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Whitewash and Boredom

Sheldon Avenue in Baltimore was where my maternal grandparents lived, the home where my mother grew up, the place my brother and sisters and I dreaded visiting. Or at least I dreaded visiting. It was an orderly street of row houses and sycamore trees, with long concrete staircases at the lower end, shorter staircases at the top end where the street intersected with Belair Road. Belair Road was the limit they’d placed on our wanderings; we were not to cross the six busy lanes of asphalt under any circumstances.

Their house was the fourth from the bottom of the row—fourth on the right as you climbed the street in the front, fourth from the left as you climbed …more

50/50 Exercise #47: “Two Pages” from Abigail Thomas

“I picked up your shirts at the dry cleaners today,” she said.

“Which shirts?”

“The ones I took last week. Your favorite blue one was in there.”

“Which dry cleaner did you go to?”

“Across from the oil-change place.”

“The oil-change place on 15th?

“No, over by the school.

“Mm.”

“You’ll never guess who I ran into at Walgreen’s …more