Pete
December 30th, 2001Pete is eleven, but he looks like he is six or seven. He lives in the one bedroom next door with three of his four sisters, his mother, his grandmother and a little dog that they keep chained to the radiator.
When I come home after work, he is on the stoop. He holds the door for me, a perfect gentleman, and asks me how my day was.
The stoop is his.
When I go out for milk at night, he is still out there. He moves from step to step, observing everything, the alpha male of the block. His perfected swagger lends him the air of a man ten or twenty years his senior.
In the winter, he throws snowballs at my window.