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While talking to the colonel about how to administratively process Nicole’s death, I volunteered to walk through the house where she was murdered. We started the conversation sitting on opposite sides of the executive desk in his office. A bookcase stood against the wall facing us. Plaques from his previous commands and a rack filled with dozens of commander’s coins that he’d been awarded over his multi-decade career sat on the shelves. He had a large, hovering presence even while seated, but the power dynamic between us was the least of my concerns. Nicole was all I could think about.

“Contact HRO,” the colonel said, “to find out who Nicole’s next of kin is.”

“I’m sure it’s her sister,” I said.

“I think you’re right. When we know for sure, we can reach out and walk her through the benefits she’s eligible for.”

“Ok—”

“And someone will have to go to the house to see if we can get any of her equipment back.”
When Nicole joined the Army National Guard, she borrowed a laptop, a load-bearing vest, a rucksack, and other tactical gear, which must have been somewhere in her rental home. I didn’t understand why the supply sergeants responsible for maintaining accountability of our equipment couldn’t file Nicole’s gear as a loss. The U.S. government wouldn’t miss a couple thousand dollars of stuff. But it seemed the colonel wanted someone to go anyway.

“I want to do it,” I blurted.

“You’re too close to the situation to have to see something like that,” he said, “especially if you’ve never seen anything like that before.”

As a second lieutenant, I should’ve said, “Roger that, Sir.” I knew walking through a murder scene wasn’t the type of experience I could prepare for, but I was certain I was strong enough to see whatever was on the other side of Nicole’s front door. I had to defy the indirect order. “Sir, I can handle it,” I said. “I’ll be okay.”

“Alright then,” he said pensively. “Take a battle buddy with you so you’re not alone.”

When I walked out, I thought about the gravity of what I had asked, maybe a little unsure after all. I wondered how anyone would see something like that for the first time. I suddenly realized that on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, where some of my coworkers had been more than once, death is forced into a soldier’s line of sight, and then it’s forced into their nightmares. I had never gone to war. I had never seen the kind of battle that spilled a friend’s blood.
I didn’t want to look away from Nicole’s murder because I wanted to test the depths of what I was capable of feeling. When I was four, my brother’s sudden death knocked my world off its axis. Weeks before his high school graduation, he died from a form of heart disease, of which death was the only symptom. I spent my entire life living in the shadow of a dead boy. Death was an ordinary part of my life. I thought about it often and anticipated its arrival. As a kid, the joy of getting a new toy quickly evaporated the moment when I realized that I could die at any moment too. The deaths of my grandmother, cousins, and uncle equate to more dying than most people will ever experience, but for me, those experiences were as ordinary as seeing shadows cast from moonlight.

Two decades later, one of my closest friends was dead. Nicole’s death, unlike the others, was hard to believe. I could still see the blonde strands falling from her bun as she zipped around our office building from one errand to another. I could still see her bunny teeth as she chattered in laughter about a new guy she was dating. I felt pain now in ways that I’ve never felt before, but I thought it might be a fluke. Experiencing the death of my brother so early in life taught me how to die before I learned how to live. I was afraid my reflex would kick in, and I would get over the loss as quickly as the people who had only known of her. A part of me hoped seeing the crime scene would make my pain last.
Within a few days, the Burlington County police released the crime scene, so a coworker and I hopped into a government-owned vehicle and drove 30 minutes west from Fort Dix to Mount Holly. The South Jersey towns we drove through moved from sweeping farmland to suburban expanse. The houses we saw along the way looked like Monopoly pieces spread across green islands.

When we pulled up to Nicole’s street in Mount Holly, I looked out the passenger window, realizing I still had a chance to look away. The houses on the block looked different from the others I’d seen on the way. Here, the houses lay nearly on top of each other, divided only by mismatched fencing. They had the same vinyl siding and over-flowing gutters. The sidewalks were broken and ripped up in places where weeds sprouted. Although it was February, it didn’t seem like greenery lived on that block in any season.
I thought about being at the house a few weeks prior. That night had been one of the few times when Nicole and I made plans that we actually kept. Before heading to a local bar, I stepped inside to meet her boyfriend and her father. Both men were polite and soft spoken. We exchanged a few pleasant words, and then Nicole and I left, not knowing that in a few weeks two people would be dead, and the other would be the murderer.

At the bar, Nicole and I shared drinks, laughed, and took a few photos. One image is tattooed in my memory. We sat cheek to cheek, smiling ear to ear. The background was a cacophony of vibrant reds, blues, and greens. I could still hear the clattering glasses and drunken conversations. We were both safe from jealous boyfriends, troubled parents, and the grind of everyday life because, in the moment, none of that mattered. Nicole didn’t have to complain about her boyfriend’s rage and I didn’t have to wag a finger at her insisting she leave him. We both felt free.

Staring at Nicole’s house now spoiled the sweet memory. A feeling of dread hung onto my shoulders and weighed me down. I walked up to the threshold knowing that on the either side of the door Nicole’s boyfriend had bludgeoned her and her father with some object the police wouldn’t name, while her teenage sister lay asleep in the attic. She woke up the next day, walked downstairs, and found her family laying in pools of blood. Nicole’s boyfriend was still in the house. When her sister saw him, she ran outside with her cell phone and called the police.

At the door, Nicole’s family-friends greeted us. They had been at the house for hours, getting rid of trash and recovering personal items the family wanted to keep. There was no turning back now. The front door opened into the living room. The couch where Nicole’s body was found sat in the middle of the room. Blood was splattered on some of the cushions and soaked into others. Heaps of clothes were strewn across the floor. This is when I realized the police don’t clean up crime scenes; they just take what they need and leave the rest for someone else to figure out.

I followed the narrow hall that connected the living room to a stairway on the left followed by a small bedroom and then the kitchen. A headboard leaned against the wall on my right. It came from the room where Nicole’s father slept. The headboard was pale green and had splatters of painted flowers and blood.

I walked up the misshapen steps to the second floor. I was careful not to graze the walls. In Nicole’s bedroom, there was blood splatter on the walls and on light fixtures and soaked into the carpet and into blankets. I didn’t know the details at the time, but after the murders were complete, Nicole’s boyfriend walked up to the bedroom with a knife and tried to kill himself too.

I stood in silent horror. My coworker walked in from behind me. He cursed under his breath, disgusted by the damage done to an entire family. I wished he would keep quiet. The moment we were standing in was already horrible. No one needed to speak the obvious truths. I don’t believe in god, but I needed silence—to pray, or, to just send as many loving thoughts to Nicole as I could. I had no room in my heart for anger toward the murderer. Instead, I wanted to fill that space with love for Nicole.

After sifting through a dresser to see what we could find, we walked to the closet. The door was ajar, so my coworker opened it. Nicole’s military gear spilled out. We realized we would have to trash it all. The equipment was blood-stained. I couldn’t believe the splatter reached inside the closet. There was nothing about Nicole’s murder that made sense.

That night, as I lay in bed, my thoughts rattled in my head. I wanted to know the particulars about Nicole’s murder. I told myself that knowing the why and the how would somehow help me find peace. I believed knowing would be better than wondering. I realized that, after learning the truth of my brother’s death, I had nightmares. I saw my brother’s heart, like armed guards, blocking his blood flow. The blood had nowhere to go, so in a desperate rage, it strangled his lungs, forcing out his last breath. I still can’t look away from that painful knowledge. I suddenly understood I didn’t need war to prepare me for anything that doesn’t already haunt me.

Susette Brooks is writer, editor, and educator. She is a graduate from the MFA in Nonfiction program at Goucher College and is the former Creative Nonfiction Editor at Philadelphia Stories. Susette is working on a memoir in essays about the lies she’s told as defense against childhood traumas. Visit her website: www.susettebrooks.com.

Clarion Street

By Nancy Farrell

It was mid-summer, 1972, when I was 12 years old, that my parents sold our small row home on Clarion Street in South Philadelphia. They bought a finer row home in a suburban development dubbed Briarcliff, which rested in the Delaware County town of Glenolden. My father, Charles, was excited to own his first garage, while my mother, Violet, looked forward to the neighbors being less close at hand, albeit only a tad less. With the South Philadelphia and Briarcliff agreements of sale both signed, the clock began to tick toward our last day as South Philadelphians. That day would arrive in October, 1972.

My father had been struggling to keep his home goods business afloat. Progress was not on his side. My father’s customers were the housewives of South Philadelphia, but their numbers were dwindling. It was the dawn of the shopping mall. The drapery that my father stored in his car and carried into houses could not compete with the variety at Sears, Roebuck and Company. In 1972, the remaining housewives continued to open their doors to my father, but it was because he was a sociable, homegrown fellow. They desired coffee and conversation with him, but his home goods, not so much.

Undeniably, it was my mother’s office job at the Bell Telephone Company that enabled our move to Briarcliff. The job was a 20-minute walk from Clarion Street, and something she accomplished in sensible heels and strictly on time. The residue of my mother’s stern upbringing gave rise to her handling stacks of Bell Telephone Company paperwork with speed and competency.

Once the news of our upcoming move spread, I was forced to fathom the unfathomable. I laid in bed at night as one realization after another turned my stomach. Clarion Street would never host another of our holidays. The aroma of my mother’s spaghetti and meatballs, cooked each Sunday after Mass at the Annunciation BVM Church, would fade from the kitchen. The days of the overhang outside our back door sheltering my bike were numbered.

Life began to shift, as my mother collected ideas for modern decorating from Good Housekeeping magazine. Briarcliff would be her chance to start fresh. Meanwhile, my father declared that Briarcliff would be cleaner and safer than South Philadelphia. I felt insulted on behalf of our home, as I watched one room after another turn to dust and echo. Briarcliff-worthy knick-knacks were boxed up, while unworthy ones were placed in the trash.

The most troubling part of the move was the inescapable loss of my Clarion Street friends. There was my closest pal, Bridget, with whom I shared a birth year and every juvenile notion, such as whether a song she made up, “Little Brown Jug,” might someday be recorded by The Monkees. With her perpetual pixie hairdo, Bridget had a pureness of heart epitomized by her habit of chalking “I’m sorry, let’s make up” on the sidewalk outside my house following our rare spats.

And then there was Brenda, who was the same age as Bridget and me. Brenda was pretty and being hip came as naturally to her as breathing. When the bullies from around the corner turned up, Brenda remained unfazed. Always with a bottle of Coca Cola in hand, Brenda liked to deliberately spill dribbles onto the street, simply for kicks. Bridget and I occasionally hitched ourselves to Brenda’s hijinks because it was exciting, but we typically favored the comfort and trust of our twosome.

There was Anthony, as well. He was one year older, and our informal leader on Clarion Street. He wore his hair long and he had a drum set in his basement, where he played Led Zeppelin songs. Bridget and I found Anthony charming, even though his rock star persona was undercut by his family’s laundry, which continually drooped on a clothesline above his drum space. We believed we had a love triangle parallel to Betty, Veronica, and Archie in the Archie comic books that we purchased at Bertolino’s Pharmacy.

My last summer on Clarion Street passed much like the prior ones. We roller skated, played tag, twirled hula hoops, and told spooky stories, all the while devouring cones of ice cream from the Mr. Softee Truck and Broadway Licorice Rolls from Jean’s Grocery Store. We fell into bed at night sticky with sweat and sugar, confident that all of those things would be within reach again when the sun came up.

The gang knew that my family’s house had been sold, but this turn of events was unfamiliar. All of us had only ever lived on Clarion Street. I longed to confess my heartbreak, but instead talked up the spacious MacDade Mall/Eric Movie Theater complex located near Briarcliff. What I should have announced was that nothing could top Clarion Street. There was the Mummer’s Parade that took place every January 1^st just two blocks away, and it wasn’t just the lively music and magical costumes that made the parade extraordinary. It was the neighborhood families who opened their doors in welcome to all, offering escarole soup and crumb buns. Our parents lost track of us on New Year’s Day, but never worried about our being cold, hungry, or safe.

There was also the 37-foot statue of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, that sat atop Philadelphia’s City Hall, which was visible, opportunely, from the flat rooftop outside my bedroom. And then there was the lunch counter at nearby Woolworth’s, where the price of an ice cream sundae was determined by whichever balloon a customer chose from the day’s balloon assortment. The balloons dangled colorfully above the lunch counter and contained within each was a slip of paper that was a price tag. When a balloon was chosen by an ice cream sundae customer and then popped, the treat’s price was revealed.

In October, 1972, when my family’s last day on Clarion Street landed, I felt a helplessness equal to the weight of the moving truck that rested in my line of sight. My friends watched curbside, while I leaned on our wrought-iron railing, as our forest green sofa and television were carried out sideways and stowed. I knew that my parents intended to comfort me, but were busy with last minute tasks. There were closets to be checked one final time, and keys to be collected.

With the last of our possessions amassed in the moving truck, the metal door was slammed down and the tarnished latch secured. This was my family’s cue to climb into our blue Rambler Ambassador and to begin following the moving truck to Briarcliff. I rolled down my back-seat window, and my friends peeked in to wave goodbye. I sat in the car, stricken, and closed my eyes, as our car proceeded to the corner of Clarion Street. To lessen the ache, I pretended that we were headed instead to our yearly vacation at the Lamp Post Motel in Wildwood, something I treasured. “It will be okay,” my mother said from the front seat.

And my mother’s prediction was true. Time passed, and I did gradually become accustomed to the suburbs, and to the new friends and happenings that filled my days in Briarcliff. There were stumbles, to be sure, like when I was stung on my forehead by a bumble bee as I walked to my first day at Our Lady of Fatima School. Or when my mother signed us up at the Glenolden Swim Club, where I sat glued to the pool’s ledge, filled with the terror of a non-swimmer. And then there was the ill-fated, week-long Girl Scouts camping trip I took to Sunset Hill, when I was commanded by the leader to wear a wash cloth bobby pinned to the top of my head because I had neglected to pack a hat.

Despite those missteps, I grew to accept that dipping my toes in creeks and fishing for minnows at Glenolden Park were reasonably worthwhile pastimes. And I developed a great affection for the group of Briarcliff girls who took me in. We moseyed to the MacDade Mall, where we shared pizza at Italian Delight and bought David Bowie albums at Wee Three Records.

But my memories of Clarion Street never fell away completely. One of my first visits to the block as a grownup was on a date to The Victor Cafe, an eatery that borders Clarion Street, where the servers are budding opera singers. The date was with the Briarcliff man that I would one day marry. He walked patiently alongside me down Clarion Street, past my old house, which then featured dark red awnings and a polished front entrance. Just as I had done back on moving day in 1972, I paused and closed my eyes, and I felt a tenderness borne of nostalgia, and a melancholy borne of a spell forever gone. Impulsively, I decided to ring the doorbell of my old house. Perhaps the current owner would be sympathetic to my story, I thought, and I could take a peek inside, but no one answered the door.

A decade later, I revisited Clarion Street, this time with my young daughters in tow. I held their hands, as I told them about pushing doll coaches with Bridget down the sidewalk. I told them about Brenda and her penchant for mischief. I pointed out the house where Anthony played his drums.

The friends I left on Clarion Street had never been far from my thoughts as the ensuing years rolled from one to the next. About a year after my family’s move, Bridget became a boarding school student at the Charles E. Ellis School in Newtown Square, an institution for fatherless daughters. My mother dropped me off at the school to visit Bridget one brisk, Sunday afternoon. Bridget and I strolled through fallen leaves to a nearby McDonalds, where we caught up, and where we realized that our bond had not waned. Afterward, as I sat in Bridget’s dormitory room, I worried that she might be lonely, but the opposite was true. She revealed that she was comfortable at the boarding school, and that the other girls were nice. Living at the Charles E. Ellis School was a continuous sleepover party, Bridget disclosed.

Thereafter, despite spans of time when we unintentionally overlooked one another, and when the tides swept Bridget in one direction and me in another, our relationship endured. When Bridget was married in 1981, I was by her side, and when it was my turn in 1984, she was by mine.

Brenda’s family also moved away from Clarion Street. They bought a home in Springfield just four miles from my family’s. At the time, my father and Brenda’s father, Ray, developed a companionship. They were Delaware County transplants who, in spending time together, found a way to hold on to a bit of South Philadelphia. As a result, Brenda and I saw one another from time to time, and she spoke of Springfield contentedly. A decade later, I would coincidentally acquire work at the same Center City law firm where Brenda’s sister worked, which circumstance renewed our families’ link.

With an expanding Internet at our disposal, Bridget and I, then in our 40s, decided it was high time that we discovered what had become of Anthony. Utilizing social media, we discovered that Anthony was a professional drummer in a band called Splashing Violet, and in another known as The Flip-N-Mickeys. We wasted no time in messaging Anthony, and he wasted no time in agreeing to meet us.

On a balmy, early spring evening, Bridget, Anthony and I had our reunion at the Triangle Tavern in South Philadelphia. Open since 1933, the Triangle Tavern, with its Italian grandmother-style cuisine, had prevailed despite several bouts of new ownership and an assortment of renovations. I parked my car outside the Triangle Tavern, and I kept an eye out for Bridget, as it dawned on me that Bridget and I had chosen the ideal place to meet. After all, what was our relationship, if not something that had prevailed despite many years and many changes?

Anthony was inside when Bridget and I entered. His back was to the door, but when he heard us, he leapt from his seat. He hugged Bridget and me in a warmhearted way that belied our lost decades. Anthony, who had remained boyish in appearance, wore a black t-shirt and jeans indicative of his career, and his hair still rested past his shoulders,

Over pizza and beer, we kicked around memories of the 1960s and early 1970s. Anthony recounted the innumerable times we had been scolded by our elderly Clarion Street neighbors for misdeeds as small as dripping ice cream onto the pavement, or as big as bumping a parked car on our bikes. And we nodded in agreement over the incomparable thrill of the Whip Truck Ride that passed through our neighborhood in summertime.

Afterward, as I walked to my car, I thought about what I would say if I could speak to that girl who had sat, stricken, in the blue Rambler Ambassador in 1972. I would tell her that hurdles and teary nights spent over her diary lie ahead, but that in time her self-confidence would grow, and like the South Philadelphia knick-knacks her parents once deemed worthy or unworthy, she would discover what to hold on to and what to let go.

Present day Clarion Street thrives in the revitalized Passyunk Square district. My small row home, purchased by my parents in the late 1950s for $5,500, would sell today for over $300,000 at current market prices. The former mom-and-pop grocery stores are now trendy businesses, and The Victor Cafe is a Philadelphia tourist destination. Still, when I visit, I recognize the kids outside. They do not notice me as they play with their Barbie dolls and their Nerf Super Soakers. I sigh, and then I smile, and I know it’s time to go.

Nancy Farrell is a lifelong writer with a focus on autobiographical works. She spends most of her free time with family, including a darling rescue mutt. The library is her favorite place. She works as a legal assistant in Media, PA.

Frank Ewing only ever lets me into his place because he has to. It’s right there in the lease.

“I ain’t ever signed off on that,” he tells me through the crack of his door the first time I knock. “You show me where it say that.”

I pass a copy across the threshold and point to where the Housing Authority mandates monthly visits from me, his new case manager.

He looks at the paper for a long time. In a few months, he’ll start to let me help him with his mail, and I’ll come to understand he can’t read.

“Boy they kill you with the small print,” is all he says about the lease.

He never learned how.

He is seventy five and has a long enough history of homelessness that the city pays me to provide whatever support he needs to stay housed, now that he’s finally housed.

“It’s not like an inspection or anything,” I add. “I’m not here to get you in trouble.”

He opens the door and lets me in. The place is always the same: clean enough, with some cowboy show on the TV, mattress on the floor, unopened condoms on the windowsill, and nothing in the fridge.

“Want some help with food?” I ask. “There are some places I know about that could help you out a little.”

“Don’t need no help. See you next month. Seventeenth, right?”

On the seventeenth, I bring back a loaf of bread. One of the pieces of mail I help Frank review is from the Housing Authority, threatening eviction. He hasn’t paid his rent once in the six months he’s lived there. I ask why not.

“How much I owe?” he says. “I’ll pay them next month.”

He doesn’t. I explain the situation to my supervisor, and at first, she assumes Frank’s using, but then when I mention the condoms, the pieces fall into place for her.

“So, he’s tricking, too.”

Next time I see Frank the lights don’t work. He lets me call PECO to work out a payment plan, but the thing about it is he has to actually pay. Both the rent and electric payments are so small it’s like they’re symbolic. It’s like:

You want this place? Give up something for it. We know your pension is modest, we understand things are hard. We’re not asking for much, just give us something.

He doesn’t give them anything. Maybe it’s symbolic for him, too.

On the day I visit Frank to tell him he’s being evicted, I meet the woman he’s been spending all his money on. She’s leaving just as I get there, and in lots of ways, she’s not what I expected: she’s older, in her sixties maybe, and beautiful in the way that mothers and grandmothers are, wholesome. Her hair’s done up, she’s wearing scrubs, she’s off to work, she tells me. We talk for a minute, and she calls me baby in that way that older women sometimes do that I love. Her name is Prudie.

“So that’s her,” I say to Frank once she’s gone. I’ve been coming to see him for almost a year at this point, so I should know better. It’s the wrong thing to say. He darkens, says it’s none of my damn business, and points to the door. I show him the notice to vacate.

At eviction court, the lawyers compel Frank to either submit to a representative payee—someone to handle his finances, pay his rent, budget his spending—or vacate the unit in thirty days.

“Please,” the lawyers appeal to me in private. “Try and talk some sense into him. You know how many people would kill to have what he’s about to throw away?”

I do. I get it, but for the whole meeting, all I can think about is Prudie in her powder pink scrubs, and I don’t try and convince him one way or the other.

After he’s evicted, I go and see him in the shelter, see what he’s paid back this month. When the balance is zero, he will be awarded a new Section 8 voucher, judge’s ruling. He hasn’t paid a cent, and the staff at the shelter are frustrated with him.

“Every month it’s the same thing. He leaves out the first—payday—and comes back on the fifth, broke as a joke. It’s been four months, and he hasn’t paid back a dime towards his balance. It’s like he doesn’t even care about getting back home. And it’s not like he’s even getting high—we’ve tested him. Addiction we can at least try to treat. There’s funding for that. But this? And don’t think we don’t know exactly where his money’s going.”

“To love,” I say, and it helps, they laugh. I’ll never tell them about Prudie, and Frank will never give her up. I try and press him a little, though. The shelter is a hell of a place to be seventy-five years old.

“Just give them a little bit. I mean don’t you want to get the hell out of here?”

He laughs. “I sure do get the hell on out, every first of the month, don’t I?”

I don’t know where it is he meets Prudie every month for those few days, and I know better than to ask. I get it. Wherever it is, it’s the one place none of us can touch.

Before I leave we play a game of chess in the day room. I’ve never played anyone as good as Frank. He seems to wake up when we play, like he’s thirty years younger, moving quickly and slamming the pieces down, “There.” He talks smack, he laughs at most of my moves, and he uses his queen in ways that would make me nervous.

“You putting her on that pedestal ain’t doing you any good, neither,” he tells me.

I laugh, he’s right. “I’d just be scared of losing her.”

“Shit,” says Frank, and he darkens like he does. “That ain’t love.”

Patrick McNeil has worked in Philadelphia’s homeless sector since 2011. His work has appeared in Eclectica Magazine, Apiary Magazine, and elsewhere. He is the organizer of Philly’s own Backyard Writer’s Workshop, and founder of the Writers Residency in Tufo, Italy.