MY MOTHER NEVER allowed me to play outside near the streets because she thought i might get hit by a car but permitted me to play in the basement downstairs located in the back of the building,the super and his wife who were dominicans had a rent free apartment by the stairs that led down to the basement and right behind the stairs was a storage room where the super kept the mops and maintenance supplies.nearby the storage area there was another apartment where the supers assistant lived with his wife and three children consisting of two boys and one girl about my age,the boys were allowed to go outdoors and play with their friends but because the girl was born with a paralysis defect of her legs she was confined to a wheelchair to sit at home and watch me through her window jumping rope or using my chalks to write and draw words and funny stick people on the cement floor.we became good friends and i'd go stand by her window to play with her dolls and talk the usual girl stuff about school,boys and favorite music we liked.her parents who were also dominicans didn't like black people so even though they were nice to me they never invited me into their house but that was okay since my mother wouldn't allow it anyway.one day while standing by her window talking about the death of the great cuban singer celia cruz she suddenly looked over to a second floor window right across from us and told me there was a man who kept coming back to his window every few minutes to look at us while we talked and played.i told her to just ignore him but when i turned around to look up at his window i noticed he wasn't wearing a shirt and was moving around as if simulating he was having sex.i went upstairs to my house and told my mother but she told me those kind of men are everywhere and that if i or my friend felt uncomfortable with it then to just stop playing down in the basement.when i went to see my friend the next day she told me that the man had put a chair by the window to stand on it so she could see his trumpet which was her silly way to describe his male privates.she had also told her mother describing the man as being very black with funny looking hair which was actually the way jamaican men let their hair grow and braid certain ways to look more masculine and appealing to woman.by the time she got around to telling her mother that night the man had closed his curtains and she told her daughter if it really bothered her then just stop being friends with black people and looking up at their windows.the next few days we didn't see the man but my friend kept talking about him laughing and joking around about the size of his trumpet though i was usually quite and serious telling her we were too young to be looking at boys and men that way yet i couldn't help turning around to look up at his window.then one day her brothers who were usually outdoors playing came into her room to look up to the window on the second floor telling her that she will probably never have a boyfriend or find someone to marry her so maybe she should consider being nice with the man next time he was at the window.when they left she told me that both her brothers sometimes liked to touch her but it was just their way of having fun because they all slept in the same room and liked to learn how to touch girls.they never touched me or said anything racist to me because i was their only sisters friend apart from when her cousins came to visit her.she told me her mother and father took turns giving her a bath and her mother showed her how to clean her private stuff usually getting angry at her but laughing when she used the soap to touch herself like her brothers did sometimes.i was shocked that her mother knew the boys were taking turns finger touching her late at night when alone in her bedroom,i lied telling her that i liked touching myself also and let my stepfather touch me when my mother wasn't around though i never told her i once put my finger up in my vagina to taste and smell what it was.it happened one day when me and my mother were visiting my grandparents and while helping my grandmother put some boxes in the attic i felt a bad itch in my vagina and later told my mother the clorox she was using to clean my dirty stained panties was causing an itch allergy in my privates.one day my friend sitting by the window in her wheelchair dared me to throw one of her brothers rubber baseball ball at the jamaican mans window since we were often looking up at his window with the curtains closed and some woman opened the curtain to look and stare down at us while holding a baby in her arms.we pretended to play with my friends etch and sketch tablet while her brothers rubber ball bounced around the cement floor of the basement.the last thing me and my friend needed was trouble so we just played with her dolls and basically went back to doing girl stuff.the corridor to throw out the garbage was way over the other side of the basement and of course my mother never allowed me back there even though a closed fence didn't allow me up into the street or strangers to come through but tenants with keys could open it to throw out the garbage instead of walking down the stairs to the basement.sometimes tenants and my mother also came through that long corridor and the men who lived in my building would often be surprised to find two little girls playing with dolls near an opened window.one day sometime around a month since we saw the jamaican man on the second floor window he suddenly appeared through his curtains opening his window to just lean out with no shirt on and me and my friend waved hello to him.he disappeared for a moment to return with a chair and i was honestly shocked when he got on top of that chair completely naked.me and my friend stared at him from the waist down while he moved as if dancing to make his entire penis bounce around and whip the air through his opened window.my friend had seen and even touched her brothers penis but i had never seen one and this man even though i had no sexual knowledge of sex or erections was just big without one.despite her wheelchair my friend had her arms and elbows supporting her to get a better look out her window.once again she dared me to do something like the time with her brothers rubber ball so i went up the basement stairs while she watched the long corridor to make sure no one was coming down or into the basement and let the jamaican watch me pull up my dress and turn around to pull my panties down to show this man my round little black butt while looking down below at my friend sitting in the wheelchair near the window but sexually nothing ever happened ...true story.