The Smithsonian needs a Joe-eeeyun in their collection. She is a rare and dying breed and cannot usually be found more than ten miles from Elizabeth, New Jersey. If she is more than ten miles from her home territory, she is in:
- Atlantic City ("AC")
- Any city in Florida with a population greater than 500,000.
- Las Vegas
- Visiting at gunpoint a relative who has moved to the back of beyond.
The Camp Yak-A-Lot Joe-eeeeyun was found sitting at a picnic table outside the community center. She is about 5'2", weighs about 180 lbs, and was wearing a new gray track suit, trimmed in silver satin with cute little Sketcher-type shoes also with matching silver satin trim. She was wearing at least eight rings, four bracelets, and five necklaces. She looked at me and said, "The kids aren't here so I can do this," and lit up an unfiltered Marlboro. She clutched a rhinestone-encrusted lighter in her hands. Her nails were purple with matching silver swirl trim.
Her black hair was short but teased up into a swoopy pouf. I never saw her without macquillage. At 9:30 last night, I caught her touching up her powder. And I also didn't see her without her huge black patent leather hobo-style handbag.
Yesterday morning, I was sitting at the picnic table with her. I had somehow slept until 8 yesterday morning and even an hour after waking up, felt like my face was swollen to twice its normal size.
"Oh! Mai Go-wad!" said Joe-eeeyun. "My f*ing sinuses are f*ing killing me today." She told me she had Type 2 diabetes, that she had asthma, and some other things I forget. She began rummaging around in that vast black bag of hers.
"Joe-eeeyun," I said. "Do you have anything in there for sinuses?"
"Sure, hon, hang oh-won." (It kills me that Yankees make fun of Southerners turning one syllable words into at least two.)
She continued rummaging and came up with a "Jeopardy!" board sized "remember to take your medicine" kit. She opened one little compartment and with her silver-tipped fingernail, handed me a little square pill. It was like an Advent calendar, only with drugs. The pill looked like nothing I had ever seen over the counter, but since my face was starting to melt, I didn't care. It was a widely accepted practice in my family to offer up whatever pharmaceuticals you had to anyone who voiced a complaint. I took it from her and gulped it down. In about half an hour, my face was its normal size again and I could breathe.
When I considered Galadriel and her companions, I thought that I was the least likely person to be caught at a Girl Scout camp, but Joe-eeeyun had me trumped. She could have been Eva Gabor's character in the Jersey Girl version of "Green Acres".
I asked her how she'd gotten roped into this and she rolled her thickly-underlined eyes and said, "My f*ing sister. She asked me to take minutes at a district meeting and that was ten years ago."
"But are you a troop leader?" I asked, pondering the sort of results she would produce.
"Owe, Go-wad, no. Pfft, are you kidding me? I don't even like my own kids, much less someone else's little brats." She waved the smoke away, killed the butt of her cig and lit another one.
I noticed through the day that she had two speeds: Joe-eeeyun velocity (a slow but steady chugging) and full stop, which necessitated finding a chair.
Elizabeth used to be full of her and her sisters. I would see them, dark haired, their to-the-minute fashionably cut long black hair frizzing in the Elizabeth humidity, their bell-bottoms hanging on to every skinny angle and they swore not to turn out fat like their mothers or their Aunt Tina. They had no use for college and no use for people who went to college and married Joey the electrician's apprentice or Tony who worked for his dad's plumbing business and would inherit the place one day.
Even as Elizabeth crumbled around their ears, they hung on. First the Irish left Elizabeth. After bitter tears, the Polish left (St. Adalbert's is a gorgeous church and even now there is at least one Mass in Polish every Sunday). Now even the Italians are going and they're being replaced with a generic group of Latinos. No one can tell the difference or wants to know the difference between Peruvians and Ecuadorans. As long as Spirito's restaurant is in the berg, they'll be there.
I can't imagine Joe-eeeyun in Pleasantville. I don't think she would be anything but miserable since there are no good Italian bakeries or (let's be honest) good Italian restaurants within ten miles.
Then again, I would never have imagined her at Camp Yak-A-Lot.
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