This story was originally about an incident that took place in my neighborhood as a young teenager. Suprisingly it morphed into something unexpected. It began with the angst I felt about watching my younger sister, when she unexpectedly broke her leg under my watch. But it was our new neighbor that became the main story.

THE NEW NEIGHBOR

It was one of those ends of spring days in New England. The weather was getting warmer, the days longer and the end of the school year was upon us. What happened that late afternoon was fuzzy at times, clear as day at others. Decades have gone by, as I reflect on what took place that day. At the time my fourteen year old self would have called it a tragedy. Today I would call it an awakening, about who I thought I was back then.

The 60’s were tumultuous, but this was the end of that decade. Surely we, as Americans had learned a great deal about war, civil rights and our own prejudices. As I mentioned previously, summer was just weeks away. I was sitting at the typewriter, hoping to get a school project completed so that I could enjoy the upcoming Memorial day weekend. My mother announced that she, my dad and 4 year old brother were going out for an early dinner that evening. My 10 year old sister was out playing with friends and that I was to keep an eye out for her.

I should note here that our neighborhood, like many in our town was made up of Irish and Italian Catholics, except for the one Jewish family that lived a few houses up the street. The average household had six children, so our street and several streets over made up a very white, nondiverse neighborhood. Except… two years prior, the young family across from us had moved and a new family from Texas (!) had moved in. A black family. With one child. Well, we were certainly a welcoming neighborhood… My parents introduced themselves and we went on with our lives. Except…this family had decided to paint their ranch house a very bright, lime green! Amongst white, brown and gray houses, this stood out like a sore thumb. Was this a Texas color? Word was out that this was a second marriage. ( in our Catholic neighborhood!) Her first husband was white and their two daughters were grown and married. The second marriage produced a son, several years younger than myself, who went by the name of JB. Rarely did we see the wife or son, but soon rumors started circulating in the neighborhood. A family a street over had some things taken from their home. Could that have been JB, they whispered? Other kids talked of him stealing froma store nearby. The father’s name was Sid, short for Sidney, like the handsome black actor, Portier. However, this Sid was nothing like him. Heavy set, freckled, didn’t speak in the quiet, hesitant way as Portier did in the movies and walked with a limp. Several weeks after they moved in, the husband announced to the many neighborhood children, who normallyplayed amongst all the connecting neighborhood lawns, that no one was to step foot on his property. How would we be able to play Kick the Can, roll down the hill, sled from the top of the hill through his side lawn, across the street, and down our side lawn on our sleds in the winter? This was an upheaval in our lives that we kids could not believe!

It was with this in mind that late afternoon, when the doorbell rang and I could see the outline of my neighbor. My parents had already left, so I went to the door. There stood Sid, my distraught sister in his arms, explaining that she had fallen on his lawn, that her leg may be broken. I told him I was babysitting and that he could put her on the living room sofa. He offered to take her to the hospital, but in that moment I was in shock. Once he had left, I asked my sister what happened. She said she was in the next yard over from Sid’s and had run down the hill to wave goodbye to my parents and slipped and fell into his yard. I could tell she was in a lot of pain. Cell phones were not invented. I had no idea what restaurant my parents had gone to or when they would be back. I decided to call our family doctor to ask her what I should do. Back then she answered the phone herself. She told me to elevate the leg, put an ice pack on it and to wait until my parents had come home. I was a minor so that the hospital and ambulance would need my parents permission to admit her. I could not concentrate on my school report. The hours seemed to tick slowly by. When my parents got home, I was so distraught that I had trouble getting the words out. I felt like I was choking.

Back from a long night at the hospital, my parents informed me that my sister had broken her leg in two places and had to wear a full leg cast for several months. Sid had come by the next day with some candy for her and to see how she was doing.

This is not the story of a child breaking her leg, of an older sister having to make decisions on how to handle the situation. This is coming to terms about prejudices and how they take on a life of their own. Did I think I was prejudice towards black people at the time? No. Why, I had been on trips down south where I was shocked that one bathroom was for whites and the other for Negroes. They were people just like us! I read about slavery and its horrors in school. I saw the marches for equality on tv. I watched Martin Luther King Jr give extraordinary speeches. But I and those in our all white town, so honorable in our outlook towards people of color, had prejudices slip quietly into our minds without question.

We really knew nothing about these newcomers to our neighborhood, except that they were people of color and we assumed that everything they did was because they were people of color. We did not stop to think that they had moved from a state they may not have wanted to leave. That their young son may have felt awkward, different in an all white neighborhood. Heck, in an all white town. That Sid walked with a limp, due to painful gout that would make anyone grumpy. That he took pride in his yard and didn’t want children picking his flowers or trampling on his newly seeded lawn. Perhaps his wife’s first husband died and they had found each other and were happy to start a new life. We will never know, because we never bothered to find out.

He carried my sister, not knowing if she had broken her leg, to our home. Offered to take her to the hospital and the next time came over to offer her candy and to see how she was. How was this any different than what anyone of us would have done?

Over the years, I got to know Sid as an adult. He certainly was a character. Age and personality differences would never make us friends, but we certainly could be neighbors.

Sheila Englert

--

2