Each day when the sun had set and all of us children had eaten our dinners, we would sit outside of the purplish-red steps that led up to the porch of my grandparent’s humble home. It was the only house of white and on a block full of yellow, pink and lime-green colors, and the only one that housed a Chinese family on a block full of Mexican families. Yet everyone had one thing in common: no one spoke English.

The front lawn could not exactly be called a lawn since everything was cemented. You could tell that the family did the job on their own because the ground was full of lumps and was extremely uneven. A metal fence surrounded the small fifteen-by-forty feet yard as it was with nearly every other house in the vicinity. Although the flimsy fences would never prevent against actual intruders, it gave everyone a sense of very much needed security.

The four of us eldest grandchildren claimed the steps for ourselves, one small body to each step, from oldest to youngest, top to bottom. Being the second oldest, I sat on the second step from the top, with my older sister above me and two younger cousins below, respectively. Sitting in a circle on the ground would be much younger children, sometimes just my younger cousins and sometimes the children from next door joined us. Despite the fact that one spoke Chinese and the other Spanish, everyone got along fairly well in their game of duck-duck-goose, hop-scotch, and cops-and-robbers.

The four of us sat on the steps talking about nothing in particular, pretending that we were too old to play games with our younger cousins, when the fact was that we were the ones who had taught them how to play. On certain days we would still join our younger cousins for a good game of cops-and-robbers or a make-shift kickball game where we could not yell and could only push the ball with our toes for fear of kicking the ball out into the road. We had lost too many balls to carelessness and oncoming, speeding cars that way. But on this certain day, the four of us would stare out across the street, our curious eyes looking one way for a new car to follow as it drove past the house.

Each time we looked out, we would see her; the little woman all bundled up in a raggedy black coat. She would be there every day, walking down San Joaquin St., holding the same bag, wearing the same soggy, woolen gloves and dragging the same rickety cart full of soda cans whose plastic bags billowed in the cool evening breeze.

“Don’t go near her.” my grandfather would always say in the same monotonous manner.

“Don’t stare.” my grandma would say while turning our heads in the opposite direction. “She’ll take you and sell you under the bridge.”

This struck fear into us, it scared any ounce of bravery we ever had out of us, and it scared me to death. I did not want to be taken away from home, but each time we played outside after dinner, she would be there and it became harder and harder each day for me to believe that the frail old woman was a kidnapper. In order to hide our fear, our young imaginations began to spin stories about the woman. The stories that my older sister told and the tales that I narrated became the truth to my younger cousins who did not know any better. Soon, even our own words began to transform from fact to fiction.

“I bet the woman is really a werewolf.” my older sister would say while watching the old woman’s shadow. She would point to the rags that frayed out behind the woman and nod, “You see those? Those turn into claws at night and it is so dark in order to hide all the blood.”

“There is no such thing as werewolves.” my cousin would argue indignantly. “She must boil children in soup.”

“Maybe her cart really holds the heads and bones of people.” I would say, slightly enjoying myself as I watched a few of my younger cousins shudder in disgust.

“She only walks the streets in the daytime in order to target her children…” I continued, “and at night, she will go out and kidnap the ones she thinks will taste good.”

“I heard that she would kill the children and then put their meat inside pork buns.” my older sister added. “That is why she has not been caught by the police yet.”

Our stories went on, some making little to no sense at all while others were simply filled with storylines that we had only seen in scary movies. One day, my older sister and I had been put in charge of looking after our cousins while my grandfather went out on an errand and my grandma washed the dishes inside. It was on this day that the old woman had changed her route and ended up on our side of the street. I froze when I heard the broken squeak from her cart come so close, my heart skipping a few beats when I realized that the metal gate was open, for my uncle had not remembered to push it back into place when he left for work that morning. My feet seemed rooted to the ground as I watched the woman pass by. Would she suddenly reach out and grab one of us with her claws?

But as the woman came closer, I saw that she looked to be around my grandma’s age, perhaps slightly older. The elderly woman had soft, pale skin lined with the wrinkles of age and creases of a thousand hardships. While her head was steady, her eyes roamed the streets in search of empty cans that some careless person had thrown away. I would never forget her eyes. Those eyes, eyes as gray as fog over the ocean, shone with the might of a hundred diamonds. As my eyes met hers, I could see the warm, loving heart she carried underneath the shattered pieces of cloths she wore. For a second, I feared she would see into my own cold, shameful heart. Luckily, she simply nodded, smiled and went on her way.

That night, I could not stop thinking about the woman and the desolation that her eyes imprinted in my young, naïve little mind. Only half of me concentrated on playing kickball the next evening, much to the frustration of my older sister who was the captain of our team. For a majority of the evening, my head remained down and my feet dug at the cement below, while I watched the street out of the corner of my eye. I waited for the old woman to walk by once more, once more to prove to me that she was not a kidnapper and that she was nothing but an elderly woman who gathered cans for a living. I wanted to prove that my grandparents were wrong, that I was wrong and that my imagination had gone too far. Furthermore, I dearly felt that I owed the woman an apology to all the villainous deeds that we had attached to her name, without her formal consent.

Unfortunately, since that day, not even her shadow was seen walking down the street again.