Welcome to Rosedale Street

            I remember the day well.  It was one day in Houston's early summer, and the schoolkids on the block were bursting with our new freedom.  We got to play all day, and stay up past 8:00 with our parents, listening to music or President Ike on the radio.

             That morning we had all gathered in our yard.  Some were swinging in the new Christmas swing-set, some were up in the chinaberry tree; and the littles, as we called them, played in the old red sandbox.  We older ones, Bobby and Philip and Susan and I, played “Mother-may-I?” on the front sidewalk.  Everything seemed normal.

             A big yellow truck drove into the driveway next door.  We looked up and saw that it was a moving van.  The house had been empty for a few weeks, and we had gotten used to having a vacant house next door.  But now someone was moving in.

             Susan ran into the back yard to get the others.  They ran around the side of the house, whooping excitedly.  There were 15 of us, all standing there, anticipating.

             The yellow doors of the van opened, and the big black sweaty men took off the felt drapes and began to unload dressers and beds, big mirrors and a sewing machine.  We all sat by, waiting.  Then a blue bicycle came off the van.  This is what we had wanted to see.  There would be children next door.

             The kids decided that they wanted to welcome the new family.  Someone brought a roll of brown wrapping paper, someone else some crayons.  We all went to work and made a beautiful sign, “Welcome to Rosedale Street.”  We all signed it:  the kids who couldn’t write yet got their big sisters and brothers to write their names on pieces of paper, then they copied them on the poster, smudging it all up despite their carefulness.

             We were all set up then.  The girls had their best dolls out; the boys had their baseball bats ready for a game if there were boys.  We stood, all of us, on the porch, waiting, the sign taped up over the door of the new family’s house.

             We waited for a long time.  The little ones began to get restless.  It was getting late.  Just as we were starting to wonder if they were coming, a shiny orange and white Chevrolet pulled up in front of the house.  We all jumped up.  The doors opened and the new family piled out.

             There were children – black ones.  There was a girl of ten who held her father’s hand, a boy of about eight, and a baby in the mother’s dark arms.

             We stood between the new family and the house.  They stared at us and we stared at them.  There was a silence.

             Bobby made the first move.  He grabbed his bat and ran across the yard to his house.  The others followed, the littles stumbling because they kept trying to look back while they ran.

            They were gone then, all except me.  I stood there and looked at the new family.  I started to run off, but I tripped over Susan’s doll.  I turned around, picked up the doll, and ran to the safety of my own house.

            I left the welcome sign on the door.

                                                                                              -Published in Lamar Review 1963-64