HAMLIN STREET

Conner’s world changed the afternoon he heard a woman screaming from down the street. Her words were, “I can’t stand it! Take it away! I can’t stand it anymore!”
        It came several beats after screeching tires.
        He was in the backyard looking for a shovel to dig a hole in the ground behind the garage. He was a scruffy, dirty little kid who loved dirt and crawling around like a lizard in the underground forts he’d build with his friends, so much so that his older sister Sharon, so much bigger and more mature, often told him he smelled like a puppy. He wandered out to the front yard to see a throng of humanity sweep toward the house. He stepped back and pressed himself against the stucco wall as a man he didn’t recognize ran up the steps cradling his three-year-old sister Celia. She was wailing at the top of her lungs, her thick long hair falling behind her. The man brought her into the living room and eased her onto the couch. Within minutes, Conner’s father Donald wrapped her in a blanket, scooped her up, and sped away in the blue Ford.
        In the following days, the house became eerily quiet. His parents were often at the hospital visiting Celia and his older sister Sharon seemed so sullen. One afternoon, he went into Celia’s bedroom and picked up the dirty little saddle shoes she’d been wearing the day she was hit by the car and tears came to his eyes. In those days they would keep people in the hospital for a long time, unlike today when a coronary bypass requires only a three-day stay. Celia was kept for three weeks and Conner was never allowed to visit. He overheard that she was in traction, her legs pulled straight up in the air in the hospital bed.
        When she was brought home, she was in a full body cast encircling her up to the armpits and down to her right knee and left foot. The first night, as she lay on the couch, completely immobile, the cast felt too restrictive and she panicked, again throwing her head back and screaming miserably.
        In the weeks that followed, Conner’s father would place Celia, still in the body cast, into a little wagon, prop her head up with pillows, and pull her for long rides around the neighborhood. Conner would sometimes tag along. They’d walk miles, up Hamlin Street, double back along Gilmore, sometimes down Van Owen to the Piggly Wiggly Market where they would get ice cream, sometimes out to the empty fields on the other side of Victory Blvd.
        The neighborhood was a post-World War II suburb bull-dozed over San Fernando Valley fields to accommodate returning GIs. Everyone had kids who ran free and lived outdoors or with other families. The houses were modest stucco three-bedroom one-bath with detached garages that sold cheap, no money down with a VA loan. Shortly