My cell phone rang the other day and it called me back in time. I was in my car headed home from work and I glanced at the screen to see who it was. I saw a California area code and a listing of "Unknown." The number certainly was foreign. But as I answered the call, I heard a deep voice that was anything but unknown to me. The sound of his voice was as familiar to me as the sounds of hide-and-go-seek, but I hadn't heard it for 30 years. "Hello, Hecka!" he said enthusiastically.
With those two words the caller tugged me back to my childhood and the treelined street where I grew up in San Diego, California. "Larry?" I asked just to double-check my memory. "Yeah, remember me?" he asked, softening his voice. "I've been thinking about you a lot lately and I called just to see if you turned out okay." We laughed and then we talked for the next 45 minutes and tried to catch up on three decades.
The last time I saw Larry he was 14 and I was 11. My mother and I were moving away from my brother and father, and out of my childhood home as part of my parent's divorce. Larry waved goodbye wearing a Braves baseball hat backwards over his long dark hair and baggy shorts that hung on his narrow hips. His tan shoulders were either shirtless or covered with a loose tank top, I can't remember now. But, he was unforgettable. And, not because he was my first love, he wasn't. (That came much later with another boy who lived even further down Carthage Street.) It's because Larry was my hero. He was three years older than I, one year older than my brother, and the leader of our group of neighborhood kids. He seemed omniscient and omnipotent. We even nicknamed him "Head" because he was the head of us kids for hours on end.
Our moms and dads were gone for a variety of reasons. Some of our parents worked two jobs to make ends meet, while others let us wander the street day and night out of blind trust or simple negligence. We would sit on the curb outside his house in the hot sun and wait for him to come out and plan the day. He chalked out basketball zones on driveways and spray-painted baseball diamonds on the black asphalt road. He divvied the teams up and was both teammate and referee. I was the only girl in a pack of boys, but I knew if he were there, I'd get a piece of the action. He broke up fights and brought us home when it was too dark for children to roam the streets. He protected me from my older brother, shared his sandwiches at lunch, and pulled me above ground when I'd get stuck inside the sewage pipes that ran below the city. He had his fun too. He taught me how to doorbell ditch, blow up mailboxes with quarter sticks of dynamite, and how to outrun police after we egged cars on Waring Road. And, I can still picture the huge freezer in his garage. For years he told me that it entombed the real Frankenstein. I remember kicking and dragging my feet as he and my brother pulled me towards the white frozen box and opened the lid. But, I never saw the harmless frozen meat and bread loaves inside because though my mouth gaped wide open, my eyes were squeezed shut.
After I hung up the phone with Larry, I thought about the question that had been on his mind for 30 years. "Did that little girl who ran the streets so freely turn out okay?" The answer is yes. And, that's because of a little boy who cared enough to fill in the gaps when Mom and Dad were gone. Thank you, Head. With Love, Hecka
