Broken in Inner-city Philly

The calendar marks the last full week of June. The Sunday afternoon sunlight bursts from the pearl sky and the grass on Saint Joe’s campus is extra-chloroform green. It is day two of Mission Philadelphia and after unpacking the Penske truck I fell off of last year, long-time friends and new acquaintances rush the quad to soak up the breeze and free time. Tattered soccer balls are shuffled in and out of the path of trees. I stumble out of the dorms we will spend the next long week in. With no showers open, Susie and I exile ourselves to the grand outdoors. Our skin in implanted with mulch, made fresh from human feces. We are freckled, burned, tired little Irish girls. Susie is sitting next to a cooler teaming with melted ice and various debris from the work site. She alternates between eating the dirty ice and spreading flat against her soiled legs. 

It was a hundred and ten degrees today; the ice tastes so succulent sweet after eight-hours of building gardens. Yes, ice is a melting diamond when you’re surrounded by the caving steaming walls of inner-city Philadelphia. In this heat, grime covered hammer in one hand and a box of nails in the other, ice feels like liquid sterling silver when it’s place on your neck and drips down your spine. We use partially melted ice to feed the stray cats and dogs and calm the nerves of the kid who found the gun hidden in the bushes. Ice here is meant to comfort the troops. It cools us and quenches our interminable thirst. Even when the adventure is over ice is the only medicine the doctor can recommend when you break your foot and perform hard labor on it for six tiring days.