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 which we will spend the next long week in. With no showers open, Susie and I exile ourselves to the grand outdoors. Our skin is 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 melts upon immediate contact 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.
There is no irony in finding refuge in a single cube of frozen water. While most of the youth group can return to the quiet suburbs and sleeping past noon, each of us spends the week admiring our fortunes. We have safe homes and close families; perhaps this is what forces us to seek out simple comforts, like ice, to render ourselves sane as we dig up heroin needles in preparation for planting flower beds in a schoolyard. It is why the only event more exciting than the last day of school is the precious next week we will spend covered in soil, scrapes and bruises. Each of us will sweat, scream, and struggle and walk away wanting only to return. We will walk away with scars, broken bones and ruined clothing but we will also walk away with memories more coveted than a simple cube of ice.
Breakfast is a comforting combination of carbohydrates, fried salt and fifteen ounces of apple juice. Mr. Wilson and Mr. Alison prey lovingly on the group to intake as much salt as possible in preparation for the day ahead. Work days are long, filled with heavy lifting and refined tool use. The eight A.M. sun has already had time to warm the pavement, so with any luck the heat index will only reach one hundred today. Voices ranging from the pre-puberty squeak of eleven year old boys to the braying gossip of eighteen year old girls engulf the dining hall of Saint Joseph’s University. Each of us stuffs our mouths with hash browns washed down by corn muffins in anticipation of the intimidating call that the van, or the giant white windowless behemoth lovingly known as the ‘assassin vehicle’, to arrive to take us away to the work site. Except for the dark circles under our eyes, there is no hint of our tired bodies and minds; there is only tangible electricity raging us forth into the day.
55th and Pearl is our largest work site to date. Initial deconstruction of the untamable poison ivy and raking of clawing weeds caused me to pass out the first time we came to this site four years ago. Now the ground is teeming with flowers and newly planted trees. We are here to revive what could not survive the winter. The stark contrast of White and Black begins as the group, young children and adults alike, begin to relief the trucks and vans of their burdensome plants and tools. Neighborhood adults and kids rush us, some more shy than others. Our entirely White community begins to blend with their Black community. We make friends with the smallest children, who try to help us push overflowing wheelbarrows. The adults and senior members of the group round up the neighborhood teenagers who are a little too rowdy to be working with blunt blade of a shovel.
As the day begins to grow older and our lunch of soggy hoagies has given us enough energy to continue with the tasks at hand, our hours of work begins to show. The newly planted flowers are free to stretch their roots into the flagrant mulch with the overpowering weeds now ripped from their homes and shoved into opaque black plastic bags. The scent of new woodchips permeates the air just as much as the roar of the blades from the weed whacker. Our work also begins to show on our bodies. We are painted with dirt, some of us mud. When we take off our socks at the end of the day our feet, untouched by the soot of the day, will be a significant five shades lighter than our sore and soiled legs. The heat will have desecrated our brains by noon, so the fuel we run on afterwards is a mystery never truly solved.
Perhaps our energy comes from the surrounding buildings, towering with families, each with their own stories. There was the girl, who had never been outside after the sun began to set in fear of encountering one of the gunshots she hears every night. There are always the two women, more wide than they are tall, who stop on their afternoon walk to shake our group leader’s hand and thank her for the memorial built in honor of the young adults who have been murdered in the neighborhood in the last five years. Our leader, Kyle, grins in her usual goofy way with her eclectic earrings bouncing sunlight in every direction. It’s moments like this that deter us from the abandon we feel when pulling out crack pipes from under park benches or the simple blatant disinterest some people will display in our attempt to clean an empty lot where a home once stood that housed a crack addicted mother and baby.
By the end of the day our feet drag and we are solemn from the grips our hands have had on power drills since arrival at nine A.M. We crave a shower, to feel the cool water hit out raw skin and scratch the surface of the long scrubbing ahead of us to remove the grime of the day. We hunger for food almost as much as the sanctuary of the shower stalls. We will run to the kitchen for the flat taste and sustenance of stale popcorn and lukewarm chocolate milk. When the showers are all occupied, with more than half of us waiting on a free stall, we retire once again to the cooling touch of the grass and somehow relaxing heat of the sun. We are too dirty to sit inside, to nap in the comfort of our beds. We only think of the upcoming night and momentary break before we do it all again tomorrow.
The evening will bring a dip in the pool, a party at the local church or a simple movie projected in the common room. Come Saturday we ache for the comfort of our own beds and the newly appreciated home cooked meals of our mothers. We want no more of trowels and watering cans. On the ride home some of us will sleep but most of us will muster the energy that started the week. We will guffaw at inside jokes and smile fondly at the mention of a neighborhood kid who helped us paint a mural. Upon return, we will hug our families but hold onto each other even longer. We will laugh away the bitter good-byes and sing praises to each other about the work we accomplished. If you gave us all a weekend off, we would all gladly pack up our blankets and stained work clothes and do it all again. For the moment we can only unpack the Penske truck and dream of next year.
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