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2002-08-15

Betty Smith (b. Elisabeth Wehner)
12.15.1896 Brooklyn / D. D. 1.17.1972 Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Homesickness

Just now the most amazing thing! Let me tell it right away. Can�t resist, with the computer screen glowing, the push to create something new for the light to shine through!
Round ten o�clock, I was sitting out on the front stoop�
as you�d be surprised how few do on these Park Slope brownstone-lined blocks. Where once whole streets would have gathered on stoops on nights such as these to watch pretty girls sweating in cotton dresses pass by through the childrens� sidewalk crowds and games; gathered on stoops to whoop at the heat and press cold bottles to foreheads and converse in lost tongues�brogues Italian Brooklynese�now a mooring place for cars lies desolate, dark, and save for the air conditioners quiet�but noisy with them as any arctic desert with wind; while in the windows of a hundred darkened rooms each one�s own aurora borealis flickers.
When a young guy in a white undershirt came along, singing softly to an infant girl in a pink dress whom he carried on his shoulders, her ankles�socked�in hand. The song, a melancholy lullaby I didn�t know, sounded old and mountain-bred and cylinder-recorded�a barely five-note tune. The baby listened; I listened. They slipped out of sight down the sidewalk; still I listened, and listened. All at once I realized
(and this was the amazing thing)
that two notes had remained behind. Caught like a bird in a basket, trapped and buoyed by the ambient thrum, a falling half tone call still issued from the scene through which the singer and his song had long since passed.

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