The Ice-Cream Truck

Not a lot of good sounds could be heard on our street. Police sirens and ambulances.

- By Souvankham Thammavongsa

Next door, a man often yelled, his shouts sometimes quickly followed by a soft thump. On our television, a movie played: a building being blown up, gunfire, and flames. We weren't supposed to watch things like that, but my brother and I were home alone. I was ten years old and he was eight.

Our parents had told us to keep the television loud so that it would sound as if there were an adult with us. They'd shown us the places we could hide together, if we felt scared. In the bathtub with the shower curtain drawn. In the closet beneath a pile of clothes. Under the kitchen sink with some pots and pans. When they were not at home, we weren't allowed to go outside. We couldn't ride our bikes or look for pretty marbles on the ground.

It was summer. There was no school to go to, and it cost too much to hire a babysitter to cover the time my parents worked, even just a teen-ager saving up for a prom dress. We didn't live near grandparents. There were no cousins next door, no aunts or uncles in the neighborhood to go to. So it was just the two of us.

"You hear that?" my brother asked me.

"What?" I said.