I remember the nightsounds in my urban neighborhood as a child. The rustle of rats in the alley coming out at dusk to search for food. The snick-snick-snick of mother latching the multiple locks on our front and back doors.
The unwavering rule about ignoring any sounds of trouble - the woman next door sobbing when her husband beat her every Friday night after he got his paycheck and got drunk. My dad debating whether to call the police as thieves brazenly stole our car from our driveway under the streetlight as we watched huddled inside. Even the sounds of the woman in the pink silk slip running around the courtyard across the street as her husband chased her and then stabbed her as onlookers did nothing.
I loved the drama of those sounds outside my bedroom window. I can still hear the screech of the sirens on the ambulance the night my uncle “dropped by.” After imbibing a jug of bootleg red wine by himself, he tumbled off the balcony on the second story where my grandmother lived. He landed in the flowerbed outside my window, breaking his back in seven places. I remember being both afraid and fascinated when we visited him in the hospital gardens where he lay in a reclining wicker wheelchair in his full-body cast.
When I was 10, my mother told me that we were moving to the country where it was quiet. That was the big selling point. Quiet. I knew I would miss the excitement, and I worried about sleeping without the soothing sounds of the buses going back and forth in front of our house all night.
On our first night in our new home in the country, the peepers put up a full-throated racket outside my window. They kept me up all night, but they also made me feel at home. I find their noises comforting, especially the older I get.
