Everyone knows the lady in the green house
next to Lauria Collision is crazy.
Everyone but her husband.
My grandmother tells me just because we are poor
does not mean we don’t have dignity or good taste.
which is okay by me.
The smell of food and beer in the green house
is as rancid as the collision workers’
discarded lunches in the hot August sun.
the beer bottles by the front door
come out faster than any assembly line
the faded wash hangs on the clothesline.
My mother tells me to walk fast when I am near the green house
which makes me think whatever is happening in the house
may be catching like the head lice on the son in the green house.
I pick up my pace one morning as I approach the green house
too late the lady of the house lifts her skirt
and moons me from her second floor bedroom.
I am an unwilling spectator at a freak show
but that does not stop Earl the husband of the lady in the green house
who chases me down Niagara Street screaming “You saw my wife’s ass!”
now I’ll drown you in the river.
Killing me seems easier than sobering up the lady in the green house
I hide in an open car trunk in Lauria’s Collision yard
as I lower the trunk I feel my heart pounding like one of the pistons
in the shiny red car before it was demolished.
As darkness comes I slowly crawl to my grandmother’s house
and tell her what happened
Grandma proudly tells me, “You’re a child of rare opportunity.
Children in the suburbs only get to go to the circus once a year.
You live next to it.”