Neighborhood Girls

by Jessie Ann Foley

  I twisted my ponytail into a hairnet and clicked the burner on the giant stovetop, swirling olive oil into a cast-iron skillet. While I waited for the oil to heat, I looked up at the little television that was mounted on the wall above the deep fryer. A reporter with a fur-lined parka fringing her face was huddled over her microphone at North Avenue Beach.

  “And if you’ll look behind me, you’ll see that even though the storm itself hasn’t landed yet, the lake is already kicking up quite a fuss!” The news camera zoomed past her and panned out over the gray expanse of Lake Michigan, where angry, foam-flecked waves heaved and crashed along the shore. “And the temperature feels like it’s dropped about ten degrees even since our crews have arrived here at North Avenue!”

  “This damn city,” growled Maria, cracking eggs. “Why I leave Poland for this? I could’ve gone to Hawaii.”

  “I seen you in a bathing suit,” Alice joked. She was pulping the stewed apples with a potato masher. “It’s better for everybody you came here.”

  “And who you think you are? Kim Kardashian?”

  “You’re damn right I do.” Maria leaned over, waving her flat, pancake ass in the air and smacking it for good measure, leaving a floured handprint on the pocket of her sweatpants.

  I shook my head, smiling at their hysterical laughter as I tipped the mushrooms into the hot oil. They hissed, filling the air with their earthy smell.

  “But seriously, I don’t like this blizzard in March,” Alice said. “Back in my town, we used to say a snowstorm in the spring is a sign of restless spirits.”

  “Why are you so superstitious?” Maria demanded. “It’s not Christian.”

  “What are you talking about? In my town, we believe the saints and the ghosts exist right beside each other.”

  “Well, with beliefs like that, it’s no wonder you never had a pope from your town.” Maria’s greatest pride in life was that she came from Wadowice, the city of Pope John Paul II’s birth. She worked this piece of information into conversations whenever possible. The two of them began to bicker about the superiority of their hometowns back in Poland, but I had stopped listening. I was thinking about what Alice had said about saints and ghosts. Where had I heard that before?

  “Wendy, wake up and stir those mushrooms.” Alice was pointing her potato masher at me. “What do you think, they’re gonna deglaze themselves?”

  By the time I got off work, filling up the long hours with thoughts of Tino and our almost-kiss, the sky was an ominous, monochromatic sheet of iron, and the temperature had dropped well below freezing. When I got home, Sonny was in the lobby sifting through his mail, dressed in a muscle tank top that was cut out so I could see his tiny brown nipples. When he saw me, he stood up tall, flexing his chest.

  “Hey,” he said, “we’re in for a big one tonight.” I nodded and moved past him toward the stairs. Why was it that even when he tried to say normal things, they came out sounding perverted?

  “Yo, Wendy!” I stopped on the stairs, took a breath, and faced him.

  “Yes, Sonny.”

  “Make sure you leave your faucet dripping tonight. Otherwise your pipes will freeze. And then they’ll burst, and I’ll get your water dripping through my ceiling, right onto my brand new leather couch.”

  “Thanks for the tip, Sonny.”

  “Well, I figure, you and your mom don’t got a man around the house, you need help with this stuff.” He grinned at me, showing off his unnaturally whitened teeth, and I rolled my eyes and plodded up the stairs. When I got inside the apartment, I crossed the front room, slid open the glass doors, and stepped onto the balcony. The clouds were like anvils, low and towering in the horizon, and the air, so cold it tasted metallic, was strangely still. I admitted to myself that Sonny was right: this was gonna be a big one. I shivered in my thin peacoat. Next year, I would really have to buy myself a new coat. A warmer one, with down filling and a hood. I went back into the apartment, crawled under a blanket, and flicked on the TV. The unfortunate reporter from earlier that morning was still hanging around North Avenue Beach, waiting for something to happen.

  “And, now,” she said, huddling with her mic as the waves crashed and receded behind her, “we’ll hear from the commissioner of Streets and Sanitation about tonight’s snow-removal plan.”

  The screen cut to a man in a mustache standing behind a podium.

  “Our advice tonight,” he said, “is not to leave the house unless you absolutely have to. I’m talking, if you’re in labor. I’m talking, if your appendix bursts. The visibility is going to be very poor. The snow is going to be very heavy. And the temperature is going to fall to life-threatening levels.”

  “No problem,” I told the commissioner, snuggling deeper under the blanket and grateful my mom was working twelve hours—long enough, according to the forecast, to ride out the worst of the storm. It was still a Saturday night, though, and in my old life, word would have probably spread by now of a party in Gladstone Park or Rogers Park or Lincoln Park or Lincoln Square or Noble Square or somewhere in the suburbs, and Kenzie would have rounded us up on a dog sled if that’s what it took to make it there in time for the tapping of the keg. It felt good to have nowhere to go.

  Eventually, I turned off the TV and decided to take a shower.

  As I waited for the water to heat up, I slowly peeled off the damp gauze that crisscrossed over my shoulder and down my back. The closer I got to my skin, the wetter it became. A faint, unpleasant odor had begun to emanate from it. Holding my breath, I peeled off the layer directly covering my skin. I turned and looked over my naked shoulder and there she was.

  I stood there for a moment, watching her watch me. It occurred to me that those two vacant eyes would hang across the thin, protuberant bones of my shoulder until the day I died, no, even after I died, after they laid my shriveled old body in a casket and buried me in the earth, Our Lady of Lourdes would stare into the unturned mud below me, for months or years or however long it takes for skin to finally decay. Unless, that is, I get buried in the permafrost like the Pazyryk people, and thousands of years from now a new civilization uncovers my body and tries to figure out just what the hell I was trying to say with that strange woman tattooed across my shoulder with her hands clasped in prayer.

  I stepped into the shower and let the hot water run over me. I knew that I could stand here as long as I wanted, until I used up everything in the hot water heater and neighbors began to complain, and it would never be enough to wash her away. She wasn’t like a scapular that I could take off if I wanted to. I wasn’t allowed to change my mind, to grow out of needing her. She and I were forever—proof that in spite of everything, I still could call myself a believer.

  After my shower, I pulled on a loose sweatshirt and leggings and found a bag of microwave popcorn in the cupboard. I put it on the counter, took a big bowl from the cabinet, and opened the fridge.

  “Oh my God,” I said to the empty kitchen. “We’re out of Dr Pepper.”

  Of course, I could eat this nutritious dinner accompanied by a glass of water, but what sane person drinks water with popcorn? What’s even the point? I looked outside. Snow had begun to fall, barely, more like a leak from the sky than an actual storm. Was it totally insane to run down to the 7-Eleven and buy a Super Big Gulp that would last me until the blizzard was over and the streets were cleared and/or somebody went to the grocery store? It probably was. It definitely was. But, then, no one was at home to stop me.

  Almost as soon as I stepped out of the lobby, the trickling, anemic snow turned on full blast, blanketing the sky in swirls of white. A text came in from my mom: Stay warm tonight, honey, she’d written, as if she had some sort of weird mom inkling that her brainiac daughter had just decided to risk life and limb for a vat of carbonated sugar water. I love you. By the time I reached the bus stop at the end of my block, I couldn’t even see across the street to the green awning over the karate dojo or the neon sign for Siam Palace.

  Halfway to the 7-Eleven th
e neighborhood had already become unrecognizable. It had turned into a moonscape—white, blank, abandoned. I wrapped my scarf around my face, stuffed my hands into my coat pockets, and began to march, lifting my legs through the powdery snow, unable to see anything in front of me but the dim haze of streetlights through the whirling white sky. By the time I got to the 7-Eleven I could no longer feel my toes, and an icy layer of snot had formed inside my scarf. I imagined myself lying in a snowdrift and staring up sightlessly at the stars, the tragic victim of acute hypothermia. The list of people who would miss me that I compiled in my head was depressingly short.

  Inside the fluorescent oasis of the 7-Eleven, my skin immediately prickled over and I realized how cold, wet, and hungry I was. I went over to the pop machine and filled the giant bucket-cup halfway with ice, then, as I hit the Dr Pepper button and waited for it to fill, my mind began to drift into a daydream of me and Tino sitting together in my old backyard on the creaky swing my dad had hung on a low branch of the spreading oak tree. It was quiet back there, a sunny, warm autumn day, and the leaves above us were edged with yellow. Tino and I sat there on the swing and talked about books. Maybe we even held hands. Maybe I wore my hair pinned up and he took the pins down, one by one, until it all fell around us and he leaned in and—

  “Wendy! Hey!” Govinda, my favorite 7-Eleven cashier, was calling to me from behind the cash register. “Why you wasting all my soda?” I looked down and saw that the Dr Pepper was overflowing, running down my hands and dripping onto the floor.

  “Sorry, Govinda,” I muttered, grabbing a napkin from the stack next to the lids and wiping up the mess.

  I paid for my drink, took a long, glorious sip to assure myself that the trek had been worth it, and was almost out the door when a familiar voice called me back.

  “Wendy?”

  It was a voice I knew well from my past, from backyard barbeques and police picnics and charity softball games in Jefferson Park. My heart sank. But what could I do? I had to turn around. And there, standing before a case of endlessly rotating hot dogs, stood Terry Ryan, my dad’s old friend, the one who had placed the handcuffs around his wrists. Beside him was a short, pudgy-faced young guy I assumed was his beat partner. They were standing at the coffee station filling their thermoses and stomping the snow off their black boots.

  “Oh. Hi, Terry.”

  “What the hell you doing out in this weather?”

  “We ran out of Dr Pepper.”

  “Oh, now there’s a good reason to go out in the worst blizzard we’ve had in twenty years.” He grinned at me, but I didn’t much feel like smiling back.

  “How’s your ma?”

  “Fine.”

  “Junior?”

  “Fine.”

  “He’s in the navy now, I hear.”

  “Yeah.”

  Terry stirred his coffee.

  “I don’t remember you being this chatty,” he joked.

  I took another sip of my Super Big Gulp and didn’t say anything.

  “You didn’t drive here, did you?”

  “No. Walked.”

  “Well, you’re not walking home. Not in this blizzard.” He glanced outside at the white wall that pounded against the glass doors of the 7-Eleven like a tsunami. “Ray and I are just going to pay for our coffee, and we’ll take you the rest of the way.”

  “I live, like, five blocks away.”

  “In this kind of storm, even five blocks is dangerous.”

  I looked at him coldly, remembering that clean click of the handcuffs he’d snapped around my father’s wrists.

  “No, thanks.” I put my hand on the door.

  “Wendy, don’t be stubborn. You’re crazy if you think I’m going to let you go out in a storm like this with nothing but that thin jacket.” He reached out and pinched the threadbare fabric of my peacoat.

  “Don’t touch me!” I twisted away from him, surprising myself at my sudden rage. The last thing I saw before I ran out into the snow was Terry Ryan standing there dumbly, holding his coffee in his hands.

  I ran as fast as I could, the Dr Pepper spilling and freezing all over my ungloved hands. It was snowing so heavily I couldn’t see where I was going. The snow blew at my face, icing my eyelashes, burning in my nostrils. I stumbled ahead, not knowing whether I was on the sidewalk or in the middle of the street, whether I was heading toward my apartment or away from it. Even sound had fallen away, the snow absorbing everything until all that was left was a muted swirl of silence. The endless march of planes that had been roaring across the skies of the northwest side of Chicago for my entire childhood had come to a halt, leaving the sky a white, wintry void. Every flight out of O’Hare would be canceled in a storm like this. I stopped running and stood for a minute, trying to get my bearings. My right shoulder felt like it was on fire, and the heat was spreading down my back and chest, too. It hurt so much I felt lightheaded and nauseated. Up ahead, I saw a flicker of glowing green light—I couldn’t be sure, but I thought it might be the awning of Siam Palace, and I moved toward it, wading through snow so thick it felt like trying to tread through water. The closer I got, though, the dimmer the flicker got, until I was lost again in the whiteout.

  I tried to ignore the tight ball of panic that was gathering at the pit of my stomach. Just keep going, I told myself. This isn’t the Alaskan frontier—this is Jefferson Park! Of all the crazy things that had happened in this city, I was pretty sure no one had ever been buried in an avalanche in the middle of Milwaukee Avenue, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to be the first. I pushed ahead against the wind, until at last, I came to a viaduct—the one that arched over the street where the Metra trains passed over in better weather. The snow was blowing in on either side, but the concrete arch over my head offered some protection, and I could finally see in front of me. Okay, I thought. This is good. You’re at a landmark. If I could manage to head straight for one block and turn right, my apartment building would be there on the west side of the street. I looked down at my Dr Pepper, which was nearly frozen solid in my purple, frostbitten hand. I took one last valiant sip, but it was too icy to even make it up the straw. I tossed the cup aside, where it clattered against the tagged-up concrete, coming to rest in a pile of debris and fast-food wrappers.

  Step on a crack, you’ll break your back. That was the chant Alexis and I had sung up and down Menard Avenue when we were kids. Her block had forty squares of concrete that made up the sidewalk—forty cracks, and two steps for each square. Eighty steps in all. I wrapped my scarf tighter around my face, took a deep breath, stepped back out into the storm, and began to count.

  By the time I got to step eighty, my legs were trembling. I turned my face into the wind, my stomach clenching, and vomited bile. Forty more steps and the apartment should be on my left. And sure enough, as I rounded the corner and pushed ahead—thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven—I saw, hazily, as if in a dream, the tall brown brick of our complex rising up through the snow. I said a quick prayer of thanks to Our Lady, touching my hot shoulder, stepped up the walkway, and stuck my key in the door.

  It didn’t turn.

  Shit. Had I brought the wrong set? No, these were my keys, with the big plastic sombrero keychain from Señor Frog’s that Aunt Col had bought me as a souvenir from her trip to Cancun. I tried the key again, with no luck. I pressed my nose to the glass front door. That carpet didn’t look right. Had it always been royal blue? I could have sworn it was a poo-hued shade of brown. Or had the landlord installed new carpet? I was confused, exhausted, and scared, and then I heard a rushing in my ears, as if an avalanche was coming. I began to see little black spots oozing across my vision like jellyfish, gelling together into a bigger spot that pulled across my eyes like a velvet stage curtain. Wrong building, I remember thinking to myself.

  Then I fainted.

  20

  I WOKE UP IN WHAT AT FIRST I mistook to be a jungle. Big plants with broad, waxy leaves hung over me, and the humid air clanged with the twittering of birds. A
flash of yellow flitted overhead, and a small canary swooped down and perched on the arm of the floral couch where I was lying, my boots placed neatly on the floor beside me. From far away, I heard the drone of a television and the clatter of dishes being washed. My head throbbed, and so did my shoulder. My mouth was bone dry, my tongue heavy and lolling. The chills persisted, and my teeth began to chatter so loudly that the startled canary swooped away and disappeared down a hallway.

  “Hello?” My voice sounded foreign, moose-like and mournful. There were footsteps, and finally a stooped old woman appeared in the doorway, holding a ziplock bag of ice in one hand and a steaming mug in the other. I lay there, paralyzed with terror, as she leaned down close enough that I could see the big, soft, porous moles all over her face and smell the combination of rosy old-lady perfume and birdseed that drifted from the folds of her old-fashioned housecoat. She had red slippers on her feet that were so worn I could see through them to the outline of her thick, yellow toenails, and her sparse gray hair was pinned up around her head with little metal barrettes.

  She came over to me, said something in Polish, then clucked at me in a universal language of grandmothers that I understood to mean that I should sit up. She leaned close, and another bird, this one bigger and gray, with a shock of red feathers mohawked across the crown of its head, zoomed through the air and landed on her shoulder, peering at me with beady, jealous eyes. The lady put the bag of ice into my hand and guided it to a spot on the back of my head where a lump had formed, the hair matted with dried blood. Then, she put the mug on the glass coffee table next to me.

  “Drink.” She pointed. I peered into the depths of the chipped mug. It was filled with blood and floating white fingers. Wonderful: I had escaped the clutches of the most epic snowstorm in Chicago history only to land in the hands of a serial killer and/or cannibal. The black jellyfish came oozing back. Bird Lady must have seen the fear in my face, because she sighed impatiently and held the mug to my lips.