Black Water

Snaking alongside the brand new developement in Maple Shade where my family moved in the 1950's was the black water of the Pennsauken Creek. Up through the black water all along the channel lay the giant elephant ear like green leaves of some kind of water plant which also sent up long cobra necked stems topped with fist sized bulbs. To a city child like myself, this was like a trip to the jungles of the Amazon river. And yes, I did know about the jungle because I was a National Geographic reader.

That black water was irresistable, not only to me but to all the young refugees who had washed up on the shores of the Pennsauken Creek from our various orgins in other cities, and army bases. The only river I had ever seen was the Delaware, from Front Street in Philadelphia when we went to church at Gloria Dei, Old Swedes Church on Sunday mornings. It was a fairly far off curvy gray highway.

I had been on the river when our family took the Wilson Line ferry in the summer on the church excursion to Riverside Park in New Jersey. Oh joy! Oh adventure! While the other kids raced around the decks in their untamed excitement, I walked around slowly, dreamily, taking it all in - the Hollywood glamour of the deck chairs, the laboring motor churning up the gray river water. I was in a movie, a mystery, a romance.

But in our New Jersey new development Cul de Sac, called Roland Avenue, we kids had direct access to the Creek water itself! We could walk down to the creek and sink our feet into the warm,silky, sucking black mud and lay out onto the black water and float. We could also climb a tree a little walk from our development, over a small white wooden bridge, and hang onto a thick knotted rope flung over a high branch and swing out over the water and flop into it. I didn't do that. I was more of a dreamer than an adventurer and I didn't feel I had the upper body strength necessary to cling to that knot and swing out over the water. The boys did that.

Although the water never hid from us the fact that it was dangerous and dirty, we were too innocent of danger in general to understand the messages. We were, at least I was, more in tune with the texture of the mud and the cool inviting satin sweep of the water over hot skin to think beyond that. Thinking beyond is something that belongs to adulthood and experience, which I was about to gain.

In those days, my traumatic childhood coupled with my horrible school experiences had made me a chronic truant. I used any and every excuse and ruse to stay out of school. Beginning in Philadelphia, after my mother saw me off at the front door, I detoured a few blocks away to hide in the alleyway and visit with the strolling cats and dogs, or wander freely through the quiet empty streets. My mother had been forced to set up some watch posts to alert her if I weren't on the straight path to the ugly black iron gates of the brick Industrial style school. It was much like the other unpleasant institutions of the time, which it resembled, detention centers, prisons, asylums. The schoolyard was thronged by bullies and victims, screaming maniacs and shrinking, shocked, sensitive children like myself, harboring at the edges watching the melee' and hoping not to be caught up in it. My days at school were imbued with terror, so as often as I could, I would escape. I didn't see the dangers in the streets any more than I saw the dangers in the creek.

Although my new blond brick one story New Jersey school was marginally and physically more safe and humane, I still suffered post-traumatic-stress and stayed out as much as I could. Therefore on one fateful mornng when I sat at our dining room table complaining to my mother that I felt sick and dizzy, she didn't believe me. She wanted me off to school as arranged. She wanted that little bit of piece and quiet she got when we were gone and she had the house to herself. First my head drooped over onto the table and she shouted, "Sit up, you're going to school." I whimpered, "I feel sick, I can't sit up." I tried, but I simply slid over the side. We had only recently moved into our new home and we had a picnic table and benches for our dining room furniture for the time being. I don't know why we hadn't brought our dining room set from Philadelphia. I slid to lying sideways on the bench.

Mom kept hollering at me and I kept falling over until she gave the final threat, "Well, if you're that sick, you're going to the doctors." I didn't care, because for once, I wasn't faking, I really could't sit up. I was so nauseated that it permeated my entire body. I was as weak as a thick pasta noodle. Also, I was dizzy. Something realy was wrong with me.

In those days, a doctor still came to your house and the doctor who came to our house said, in wonder and dismay, "Mary did you not notice that her eyes were yellow?" No, she hadn't noticed that. We hadn't probably made any kind of eye contact and anyhow when you are with people all the time, how often do you really look into each other's eyes? He called an ambulance, that's how bad it was; and I was taken to Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden. At that time, it was fairly new and very clean and well cared for by a mix of nurses and nuns who lived in a convent next door. From my hospital room window, I could look down on the backyard of the convent where from time to time I saw a nun walking about.

It was nice in the hosptial, clean and quiet, and except for the many examinations, consultations and blood tests, not much was happening to me. I felt weak, but that wasn't too out of the ordinary. I was a sedentary and weak girl by nature, not sporty or physically active. In the hospital I lay in bed reading all day long, mostly the coin of the realm for girls reading at that time "Cherry Ames, Student Nurse." And my mother brought art supplies and magazines. Actually, I was happy. And that's a good thing because I was there for a long time; I no longer remember how long and there is no one living who would remember. And after I got out, in a dream come true, I stayed home from school for the rest of the year. I had a pretty little back upstairs bedroom with a rose floral wall paper and a turquoise wooden tray table on which sat my meals and art supplies. I could look out my bedroom window onto the cornfields of the farm behind our development. I saw it sprout, ripen, turn gold and get harvested.

Eventually my paradise was invaded by a fat, unattractive home-bound tutor who, to my chagrin, had the nerve to sit on the side of my bed! What effrontery! I can't remember doing the homework he brought, and I only barely remember him coming at all. Mostly, I read, Nancy Drew books, and all the books my Grandmother Lyons had given me from her basement, her whole collection of Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. Without that gift of imprisonment and plentiful free time I doubt I would ever have gotten through Dickens and Twain with their dense, archaic prose. But I learned vocablulary and I learned how to become accustomed to that language world and I grew to luxuriate in it.

Of course, at some point I got better and had to go back to school but I was changed forever, not only because I suffered liver damage and lived with a warning for my future - never drink alcohol! But also because I became literate, seriously literate, unlike any of my peers. My mind was changed far more than my body.

Eventually we found out how I had gotten so sick because several more cases emerged in our area. I had Hepititis E from fecal contamination of water sources. Our new housing development had so overstressed the local sewage plant which had not been updated for the additional use, that the workers were simply releasing untreated sewage out into the Pennsauken Creek. These were the days before clas action law suits, so we just kind of said "Huh, how about that." And that was the end of that.

But the other thing that changed with me was that now I was aware that danger lurked beneath the beautiful black waters of nature. I learned about the deadly potential of virus and bacteria. It wasn't my last lesson. Not long after that year, something bit me when I was swimming in the tea colored cedar water of a lake in the Pine Barrens, something bit me on my calf and it turned into blood poisoning. It left a nickel sized scar on my leg. I was convinced now that danger lurks in the dark depths. After that, I was never comfortable swimming, no matter what kind of water, and my original distrust of the world from my traumatic childhood took permanent hold, though tamped down, it was always there. Happy Trails - stay ut of the dark waters! wrightj45@yahoo.com