New neighbors came to the corner house at Congress and Green streets.
The look of their clean white curtains was the same as the rim of a
nun’s bonnet.
One way was an oyster pail factory, one way they made candy, one way
paper boxes, strawboard cartons.
The warehouse trucks shook the dust of the ways loose and the wheels
whirled dust—there was dust of hoof and wagon wheel and rubber
tire—dust of police
and fire wagons—dust of the winds that circled at midnights and noon
listening to no prayers.
“O mother, I know the heart of you,” I sang passing the rim of a nun’s
bonnet—O white curtains—and people clean as the prayers of Jesus here
in the faded ramshackle at Congress and Green.
Dust and the thundering trucks won—the barrages of the street wheels and
the lawless wind took their way—was it five weeks or six the little
mother, the new neighbors, battled and then took away the white
prayers in the windows?