Tire Swings.

It’s been a few days since Angel on the seventh step has been feeling well, I like to talk to him a lot even though he doesn’t respond. He looks at me with his big blue eyes and watches me as I talk, I feel important for once, I feel as if he’s the only one that truly understands me. Sometimes I rock him in the old wooden cradle father found on the side of the street and sing him lullaby’s that mother used to sing to the twins. I miss the twins very much and they’ll always have a special place in my heart but I know that there in a better place now, and I think that Michael was a gift from them to keep me company and to keep mother and father occupied and motivated. As I was rocking him two men walked in wearing big boots and fancy jackets, their hair was slicked back and they had a tool belts around there waists with note pads to their sides. I looked around alarmed searching for mother, wondering why two strange men were in our home. She told me it was alright and those men were just the inspectors making sure the house was in ye’ good shape, I wondered to myself how this apartment building could be in ye’ good shape when just a couple of weeks ago the downstairs floor flooded, the wooden floors creek and some hollow threatening to collapse under your weight. They walked around the small apartment crouching down, checking things and each time scribbling small notes onto their frail ripple paper. I asked one of the men with a scruffy beard what he was writing and he told me that he was writing the secrets that the house was telling him. I thought to myself how odd that was that our house was telling him secrets I wonder what the secrets were, I looked at father and asked him if he knew what the secrets were and he grumbled keeping his eyes focused on the window. The men started to pack up there things and scribble a few more notes as they were walking out the door when mother asked them if they had any boots to spare for us, when the last word was uttered from her mouth fathers head shot up staring at her in disbelief, he told the men it was alright and they were allowed to leave. Once the door the sound of the door clicking in its hinge occurred father and mother started disputing other something I believe father won, or maybe lost because the next day when he came back from work he grabbed out pairs of boots and a rubber tire and started to fix them, he fixed all the holes and gashes and added an extra layer of warmth. The next day I had to wear them to school, I was utterly embarrassed as I crossed the school yard my new boots clunking against the cold hard ground bringing stares and laughs from my classmates; I hoped that was all that would happen. Once in class kids I felt eyes on my and Malachy, I could hear laughter in corners and I knew they were whispering about us. A few of the meaner boys came up to us and laughed about our boots they asked us if we got them from a junk yard and I told them that my father made them and they would last a lot longer than his would! They taunted us for the first half of the day until my schoolmaster shouted hitting his long wooden stick on his dark brown desk swearing under his breathe he told them to treat others the way they would like to be treated and threatened to whip the next person who teased us, at that moment I was happy to have a schoolmaster like him and for the rest of the day I kept my head up as high as I could with boots like those and walked proudly home.