She moved from friend to friend, city to city because she refused to be tied down, fettered, inconvenienced. A rolling stone gathers no moss.

The latest cream stucco house on the quiet mowed lawn street was like all the others. The people weren't technically friends, but friends of the last friends she'd stayed with. Tense they were, all through dinner, the usual strained smiles. Then when they parked her in the TV room, the usual whispered argument drifted from the kitchen until she heard the magic words, “Well, she could save us daycare money.”

She was in. A bit annoyed though, when it turned out she'd be baby-sitting not only their seven-year-old, but assorted kiddies of pals whom they'd charge a fee, “which will help offset your room and food, so we didn't think you'd mind.” Well, she did and felt used like the friends in cream stucco houses always used her eventually.

Violent the kids were. Always hitting each other, playing war with plastic guns and curtain rods. She figured they got it from the parents of the cream stucco house, clearly violent people too with their locked cases of hunting weaponry lining the TV room walls.

And then the nosy neighbor woman, an elderly black woman with a crocheted cap on her head no matter how hot the day, rapping loud on the door, and as soon as she answered, shouting to her face: “Why don't you watch those children? They run wild in your yard, making noise!” Oh, like she had time to be watching any children.

On one particularly headache inducing day when the kiddies were at their current war full-throttle, the seven-year-old resident of the cream house wept to her that defeat was imminent.

“What you need,” she suggested, “is proper weaponry.”

To the child's brightening eyes, she smashed open the gun cases, showed the child how to load and fire (don't forget to aim first) and of course she had to show the rest, to be fair.

All weapons distributed, the kiddies ran outside and bit into their war with gusto. Sure, there were cowards--in any war there are--but she'd locked the patio doors so their desperate attempts to retreat only got them mowed down. Some shots went wild, careening through the house, but she stayed low to the carpet until, warriors to the last, the final shot rang and all heroes and cowards alike had fallen.

She packed her few belongings, slung her satchel over her shoulder and as she ambled to the bus station she recalled an acquaintance of a cousin in California with a guest house she might crash in for bit.

The elderly black neighbor was the star of the trial. The wife of the cream house had to be shushed over and over by the judge when she cried, “That other woman watched the children, not me!” But the elderly neighbor shook her head with the crocheted cap (the prosecutor, nice man, complimented it often), and said, “It was her that answered the door every single time. Umuh.”

Much later when the wife of the cream stucco house had to be forcibly dragged to the gas chamber and the elderly neighbor watched the news coverage while crocheting another cap, she did admit to misgivings now and again, though added, “not my fault all white people look alike.”

(c) 2005 - 2006 Rosalind Barden