Through the Park
by Shannon Frost Greenstein
A quiet night/the dead of summer/apple-flavored Smirnoff on my breath; two best friends/and a seasonal pardon from the demands of Liberal Arts.
Are we lost, I ask, knowing we are lost, not knowing the era of GPS will soon be upon us; chain-smoking, belting the lyrics to Rent, the lava of vodka in my stomach steadily warming my blood.
Lily-white/birthed of the suburbs/we are “from Philadelphia”; which means/in all actuality/we had third-grade field trips to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell/living history 30 minutes from home; which means/in all actuality/we know nothing of being from Philadelphia at all.
Let’s ask somewhere, she responds, a roiling sea of twisting roads and monstrous shadows and dead ends pressing in on us from every side; a far cry from the glitzy neon marquees of Center City we ultimately expected to find while scheming this ill-advised odyssey.
The City of Brotherly Love/with the highest poverty rate/of any American city; living history/bleeding into the present/upon the exact same cobbled streets/and bathed in the grief of over 1500 shootings/every single year.
Right there, I gesture, and we pull into a dingy service station, vending gas under a brand name I’ve yet to ever see, derelict cars and automotive tools scattered every-which-way.
The attendant sits/behind a barricade of dirty glass/looking mildly amused to see two blondes/with cleavage on display/stumble uncertainly through the door.
Directions? I entreat of the clerk, gesturing vaguely to my best friend and our car beyond, filling the awkward silence with details about our destination and our wayward journey, chattering nonsense until he finally puts me out of my misery.
Turn right at the light/he advises/and go North until you hit Montgomery Avenue; then there are further instructions/more lefts and rights and landmarks to spot/to which I hoped my friend was paying attention/because I am a lousy navigator.
Thank you! I gush to the man, backing towards the door, pausing as he holds up a finger in warning, a look of solemnity in his eyes/ lived experience lining his face.
Be careful/he warns; Montgomery Ave/goes through the park.
Through the park? I repeat with a laugh, back in the car, picturing the landscaped green spaces of my youth, the darkness around us liquid and viscous once again; you have to watch out for parks, my friend agrees, both of us tickled by this unsolicited advice.
The park/I will learn eventually/is Fairmount Park; the largest landscaped park in the country/2,000 acres of trails and woodlands and waterfront exploration/a bastion of nature surrounded by urban grit/the park/I will learn eventually/is the poorest and most dangerous neighborhood in Philadelphia/neglected by police and 95% Black; so tell me again/how segregation has ended.
I do not, however, know any of this at the time. I do not know how deeply systemic racism vivisects the city I call home; I do not know my own privilege. I do not know my friend will become an activist, will devote her life to advocating for the BIPOC community, will catalyze the transformation of my own moral compass. And I do not know she will die of an overdose 15 years down the road, one night alone in her home.
But I learned.
And now/now that I comprehend/poverty and inequity and the cycle of violence/now/now that I actually see/the human suffering masked by the history and the glamor and all the designer stores/I finally understand/that long-ago warning.
I still don’t go through the park at night.
But my paradigm has shifted/and my values have changed; today an anti-racist/I barely recognize those blondes from the early 2000s/who couldn’t comprehend how the other half lives. And I’m also convinced/if my best friend had lived/she’d be well on her way/towards changing this entire f*cked-up system by now.
