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| Illustration by my daughter, ©Vida Wadhams |
Good Girls, Then and Now
The men who knocked on our front door may or may not have had the hulking frames that persist in my memory. I was only 8-years-old and accustomed mostly to the slight builds of my Filipino fathers and uncles, so it's entirely possible that these other men—all white men—weren't even six feet tall.
One of them was named Frank, and he often arrived neat in his firefighter blues. Off-duty, his jacket of choice was the classic Derby. Another appeared in worn work pants and work boots, but always with a clean, plaid shirt. Also of note: his left ear did not exist. It had been sheared off, quite neatly, for reasons unknown, and it took all the concentration I could muster not to stare at what was, essentially, a rather large hole on the side of the man's head. The other visitors existed on a continuum between these two, and though time has transformed them into a single generic man, I'm sure I knew all their names at the time.
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