With my left properly placed on the pedal, I skipped with my right foot and hopped onto the padded banana seat. “Okay—you is okay.” I could hear my father encouraging me. I could hear his urging: “Balance! … Balance! No hurt youself!” His fading voice mixed with the warm wind humming in my ears. I was six then. As I grew older I ventured farther, past Senhora Rosa’s variety store where colored balls and blinking dolls wrapped in cellophane dangled from invisible strings tacked to the yellowed ceiling. Everything twisted and twirled every time I made my way into the store, pushing the large “Coke” handle and tripping the familiar chime. I pedaled to the clicking of colored straws that covered my spokes, all the way to the top of our street to the synagogue, “da church for Jewish peoples,” and onto Dundas Street with the blur of the Red Rockets. That’s where I stopped. By the age of seven, Palmerston, Markham, and Euclid Avenue all bored me. Manny had coined it “Name That House!”
