The windows of the pawnshop are long boarded up, but the three brass balls, sign of the trade, still hang from a metal bar over the door. I stop by the side entrance. Narrow, dark. A bit of filthy linoleum lies half tacked over the stoop.

I know where this entrance leads so well I need not shut my eyes to see the boy of eight weighted down with his father's only suit--pawned each Tuesday afternoon, retrieved each Saturday before sunset. For three months of Tuesdays and Saturdays, like some kind of ritual. Done with such dispatch the father never suspected the journey his garment made before it was restored to him, brushed, respectable, in time for a Saturday night visit or, more rarely, a church service on Sunday.

I was that boy, bewildered. For each time my mother sent me to claim the shabby blue serge pinstripe, I paid Mr. Wiltshire a tiny bit more money.

"Just till the paycheck, end of the week, love." My mother bent to kiss me. She saw my face. "And just till he gets his raise. It's coming, Johnny love, in a few months. It's coming."

© 2010 by Shulamith Levey Oppenheim