9. Will and Me (cont.)

I used to limp sometimes when I walked through town with my mother, reveling in the sympathetic looks I could garner from passing adults. When I was in second grade and playing horsy in the living room with my brother, I fell off his back and broke my arm. All the time I wore the cast and sling, I hated having people looking at me, feeling sorry for me.

I was, even then, aware of the irony in my shift.

A red-ash hill rose in a clearing in the woods. Red-ash hills stood all over that part of northern Illinois. They were deposits left from coal-mining days. I don’t know even today what those piles should properly be called, but everyone—even the grown ups—used to call them red-ash hills. We hiked to the red hills in the woods, climbed them, slid back down on our butts. We must have ruined our clothes, doing that, but I don’t remember being scolded.

We ran free through the summers, leaping through the doors of our houses like birds taking flight. No one asked where we were going. The only time we had to report back was for meals. And then we could always call and ask, “May I have lunch at Betty’s house?” or “May Betty have lunch with us?” The answer was always yes.

We wandered through the vegetable gardens, plucking onion tops for onion-top sandwiches (two slices of bread and butter with unwashed onion tops between, a simple recipe), biting into sun-warmed tomatoes, sampling stalks of rhubarb that made our mouths whither and cringe.