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18 CHICAGO The train hurtles fast. I look out until the light fades. I eat the sandwiches Aunt Rena packed for me. I fall asleep. A long time after it is light again, the conductor announces we'll be coming into Chicago. Now suddenly I'm terribly afraid. Where am I going? My paper slip says Englewood and Eggleston. They sound so alike. One is the name of the station and one is the name of the street. But which is which? I ask, I show the piece of paper to the conductor and other people on the train. They nod. They say, "We'll tell you where you have to get off." The train stops, I get off on a large, long platform, look around, and after a long minute see Mama, Daantje, and Tante Lisel in the distance. I feel. . . not happy, but oh, so relieved. As we leave the train platform, I see that the street is lined with trees. Hungrily my eyes center on the green trees, familiar and beloved. We walk a few blocks and come to one of many little houses. I sense that Mama and Tante very much want me to like this house. It is nice, a house a child could draw with a triangle roof, a door, two front windows. What is completely strange is the porch in front and the bench hung from the ceiling by two chains so you can sit and gently swing. Inside, a living room to the right, a dining room directly ahead, and walking further back a kitchen with two windows overlooking a yard in back. The back door opens onto another porch. To the side of the kitchen is a bathroom. In American houses the toilet is inside the bathroom, not in a separate little cubicle, which is strange. Off the kitchen another door opens to a "pantry." Shelves of cans, spaces for noodles, potatoes, and sugar. Shelves of space for food! From the entry door, slightly left is a staircase 136 CHICAGO leading to the attic floor with sloping ceilings. There are two little rooms overlooking the back and one larger room overlooking the street. Behind the little garden in back is the "alley" and over the alley is a metal structure that carries the tracks for the "el." Soon I hear the noise of the approaching elevated train and for a moment the noise overtakes our speaking, hearing, our very breathing. Then it rumbles off into the distance . One little room is for Daantje and one is for me. I've never had my own room; it even has a closet. There is a mirror on the wall and a desk and chair. A bed is pushed into one corner and the window, a dormer, looks onto the back porch roof. The bigger room in front is to be rented out so that Tante Lisel, who has bought this house, can get some money to help pay for it. Apparently, Mama and Tante looked for an apartment for us but no space was available and where there was space, children were not wanted. Tante is sorry that we cannot live in her neighborhood, Hyde Park. All her friends are there. Tante is a pharmacist who came to Chicago in the 1930s. The little house is in a neighborhood called Englewood. The second evening, the doorbell rings. A lady stands by the door and announces that she wants to welcome us to the neighborhood. Does Mama know where to register us for school? The lady tells us that if there is anything we need we should call on her. She will help. She lives in a house on the next block and she is the "Democratic Committee woman." I've never met a grownup stranger so friendly. She talks about her daughter and tells us she is Irish. Somehow this seems important. The following day, Mama, Daantje, and I walk about four blocks to the local public school, the Lewis Champlain School. There is no headmaster ; there is a lady principal. Mama talks with her and says I was in sixth grade for a month in New York. The principal takes me to a seventh -grade class where the teacher is another lady. Like the principal she is Irish. It is now September 1947 and at the end of this month I will be twelve years old. After the first few days, I see that the children are kind; no one appears to...

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