A house I have known

The house at 14 Allerton Street was on the edge of Pill Hill in Brookline. It was called Pill Hill because so many doctors lived in the neighborhood. No wonder. The Deaconess, Baptist, Children’s, Beth Israel, Brigham and Women’s hospitals and The Lahey Clinic were all a few miles away.

I didn’t like it there at first. As far as I was concerned, we had moved to the city. Fire engines from the station at the bottom of the hill roared up High Street with sirens blaring. Police cars sped by on their way to Jamaica Pond. It was noisy. We moved there when I was twelve after all my siblings had grown up and left home. We moved for my father’s work, a job he couldn’t pass up.

I missed the open spaces of Summit, New Jersey. The reservation behind our house stretched back for miles. Even the name, reservation, made me think of the Watchung Indians that once inhabited the area. Were there still a few left camping out by Surprise Lake? Despite the neat suburban street out front, it felt wild and mysterious beyond the outer stone wall behind our house. We lived next to an area called Elephant’s Grave. One morning, my mother announced that there was a bear in the back yard. I ran to the window to see it. No such luck, it was April Fool’s Day and she had gotten me again. But it seemed likely considering the wild world back there.

In Summit I walked to school with friends. From Oak Ridge, we’d walk down Magnolia, across Mountain, down Laurel along Memorial Field. After crossing a brook we’d cut through a hole in the fence and enter the playground of the Brayton School. In Brookline, I took the MBTA to school. One stop from Brookline Village to Longwood. We had to walk the long way to school. We weren’t allowed to cut through the Fenway, too dangerous.

At the end of the day I’d stagger up steep High Street to our house on Pill Hill. Eventually I met a friend to walk home with. The walk seemed less arduous, the sirens not so loud. Boys and latin vocabulary dominated our conversations.

It wasn’t the house’s fault that I didn’t like living there at first. It just didn’t have any history. It felt strange to inhabit a place that hadn’t known me my whole life.