Oddball

A story that found me.

It’s a vibrant neighbourhood.

I’ve lived here for years and it’s gone from being one of the low income, grubby parts of town, once called Portersville, to a gentrified, upwardly mobile hotspot most people now call Valeburg. It’s still Portersville to me, but I’m in the minority.

Ironically, my progress has been in the other direction, slowly breaking down and becoming ignored and forgotten.

That’s alright with me. I’m comfortable with my slow decline. It suits me.

All around my little one bedroom apartment, families of all sorts parade up and down the streets, pushing strollers that rival my old, beat up car in their cost, scrolling on their brand new, latest model phone to be told where they should eat, what they should buy here in the new Valeburg.

As a single man of late middle age, I’m given a wide berth by those families. They see me walking down the street and clutch their kids a little closer, push themselves between us as we pass. I understand. I’m an oddball. No wife, no kids, no connection to the community beyond living here for most of my life.

In their shoes, I’d likely do the very same as I passed me.

I don’t pay much attention to the families, and they return the favour.

A while back, one family did catch my eye, briefly. A mother and father, African-Canadians, and their three kids. The standard ridiculous stroller, high end phones, all the usual stuff. The two older kids were walking behind them, holding hands.

A boy and a girl. The girl was…

Odd.

She was squat, like she suffered from mild dwarfism, or whatever the politically correct term is for that condition these days. And her head was a sort of squashed, oblong shape. The combination was eye catching, but it was her smile that grabbed my attention more than her appearance.

It was just a little too broad. I can’t explain it better than that.

I looked around to see if anyone else had noted this strange little girl, and when I turned back, the boy was alone. The mother looked up from her doom scroll, over her shoulder and reached back for the boy’s hand. He skipped and ran to catch up.

No sign of the strange little girl.

I walked on, mentally shrugging my shoulders. Maybe she was a friend from one of the surrounding houses, not a sister. Gone home to mommy, I assumed.

Life went on, as it has the capacity to do.

A few weeks later, another family caught my attention. This family was an Asian man and his Caucasian wife. No stroller this time, but both phones were shiny and full of instructions on how to live better lives. The two children walked ahead of the adults, holding hands.

A little girl. And another little girl.

The same little girl.

The first time I’d seen her, she’d looked perfectly at home in an African American family. Now, she appeared to be have just the right features and skin tone to be a daughter to an Asian man and his Caucasian wife. The same slightly squat form, slightly oblong head and that same, too wide smile.

Coming the other way was the couple from weeks before and their high end stroller.

Both walked slowly, Each clutching the handle of the stroller as if it were a life preserver in a hurricane. They were dressed head to toe in black and neither was scrolling on their phone or even seeing the world around them.

No little boy, just the child in the stroller.

When I looked back at the family with their two little girls, they were calling their daughter back to them as she had strayed ahead too far.

Of the second little girl, there was no sign.

Odd. I put it down to the time of day playing tricks on my eyes. Obviously the second little girl had once again returned to her own home.

Three days later, I was out of eggs for my breakfast. I rode the creaky elevator to the ground floor, noting a new, less than clever piece of graffiti on the doors. My building is one of the few holdouts of the old Portersville era, those of us still clinging to it’s lower rent and declining upkeep, aware that if it too is ever gentrified, it won’t bring us along for the ride.

I walked down the cracked and crumbling steps and reached the street.

The tiny hand that slipped into mine felt natural. I looked down at that slightly squat body and the too wide smile shining up at me and smiled back. We walked together for a half a block in silence.

The Asian man was walking toward us, his black coat and suit crisp and formal. His wife trailed behind, her black dress crisp and formal. Just the two of them.

I nodded as I passed them, then looked down to ask my companion what she knew of them.

I was entirely alone.

My decline proceeds apace.