When I was born, I lived with my extended family. Mom, dad, aunt, 2 grandmas, grandpa, cousins and a few people who came in and out of our house. We called it 922. It was a pretty small place too. What can you call it? It wasn't really a house since we didn't own the building, but can you call a place that can house that many people an apartment? It was one of those three story houses that sat on the outskirts of Chinatown and lead the way to Fisherman's Wharf. We lived on the first floor.
Our distant relative lives on the third floor. I don't remember how we're related to her. I think she is our grandma's stepsister? I'm not totally sure. But we're related somehow. She has a grandchild name Arthur. I don't remember anything about Arthur but he gave me a bunch of workbooks. I think I still have some somewhere. Apparently Arthur married someone that the family didn't approve of. I haven't talked to that grandmother who is related to us for a long time, but she always fondly talks about Arthur. Apparently someone from that side of the family also married a black man who left her for a black woman. This is big gossip in our household and we disapprove of black people. My family is narrow minded.
I don't know who lives on the 2nd floor.
I remember when I was around 7 or 8 years of age. My parents had already moved out and was living elsewhere, but I stayed with my grandparents sometimes because the school bus stop was close to 922. Plus my new house was cramped and often 4 people slept in the same bed. I used to play on the steps of 922. Countless times we would roleplay on those steps. I think it was Power Rangers. I was Pink ranger because I forced my cousin to be Yellow. I was older, that's why.
We spent a lot of time going to the library too. I would go with my cousin, who was two years younger, and together, we would walk down to the library. I wonder why no one stopped us? We were only 8 and 6 years of age. Perhaps we didn't tell them. Once, we wanted to get library cards so we signed the forms ourselves. When it came to "parent's signature", I didn't know what signature meant, so I told my cousin that it's for our parent's name. We both signed in our parent's name. When we gave it to the person who handled our cards, she looked us. She probably can tell that our parents didn't really sign it. But one look at our innocent faces waiting, she gave us our cards anyways. It was my first library card. I think I lost it a few weeks later.
There was also a park nearby. I remember loving the swings as a kid. I don't remember this, but my cousin said that our grandpa would push us so hard that it seemed like we were gonna fall. Maybe he did, but perhaps I loved the swings too much to care. Or maybe she was just a wuss. I had an incident on the swings once. I was swinging on my stomach and one of my cousins ran in front of it. My head collided with his head. Unfortunately, it was more like my face collided with his rock head. I got a black eye from that. I went home that day and grandma rolled a boiled eye on my eye. It smelled funny. She ate it afterwards. We were frugal.
When I was living there, I would get some money. I think it was 5 dollars a week. I would keep it in my Spottie Dottie wallet. I saved about one hundred seventy odd dollars. When I moved to my current home, I misplaced it. I found it a few years ago, but it was empty. I'm still looking for the thief.
There was a basement in nine-two-two. I remember it being dark and full of cans. My grandma collected cans. She would go to the recycling center with bags full of cans and come back with something like 10 dollars. I remember that basement lead out to the backyard. We would crush the cans there. Those were fun times.
That backyard also held some watermelon seeds that we tried to plant. We had had watermelon the other day. It was delicious. We wanted more, so my cousin and I went to the backyard and dug some holes for our watermelon seeds, not knowing that San Francisco weather would never allow watermelons to grow and that our soil was ill nourished for any sort of garden. It didn't matter anyways because the next day, when we were gonna go water our little darlings, we had forgotten were they were. We went around the backyard with our little pails and tried to find it. We ended up watering the whole yard.
An aunt used to live with us. She was and still is my favorite. I didn't like her boyfriend though. He was greasy looking and he always was sucking on a toothpick or one of those floss/toothpick combinations. He probably had bad teeth. He was one of my uncle's friends. He looked too old for her. I used to spy on them. There was a keyhole that I could see through. Usually I couldn't see anything, but I would check anyways. One Christmas, they bought me a Chinese checkers game. We lost the marbles soon after. There was a feather duster in her room that I used to love playing with. But my aunt would always tell me that it was dirty. But it was oddly soft. I didn't care. Through her room, we were able to see fireworks. She said that we would have been able to see them better if they didn't build the apartment complex that blocked out half the view.
My aunt used to fold paper stars. She kept a jar of them in our bathroom. My cousin and I used to take them. They were made of shiny paper. I used to put them in my wallet. But then they would get squished. It was disappointing. A few years back, I told her that my cousin and I were the thieves. She laughed and said "No wonder they kept disappearing."
I said that our family was frugal. When it was time to go to bed, my grandma would have everyone pee into the toilet bowl before flushing. I was young; I didn't realize how dirty that was. We were "saving water".
While living there, I had to sleep with my grandma. My grandpa and grandma would sleep in different rooms. The room that I slept in was a glorified closet. It was narrow and long. We fit one bed and some miscellaneous things. My grandma was a heavy snorer. Sometimes my younger cousin will sleep with us and he would snore too. It was like a contest. Grandma snores. Kenny snores. Grandma snores. Kenny snores. And so on and so forth. It was hard to sleep.
I went back to 922 with my cousin last week. The place has changed. It's blue now. It was a beige when I lived there. It didn't seem like a Chinese family lived there anymore. Our distant relative has also moved away a long time ago. The steps that we used to find endless don't seem as long. I wanted to know what the inside was like but I couldn't go in anymore. I walked to the library. We wondered what made our grandparents trust us to go down this long street, cross the crosswalk and to the library/park. I sat in the swing that made me get my first black eye. I went down the slide. It was nostalgic. But everything seemed smaller and less imaginative. It was only a park after all.
A lot of things have happened since I lived there. But my childhood will forever be dubbed NineTwoTwo.
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