Our Backyard

The neighborhood I grew up in had a backyard—not the kind tucked away behind a single house, but a communal, neglected space that bore no likeness to the polished front. The two coexisted like parallel lines of reality—one visible, the other hidden—and we, the children, moved freely between them, as if slipping from daylight into dusk.

Our building stood right at the edge of the asphalt, its façade facing the main road. Across the street stretched the shopping center, where our parents ran errands and traded pleasantries. It also hosted the neighborhood cinema, which screened double features, and farther down, the town museum—a round, ostentatious structure nestled in the center of a sprawling park. We rarely stepped inside. More often, we scaled its slick outer walls like knights laying siege to a dormant fortress.

And then there was the backyard—a place unmarked by brochures or maps, omitted from memory as if by design. The path to it wound its way through the courtyards of the shared buildings, slipping past laundry lines and rusted fences. Unlike the groomed lawns at the front, the backyard was barren—just sand, fractured concrete, and air thick with the acrid tang of urine and other nameless smells. Yet, to us, it was a hidden kingdom, a realm of magic that belonged to us and us alone.

Bordering our backyard stood the regional psychiatric hospital, obscured behind a solemn row of towering eucalyptuses—majestic, forbidding. Now and then, faint cries slipped through the fence—muffled, strangled sounds that seemed to shiver through the air. We were not allowed to cross that gate, and none of us dared to. At least, not until much later. We stood outside, peering through the iron bars as if at the entrance to a cemetery, eyes wide, breath held, heartbeats scattered on the wind that rustled through the trees.

We entered our realm with reverence, tinged with forbidden delight. We knew no adult would follow, at least no one respectable. Not our parents, not our aunts and uncles, not even the neighbors from the upper floors. No one in our backyard cared whose father worked where, or if they had one at all. No one noticed whose shoes were coming apart at the seams. Status belonged to the front-facing world, where parents muttered gossip behind taut smiles. But here, among dust and rust, we were simply children. Barefoot, loud, and sovereign.

We often spent entire days there, only remembering to return home when evening fell or hunger gnawed too sharply to ignore. By then, even our parents, worn thin by the grind of daily duties, would notice us gone. Sometimes we organized coronations, crowning ourselves royals of nothing at all. Other times, we dug holes, certain we would strike gold or tumble straight into a secret past.

Sometimes we would seize a tree branch and declare it a magic wand, while our other hand clutched an invisible map—one that opened secret portals to far-off lands, just like in the English-learning show we watched on the days we skipped school. We would point to a random spot, then race toward it at full speed, flushed and breathless, clutching our sides as if to hold ourselves together. We laughed until our ribs hurt.

Other times, we simply traced patterns in the dust with our fingers or perched on the stone fence exchanging sworn secrets, forgetting entirely that there was a home to return to.

We fought endlessly for no clear reason—a glance held too long, a made-up rule taken too seriously. The backyard would sit empty for days, abandoned like a forlorn kingdom. Neither of us would be the first to return—our pride too stubborn, too fragile to bear the cost.

At last, our mothers intervened, summoning us with the weary diplomacy of women who had weathered far greater storms. We’d exchange sullen apologies, barely meeting each other’s gaze, and by afternoon, we’d be back on the stone fence, as if nothing had ever fractured. But the backyard remembered. It always did.

It was my friend’s older brother who had first introduced us to our backyard realm. He had once ruled it like a gentle king, showing us how to scale the wall without scraping our knees, how to choose the sturdiest branches for swords. We felt safer in his presence. But one day, without warning, he relinquished his throne. He took to circling the shopping center on his bike, eyes half-lidded with practiced boredom, ears cloaked in headphones, never offering more than a glance that slid past our inquisitive gazes. He would later be rumoured to venture beyond our unspoken frontier.

Few adults ever glimpsed our hidden world. But, from time to time, mysterious strangers would wander into our realm. My friend and I would devote whole afternoons to tailing them in one-sided pursuit, solving unspoken crimes, casting ourselves as a pair of bold young detectives fashioned after the black-and-white duos we adored on our single-channel, always prime-time TVs. Naturally, our detective names were perfect reversals of our real ones, befitting the inverted logic of the backyard world.

There was also the reclusive neighbor—a disheveled figure whose unkempt appearance made us shrink back instinctively, without fully understanding why. His mere presence was enough to scatter us, barefoot and breathless, up the stairwell.

Years later, we’d learn the truth. The neighbor who had harmed my friend’s brother wasn’t the solitary figure we’d feared, nor one of the wandering souls who haunted the edge of the asylum. It was someone else entirely.

A different neighbor.

An upstanding man. A family man. A man of crisp collars and clean records, who waved from behind trimmed hedges and never parked over the line.

The kind who belonged, without question, to the front-facing world.

The world that left no room for doubt, and no shadow deep enough for suspicion to take root.

My cousin visited one summer and asked to see the backyard. We led her down the narrow path between the buildings, past cracked steps and swaying laundry lines, our hearts taut with pride and quiet caution.

But she didn’t see it. Not really.

She called it dirty and said it smelled. She stepped gingerly around the broken bricks, as if they might stain her.

And when she left, brushing dust from her jeans, the backyard felt smaller somehow—like the spell had worn thin.

After that, we never brought anyone else in. Not unless they already belonged.

Sometimes, I wonder what became of the backyard. Whether it's still there, hidden behind the buildings, or if it's been paved over like everything else. Neither my childhood friend, who later moved away, nor I have been back in years. I’m not sure I could bear to find it smaller than I remember, or worse, unchanged.

And sometimes, I wonder about him, too—our one-time king. Whether he ever found another realm to rule. His silence echoes louder now than all our childhood laughter.