Hi Ho, Hi Ho (it's off to work I go)

This is a picture of me, but not Helen.  I don't have a picture of Helen.

The woman in this picture married the brother of my mother.  I thought 

she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.  She was so fair that

 even her brows and lashes were blond.  If you read Ghost Tour, it was to

 the farm of this aunt and uncle our dog, Laddie, was sent after chewing

my mother's shoes.  Here, we are sitting on my mother's  tapestry sofa.

The first job I ever had was dusting knick-knacks for my mother’s best friend who lived across the street from us on Andrews Avenue. Her name was Helen and she had a raised mole above her lip which I asked her about. I was 6 years old. Helen also had a deformed right index finger which I also asked her about. It got run over by a sewing machine needle is what she told me. She had short curly hair because her daughter Gladys gave her a Toni home perm every couple of months. She was plump and always wore a dress, most of which had interesting and beautiful patterns. I hated it when she wore a plain dress of one color and no pattern.

From where they sat in Helen’s kitchen they could see many of the neighbor’s houses. Mrs. Swanson, the Browns (my grandparents), the Ritters, the Lipinskys, the Donovans, and the Chambers lived in the row on the other side of the sidewalk, directly across from Helen’s kitchen windows. They talked about all of them, sometimes they whispered, and that is why they liked me to stay in the living room and do my work. Helen said “little pitchers have big ears” and I knew what that meant.

“Mrs. Swanson’s son Albert is going to marry the Lipinsky’s daughter and move to Canada, and Mrs. Swanson will be all alone. He is a Mama’s boy, you know. Grandpa Brown doesn’t like my mother visiting Helen because my mother and Helen drink whiskey, and he doesn't like my father because my father is an Italian and a Catholic. The Ritter’s are dirty Southerner’s with too many kids and Mrs. Ritter is low class for sitting on her front steps and nursing her baby. The Lipinskys are dumb polocks and their house always smells like cabbage. Mrs. Donovan is not the real mother of Melvin like everybody thinks; Melvin’s real mother is Mrs. Donovan’s daughter, Lorena.  Donald “Ducky” Chambers is a tap-dancer and probably a homosexual”.

While Helen and my mother sat in the kitchen chatting, I did my dusting in the living room. It was fascinating work, because I got to pick up and examine each porcelain figurine in her vast collection. It was a great responsibility as well, because Helen cherished all of her figurines and I had to be extremely careful not to break one. I also had to put each one back in the exact same spot it came from. That was no problem though, because I had it all memorized. I knew where each one belonged better than Helen did. She said she had confidence in me and that I always did a fine job. She paid me one dollar. That was enough to go to the movies on Saturday afternoon, buy popcorn, Jujyfruits or Red Hot Dollars to eat while I watched the movie, and still have enough money left to buy an Orange Creamcicle from the Jack & Jill man, or a comic book.