Mind Games

Several years ago I started getting notifications from Google about my website http://www.secondlooks.biz which includes a photography site, a resume site, and a writing site, as well as contents that accompanies my ebooks sold on Amazon. Google wanted me to include language and design that would optimize my web-page content for mobile as well as desktop platforms. Mostly self-taught, I had dabbled in HTML and CSS and Javascript and had even taken a class as far back as 2010 and had many hundreds of web-pages, but somehow getting the mobile platform statements right on those pages eluded me. When I incorporated those statements, my pages ended up looking worse on mobile platforms such as my iphones and ipads. The upshot was that I removed the statements and Google quit including me in their web-search results so that people could no longer find my content, even with a specific phrase. :( 

 While this seems to hold true for my blog site as well, I have decided to migrate some of my work into blog pieces to hopefully increase the chances of being found and preserving some of these writings. as I am now in my early seventies and retired. After I graduated from college in 1972, I worked for an inner city youth ministry called Teen Haven in Philadelphia for 3 and a half years. Teen Haven was founded by the Reverend Bill Drury. The following piece Mind Games is from my Teen Haven Diary.

Mind Games

by

Jeanne Winstead

It was 9:00 o'clock one evening when Stan dropped by the Teen Haven Center on 20th Street to say hello to Barb. She was out of town, and Toni and Stephanie had come expressly to spend the night with me so I wouldn't be alone. I was pleasantly surprised to see him. Although I hadn't planned to put the girls to bed that early, a rare opportunity to socialize had presented itself. So against their good-natured protests, the girls took their baths and gave me their goodnights.

Stan and I sat at the kitchen table on the third floor of the old row house that was the Teen Haven Center and visited.

He was a slender, nice-looking guy, intelligent, in his mid-twenties. Barb and Doug had known him since he was a fourteen year old gang member on the streets of Philadelphia. He'd come a long way since then. He'd told me once he'd been thrown through a storefront display window in a gang rumble.

Stan always seemed glad and very gracious when he saw me, and we'd sit and talk about works by black authors like Malcolm X and James Baldwin. Stan was certainly not wanting for attention from many beautiful young women. I was flattered that he showed any interest in me, but he had never asked me out. One night several months ago at the Broad Street Teen Haven, he had dropped by to visit. The conversation turned a little personal, and I think he found out that I had never been kissed, even. That seemed to fascinate him, and after a while he took my hand and leaned forward, gently coaxing me, but at the last moment I backed out. I turned my head and said no. As a Christian missionary in an inner city youth ministry, I had certain ideas and guidelines about how physical intimacies should progress. I thought dating should come first. I didn't hear from him after that, and assumed that he'd lost interest.

It was a price I was used to paying for my beliefs.

This night as we sat in the kitchen, he mentioned that he really needed a place to stay. I accepted this without question. Stan had spent many nights at Teen Haven over the years. I told him he could have Barb's room.

I was making preparation to go to bed around eleven, when he called me to the room he was sleeping in.

"What do you want?" I asked, standing in the doorway.

"Look over there out the window," he said.

I entered the room. Nothing prepared me for what happened next. Suddenly the lights snapped off, and before I could say a word, he had me by the throat. I could feel something sharp pressed against my jugular. In the dark, breathing hard, his voice shaking, he whispered to me that it was a knife, and to do what he said or he swore he would cut me. Then he started moving me toward the bed. My mind simply refused to grasp what was going to happen next. Maybe it was that I'd had very little sexual experience and was scared of it. Maybe it was that six weeks of self-defense training I'd had back in college that had been rusting in some far corner of my mind for three years. I don't know.

Right before he forced me down on the bed, I gasped, "You'll just have to cut me then," and somehow twisted out and away from his grip. I moved quickly over to the light, snapped it back on, and we just stood there staring at each other.

"I'm sorry." he apologized almost instantly.

"It's ok," I said. "As far as I'm concerned this never happened. But just leave. Now."

"OK," I think he said.

But he made no move to go.

So I said, "I'll wait for you to leave, go now," and walked out of his room and back to mine. And stood there silently in the middle of it, listening for the sound of his foot steps going down the stairs. But the house was deathly quiet. With each passing second came a growing sense of danger, and the more paralyzed I felt to even move. The air and the silence were thick around around me. Why wouldn't he leave? It was like he was under control of something that would just not allow him to leave. Then I saw my Bible laying on my dresser. Finally I took a step, grabbed the Bible up against me, then stepped out into the hallway. The girls' bed room was right next to mine. I opened their door and slipped inside, locking it behind me. Then I sat down in a large stuffed chair between the door and Toni's bed, and tried to read.

Immediately Stan was on the other side of the door.

"Open up, I have to talk to you," he pleaded.

"No! Go away, Stan!"

"I'm serious, you open this door or I'll break it down!"

And he did, he kicked it open, ripping the little latch from the door post and sending it flying. I screamed and scrambled out of my chair right over the top of Toni's bed, grabbing little, sleeping Tony up against my chest and dragging her with me to the opposite side.

"Go away, Stan, please!" I begged. And started to cry.

Toni woke up out of a dead sleep in my arms and said, "Jeanne, what's wrong!" in a panic.

I held her slender nine year old body against my chest, literally clung to her for protection.

Across the room her sister, Stephanie, eleven, sat straight up in bed. "Jeanne, what's wrong!"

I just buried my face in the curve of Toni's slender brown neck and sobbed,"Oh, Toni, I'm scared, I'm scared!"

With all three of us awake, Stan sat down in the chair I had been sitting in.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he reassured us. I just want Jeannie to come back to my room to talk to me."

Stephanie had this knowing look on her face. "Don't go with him, Jeannie," she warned. I wondered how she knew.

"Stan," I said desperately, "If you don't leave, I'll have to call the police!"

All he said was, "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

That's all he had to say.

I was absolutely afraid to move away from Toni. She was my safe haven. No harm would come to me as long as I had her in my arms. Little Toni, a hard look on her young face, caught her older sister's eye and jerked her head toward the office, where the telephone sat. Steph hesitated, then started to climb out of bed, and I shook my head no, emphatically, for her to stay where she was.

The seconds stretched into minutes, and the minutes into an hour. Stan continued to sit there. I could tell the girls were fighting to stay awake.

"Don't fall asleep on me," I told Toni softly. She looked over at Stephanie. What happened next seems strange. Somehow the three of us just shut Stan out. We started laughing and giggling and talking to each other. We told stories and jokes and played Can You Guess What I See Now, and every other game we could think of. It was like an overnight party. Except that all the while my mind kept fishing feverishly for some way to get to my car keys and escape from the house.

And all the while, somewhere far away, out there on the peripheral, Stan sat watching us.

Every so often we'd all fall silent. The girls' eyes would droop, and I could feel sheer exhaustion coursing like brown sludge through my veins. It got so bad, I considered giving in to his continued insistance that I go "talk" to him. Maybe he really didn't mean me any harm, I told myself. But the girls always stopped me when he urged me to go with him.

Eventually, Steph decided she needed to go to the bathroom. Stan said we could go. Reminded us he didn't have to let us go, but he did. The girls and I walked down the hall in a tight little group. As we entered the bathroom, he walked right past us and sat in the office right next to it. Shaken, I shut and locked the door, flushed the toilet, turned on the faucet, raised the bathroom window to see if I could climb out to the street.

"Don't leave us alone with that man," Stephanie said. And she didn't say it like a child. She said it dead serious, like he would use them in my absence.

"I wish Ronnie, or James, or my Uncle Jimmy were here," Toni pouted. "They'd take care of that man."

Ronnie, Toni and Steph's oldest brother, used to live at the center. Toni had no idea how much my heart echoed her simple sentiment. Or that for me the sun rose and set in Ronnie's eyes. Or how much I had hated it when at a young sixteen, he'd decided to leave us. James, their loveable fourteen year old brother, still lived with us, but was away at camp.

The sad fact was there was no one here to help us. The three of us huddled on the floor for a while and whispered. Finally, Toni said, "I'm hungry. I wish I had a Big Mac right now, and fries..." She licked her lips and rubbed her tummy.

I just stared at her. "All right," I said suddenly. "Let's go get one. Let's just open this door, walk down the stairs, and leave."

The girls both looked at me with wide eyes.

"He's not going to leave," I told them. "So, let's us leave. Now."

"You all didn't have to lock yourselves in the bathroom." Stan sounded almost reproachful as we stepped into the hallway. "I wasn't going to hurt you."

When we announced our plans, he just listened quietly.

Then he said, "I'll leave too."

I told Stephanie to run into my room, just a few steps down the hall, and grab my keys from my desk. We waited for her on the stairway. At 2:00 in the morning, the girls and I walked out of the building, leaving it wide open, and got in the car. Stan came behind us.

"Can you give me a ride?" He asked. Amazed at his persistence, I shook my head no.

"I won't be bothering you again," he said. "Tell Barb I'm sorry."

With that he walked away.

I drove the girls to an all night hamburger joint on North Broad Street close to Center City. Sitting at the counter in our pajamas like three refugees from the twilight zone, we listened to a drunken customer and the waitress trade obsenities while we ate. From that place I called Annie at the Mt. Vernon Street Teen Have. Got her out of bed. Told her we needed a place to stay the rest of the night. When we got there, she was waiting for us.

I remember in the days that ensued, feeling bad for Barb and Doug and Stan, wondering how he could choose to close that door, long open between him and Teen Haven before I ever came on the scene. I also remember feeling bad for me. Many people pressed me to go to the police, but I never did.

To this day, if the light goes out suddenly and unexpectedly, I have a knee jerk reaction. For a moment I'm back in Barb's bedroom at 867 N. 20^th Street in Philadelphia, some twenty five years ago.

But the reaction isn't as intense as it used to be.

Toni and Stephanie and I went on to share many moments together during my years at Teen Haven. It just occured to me, at age forty-eight, and twenty-five years after the fact, that I am officially a "black" person. I have been officially received. One day the three of us were in a McDonalds on North Broad Street. Some black Muslims were sitting at table next to us. I worried, from experience, that they would harass us for being together and mentioned something to the girls about their presence in a low voice.

"Yeah," Toni said disgustedly. "It's a wonder they don't try to sell you one of their newspapers!"

I just looked at her. "Why, Toni," I said, keeping my voice down, "They wouldn't do that!"

"Why not," she wanted to know immediately.

Amazed at her innocence, I explained in hushed tones, "Because I'm white and you're black. They don't like to see us together."

"You're not white," Toni announced fiercely. "You're like us - you're black!"

And if that weren't enough, she tossed a defiant glance over in the direction of the Black Muslims, and said it again.

At that moment, it felt like everyone in the restaurant was looking at us. For a second I wanted to crawl under the table. I felt so embarrassed. And so proud.

For if Antoinette Williams thought that I was black, no bigger honour has ever been given me in my whole life. 

June Bug

more teen haven stories ...

Forces of Nature

Several years ago I started getting notifications from Google about my website http://www.secondlooks.biz which includes a photography site, a resume site, and a writing site, as well as contents that accompanies my ebooks sold on Amazon. Google wanted me to include language and design that would optimize my web-page content for mobile as well as desktop platforms. Mostly self-taught, I had dabbled in HTML and CSS and Javascript and had even taken a class as far back as 2010 and had many hundreds of web-pages, but somehow getting the mobile platform statements right on those pages eluded me. When I incorporated those statements, my pages ended up looking worse on mobile platforms such as my iphones and ipads. The upshot was that I removed the statements and Google quit including me in their web-search results so that people could no longer find my content, even with a specific phrase. :(

While this seems to hold true for my blog site as well, I have decided to migrate some of my work into blog pieces to hopefully increase the chances of being found and preserving some of these writings. as I am now in my early seventies and retired. After I graduated from college in 1972, I worked for an inner city youth ministry called Teen Haven in Philadelphia for 3 and a half years. Teen Haven was founded by the Reverend Bill Drury. The following piece Forces of Nature is from my Teen Haven Diary.

Forces of Nature

by

Jeanne Winstead

 

When I was working at the Philadelphia Teen Haven in the seventies, I took a day and went to one of the New Jersey boardwalk towns along the Atlantic Ocean. Ocean City, maybe.

I spend the whole day on the beach, renewing an early childhood acquaintance with my beloved playmate, the Ocean. My dad had taught me to dive under its waves, and to ride them back in to shore. So after being away for most of my landlocked life, I revel in the moving water like it was a living thing, get slapped and slobbered on by its playful, puppy waves. I love its hugeness. I’m in and out of it all day long.

Along toward the end of the day, now sun-baked dry and crisp with sand, I decide to go in for one last swim before heading back to Philly.  So I run blithely out into the water. Quite a few people are here. The man next to me speaks.

“Are you sure you want to be out here?”

He stands head and shoulders above me.

I look around. It occurs to me that there are some things I hadn’t noticed…like the only people out in this water are large, burly men. That the water seems a little rough. Then I see it coming at us. This huge wave, bigger than any I’ve seen up close in my whole life. All the men groan, collectively. I have this sudden urge to latch on to the man who’d asked me the question. But I know we’ll both drown if I do that. Too late to get away from it, I have to go under it. I must not let it break on me!

“Dive!” yells the man who asked me the question.

We throw ourselves under the fast breaking crest. The water pulls me back as I come out the other side to see another huge wave coming right at us. The last one was too close for comfort, and I struggle out to meet this new wave farther away from land. I hope to catch it before it starts to break and ride it back to shore. But it takes all my strength just to reach it before it breaks.  The same with the next. And the next. Some waves are bigger and some crest sooner. Each time I get through one, the water drags me away from the next one, which is rapidly approaching.  I fight my way desperately back toward it, and I barely make it under before it breaks. The sheer power of that water, that Force of Nature. I’m no match for it. It’s no longer a friendly thing. And I’m getting so tired. Deep under the surface, the water swirling around my face, bubbling through my hair, I pray, “Please, God, don’t let me drown. Not like this.”

 I surface and finally catch a smaller wave and ride it in to shore. It spits me out in the shallow water, grinding me along the sand. When I get up out of the water, I’m bleeding from scratches on my legs and arms. 

And I’m so grateful. And embarrassed.

I struggle to walk back to my beach blanket hiding my shredded dignity. But my legs are weak. That eternity, actually just fifteen minutes spent with Mother Nature’s fury has sapped my strength for the rest of the day.

I know people who have drowned. It always takes you by surprise. 

I still consider the Ocean my friend and playmate. But ever since that day I never have quite the same view of it as I did from my childhood.

Ever since that day I’ve had a deeper respect for the power of water.

The forces of Nature put me in mind of another story about my Dad. Dad was a mining geologist. When I was ten years old, he got a job with Cerro de Pasco, and we moved from a brief stint in New York City to Santiago, Chile.  The mine was located in the Cordillera, the Chilean name for a mountain range that was part of the Andes. Cerro named the mine Rio Blanco after the river that wound through that area. Rio Blanco meant White River, so named for its rapids, I suppose.

Cerro owned a hotel/resort for its employees just a mile or so below the mine itself. A beautiful place in the pines at the base of a hill halfway up the Andes. So we spent a lot of time in Rio Blanco.

The drive from Santiago to the hotel was beautiful. Narrow winding roads and hair-raising heights, and if you happened to be driving through around sun set, the entire sky and the massive cliffs would all turn a deep red.

 When we reached the base of the Cordillera, we were on the same level as the river. It looked wide at that point. Eventually it turned into a slender ribbon about an inch wide, it seemed, as we looked down at it. Somewhere at that point, there was a place where Dad liked to stop for the view. It was a cliff with a sheer, ninety-degree drop to the river far below. What I would do is walk out to the very edge of that dizzying height, and with my toes almost hanging over, stand and look down at the tiny river below. It was intoxicating.

My mom and grandma Renzetti, would gasp and beg me to get away from the edge. I ignored them. So they would plead with Dad to do something.

“Leave her alone,” was all he’d say to them.

As my parents got ready to leave, I’d walk away from the cliff and climb back into the car. That spot was one of my favorite places in the whole world.

JuneBug

more teen haven stories

 

Anatomy of Violence

Several years ago I started getting notifications from Google about my website http://www.secondlooks.biz which includes a photography site, a resume site, and a writing site, as well as contents that accompanies my ebooks sold on Amazon. Google wanted me to include language and design that would optimize my web-page content for mobile as well as desktop platforms. Mostly self-taught, I had dabbled in HTML and CSS and Javascript and had even taken a class as far back as 2010 and had many hundreds of web-pages, but somehow getting the mobile platform statements right on those pages eluded me. When I incorporated those statements, my pages ended up looking worse on mobile platforms such as my iphones and ipads. The upshot was that I removed the statements and Google quit including me in their web-search results so that people could no longer find my content, even with a specific phrase. :(

While this seems to hold true for my blog site as well, I have decided to migrate some of my work into blog pieces to hopefully increase the chances of being found and preserving some of these writings. as I am now in my early seventies and retired. After I graduated from college in 1972, I worked for an inner city youth ministry called Teen Haven in Philadelphia for 3 and a half years. Teen Haven was founded by the Reverend Bill Drury. The following piece Anatomy of Violence is from my Teen Haven Diary.

Anatomy of Violence 101

(or ...Twenty Minutes One Spring Evening)

By Jeanne Winstead

Homie...Strollin’...Boot Cops...Dime Dropper... It was a strange, perilous new world and I loved it. I had come to the inner city right out of college armed with a degree and with a hope. The degree was in Speech and English and the hope was that I could change a world plagued by poverty, gangs, and violence.

But the kids just laughed at me as I struggled to teach them the concept of turning the other cheek.

"Just walk away from a fight. Trust God to protect you."

"Oh, man. Dig yourself, lady! Ain’t nothin’ happen’n!"

And back and forth the argument went. In turn they taught me their language and how to box. Homeboy...Fair One...Got Your Back... I never dreamed during these exchanges that I would soon receive an unforgettable, hands-on application lesson on the real meaning of those phrases...

It was about seven o'clock one warm spring evening when I returned to our Teen Haven Center from teaching a Bible Club in Southwest Philly. Outside it was beautiful and balmy, one of those rare, truly perfect spring days after a long, cold winter. Children were jumping rope and playing stick ball with one another across 20th Street, which was a main bus route from center city Philadelphia during the day. In front of our Teen Haven center, located in a three-story row house which faced 20th Street, a fascinating, unrehearsed fashion parade was taking place. Small groups of teenage guys and girls, out to see and be seen, strolled up and down the sidewalk and congregated on the street corners, while adults sat and visited with one another on their front steps.

Inside the center it was quiet. Besides myself, there were three live-in teens and a senior staff member at this location. The senior staff member, Barb Staples, had not yet returned from a Bible Club at 23rd and Diamond. James was the only other person home. He was our fourteen-year-old live-in, currently in bed with strep throat. James wasn’t the only one recovering from an ailment. I had recently discovered there was more than one kind of peril in my line of work, the peril of a broken heart. Maybe it was the magic of a warm spring evening after a long cold winter, or maybe I was just ready to let go. But suddenly the solitude and tranquillity inside the building enveloped me. I felt peaceful for the first time in weeks. As I made my way to the third floor kitchen, this quiet was shattered by a shout from the street. It was Claire, James' young aunt.

"Look out the window! Those boys fixin' to fight Ronald!"

Ronald SaintClaire was another of our live-in teens. Knowing how quiet, considerate, and easy-going he was, I thought this statement sounded rather unlikely. Just the same, I stuck my head out of our third-floor dining room window. Through the branches of the big old oak tree in our tiny back yard, I observed Ronald, leaning casually against a car in front of an abandoned row house where junkies often hid to shoot up. A group of boys, one of whom looked like Jo-Jo, appeared to be in heated conversation with him. As I watched, Jo-Jo began to poke and push at Ronald, and then he and Ronald leapt apart and started sparring.

We were accepted, even sought out as the neighborhood peacekeepers, so I knew the kids would allow me to intervene. After all, Ronald was a mature eighteen-year-old, and Jo-Jo, a good-natured, heavy-set kid in the neighborhood, had once dragged me out on the street to break up another fight. It was about 7:10 when I reached our front door. By then the fight had shifted over to 20th street. I saw that "Jo-Jo" was actually an older (much taller) guy named Bruce, who used to live across the street. Bruce was with a group of friends I didn't recognize. I honestly can't remember now how many there were. I think six to start.

My first impressions out the door were of the sheer force of Bruce’s punches. The next were of Bruce's friends closing in behind Ronald and striking him so hard on the back and head, that my stomach started churning at the impact. Marching quickly down the front steps into the street, I wedged myself between Ronald and Bruce, and said, "I'm sorry, but we do not allow our young people to settle things this way. If you have a problem, you can talk to me, because I'm Ronald's guardian."

Deference to parental bidding often gave reluctant contenders an honorable way out of a fight. I’d seen this work many times. That’s why it shocked me when Bruce made absolutely no acknowledgment of my presence. In fact, viciously lunging forward to punch Ronald, he barely cleared the top of my head! Stunned and groping to make sense of it all, I heard a comment off to the side about the Moroccos, a rival gang.

"Ronald doesn't belong to a gang," I protested, looking up into Bruce's face to get his attention.

It was then that I really noticed his eyes. They were unfocused, distant, no light, no recognition in them. A whiff of alcohol penetrated the space between us. I suddenly realized that these kids were stoned beyond all reach of reason! My words were like futile, little, clinking pennies bouncing off a closed glass jar, rolling off into oblivion - The adrenaline flooded through me like an old freight train lurching into motion! Oh, No!

Easily reaching around me, Bruce pulled Ronald's head into a relentless vise between his arm and rib cage. Bruce’s friends came up from behind and proceeded to strike and kick him mercilessly across the back and legs. As he jerked and twisted to break free from this barrage, I latched on to Bruce's arm and tried to pry it loose from Ronald’s head. It would not budge! I reached around Bruce, to try to block the blows raining down on Ronald's back and neck. But I couldn’t keep them off. As we all wrestled in this human press, I argued, pleaded and begged the kids to stop. Finally Ronald yanked himself free. He managed to take a few steps before the gang all piled on top of him, bringing him down in the middle of 20th Street, his mouth bleeding. Horrified, I turned and fled into the Teen Haven Center. Scrambling up the stairs on all fours, pulling myself up with my hands, I reached the office phone, clawed the receiver off the hook and dialed 911.

"Heh,plahcuh,eighsisev twha..."

To my dismay, the words tumbling out of my mouth were incoherent. As I struggled to articulate, Jame’s voice came over the line from the upstairs phone. "Hang up the phone, Jeanne! Get back down there! Hurry! I'll call the police!"

I slammed down the receiver, sprinted headlong down the stairs into the street, and plunged through a huge circle of people that had started to form around the action. Somehow Ronald had made it back up on his feet. He had his fists up and was circling in a fighting stance.

I felt so relieved!

"Ronald, let's go to the house!" I grabbed his arm.

He shook me off. "Move, Jeanne! Get away!" His voice was gentle and insistent.

I was dumbfounded. So Ronald wasn’t going to come with me either!

"Get out of the way," he repeated, as he barely managed to dodge someone’s fist! I stepped back reluctantly. I had no intention of "getting away."

Instinctively I swung around to face a slender youth, rapidly approaching with a board in his hands. "If only we can hold out till the police get here," I thought. As I raced to break the impact, Bruce moved in behind me with a board he had picked up from somewhere and smashed it across Ronald's back. The slender kid deftly sidestepped me and slammed his board against Ronald's head.

"That guy's got a brick," someone in the crowd yelled to me!

Wheeling around, I saw a kid take aim. "I've called the police! They'll be here any minute!"

The kid let loose, and the brick barely missed its mark. Feeling each second tick by, I ran over to the sidewalk and looked up at James, who was dangling half way out of his third-story bedroom window.

"Did you call?"

He nodded his head emphatically. Just then someone else in the crowd shouted to me, "That guy's got a bottle!"

I turned and dashed toward it holding my hands out to block it. This time it struck Ronald square on the chest and shattered when it hit the ground.

"Please, Ronald, come into the house!" I started pulling him toward the building. He followed reluctantly, still keeping his fighting stance.

"Don't let him get to the house!" Bruce shouted.

One of Bruce’s guys jumped up on our front porch steps and stood in front of our doorway, staring down at us. We had no choice but to turn back. I felt sick inside. "Where are the police?" By now there was a sea of faces surrounding us. As we whirled around and around in a grotesque dance, I kept recognizing individual features...Renee Holland, who lived down the street; Gracie Jones, our pretty next door neighbor; Sandra Gordon from Opal Street. I caught a glimpse of James' little sister Tony standing in our doorway screaming. Only nine years old, she had come to spend the night with us. At that moment I wanted to go to her, to shield her from seeing this, but I couldn’t. Once a couple of men stepped out of the crowd and tried to take the boards away from the kids and reason with them but couldn't hold them back. Suddenly Ronald bolted through the crowd into the empty lot by the side of our building. Bruce and his friends pursued. Running as fast as my legs would carry me, I caught up with them all at Opal Street.

Here, away from the crowd, I became aware that Ronald was starting to lean on me. Instinctively, I started moving with him, as a unit. Using me as a shield to gain some temporary relief from the brutal blows, he braced himself on my shoulder, while he kept trying to defend himself with his other hand. I also became aware than Bruce and his friends were starting to get annoyed with me. The slender kid with the board kept repeating, "Get out of my way, bitch!"

Finally I lashed back, "You watch your mouth!"

Lunging directly over my head, he brought his board down on Ronald and almost simultaneously with the impact, I swung my arm around, and slapped the kid across the face. Shocked at myself, I reached out and touched him on the chest. But the slap and the conciliatory gesture were totally lost on this kid. He kept on hammering, as did the others. At that point, I thought to myself, "They aren’t ever going to stop. The police aren’t ever going to come. They will keep hitting Ronald until they kill him." I looked up at the sky and thought, "God, where are You?"

Then I realized that for the first time since the fight started, the Bible teacher had stopped to think about God.

The kid I had just slapped brought me abruptly back to reality. "If you don't move," he said in extreme irritation, "I’ll hit you!"

The others chimed in, "Yeah, bitch, we'll hit you!"

For the first time, I had their attention. The ball was in my court.

For one long terrible moment, we all hung there in a state of suspended animation. I was aware of Bruce and his friends looming over me and of Ronald, struggling to stay conscious and on his feet behind me. But mostly I was aware of this overwhelmingly powerful inner urge to turn and run away from there, as far and as fast as I could go. In my mind's eye, my feet were already moving, putting distance between me and that empty lot, that neighborhood, that city. I was running through a grassy field in the sunshine and all of this was far, far behind me. The vision of Bruce and his friends all falling on Ronald like a pack of wolves as soon as I stepped out of the way called me back, back to the city, back to the present. As I stood shaking in that empty lot, my feet somehow miraculously frozen to the ground, I heard Ronald say angrily, "You better not touch her!" Then I heard a thud as Bruce struck him again.

Knowing that I would bolt if Bruce and his friends hit me just once, I said out loud as if addressing Someone invisible, "Oh, Lord, help us!"

To my amazement, the guys seemed to back off for a moment, just enough to make a hole for us to walk through.

"Please, let's go inside, Ronald!" Afraid that he might still refuse to go, I grabbed him and dragged him away from Opal Street, almost bearing his full weight as we stumbled along the side of our brick building, pressing toward our front door. For a moment it looked like we were going to actually reach it. Then Bruce cut across the empty lot in front of us and his friends started to close in.

Safe haven had slipped from my grasp once again. Ronald, half-conscious and in no condition to continue fighting, was about to be bludgeoned to death right in front of me. I snapped. I pinned him against our building with my back and commenced screaming. Over and over. Sucking the air into my lungs till they felt ready to explode. Expelling it out in these gut-wrenching screams. I couldn’t stop. As they racked my body, Ronald feebly reached his hands up around my rib cage and patted me reassuringly.

Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a police car pull up. I found out later that a man in the crowd had run to Girard Avenue to flag one down from the neighboring police district. As the policeman got out of the car, Bruce's friends all blended into the crowd, and Bruce came sauntering toward us casually. I kept right on screaming. Bruce stood silently in front of us for a moment, just staring. Then he drew back his arm and brought his fist down with bone-rattling force one last time. The blow caught me across the side of the head, a huge collective gasp arose from the crowd, and in a second, the policeman went after him, dragged him to the car, and handcuffed him. By now it was 7:40p.

I was so focused on getting Ronald to safety, I continued to push him around to the front of the building, where I shoved him through the door. A man had to stop me.

"That boy needs to go to the hospital, miss," he said. "Get the police to take him."

Nodding numbly, I went to the officer and said, "We need to go to the hospital."

"All right, Miss," he said. "Who does, you?"

"No, the boy they beat up."

"Where is he?" the officer asked, looking about bewilderedly. I realized that he had not even seen Ronald behind me.

Ronald stumbled down the steps into the police car. I climbed in beside him and he slumped against me on the seat, blood running from his head and down his face. As the car pulled away from the crowd of faces surrounding it, one young boy, who looked to be about ten, turned to another and said in a subdued voice, "He's all messed up."

Ronald went very stoically and quietly with the emergency room personnel. The doctor who stitched him up said that he might not have survived the blows to his head had he been drinking. Miraculously, he had no broken bones.

A medic showed me to a public waiting area where an attendant handed me a rag and said, "You might want to clean up a little." Looking down, I saw, for the first time, the blood that was all over me. It was smeared from my hands up to my elbows, soaked down my brown and white striped shirt where Ronald had leaned against me, and even caked in my hair. I started to weep uncontrollably. In a short time Gracie and Lila came in. Soon other people from the neighborhood and the staff wandered in just to sit with us.

It was after midnight when Ronald was released from the emergency room. From there the police took us to the station so he could make a statement. Bruce was the only one in custody and he looked away sheepishly when he recognized Barb, my co-worker. She had taught him in Bible school many times. The officer assigned to the case was not in, so we returned to the Teen Haven Center. By then it was almost two am. Ronald went immediately upstairs and sat down in front of the television set without saying a word. James, Claire, and Tony tried to kid around with him, but he was too much pain to move or even talk. For some reason the hospital hadn't given him any pain medicine. When the J.A.D. officer finally called at 3:00am to take a statement, Ronald had difficulty making himself understood over the phone. His mouth was cut and swollen. After struggling to repeat something three times, he abruptly handed me the phone, said, "Here, Jeanne," and walked into the bathroom.

Barb followed him and asked, "Ronald, are you all right?"

He broke down sobbing in her arms. I asked the officer to call us back later. When Ronald finished weeping, he returned to the couch, and Barb put ice packs on his arms and wiped his face with a cold rag. He said, "It's funny. I'm really sore. But I'm not mad at anyone. I got two people inside of me. The Devil's telling me to be all hard and get revenge, and the Lord's telling me to forgive."

He was doing better with his Christianity than I was with mine. I felt such hatred toward those boys. Something in me wanted to see them pay for being such animals.

"I didn't really want to fight," he continued. "I wasn't mad during the fight, just embarrassed."

Recalling his dispassionate determination to stick it out, I asked, "Why, Ronald, why?"

He looked at me as if I should have known the answer. "No one likes to lose a fight, Jeanne."

"I don't think anybody's going to look down on you for losing that fight, Ronald," Barb said. "I think everyone will admire you for standing up to them. You wait and see."

Only later did we find out that Claire had taken a knife out of our kitchen drawer to slip to Ronald during the fight. James would not allow her to take it outside.

Like ships passing in the night, we all went on with our lives shortly after the incident. We were young people, all of us. Romance blossomed between Gracie and Ronald, and they commenced to date. I continued to work at Teen Haven for one and a half years, but with a more temperate view on teaching people to unconditionally turn the other cheek. Through the grapevine, we eventually heard that Bruce and his friends had mistaken Ronald for someone else they were looking for.

As far as I know, they never went to court.

It occurs to me, now that you’ve walked into my shoes, perhaps I should step in to yours. People often tell me, "I could never be that brave." Neither could I. I was much more reluctant to intervene in street fights after that. Sometimes we find what we need to get through something only when we really need it. Maybe that’s just how we’re made. I personally think God literally kept my feet planted to the ground that day. He put some very heavy weights on them and anchored them down… "Homie, Homeboy, Got Your Back."

Some of you may be thinking, "What message does this story have for me? I'll never be in a situation where that could happen. I don't work in an inner city." Others of you may be thinking, "I was the one who was beat up in a fight!" To all of you I'd say that this story isn't intended to be a bandaid or a cure all for violence. It's just a sympathetic, dissecting look at my reckless youth and one violent incident from a twenty-five year perspective in search for clues. There are still many unresolved questions in my mind. Why did those boys restrain themselves with me as much as they did, and why, in their manic state, did they back off for a time, when I spoke the name of God out loud? How could the policeman not have noticed Ronald pinned to the wall behind me? Why didn't the hospital personnel give Ronald anything for pain? Why didn't the police answer James' call? Why didn’t the courts ever call us?

But here's what my coworker Luke Knowley has to say about it. "This story has several lessons, the main one being that the power of faith, or at least of a shared belief system can (sometimes) bring order into chaos. It can reach in to someone in the very grips of unfocused violence, someone out of control, someone beyond the reach of any rational appeal, and get them to stop, to think, or at least to pause for a moment."

"Now, that," says Luke, "is power!"

I agree. At the very least, it bought us a little time.

Now that I think about it, Bruce did grow up across the street from Teen Haven. He knew Barb, went to camp, came to the center to play ping pong, probably received some Bible teaching. If that had the power to pause him in his manic state, then to me that’s a greater miracle than if God had actually sent down angels to our rescue. Which, in the form of the community who surrounded us on that street, He did.

The fact has been driven home to us in this electronic age. Anybody, regardless of age, geographic location, or walk of life can find themselves thrust unexpectedly into a violent situation.

As I look back twenty-five years and recognize the irony and the incongruity of a Bible school teacher and an inner city youth teaming up to get through a street fight, it occurs to me...Perhaps this account is my attempt to resolve something we all left unfinished back then.

Perhaps in a small way, I still hope to save the world.

JuneBug

more teen haven stories ...

Maybe it's time ...

With kudos and apologies to the Teen Haven Ministry which was started in inner city Philadelphia in 1963 by evangelist Bill Drury, and which has engaged and changed so many lives, and which remains a vibrant and viable ministry to this day - http://www.teenhaven.org.

During the years of 1972 through 1975 I worked in an inner city youth ministry right out of college. I joined the ranks as a summer staff member a couple of weeks after graduation, and stayed on as full time staff. It was during these years that I first started seriously keeping a diary. I think I started it because we had to write a monthly prayer letter to supporters back home and because I kept seeing and discovering so much, both without and within, and so many people's stories worth telling were building up inside of me until they just had to spill out.