There are so many streets. The dirt road, Willowbank Drive, Pleasant Hill, Birch, Calhoun, and Congaree. Each one is unique for the different times in my life. The unnamed dirt road would talk about me, my niece, and nephew walking up and down the length of it, or my daddy guiding me down to Daddy Fred’s farm to pick veggies. Callhoun would talk about me walking to and from Kensington Elementary, me playing dodgeball with neighborhood kids, and accidentally breaking Mr. Winston’s flower pot with too hard a kick. The road in Maryville would tell of watching me pick pinecones up in the yard because Daddy promised me a nickel each.

The street in Green Acres would talk about being locked outside waiting on mom to get home after she spent her money on anything but food for me and my little brother, or how we went to neighbors and got plates of food to eat so we didn’t go hungry. The roads in Rose Hill would talk about me and my brother riding our bikes, chasing our dogs. Dana Lane would speak of sitting on the front porch, waiting on school buses. The place where I lived was ever changing, constantly evolving. A mix of country isolation and suburban life, and a lot of poverty, most especially when my parents weren’t together.

They might talk about my resilience and self-reliance, my wanting to play on the kindness of my neighbors to keep me fed and my brother fed and occupied, so he didn’t think too hard about the rough patches. I tried to shield him from when my parents weren’t operating at their best. They would tell of a little girl with too much on her shoulders and a smile on her face so as to put those around her at ease.