Ronnie’s Soliloquy

His usually hard young face was tender and soft with the painful emotions that flickered across it.

“What’m I gonna do?” he said softly. “Forget her, she’s not the only girl! What other girls do I know that are shy and tense, and all nervous, and seem to be intelligent...no one. She’s just like a fairy tale - she’s too good to be true, and I can’t ever keep anything that good. I always lose it - like my pool stick.”

I’d gotten him that for his birthday, and he had left it downstairs, and someone took it.

“I’m mad! I’m so mad right now, I could just take my hands and choke you, Jeanne. If you hadn’t taken me to see that thing, I wouldn’t have seen her.” He looked out the window and said to no one in particular,” Shoot me. I guess I could shoot her - but that wouldn’t help. Then her Puerto Rican Pop would come after me. I can’t stand for people to hate me. That’s why I always end up apologizing. Even when it isn’t my fault, I end up apologizing. Oh, not right away, or out loud, but I apologize. I do. You don’t think I’m serious just cause I wear a smile on my face? I’m hurtin’ so bad inside, I can’t even joke.”

This soliloquy took place in my room one night, shortly after I took Nilda Ramos, Ronnie, and his good friend Brother to the Sansom Street Baptist Church in Center City to see their annual production of Amahl and the Night Visitors. They all really enjoyed the musical, and also, Ronnie was quite taken with Nilda. Nilda was a fifteen-year-old Puerto Rican girl, Catholic, whom I met when following up the summer’s house to house visitation program in the Mt. Vernon Street neighborhood. I was trying to start a teen girls Bible Study, but she was the only girl who was interested. So I had a personal Bible Study with her. She was a lovely girl, and very shy.

I remember really wanting Ronnie to go to see Amahl and the Night Visitors with me, but being sure that he wouldn’t want to. But he had missed church that morning, and Barb said he could do this to make up for it, if he wanted to do that instead of go on punishment. So he went. Brother was with him. This was only about two weeks after he came to Teen Haven. I remember going to get Nilda, and the guys wouldn’t go with me because she lived in Wallace Street gang turf. So they agreed to meet me at Fairmount Avenue, which was the dividing line.

Anyway, Ronnie liked her on first sight, but he hung close to me, and sat next to me at the operetta - he was shy too. But after that he started bugging me to take him ice-skating on his birthday, and to invite Nilda. I did, and she went. Frostie went too. She had never been ice-skating (neither had I), and hung to the rail all evening - and to me. She was very shy and embarrassed, and totally refused to unfreeze or cooperate with Ronnie. He began to tease her a little.

She had brought him a wallet, as a birthday present, and on the way home, she shoved the package into his hands and said abruptly, “Here’s your birthday present although you don’t deserve it!”

Ronnie was so overwhelmed he couldn’t even speak. She brought me a gift too, for Christmas. It was Spanish perfume.