Random Family

In this chapter, LeBlanc introduces and focuses on Jessica, a beautiful sixteen-year-old Puerto Rican girl who lives on East Tremont Avenue, on one of the most impoverished blocks in the Bronx. East Tremont, which hosts a bustling drug trade, marks the north end of the South Bronx. Jessica’s mother, Lourdes, rents a tenement apartment just off the Grand Concourse. The apartment houses Jessica, Lourdes’s other three children, and Big Daddy, Lourdes’s boyfriend.The street is alive with children, young adults, and the elderly—shopping, eating, socializing—as well as drug dealers and their skulking customers. It is the mid-1980s.

Jessica—who cobbles together outfits by accessorizing and fragrancing herself with her sister’s, mother’s, and best friend’s clothing, accessories, and perfume—dolls herself up for her every mundane appearance on the streets, because she knows that “chance [is] opportunity in the ghetto, and you [have] to be prepared for anything” (3). Her bright hazel eyes, welcoming smile, and curvy figure glow with intimacy: “you could be talking to her in the middle of the bustle of Tremont and feel as if lovers’ confidences were being exchanged beneath a tent of sheets” (3). Jessica charms men of all ages, but finds it hard to hold onto steady, committed romantic relationships.