When we got broken, when our family got broken apart, I was sent away to the neighbors on Nile street. They lived across for the river house and over a little bit. Next to the man who had all the precious things in his house, that were borrowed when the Queen visited, knives and forks and things. They were friends of ours, so they weren’t strangers. I knew them, but they were so different from us. Their lives were chaotic in a romping kind of way. The parents were gone most of the time, so the older twin girls fed us.
People get so familiar on the outside when you get to know them. Their dressing habits, personality, their conversations. But get inside their homes and it’s like getting inside their minds and their bodies and sometimes their souls. Both houses looking similar on the outside, yet so drastically different on the interior. Then, next to the collector was the little grocery on the corner owned by the Dutch couple. They were so nice to us. She had long grey hair and it was plaited and wound around her ears with a perfect parting at the top of her head.
My brother was sent to an orphanage. There was only one in our town. It was across the street from the hospital. there were a couple of the flat merry-go-rounds in the side yard. I liked those little ones, it was easy to get a rolling start for yourself and just sit in the middle and spin. When I visited my brother, I would let him have the inside. It was lonely and strange to be seperated from him. I couldn’t watch over him nor protect him. But they had many eyes in the orphanage watching the children, so he stayed alive there.
—Ossibell
Ossibell 