Free The Invisible Wall by Harry Bernstein

given me a minute’s rest. It’ll be a good thing for him to be off at school. Wish I could do the same thing with me ’usband. Between those two I’m a wreck. Well, at least I’ll be done with one of ’em.”
    â€œI’m sorry about ’arry bothering you,” my mother said. “Maybe he won’t now that he’s going to be at school all day.”
    â€œWe can only live in ’ope,” said Mrs. Turnbull.
    My mother pulled me by the hand and we went on. After we had gone a distance, she said, “Does Sarah send you every day for ginger beer?”
    â€œYis,” I said.
    â€œAnd do you always spend your penny on sweets in Mrs. Turnbull’s shop?”
    I nodded.
    â€œI think it’s time you stopped buying so many sweets,” she said. “Perhaps you should start saving up your pennies for something you need, like shoes. If I’d had just a few more pennies I could have bought you shoes.”
    â€œI like clogs,” I said.
    â€œWell, it isn’t good to eat so many sweets,” she said. “And I don’t think it’s good for Sarah to be drinking so much ginger beer. I’ll have to talk to her mother about it.”
    We didn’t say any more about it, and I was glad, because for some reason the subject always made me feel uncomfortable. There was still something secretive about it when Sarah sent me on the errand, and if Florrie was in the shop she always gave me a glowering look. Mrs. Green, too, started muttering when I passed her house going to or from the grocery.
    We began to climb the steep hill that ran alongside the park. In the winter it was used as a toboggan run during the few times that it snowed. In the summer courting couples holding hands made their way up the hill to the entrance of the park. The trees, I recall, had just begun to turn yellow and red, and some of the leaves had already fallen off and had filtered through the iron rail fence onto the ground. When we reached the top of the hill, we paused, both of us out of breath. We turned to look back. There was a view of the whole town beneath us, the streets slanting downward to the mills and the river behind them, the rows of houses staggered one below the other, with slate roofs shining from the damp, and curls of smoke coming out of the short, stubby chimneys. A yellowish pall hung over the scene, and the tall, slender stacks of the mills were half buried in its density.
    I tried to make out our street and our house, but they were all so much alike it was impossible to do so. At last, rested, we continued on our way. The ground had flattened out and it was easier walking. Soon we had entered into a new world. There were no more rows of houses, but individual ones with little fenced-in gardens around them, and each one different from the other. I looked at them in awe, as did my mother.
    â€œSomeday,” she said, “we’ll have a home like these. Would you like that?”
    â€œOh, yis,” I said. “When will we have one?”
    â€œSoon, I hope. Very soon if the shop is a success.”
    She still believed in her shop, despite the fact that she was struggling with it. That day her hopes were high. A slight drizzle had begun, and she opened the umbrella, and we both walked under it, briskly. Once again I became conscious of my clogs and exulted in the sound they made as the iron rims on the soles struck the paving. I would look back at the sparks that shot up from them occasionally, and laugh with joy, and sometimes my mother would laugh with me, and her hand holding mine would squeeze tightly.
    â€œThere it is,” she said, suddenly. “There’s your school.”
    It was a redbrick building with a rhododendron garden in front, and a large play yard at the side, with goal posts. We both became silent, and a little frightened too, I think. The entrance door was big and wide and imposing, with large black hinges, and an arch