PART 1   

“THE ATTIC” 

  I   

Time to go up to the attic and hang my laundry. Ever since I was a child the attic has given me an odd feeling. As a little girl I avoided it unless I had the uninterrupted company of my grandmother. At best it seemed like an uninviting place. Even the steps leading to the attic seemed to pose a barrier, guarding the entrance to a place one should enter with extreme caution or maybe not at all. The width of the steps was very narrow and the angle of the ascent was steep, due to the nine-foot ceilings of the apartment below. The stairs themselves were wood and their edges were worn round from the countless numbers of feet, from before the turn of the century until now, that had trudged up and down them.  Attics seem to have been, and are, the best place to hang laundry amongst the crowded conditions of big city tenement life.

                The top of the staircase as viewed from the attic level was just a hole in the attic floor. There was no guardrail around it, nothing to grab to steady yourself on ascent or descent. It was as if even that small token of safety was denied.....  

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