Patsy Moore

I shared my girlhood secrets with Patsy Moore. With my straight brown pigtails bent toward her blond curls, we whispered and giggled our way through childhood. Patsy’s family lived on the fourth floor of the apartment house next door. Before we had telephones, Patsy and I called to one another through the air shaft between the two buildings.

“Patsy. Patseeeee,” I bellowed.

“I’ll be right down,” she answered before slamming the window shut.

We met on the front stoop and walked arm in arm up Seventh Avenue to gaze in the shop windows and talk about “someday, I’m going to . . .”

“When I grow up, I’ll get married and have four children, two boys and two girls.” Patsy informed me.

“Me too,” I said. What Patsy wanted, I also wanted.

  We spent hazy summer afternoons on the roof, otherwise known as “tar beach.” In shorts and halter tops, we stretched out on blankets, drank Kool-Aid, munched chips and listened to Patsy’s portable radio.  Movie magazines supplied fodder for our star struck imaginations and we discussed the latest films at length. To our pre-pubescent longings, we fell in love with the pretty boys of celluloid, and plastered their pictures, torn from magazines, on our bedroom walls.

One summer day as we strolled the avenue, I spotted a woman with an enormous stomach. Otherwise, she looked slim and attractive. Poor lady I thought, she must have a terrible illness.

“Did you see that woman’s stomach?” I whispered to Patsy.

“She’s having a baby.”

“How do you know?”

“The baby’s inside her stomach. That’s why it’s so big,” Patsy informed me with a smug look of superiority.

My eyes got as big as the stomach we discussed. “How’d it get there?”

“You’re too young to know. I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“I’m only 6 months younger than you.” I shot back....both of us just ten years old. Undaunted, I pestered her for days until she conspiratorially relayed that taboo information to me. She also told me boys will try to “do it” to all the pretty girls they know. I had a hard time believing her.

“You’re kidding,” I said 

“You’ll find out,” she flipped her curls with her hand in a dismissive gesture.

After that, I looked at boys differently.

By the age of thirteen, on the brink of womanhood, we looked forward to maturity. That meant getting breasts. Pulling our sweaters tight across our chests, we compared the size of our nubs and boasted about needing a bra.

Being a grade ahead of me, Patsy entered Manual High School, the September I entered eighth grade. She suddenly looked grown up. She dated boys, went to dances and wore lipstick and high heels. A new life had opened up to her, and I had no part in it.

When I entered high school, I didn’t go to Manual with Patsy. I went to Bishop McDonnell. I made new friends, had new teachers and went to parties different from Patsy’s. Our paths had diverged. We remained friends for a while but drifted apart as we progressed through high school, graduated, got married and moved away from the neighborhood.

That youthful closeness we shared now lives only in memory.

 Friends Jeanie Oscecola, Mary Fahey and Patsy Moore