Northeast philly girls

Hudson Review, The, Spring 2002 by Juska, Elisa

Northeast Philly girls lived close. Their houses were close, clothes were tight, families crammed together on long city streets. On the corners, they stood in clumps, girls with big hair and tight jeans and fringed leather pocketbooks. They held lipstick-wet cigarettes between two fingers and exchanged bubble gum, lighters, compact mirrors, all with smooth, pink sleight of hand. These girls had names I wanted-Colleen, Eileen, Christine-the long "e" insisting on femininity. Their boyfriends were cool and wiry, dropping kisses on their cheeks or loose arms around their necks. At night, so I heard, the boys took them to the St. Lucy's parking lot where they pressed up close in the warm backseats, and later, the girls emerged older, more knowing, having acquired fresh gossip and kissing bruises they would display like badges of honor on the corner the next day.

At age twelve, I suspected that in the Northeast, like at summer camps I'd heard about, girls grew up more quickly because they lived so close.They got to see things. They got to hear things. They couldn't avoid it; there was no place else to go. Becoming a grown-up in Northeast Philly seemed as easy as catching a cold.

Riding in the front seat, heading to Aunt Jean's house, I watched the city out the window. Neighborhoods in Northeast Philly all looked like this one: blocks of row houses built shoulder-to-shoulder, cramped with stop signs and parked cars and corner delis and kids who walked so close to your car their knuckles nearly skimmed the hood. To me, the thought of having other people living on the other side of my wall was terrifying; if they started a fire in their house, mine would definitely go down with it. In our town, eight miles outside the city, houses were discreet, separate. Around here, neighbors yelled to each other from their front stoops.

It was grey December, the Saturday of the annual St. Lucy's Christmas fair. For the holidays, the row houses were decorated to the hilt with multicolored lights, life-sized mangers, plastic reindeer hitched on roofs. Like every year, Mom and her sister, Aunt Jean, would sell homemade ornaments at the fair while I spent the afternoon with Terri. I dug my nails into the armrest as anxiety started its slow creep up my spine. It was a feeling I'd grown accustomed to around my cousin-having nowhere to hide.

I sunk low in my seat as Mom turned onto Hartel Street. The usual gang of boys was playing hockey in the street. Even though it was getting cold out, Northeast boys never seemed to go indoors. Their goalie nets sat ragged by the curb, their St. Lucy's jackets heaped on the sidewalk. The boys were a sweaty hub of crewcuts, baseball caps, Flyers jerseys, and gold earrings around which the neighborhood ebbed and flowed to its own kind of time.

The boys took a step back to let our car pass. I stared at the floor. Mom stopped and maneuvered our SUV into an empty spot in front of Aunt Jean's. Mom was good at parallel parking, from having grown up on a street like this. When she turned the car off we sat there a minute, listening to it tick and sigh under the hood. Mom's long maroon coat was belted at her waist, scarf wrapped snug around her neck. Maybe being in the cramped streets of the Northeast made her feel self-protective, too.

"Ready, kiddo?"

Not really. I would have preferred to have stayed right where I was. But I nodded, not wanting to admit how much I dreaded spending time with Terri.

Mom grabbed one bag of ornaments and I picked up the other. When I opened my door, it got stuck in a grey snowbank. Behind us, the boys sounded loud and too close. Across the street, a mother yelled: "Danny, put your jacket on!" As I pried my door loose, I could see the edge of a neighbor's curtain pulled back, and it was just these kinds of details that made the Northeast seem like a place that knew too much.

Aunt Jean was stirring a cup of coffee with the unused end of a knife. The top end was greasy with butter and toast crumbs. She had the portable phone in her hand and wore a bathrobe with sweatpants underneath. The kitchen table was covered with ornaments: Baby Jesuses in walnut shells, clothespin soldiers, wax paper stars.

"Ed called," Aunt Jean said.

Uncle Ed-though I wasn't sure if I was supposed to call him "Uncle" anymore-had been caught with another woman in September. Aunt Jean and Terri were in the Clover parking lot, carrying shopping bags full of school supplies, when they saw Ed's head in the backseat of a green Volvo. He was with a woman. Girl, actually. She was twenty-two, a cashier at Clover, and her name was Janine.

"What did they catch him doing?" I'd asked my mom. "Kissing?"

Her tense face paused for a minute, as if she was about to say something. Then she firmed up again, thinking better of it. "Yes. Kissing."

But Terri had a different story. "I saw the whole thing," she told me. "Her shirt was halfway open. And Dad's hand was on her butt." She could have been describing one of her soaps.

Lingering in the kitchen doorway, I watched Aunt Jean sip her coffee, running one hand through her reddish hair. You could tell she and Mom were sisters, if you studied their faces only. They looked like older versions of their St. Lucy's graduation photos, both with blue-grey eyes and thin-upped smiles. Back then, they wore their hair full and flipped at the ends. Now, Aunt Jean's hair color changed every month. Mom's was a steady grey.