The Street with Five Speed Bumps

Fiction by Vishwas R. Gaitonde

Photo by Ruslan Zaplatin 🖤 on Unsplash

A headlong plunge into a mixture of the strange and the familiar—that’s what moving to a new neighbourhood is like. The houses, the people living in them, those passing in cars or whizzing by on bicycles, pedestrians—all of these are part of any neighbourhood in any town. But in a new place, you have to find your bearings all over again: get to know the people on your street, get acquainted with strange roads, and adjust your habits—the grocery stores here didn’t stock thick-cut bacon or aged Cheddar, and there was no hairdresser close by. And things change over the years. Boys who once rode bicycles to deliver the morning newspaper had turned into elderly men who made their deliveries by car.

But on the whole I liked my new life. I had a real nice house. Like many other houses on my street, mine had a picket fence and a pretty garden. The street was lined with trees, and the shade they cast was most welcome. From my bedroom window, I could see the sky through the branches of trees. The sky changed dresses the way I changed mine: as pale as a ghost in the morning, bright blue when the sun was up, salmon pink at sundown.

But there was a peculiar thing about this street—the speed bumps. I went over one as I drove down the road, and in no time, the car jolted and the teeth rattled in my jaw when I went over another bump. That’s really odd, I thought, and then came to yet another. There were five of them. Five! I couldn’t believe it. And two were placed so close to each other. If they were any closer they would have looked like the double humps on a camel’s back. Also, there was hardly any traffic on the road. The speed bumps, so many of them, made no sense. The strange world that we live in just got a bit stranger, I thought.

As the days passed, I became conversant with those who shared my street. It was a mixed bunch: yuppies taking off in sleek Teslas and an older crowd content who ambled their way through leisurely days. And the characters! Two houses down lived a man who kept bees in his backyard and advertised it by sporting a bushy beard as big as a beehive. He assured me: “Mam, my apiary is secure, and if, heaven forbid, you’re ever stung by a bee, it sure wouldn’t be one of mine.” Then there was the skinny man who could never repair his car. He was always sprawled in his driveway on his back, his matchstick legs sticking out from beneath his car, groping pathetically for one or another of his tools spread around him. Further down the road was a prim lady, always fluttering around in her garden, a loose cotton dress hanging over her bony frame, her coiffed silver hair very like that of Queen Elizabeth. When I grow old, I thought, I’d love for my silvered hair to look like this. It would look so elegant against my dark skin. Queen Elizabeth’s hands shook so much I wondered how she could prune her rose bushes. She was the only one who greeted me by name. “Good morning, Debbie,” she would hail me as I walked past her house. “Now you make sure to have yourself a lovely day.”

The ice cream van alerted me to another strange thing about my neighbourhood. As I heard it go down the street playing ‘Turkey in the Straw’ it struck me: who were the customers? There were no children on my street. No kids played on the sidewalks in the evenings and no mothers wheeled babies in strollers.

The sole exception: a little boy of about ten or twelve would play imaginary basketball some evenings, dribbling a make-believe ball on the sidewalk and shooting it into a make-believe hoop that was much too high for him. At every miss, his face drooped, and he shuffled dejectedly. Then he began his run again to shoot the ball, with the same results. I had to laugh. He could have imagined the hoop to be lower and scored every time. I made a mental note to tell him this, and I also wanted to caution him. He often started his run from the middle of the road right near the camel’s humps. If he tripped over them, he could flatten his face and chip his teeth. He would play even after the sun went down and twilight set in. He seemed to relish the twilight, becoming more animated then. Why were no adults supervising him? It bothered me.

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It was a bit of a drive to the supermarket, so when I ran out of milk or butter or tissues, I stopped at the convenience store two streets down. The young man behind the counter, who always wore his baseball cap backwards, was a moody creature. He was personable and talkative one day, surly and tight-lipped the next.

Finding him in a chatty mood one morning, I asked him about the speed bumps and the logic, or rather, the stupidity behind them. There’s a story behind that, he told me. There was a time when many families with kids lived on your street. There are no parks or open spaces around here, and so the kids played on the street. They were as much on the road as on the sidewalk. The residents asked the city to install a speed bump. But the city just raised their eyebrows and rolled their eyes. After persistent requests and even petitions, they sent an inspector to your street. His report: there’s not enough traffic on the road to justify a speed bump. He was right in that there wasn’t much traffic. But the cars that came down the road came much too fast, so the kids’ safety was an issue. The city didn’t buy this. Where were the parents, they asked. Wasn’t it the parents’ responsibility, and not the city’s, to keep their kids off the street?

I digested this snippet of local history.

“Then one day, a car ran over a little boy. Bam! Messy, messy, lots of blood, and mixed with the blood, plenty of crushed bones.” The man was ghoulish, the way he relished talking about the accident. “The kid was rushed to the hospital, died that night. The city woke up, installed the speed bumps, not the one the residents had requested, not two or three, but five.”

But the families with kids had thought it a case of too little, too late. One by one they packed up and moved, leaving behind a street where cars now had to slow down several times for no reason.

“It’s not true that there are no kids on my street,” I informed the man, glad that a newcomer was one up on a long time resident. “There’s a little boy who plays pretend basketball some evenings. Right where those two bumps are, the ones close to each other, that’s where he plays. Poor kid, he looks so lonely, playing all by himself.”

The man gave me an uncomfortably long, hard look, twisted his cap the right way round, and rang up my purchases. Was were his eyes saying that his lips wouldn’t?

“Your receipt, Ma’am, and your change.”

There was something unusual about the boy. It was right under my nose and I was missing it. I was convinced of this. I felt it would become clear when I had a talk with him. But when I approached him, he darted into an alley between two houses. I followed him but he must have run really fast because he was nowhere to be seen. All I saw were trash and recycle bins, litter that should have been in the bins strewn in the alley, and a fat ginger cat that sat smirking at me.

I was flustered but I retraced my steps and walked on down the street, head bowed, lost in thought. Queen Elizabeth was in her front yard; she gave me a sharp look as I approached.

“Debbie. What’s the matter? You’re off-color.”

“I—well…”

“Dear, why don’t you come in for a cup of hot tea? It’ll soothe you, and besides, I’m

having some myself. I just put the kettle on; the water should be bubbling hot anytime now.”

I followed her into her living room. It was tastefully furnished, hardwood floor, mahogany chairs and coffee table, dainty lace curtains, a crystal vase with fresh-cut white and yellow roses.

“What kind of tea may I offer you? Black, Green, Herbal? I’m addicted to Earl Grey myself, and I always take it the proper English way, with lemon, not milk. It’s calming, my dear, calms you down wonderfully well.” She was every inch a Queen Elizabeth. The queen was dead but she lived on here on our street.

“I’ll have the same—mmm, forgive me, but I don’t remember your name.”

“Oh, not to worry, we all have faulty memories. I’m Tilda. Tilda Moseley. And now tell me what’s been bothering you.”

“It’s a boy, Tilda. A little boy.” And I told her how I was trying to weave together the bits and pieces of information I had gathered since my arrival into a pattern that I could understand.

“Oh, the boy. That boy.” Tilda looked grave. “Children once played on this street. We always heard the pattering of little feet, the chattering of many voices. There was a basketball hoop in the front yard of one of the houses, and the kids hung around there all the time. Mostly older kids, but there was a boy who clearly didn’t belong in that group—he was too little, too short to shoot a ball into the basket, although the other kids didn’t mind. He thought that speed would help. So he’d start his run from the middle of the road. And one day, he was hit by a car and—well, poor little kid, he died.”

Tears wavered unsteadily in her eyes before rolling down her cheeks. It was as though it was her own grandson who had perished. I was startled. I had seldom seen such sorrow on a face. I reached out to give her a reassuring pat but she shrank back.

“But I just saw him a few minutes ago.”

“Are you sure? Did you speak to him? Shake his hand? Pat him on the head?”

“No, he ran away.”

“Then you only saw him, dear. Or thought you saw him. The two aren’t the same.” She wiped her cheeks and regained her composure. “Seeing is not believing, and I don’t care what people have to say about that.”

“What’s your point, Tilda? A ghost, he was a ghost—is that what you’re implying?”

“Why not, dear, why not?” Tilda gave a throaty chuckle. “Do you suppose apparitions are seen only on dark nights on deserted streets or in spooky houses?”

Then Tilda looked sad again.

“Those two speed bumps so close to each other, that’s the exact spot where—where the boy was run over. Those speed bumps, they’re his little tombstones.”

I was shocked. That was the exact spot where I would see the boy playing. Was he really a spectre that I had been sighting in broad daylight? I stared, first at Tilda and then down at my hands. I heard a noise on the ceiling, the sound footsteps in the room above us.

“I’ll check on the kettle. The water must have boiled.” As Tilda left the room, she glanced over her shoulder and said, “Tea, tea, a hot cup of calming tea. We both of us need it.”

A woman came down the stairs and stood rooted in shock when she saw me.

“What are you doing in my house? How did you get in? I didn’t hear the doorbell.”

“I’m Debbie. The lady of the house let me in. She’s just gone to the kitchen to make us some tea.”

“You must be crazy. You are crazy. I’m the lady of the house. There’s no other woman living here.”

“Crazy? I see this lady in the garden all the time. She told me her name was Tilda. Tilda Moseley.”

Now the woman really looked stunned.

“Don’t play games. It’s not funny.”

“Games? I’ve just moved to this neighbourhood. I’m trying to find my way around here, not play games. Do you know this Tilda? You looked as though you did.”

“I know who she is but I never met her. Matilda Moseley was an elderly woman who once lived in this house. She was responsible for our big local tragedy. She ran over a boy right on this street, and it was fatal. I simply don’t understand why these old people are allowed to drive unless they’re fully fit. Anyway, her age didn’t prevent them from sending her to prison, although they took it into consideration—she got a short sentence. But after she was released she committed suicide. Just couldn’t face the world. Overdosed herself with her sleeping tablets, flushed them down her throat with Earl Grey tea.”

I held my head in my trembling hands for a few seconds and then said to the lady, “She was so real. I’m tempted to ask you to go to your kitchen and check if she’s there. My nerves are a mess. Seeing one spook is bad enough, seeing two in a day is a bit much.”

“Two? I am a real person.” The lady gave a throaty chuckle, took my hand and placed it on her forearm. “Here, feel me.”

“Oh, I wasn’t referring to you. I saw — actually, I keep seeing — a boy who isn’t there. The boy who was killed.”

I described my encounters with that apparition.

“That boy’s as real as you and me. His name is Ronnie. He’s my friend’s nephew, he’s visiting her with his parents for ten days or so.”

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Vishwas Gaitonde's formative years were spent in India. He has lived in Britain and now resides in the United States. His short story collection 'On Earth as It Is in Heaven' won the 2023 Orison Prize in fiction, and will be published by Orison Books. Literary awards include two residencies in fiction at the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies (Minnesota, USA) scholarships to the Tin House and Sewanee writers’ conferences and fellowships to the Summer Literary Seminar (Montreal, Canada) and Hawthornden Writers Residency (Scotland).

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