House 24, on 11th Street, was very well known, not only because my dad was a very respected and well-known man in the neighborhood, but also because at home we helped a lot of people. Even though we didn’t have much and my house was humble, there was always food to share, give away, or donate to anyone who came to the house. In return, my father, especially, was appreciated, and even the children who ran past in front would greet him: "Goodbye, Mr. Julio." "Goodbye, little friend," my dad would reply, regardless of whether they were big or small.
When my parents arrived from the countryside where they lived, they lived in rented places for a long time. Later, my father did countless jobs and managed to buy that small house with three bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. At that time, it was just dad, mom, my grandmother, my two sisters, and me. So one bedroom was for my parents, another for my grandmother, and the last one was for us. The only room that had a door was the bathroom; all the other rooms had a fabric curtain covering the entrance, which only served to cover the threshold, not to provide privacy. I remember that those curtains, ethereal, light, were a cause of anguish and nightmares for me during my childhood nights:
_Maíta, someone lifted the curtain last night - I said to my grandmother.
_Fool, it was surely the breeze that came in and moved it - my grandmother assured me, and her explanation did not convince me at all.
Likewise, in the small living room was the only television, and around it we would sit every afternoon, after doing our homework, to watch cartoons, and since the house had no nearby wall, other children would sit at the front door to watch the programs we were watching. At night, mom and grandmother would sit in the living room and watch the 9 o'clock soap operas, and we, secretly, would watch the passionate kisses between the protagonists and then play at kissing the mirror as if it were on TV.
The kitchen was a forbidden place for my sisters and me, after one of my sisters had a pot of hot water fall on her. My grandmother and my mother were the queens of that ancestral space where only they performed magic, even with few ingredients. Now that I remember, that place was always full of smells: pepper, oregano, cinnamon, vanilla. It was as if the kitchen worked 24 hours and my mother and grandmother did not have rest.
But if there was something special in my house, it was a guava tree in the front, which had a swing hanging from it that my father had made. That tree was my refuge without curtains, but made of branches and leaves. In such a small house where no one could hide, having that tree was wonderful, because when I didn't want to talk to anyone or was upset, even when they wanted to punish me, I would climb the highest branch and there I could spend the whole day eating guavas and watching the ants carry pieces of leaves.
That house, over time, became bigger: there were no longer just rooms for us, but also for guests, and the doors came not only to provide privacy, but also to isolate us. But the fame of the house always remained intact, just the same, so much so that once, after many years, I took a taxi that took me to the house, and when the driver saw it, he happily said to me:
_I know this house! Wasn't this house yellow? A man used to live here who let us watch TV and many times gave us food.
Yes, that's how it was in my house: there was little, but everything was shared with others, even the television.
