Chapter 7: Reparations, The Good Day Alert, and Wandering Short People.
Before Quincy could walk up to his building’s door, he saw a poster on the ground. It said ‘Isn’t it time that reparations were paid for the crime of slavery.’ Quincy picked up the poster and read the smaller print below the headline. The poster was asking the American government to pay money for allowing slavery to exist in America. He was extremely excited to find such an antique poster. Clearly it must be from the early 1900s, since the last people that had been slaves had died well over fifty years ago. And asking for reparations for descendents of slaves would be similar to requesting reparations for descendants of serfs from the middle ages. Wondering if he should look for the owner of this historical document, Quincy placed it in a folder so as not to damage.
Across from his apartment he heard the voices of the two kids he heard everyday. He usually heard the voices late at night, but today they were home early. The two kids sounded like they were probably about seven or eight years old, but must have been at least fourteen or fifteen if they were walking the streets alone. Each day, when they arrived at the building they yelled at the top of their lungs, “Hey Grandpa! Hey Grandpa! Let us in!” Ah, that tender age where one is old enough to run around the city of Philadelphia alone without any adult supervision, but not quite old enough to have keys to the apartment. Many children in Philadelphia were at the very stage in life.
He began walking up the steps to his apartment and behind him rang the familiar sound of horns honking. This was a constant companion to all those who lived in Philadelphia. The sound of horns was engrained into the heads of Philadelphians. It is even rumored that, much like a seashell, if someone from outside of Philadelphia put their ear up to the ear of someone from Philadelphia, they could hear the sound of horns. Almost ten times a minute, a horn would blast and Quincy would smile each time. His mother had told him the meaning behind the honks. These honks were coming from people on their way home from work, and the drivers only honked to let everyone know that they had had a good day. Since people got off work at all different hours, someone was always announcing that they had just finished a great day. From the amount of honking that Quincy heard, he was sure the Philadelphia was a great place to work.
When he arrived in his apartment, he was pleasantly surprised by the scent that could only mean one thing: there was one less roommate to share his Raisin Bran with. After a short ceremony, Quincy bid farewell to another mouse. Historically, he got more emotional about such an occurrence, but after the twentieth mouse this month, his tolerance had built up. Taking a break from the smell, which was also partly caused by the stockpile of dead mice in the walls resulting from the Decon placed by the landlords, Quincy went out on his balcony.
From his vantage point, Quincy watched down on the world of Philadelphia. As he watched down from his perch, he noticed the usual suspects. As always he saw the little people. A little known fact about Philadelphia is that there are many people of very small stature.
Everyday, Quincy noticed lots of short people walking around. He once thought that they might be children but concluded that this was not possible since no parents were present (since no decent parent would allow his or her children to walk around unsupervised in a big city except at the subway, lest we forget the ‘smile code violation’). Coincidently, these short people looked exactly like children, and tended to act just like children. Though, Quincy had seen many of these shorter people smoking cigarettes, ensure it must be short adults. Many of these short people, though usually the slightly taller ones, had the ingenuity to make their own cigarettes out of greenish brown crumbs and pre-made rolling papers. Though these handmade cigarettes had a different odor to them and must have been much stronger as the smokers usually had blood shot eyes. These types of cigarettes were very popular in Philadelphia, and one could expect to at least smell the smoke of them on every other block. Often it would be pouring out the window of an apartment building.
These short people were always using the words that Quincy meant to look up. Then again, in Philadelphia, everyone used the mystery words. Quincy was pretty sure that people were paid for saying ‘Fuck’ since people tried to throw it into every sentence. As he watched down on the passer-bys, Quincy reminded himself to find out what the word meant.
Looking out upon the city of Philadelphia, another thing Quincy noticed was how rundown many of the apartment buildings looked. Many of the buildings barely looked livable from the outside. The windows were closed up with either plywood or long boards. The outside walls were sometimes spray painted with the word ‘condemned’. Yet, Quincy saw people going in and out of these places. He knew people lived in many of them. What shocked him was how kind rich people could be to these people. He wasn’t sure exactly what rich people were doing to help but he was sure they were helping since people were always getting out of expensive and nice looking cars and going into the buildings.
Most of the time these people would spend months coming and going from the same place. Whatever the program involved, these rich people were very dedicated to helping out. Often, the people brought their whole family along on the mission. And to show how much they cared, they even attempted to dress like poor people. Maybe they thought poor people would be too proud to accept help from rich people. But the disguise was perfect. Anyone passing by would have easily confused these people with real poor people. Only the cars (and the gold chains and jewelry) would give their secret away, but this secret was safe with Quincy. Strangely, Quincy never saw anyone other than the disguised rich people leaving the home. As he considered this, a resounding rumble erupted from Quincy’s stomach.
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