many different colors and I loved it so much that I wore it with pride. Mom also knitted blankets for all of our beds and even made braided rugs for the floors out of twines of wool that Bobby brought home from the mill. She was extremely talented in this area and was somehow able to provide everything that we needed by creating it with her own two hands. She did all of this quietly without notice. The things would just appear as we needed them: a new shirt I needed for school, a spring coat, or curtains for my bedroom. She even made me bathing suits! They would just magically appear. Mom seemed to be happy and this was a nice shift in the house. This apartment seemed much brighten than Gills Alley, especially with Bobby working second shift at the mill. He would often be gone by the time we got home from school and we would be in bed when he got home from the mill.

Bobby’s Polish mother, who we called Grammy, was an amazingly kind woman. She loved us and we loved her. She did not drive, always wore cotton apron dresses, and never said a bad word about anyone. She was soft spoken and plump…. She taught my mom how to cook Polish food and we all loved it. I was always so amazed by mom, by the way she could just learn how to do things and make them come out perfect. She learned how to make kapusta, galumpkies, and porogies perfectly—probably better than Grammy herself. Bobby and all of us loved the Polish food that she made. “Alright Lynn,” Bobby would say as she served the meal.

Mom was always home. I knew I could count on that. She would be doing something in the kitchen or sitting at her sewing machine. She always had something delicious made for us when we got home from school and her Bible was always nearby. She always went without so that we could have; she wore the same winter coat for as long as I can remember.

Bobby managed to stay sober and this was definitely another big improvement in our lives. He was going to church regularly, to ask forgiveness for his sins….. and working lots of hours at the mill. But he often had unexpected bouts of anger and rage and this made it difficult to form a bond with him or to trust that things were going to be okay. His rages came at such unexpected times and for what appeared to be no reason at all. The hardest part was trying to figure out what caused them so you could try to avoid them. Any attempts at doing so always failed because the rages came and went without any warning or reason. Of course “the kids” were always the reason, but there was never any real rhyme or reason. Once you stopped doing the thing that made him rage, something else would just replace it. He would also take it out on my mom, which made me sick inside. I wanted so much to protect her from him, a pattern that would last a life time. When I tried to stick up for her, it just made him more angry and it made him hate me more. The hatred went both ways, I started hating him the day I stuck pins in his violent hands.