Danielle

It was getting dark early now. Not even was it four-thirty in the
afternoon and the sun was already on its way to a December night's
rest, leaving the sky above Pawtucketville to turn its usual ashen
shade of gray. It was not dark, but daylight was rapidly stealing
away.

As she stepped off the bus that delivered her from Presentation
Academy, a large white, puff of her warm breath hit the cold December
air. She waved back at the bus driver and stood still a moment, a
vision of beauty against the gray storefront, gazing at the street laid
out before her that lead down the hill to her house. The red glow of
the setting sun shone softly on her bronze hair, and set alight the
blue of her eyes. As dusk began to envelope the sprawl of homes that
grew out of what was once Little Canada, a glow began to radiate from
her, and all eyes were unavoidably drawn to her. Even though she was
only 14, her beauty was recognized by every man and boy throughout
Pawtucketville.

The walk home from Martin's Variety store, where the bus dropped her
off, was not a long one. Everyday she walked the four or five blocks
back to her parents' house, where she lived with her four brothers and
younger sister. And even in the cold of a New England winter, she did
not mind. It took only a few minutes, and it gave her a chance to be
alone and listen to her thoughts. The daily walk home was a brief
respite from everything else that existed in her life.

But she was not really alone. Despite the fact she walked unescorted,
Danielle knew she was never really alone. Everyday she could feel the
dozens of eyes that followed her as she walked down Fourth Avenue
toward her home. The eyes of the people who peered out of dirty
windows, from behind the tattered blinds of the run down houses, those
eyes were fixed on her every afternoon as she walked back from the bus
stop. There were the eyes of the teenage boys who stood on sidewalks
and congregated on street corners, at the precise time every day, as if
they were trained by Pavlov himself, just to look upon her, in the hope
they might catch her eye. And there were the eyes of the strangers, who
would see her, and stop and stare in disbelief that they were now
witness to such a radiant and glowing presence here on the filthy gray
streets of Pawtucketville. How such a flower could bloom beneath so
much waste was certainly a mystery to those not raised in our
neighborhood. But regardless, she paid none of them any mind. Danielle
had other ideas all her own, and nothing the neighbors, or the boys, or
the strangers did, impressed her in the least. She simply walked
on.

I knew Danielle when I was growing up in the Pawtucketville section of
Lowell, before my family moved out of Massachusetts. We are the same
age. I was about nine the last time I had seen her, and perhaps five
years had passed since then. Many things can change during that period
of time: houses get painted, fences are built, children grow older. But
some things never change. Pawtucketville looked the same as it did the
day I left: dark and gray and dirty. The third and fourth generation
French-Canadians that were our parents and grand-parents, the sons and
daughters who worked in the textile mills for half the wages the Irish
wanted, made no attempt to accept change or bring new ideas to their
children or their community. They simply clung to the beliefs and
values their parents had instilled in them a half-century earlier. They
built their own churches, Catholic of course, built their own schools
to keep strong the cathechism. They tried to make an island fortress of
their section of Lowell, isolating themselves from the Irish, and the
Yankees, and the Greeks. They made a saint out of Jack Kerouac, and
then burned him in effigy when they rejected his heresy. They wanted a
place to keep themselves, their children and their beliefs safe and
strong and pure and alive.

But the progressive of air of the sixties brought a wind of change to
those of us who would become aware in the seventies, and the scent was
a potent and intoxicating one. Not even Pawtucketville could escape its
allure. To the dismay of those who sat stagnant in the stench of
complacency for so long, the changes were not welcomed, but feared.
Soon the subtle changes, not noticeable to the eye, began to permeate
the cloistered community. The young embraced it, and moved towards it,
just as a moth is surely drawn to a flame. Pawtucketville was being
pulled in two different directions, and being left hollow in the
middle.

While all this was going on, my family was elsewhere. My mother
endured the shock of being removed from her community for the last five
years; my father, being a bit of everything besides French, reveled in
the absence. I began to realize not everyone spoke on the telephone in
French: "Allo! Comme ca va? Tres bien, merci". I was no longer a part
of this world. Danielle could only dream of the day when she would no
longer have to walk along the gray streets of Pawtucketville.

You see, the thing was, everyone knew her. Everyone knew everyone. We
all went to the same school, the same church. Every family knew every
other family; there were no secrets. When you started school, the nuns
knew you from your older brothers and sisters, and they knew your
brothers and sisters from your parents before them. Father Boucher
confirmed your mother, Baptized you, heard your first confession, and
was preparing you for your own confirmation. Everything is the same as
it ever was, the way that almost everyone wanted it to be. The mistakes
that were made, the accidents that did happen, the sordid details of a
fall from grace, like when Danielle's older sister got married last
September, and had the baby in January. My how the ladies who played
bingo at the parish hall chatted that little nugget up. And she seemed
like such a nice Catholic girl, too. Certainly it would not be long
before the younger sister was in the family way.

Now all that had happened, and all that had been said came to rest on
her. She knew why the neighbors peered out from behind their blinds,
out of their run-down houses and shabby lives. They wanted to see her
fall as she walked. And she knew, too, that was the reason the boys
would watch and wait for her. They wanted to know if she was like her
sister. Maybe she would go for a walk with one of them in Turcotte's
woods, and show them the tricks her sister taught her. Such a burden to
carry. But she paid them no mind, none whatsoever, never talking to
them, never smiling at them, never acknowledging their existence. She
simply walked on towards her house, dreaming and waiting.

On this particular December day, my family had come back to town, to
visit my aunt and uncle. We had recently moved again, to Manchester,
New Hampshire, a little more than a half-hour North of Lowell, but
light years away in my mind and my being. I was walking up Fourth Ave.,
towards Martin's Variety, with my cousin, Tom, to pick up a Coke and a
pack of Marlboro's, when up ahead of us, I saw her walking down the
hill toward where we were. Even though I had been gone, I had not
forgotten how the sight of her could make my heart race. I found a
street light that was coming to life and positioned myself beneath it,
and waited for her. I was not sure she would recognize me. The closer
she got, the more my doubt increased. But then she stopped, and we were
face to face.

"Hi Walker. How you doin' these days?" she asked me, completely
ignoring my cousin.

"Hi Danielle." I replied, a bit surprised that she remembered me. "I'm
doin' pretty good. How about yourself?"

"I'm O.K., but you know how it goes around here, nothing really
changes. You really haven't missed a whole lot" she said, looking at
her surroundings, a crooked smile appearing on her face. "What are you
doin' back here? The last thing I heard you and your folks were living
somewhere down South, like Florida."

"Yeah, we were living in Tampa until this past summer, and then my dad
got transferred up to Manchester. My mother wanted to come on down
today and visit her sister. Tom and me, we were just headed up to
Martin's to kill some time before dinner. It's kind of strange being
back, you know?"

"I can believe that, especially as long as you been away. What's it
been any ways, four, five years?"

"Yeah, about five years. Seems weird, huh?"

"Super weird. But it's good to see you, you know?"

"Yeah, it's good to see you, too."

"Are you gonna be around later? I'm sure my folks would love to see
you, and I'd really like to hear what it's like in New York and
Tampa."

"I'm not sure. I think my mom wanted to head back to Manchester early,
right after dinner, like she had something to do."

"Oh. That's too bad" from the sound of her voice I could tell she
meant it. "It would have been nice to get together and talk for a
while."

"I would have liked that too. Maybe we can do it some other time.
We're back in New England again, real close, so I'm sure we'll be
coming by to visit a lot. My mom really missed her family."

"Yeah, but I bet it was nice to get out of here."

"Some days. Some days I miss it. Its tough to make new friends
sometimes. But it is nice seeing something outside of Pawtucketville
when you get up in the morning."

"I can believe that. I better get going. You take care of yourself,
Walker. I'll see you around."

"You too, Danielle. I'll catch you next time."

And as she stepped out from beneath the streetlight, and began walking
down the hill towards her house, Tom and I continued on up the hill
toward Martin's. I turned around to watch her, for just a moment, while
she made her way down a dim gray street in the Pawtucketville section
of Lowell, on a cold December afternoon. And as she walked it seemed
the light walked with her.

And she never looked back.