INTERSHIP: Talking with Dulcidia and Joceline Blanco

Wednesday, 15 July 2009

Over the next few weeks, I started hanging out at the Mission a lot. The fact that all I was doing was working my internship and exploring Chicago meant that I was uncharacteristically free. I could be flexible and wait around while someone completed their work. I could get to be friends with the kids. Each conversation ended up supplying me with practical knowledge about the people there or the neighborhood. I was relishing the art of hanging out with people and watching things happen. And moreover, people learned to like and trust me because I was always there.

On that first day of hanging out, the Padre returned to the Mission to make a phone call. When we walked in, he greeted a mother and daughter talking to friends at the front.

These are the Blancos, he said. You should talk to them. Marilu is helping them to get loan modifications.

And so, Dulcidia Blanco, her fourteen-year-old daughter Joceline and I sat on the wooden pews.

Dulcidia spoke ok English, but soon we moved into a rhythm where she spoke to Joceline in Spanish and Joceline translated. Sometimes, I asked interview questions, sometimes we chatted. It was in that way, in this relaxed, conversational style that I got their story.

Dulcidia and Luis had crossed into Mexico from Guatemala twenty-five years ago. They later crossed the rio to get into the united states. In the 1990ss, they received amnesty through a lottery. Dulcidia feels safer now, more free, less afraid.

They bought their house in the nineties and Joceline and her three brothers were raised there.

They told me about joining the church: “It helps out a lot of people, we like that a lot.” Luis drove supplies down on a mission trip to Tabasco. They never expected to be the recipients of aid.

They told me about last September, when Luis started getting less and less work as a trucker. Soon, he was only working 2 or 3 days a week at most.

Dulcidia had to go onto food stamps, something she has never done before.

She spoke of how they could no longer pay the mortgage. “The bank keeps pressuring me,” she said. “The first time they called was Christmas. They said we had lost the house. They keep calling and saying we have already lost the house when we haven’t. They once called my husband when he was driving and said the same thing. He almost crashed, so now I take all of the calls.”

“If they take the house away, what are we going to do?” she asked. “It’d be easy to rent another place but it’s been fifteen years there, I don’t want to leave.”

Joceline turned to me. “Mom gets really depressed. She cries a lot. Sometimes, I come into the room and she is just staring at the wall.”

Dulcidia adds: “Sometimes I want to just leave it all behind.”

The most precious part of the whole thing was the silence after we talked. I was able to share that with them, share the fact that discussing these things weighted us all down. I offered them a little hope, Well, if anyone can help you, it’ll be Padre, I said. I know, I know, said Dulcidia. 

INTERNSHIP: Padre and I visit the Factory, attempt one

Wednesday, 15 July, 2009

The Padre and I entered the factory the next day, wriggling through a tear in the fence around it. I stepped gingerly over stagnant puddles, broken glass and huge piles of trash. It reminded me of the camp I had seen in the desert last spring, the hidden cave covered in human garbage. It was isolated, a cave in a lonely ridge in the Sonora, yet it was packed with flies and discarded pieces of human existence. Once again, here was a place I couldn’t believe people live. And Chicago winters were for me comparable to desert summers. Neither place are liveable for humans exposed to the elements.

“See how much they drink,” said Padre, pointing at mounds of liquor bottles.

The next room, however, showed poignant humanity—overturned crates and a few chairs, one looking like a seat extracted from a mini van made a makeshift living room. Magazine pictures were tacked to the walls. I pushed on a door and it opened wide enough for me to see six mattresses, stacked with clothes and blankets and someone’s stored bicycle. Yep. People lived here for sure, though no one was there now.

Padre and I climbed upstairs to see more beds and piles of clothing but no one answered our calls. They were probably out working, seeking day labor at the Home Depot. We agreed to come back the next night and see if they were around. In the meantime, he had some other people I could talk to. 

INTERNSHIP: The Padre, ctnd.

Tuesday, 14 July, 2009

I was getting ready to leave the mission when Padre came in. “Do you need a ride?” he asked. “I am going now to play soccer.”

I agreed to the ride and was delighted that he played soccer. He just got better and better.

We piled into his old car, floor littered with coffee cups, banana peels and newpapers.

“Do you have time to see the factory?” he asked.

“Of course!” I said, astonished at my luck.

As we drove along, I marveled at the Padre and the conversation we were having. His accent was rollingly Central American—h’s before vowels and dropping the endings of other words. Still, he never missed a word. He had been living in the United States for more than twenty years now and I had the sense that he talked the same way in Spanish, too. Because it wasn’t the accent that made his speaking style unique.

The Padre has a way of interacting with you—a calm, slow way of looking at you intently and filling space with lots of repetitions—“Mmm-hmm, mm-hmmm, mmm-hmm” he says, nodding his head. He barely blinks when you are talking, yet his eyes twinkle when he is amused and he grins a lot.

We drove down shady streets of little houses, chatting merrily. I loved his slow sentences and the quirky phrases that came out and the grins that followed when I commented. Soon, we had reached the factory. It was a huge building and looked almost burned out. I couldn’t believe people lived there. He assured me they did.

“We going to go tomorrow,” he said.

Conversation shifted as we turned back towards the bus stop. I asked him about the park he was going to play soccer in; I asked him where he lived.

“Oh, I live on the north side,” he said. “I just moved. Y’see, I have two cats and a rabbit.”

This guy is out of this world I thought. I love everything he says.

“I used to have three cats, but one cat, she died on the road. She was like a daughter to me, so I moved.”

He continued on as we continued on, telling me about how the rabbit thought it was a cat and the cats thought they were rabbits. He had the sweetest, shyest grin as he talked about them. And every time I asked a question about them, he’d seem delighted to answer. We talked about his furry friends until we reached my bus stop.

“So I’ll see you tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yes!” I said, clambering out awkwardly.

“Ok,” he said, grinning upwards. “OK! We go to the factory tomorrow!”

 

INTERNSHIP: I first go to Our Lady of Guadeloupe Anglican Catholic Mission and meet Padre Jose Landaverde

Tuesday, 14 July, 2009

I walked into the church off of 26^th Street and took off my sunglasses, blinking at the change in lighting. I was in a converted storefront, pews lined up behind a glass-covered case where colorful Our Lady of Guadalupe’s reigned. The receptionist was using the case as a desk. Grinning but speaking no English, he sent me back through lacy curtains into a type of waiting room. An older man and a younger man, chatting in the corner caught my attention. A few women waited dispersed in different seats, speaking quietly in Spanish to their children. A little boy ate fried chicken with greasy fingers and seemed to have run of the place—he even seemed to enter a closed room place where I assumed meetings with the lawyers were taking peace.  Yesterday, when I had met with Mujica, he had given me the basics of what went on here—lawyers came to give free consultations on immigration and housing issues to community members. So I was there, but Mujica wasn’t.

The old man and young man seemed interested in my plight. I texted Mujica and it seemed the older man was looking for him, too. He kept asking me if I had an appointment. It was a hard thing to convey—Mujica has recommended that I go, but had never totally said he’d be there. I sad on the plastic seats, staring at my phone and the hushed Spanish conversations happening around me.

I felt, not awkward exactly, but that I was acting awkwardly. I was the only non-Latino in the room and I was sitting alone.

Eventually, I went to talk to the young man, who was now seated behind a desk. He had a smooth face and a mild expression. He was wearing a peasant sort of shirt, white with a symbol of a chieftain outlined in blue on either side of his chest.

I decided to start from square one, admitting that I had no idea what was actually going on.

So, I said. What’s going on here?

In the first two minutes, I was ready to bow to Mujica. The young man and I spent those two minutes establishing points of connection—of which, I quickly learned, there were many. Our meeting seemed established not by Mujica, but by some unforeseen god of fortune.

We determined that I was a reporter working for StreetWise writing about Latino immigrant homeless. We established that he was the Father of the church here (a surprise to me considering his boyish looks). We learned that he had gone to the University of Chicago for theological seminary and that I was living in Hyde Park. Then, he said casually that he had worked as a vendor manager at StreetWise when he came to the city. Then, he had worked as a member of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless creating a task force on Latino homelessness and the plight of day-laborers.

His casually stated comments were gold, all of them insights on the community, the homeless and his life. As we chatted, another community member wandered up. Soon we were swapping stories and observations. The Padre printed out his research and then, in the same casual tone, offered to take me to an abandoned factory where he knew a bunch of homeless were camped out.

What are you doing tomorrow? He asked. I cannot go now, I am busy. If you come, one o’clock tomorrow, we can go.

With a mischievous smile, he added: It’s a lil’ bit dangerous so I’ll wear my priest stuff and we’ll be ok.

Two minutes later, he led me into the back room to meet Marilu. I was deposited in a warehouse-like room after following the Padre down what looked like a supply closet—I hesitated at first, was he leading me or stopping by to grab some supplies?

But he beckoned and the room opened up. Half of it has junk and clothes piled on tall shelves. The room was filled with salty smelling smoke which drifted in from an open door.

Gathered around a table were six women, speaking Spanish. Some of them had plates of half-eaten cake. Tortillas sat in packets, tomatoes sat washed and ready to be chopped.  The women were hanging out and looked up curiously when we approached.

This is Marilu, Padre said, pointing me to a round woman with a friendly face.

I sat down. With the help of the women around her, especially a young girl who translated, Marilu filled me in on what was happening in the community. I sat there for over an hour as they told me about their friends losing their homes, steep housing prices and a name, almost whispered with following nods: Herminia Corona, Herminia Corona. 

INTERNSHIP: I am doing EXACTLY as I dreamed of doing

18 July 2009

My entries about Jorge Mujica and Marcos have been part of the incredible journey of writing my cover piece for StreetWise. It began with the vague statement from Suzanne that won my decision to join StreetWise staff—and we’d like to have a story on the immigrant homeless.

Suzanne’s initial idea was one about the Polish immigrant community. I expanded that—What about a series? I asked. One on each of the three largest immigrant groups in Chicago and how they deal with their homeless?

And Suzanne gave me the ok and I began researching the situation of homeless immigrants in the Latino, Polish and Indian immigrant communities in Chicago.

I have visited a shelter for Polish immigrants and it will be an amazing tale to tell. However, the story that has won my heart is the story on homelessness in the Latino community. Of course, those of you who know me know that I am already deeply involved in the immigration reform debates—a passion which began with my volunteer experience with undocumented migrants crossing the desert in Arizona. It was there that I decided on my idiosyncratic dream—to be a reporter coving issues of immigration.

For this story, I started with a discrepancy in numbers and facts. I began with a statistic—that the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless states that only 6% of the homeless in the city are Latino. This doesn’t mesh with other statistics. Chicago’s population is 25% Latino and studies show that both increased raids by border officials and the recession have impacted Latino families. Latino families are often poor and the parents are often working minimum-wage, low-skill jobs. So I was sure that there was something that the survey had missed.

Well, turns out, there are a lot of factors about the Latino community that the survey didn’t take into account. I learned these facts from my own observation and from talking to many people, many of them participants in the first forum on Latino homelessness entitled Todos Contamos, an under-noticed symposium held in April.

This is what I have learned. For the most part, Latinos in Chicago form a close-knit community that has learned to support each other when they can’t count on others. Often, when one family loses a home, instead of going to a homeless shelter, the family (or individual) simply moves in with another family. Though they are homeless, these displaced people aren’t counted in surveys. Homes across the community, however, are overcrowded by this “doubling up” causing safety hazards, increased stress, child abuse and increased domestic violence. And even if they are  out on the streets, most Latinos are mistrustful of government services—expecting that they do not qualify for aid, that the service will not have appropriate cultural and lingustic sensitivities and worst of all, terrified that they will be turned in. So instead, people are turning to churches and family members for help.

Chasing down this story has brought me to know the streets of Pilsen and Little Village, the Mexican communities of Chicago. Walking down them now involves waving to passersby and stopping in at my favorite places. I now know where ICE raids happened, where the activists hang out, and where gangs convene and where reform happens. The stories are being written with the help of an incredible cast of characters. Some are the angels who help the downtrodden in these communities and some are those who are homeless, struggling or losing their homes. Some are looking at the future with hope; others with trepidation. All of them have let me into their worlds.

I want to tell you there stories. In my article, they will be reduced to mere sentences or paragraphs. But here, in this forum, I can bring people to life.  I can introduce you to the dapper Puerto Rican who runs San Jose Obrero Mission or the quiet, yet radical priest from El Salvador who runs Our Lady of Guadelupe Anglican Catholic Mission on 26^th Street. I can introduce you to the people who are uncounted—the family with four children who have been receiving foreclosure notices and the man who loves America, yet lives in a downtown shelter. 

CONTRACTED OPTION 2: Shabbot Shalom and Aaaaah-mein!

18 July 2009

It was the rabbi’s thunderous voice that brought us into Friday night service at Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation on South Kedzie Avenue. I had heard Rabbi Capers Funnye speak at a benefit for the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs the night before. This heavy-set, regal-looking African American man had overwhelmed the room with his powerful, gospel voice, singing out across the tables and filling the room with it’s rich tones. I knew then that I wanted to go to his service. And so, we found ourselves heading into the far South side this cool Friday night to attend a rather remarkable service. Since coming into Chicago, I have become absolutely unfazed by discovering myself in remarkable situations. But as far as diversity goes, this one perhaps took the cake.

The Congregation was historic, I learned from a quick perusal of its website. It was founded as the Ethiopian Hebrew Association in 1915. When Martin Luther King Jr. was in Chicago during the Civil Rights Movement, he found shelter at the temple. It is still operating today, with one of the most diverse congregations around.

The website told me that much but as I walked down South Kedzie, I learned from Curtis a little bit about the neighborhood the congregation now sits in. Curtis works at the Southwest Youth Collaborative; a community center on Kedzie for youth growing up just South of 63^rd Street, one of the three most dangerous streets in the nation. Though today the SWYC building is covered in bright murals and has become a safe haven for kids in the neighborhood; its past tells a different story. There are photos of people throwing rocks at Dr. King Jr. from the roof of the building. The KKK used to have its center in the neighborhood and racial tensions still run high. For Curtis, a pretty preppy white kid, it’s been hard to win trust in the kids he works with. When he first started, another worker told him—“I’m brown and it took six months to get them to like me.”

We didn’t know what to expect when we arrived at the temple but what we did meet was locked doors. We wandered around a little bit hopelessly before ringing the doorbell and being let in by the Rabbi himself. We were ushered upstairs and handed over to a beautiful African-American woman wearing a sky blue skirt set with tiny mosaic mirrors. She  explained that men and women in the congregation sat separately and that head covers are expected for both men and women. Curtis donned a yarmulke and the girls wrapped their hair in lacy scarves. We were offered seats and I spent the next few minutes studying the people around me.

The crowd around me was absolutely impossible to fit into any mold. In front of me sat the beautiful woman who had welcomed us and her neighbor, a tan woman with dark locks escaping from her gypsy-style black and white scarf. There was a red-headed white woman visiting from New York and an awkward looking girl with brown hair who was looking at the University of Chicago. Behind us was a Latino family—an eleven-year-old daughter, mother and grandmother.  The men’s side was predominantly African-American but also included Curtis, the husbands of the middle-aged Latina and the red-haired visitor and the father of the girl at the University of Chicago. My favorite in the entire crowd may have been the Rabbi’s grandson—a tall, lanky, pants-sagging yet tallis-wearing guy.  I’m sure that their belief systems and reasons for coming were even more diverse than their appearances, but the surface-level differences were wide-ranging enough for books.

Rabbi Funnye entered and raised his hands and then his voice. I melted into the noise. I didn’t understand a word of the Hebrew that he spoke but I knew that the inflection was different from any other I have ever heard—the Hebrew rose and fell in African rhythms, Gospel tones.

I could have listened to the Rabbi for an eternity, but unfortunately, the congregation was often invited in. When that happened, I strained to avoid the out of tune chorus that rose around me and focus on his voice. 

The room was brightly colored with purplish walls and misty paintings of the creation. Out of a huge window, the sunset glowed pink and purple.  The Rabbi finally beckoned us forward and I rose when the congregants rose and then shared in ritual grape juice and raisin-spiced challah bread. Throughout the rest of the service, whenever a congregant was hungry, he or she would rise, walk to the front and snag a piece to munch on.

The service took a turn after bread was broken. Moving forward to sit on the edge of the altar, the Rabbi spoke in English, asking the congregants to raise any questions they might have.

Jewish people, he said, have always initiated conversations with God. They always question Him.  Even when they are called by God, they say: ‘Why me?’

 He was an intimidating presence but the woman in blue soon spoke up with a question about a Hebrew word. The conversation continued and soon, we were on the role of women. (Earlier, he had read a prayer of praise for one’s wife. I thought it was a nice gesture, though I felt like some of the things in the prayer were a little dated—while it complemented the woman; it did so for her dedication to hard work, running the house, etc.) I had also thought a little bit about the separation between men and women in the Congregation and surprisingly; I liked it. It made me feel special, mysterious, and feminine— like when women pray, there is a magic utterly different from what men experience. It was a surprising conclusion for me to come to, but true. However, the discussion was a lot more conservative than I expected. Women in the audience were talking about deferring to their husbands and while the Rabbi was emphatic in saying that that didn’t happen anymore, his definition of women’s rights were a little weird. He said, for example, that he never touches his wife’s income. She has worked for twenty years but as a man, he still believes it is his income that should pay for everything in the house. He believes that is his responsibility. Several other questions (put forward by his tall, lanky, pants-sagging yet tallis-wearing grandson) were shot down by the Rabbi.

It was after nine pm when we shook hands with those around us and wished a universal Shabbot Shalom. It was the typical Chicago center adventure: the kind where you suddenly find yourself in another world, but one that welcomes you. 

Correction at the Corner Cafe

15 July 2009

The Corner Cafe

Once, in class, Scott told us about a book called Slim’s Table. It’s a book about the culture of a group of African Americans who meet at a café located not two steps from the Chicago Center. When Scott’s son Lane was assigned to read the book in college, the professor began the lecture by talking about how the café was in the middle of the ghetto in a dangerous area on the Southside. When Lane politely protested, saying he often went there for breakfast and it was actually in a safe, college town environment, the professor refused to believe him. He had a mental idea of where this café was and instead of asking the locals about it, he formed his own, misconstrued image of it.

Well, my friends, I am ashamed to say that I am guilty of the same thing. I began this blog, really and truly, with my entries about Verbal Balance, a spoken word poetry evening held at a Southside café. Someone had told me that the café was on the far Southside (“Danger!” my mind filled in). When we pulled up, we parked to the side and it did look to me like it was in an industrial wasteland. People had told me that it was a culture shock to go and I flat out believed them. I really did sit in the café, nervous about the outside, perceiving it to be a scary, unwelcome place.

Well, I was chastised by Scott for creating my own reality in my entries about the Corner Café. And it’s true; when we returned for the Verbal Balance event held last Wednesday; I saw the area in a whole new light. We drove in on another street and it looked pretty normal; some houses and some apartments. When we parked, I didn’t feel like we were at the end of the earth as I had on our first trip. In viewing the environment a second time, I saw normality that before I had let hide itself in the dark night.

Inside, I sat on a big, padded couch next to a big, padded woman who called herself “Earth” (I accidentally called her “Erf” for the first five minutes until she explained the origins of her name and I finally realized by pronouncing it with her accent I had made a fool of myself—as in, “Erf—what an interesting name. Where does it come from?”). Earth told me the neighborhood was ok, there are good parts and some bad parts. It go block by block. Some places, you could raise kids; others no. But, yeah, it’s really ok.

This discovery does make me nervous, very nervous. I had the fortune to visit this place a second time and the flexibility to add this note to my blog. But I am a journalist by profession and there will be times when I am expected to write about things which I will not have the chance to revisit. How can I trust myself when I realize my lens is hopelessly screwed?

Well, Solution Part A is that I will try to always visit a place more than once (something I have tried to practice, especially as a journalist because each time you visit a place or speak to a person, you learn something new.)

Solution Part B: Now that I am aware of certain blinders I wear, I can be on guard for them. 

INTERNSHIP: Pilsen, through Jorge's eyes

 

A little fat boy comes to our table with candy, he is asking if we sell it. No, darling, he says.

No, I say, shaking my head.

I smile as Tubby walks away but Jorge leaps into a comment.

That’s child labor, he says. That kid must pay his dues to his family, pay his keep. It gets worse during the school holidays.

We watch him go from person to person, showing his pitiful ware, almost tripping on a step.

That’s horrible, I say, horrible.

Our eyes wander out the window when the little boy goes outside, no doubt to meet a padre watching from the corner.

The theater across the street is where we led the debates for the 1986 immigration reform bill (Which granted amnesty to thousands of undocumented, permanent across the county). But it was crap by the time it was done. We got that through and started working on the next one the next day. That was twenty-two years ago. And we’re still working. How old are you? A lifetime ago. A whole lifetime.

Obama came here, to this café, on his “Tour of a Latino Neighborhood”. We have  a picture. I met with him right here. 

INTERNSHIP: Writing about Jorge

Jorge drives me to the red line in china town, telling me about January fifteenth when he walked the 11 miles to Hyde Park to protest immigration reform for Obama. It was 1 degree that day.

He invited me to his organization tomorrow. Four pm is when the lawyers come, six pm is a kids program.

I’ll see you soon, I say. I walk to a park in China Town and sit by a big plant container. My view: a mural and the highway. Sun on my back, sitting on the ground, smell of piss saturates my nose. It’s gross but it feels good to be outside and good to tell this story, so carefully entrusted to me.  My fingers fly on the key board. 

INTERSHIP: Jorge's Community Anecdote

I’ll tell you a story, Jorge said. I’ll give you some numbers that will blow your mind.

Ok, so in 2007, there was a heat wave in Chicago. It was bad, real bad. In our neighborhood, we lost eight, nine hundred people. People dying in closed up apartments. So many that grocery stores were lending the morgues their refrigerated trucks. It was horrible. But, guess, out of those, how many would you guess were Latino?

No idea, I shook my head.

Two, he said. Two. Do you know why?

Something clicked. Yeah, I said, yeah. The people who died were white, elderly alone in their apartments.

Exactly, exactly, he said, excitedly. Because we don’t do that. For Latinos, our grandparents live with us. We take care of them. We say, m’ijo, go fan Grandma, ask her if she needs a glass of water. We don’t leave them like that. 

INTERNSHIP: what Jorge sees daily

13 July 2009

Conversations in the Car between Pilsen and Little Village (Chicago)

*

This what we are seeing, he said. In the city of Chicago, one hundred men are deported each week. These are young, working men with families. The family has a traditional set-up so usually the wife doesn’t work. Small kids. Well, then he is gone and suddenly we have these mothers, these kids becoming homeless. That’s why if you come to our office right now, it is like a daycare center.

What do you do? I asked.

Well, we try to find someone to take them in, maybe someone who used to be in the same situation.

That’s how the community is. We open up our homes. The other day, my wife and I were counting how many people we had had to stay. It’s been thirty-four in the past six years. Some stay for days, some for weeks or months; I think this one guy stayed for years. Yeah, he was in the basement for about a year and a half. That’s just how we are.

We’re used to overcrowding. You know, if a young, undocumented man comes here they afford the rent by living maybe 12, 14 to a house. People aren’t there together, you know, eight are sleeping while eight are working and so on. You see it in the grocery store; you see two skinny guys with the two carts loaded up with beans, tortillas and you think, how can they eat that? Well, they are buying for all the guys.

*

Here is something else. We are seeing all these families who are being foreclosed on. You see, if you are an undocumented permanent resident than you can’t get any of the stimulus package money to get loans to keep your house. So we tell them, don’t keep paying your mortgage—don’t try to keep your house as long as possible. If it looks like it is going to happen, it is going to happen. So we tell them, stop paying. If it’s two thousand a month, and you don’t pay for three months than you have six thousand you can put down on an apartment when you loose your house. That’s what we tell them.

Me: Wait. So are there a lot of people like this? Permanent, undocumented residents who have bought houses? How does that work?

That’s the housing boom for you. You could go to the bank and get a loan, granted, they didn’t get good interest rates, they weren’t eligible since they weren’t documented.

Me: Wait, I say. They’d loan to undocumented people? Don’t you need a SS number?

Nope. You need what’s called an IT number, which you can get if you go to any number of places. It’s an Income Tax number and you get it when you register to pay taxes. All you need is your W-2s. So these people would go in with this. They’d get a loan to put down the deposit and then they’d get a loan to help pay for the rest of it. But then they’d have crazy mortgages—like $4,000 a month. But they were so happy, this was America—they had a house. But now, they lose their jobs and they can’t pay the $4,000 anymore.

Me: I get it. So these are the people who arrived after they gave out amnesty in 1986. So they were buying houses in the nineties... oh yeah, right in the middle of the housing bubble.

Exactly, exactly!

*

INTERNSHIP: Marcos

13 July 2009

Home Depot Lot, Little Village Chicago

Marcos was shy, but once he started talking his voice flowed forth. Though he never spoke rapidly, he never paused, acting as if the words were almost tumbling out. Sometimes, when people tell me their stories, I can hear the way they build themselves up as we go along. But with Marcos, I heard more and more truth and honesty the longer he spoke and I listened. Sometimes he looked away, sometimes I heard shame when he dropped his already quiet voice, but he kept talking.
We started by talking about his life.
He was from Houston, up here to work. He told me about the jobs, the occasional employers who fucked you over—giving you too little for difficult work. If that happened, he and his friends would leave, hiking back to the Home Depot lot to farm themselves out to someone with a little more integrity. If it got to 2 or 3 and he still hadn’t found work, he’d give up for the day: find a park and maybe drink (he indicated this to me with the shy hint of a hand motion, bottle to mouth but so subtle I might have missed it.)
Most employers are good though, he assured me. They offer you water; help you out a little.
Looking around at the others in the lot, he told me there were more guys than ever who had lost their jobs. He told me about how he at least had a skill—sometimes people who bring him along just to translate.
Where do you stay? I asked.
He stayed in the mission—a homeless shelter down town. He didn’t like it. They were too strict. And religion? Well, don’t get me wrong, he said. I love god. I do, I really do. But I get a note to say I am working so I don’t have to do that stuff. I like going to church, I do, I really do. But…their services…
They just don’t speak to you? I offered.
Yeah! You know.

*

Eventually, we wound around to the rest of his story, a part I was desperate to hear. By now, we had been chatting for a long time. The sun was hot. Cars drove in and out of the lot and the workers around us shifted as people took work and left it. Jorge was talking animatedly to the workers around, laughing and waving his hands. When a driver rolled down the window and asked for a plumber, Jorge took a break from talking to run around to clumps of workers, calling out for the plumber. Marcos and I continued to talk.

I made a lot of mistakes, he said. You know, when you’re young, you mess up.
He stopped looking at me except to glance. He rubbed the back of his sunburnt neck and twisted his arm behind his bag, still clutching the half eaten burger, poppyseeds on top.
He continued.
Marcos: My parents were from El Salvador. But I was born in Belize. They were refugees there. I was born there and two sisters were, too.
Me: How did they get over… to the US, I mean?
Marcos: They did what a lot of people did, they got into the country, then…it was different for El Salvadorans then because there was a war there. They did what Cubans do today.
Me: They applied for amnesty.
Marcos: Yeah…
Well, I was making a lot of poor decisions. I, he stopped, still pained at the closeness of it all. I had my green card pending.
It was new years and I went over the border with friends, to party. On new years, lots of people were coming back and forth, they were busy. But when it came my turn, I was.. I was intox… I was drunk and high on drugs.
He strung the last words together, barely audible, ashamed.
I was. And uh, I tried to cross the bridge but I was alone. I walked that long way alone, you know and not with a lot of people, so the lady asked me a lot of questions. And it was all cool until she asked for my card and I gave it to her and she put it in her computer and she said, you’re not in the system and then, they imprisoned me, detained me for seven months.
I was sent to Belize. I wasn’t from there. I hadn’t been there since I was six. Everybody heard the way I talked, said: ‘where you from, man?’
It was horrible. I am used to here where they say, ‘ah man, you want some water?’ There, they make you work, they mean. They drive you and the work is hard and you make no money. Nothing. Like twenty five cents. And then I lost my job. I lived there for a year and a half and I was like, ah man, I gotta get back.
Me: How did you do it?
Marcos: Well, Mexico’s got real strict borders, real strict you know. I got into Mexico because I speak Mexican Spanish—and Spanish from Belize. They are two different like dialects, you know? I grew my hair long, was all shaven. So I did that. And then, when I was North, I called my parents and they paid for me to cross the other border.
Me: How?
Marcos: By… uh… boat. They took me across the river.
I can’t complain, man. It was all, all was inside I could feel the fear inside me. But I’m lucky. He touched his round face. I never suffered, no one ever beat me. And then I come here and man, America is great. Man, I so lucky to be here man. So lucky. And all of that. It’s like a bad dream. Like a bad dream, seems so long ago. After seeing what it was like over there, I’m just happy to be here. It’s so much better.
I wasn’t sure what to say. Here was a shy and sweet man, living in a homeless shelter in Chicago, standing in a hot parking lot waiting for day labor jobs that aren’t coming and he is telling me America is great?
*

Oh man, I real shy.
Marcos looked bashfully at the ground and rocked from foot to foot. He didn’t want his picture taken until I convinced him that the reason I wanted his picture was because we talked. I could take a picture of any guest worker anywhere, but I wanted his because I knew his story, because he had shared it with me.
You do? He asked.
We compromised. A picture from the back was ok. He checked it out on my camera.
Me: Is Markos with a “c” or a “k”?
Marcos: With a “c”, but I like Mark.
Me: Can I ask you your last name? Do you feel comfortable…? I asked.
Marcos: Martinez. Yeah sure, and here. I’ll give you my cell phone number. I like what you do. A lot. I—how do you say it—uh, support what you doing, he said. I really do. Your helping all these people. That’s why I want to help.
His faith in my work was almost disconcerting. Who was I—this young kid, this girl— he had entrusted his story to?
Me: It’s people like you two who tell me your stories, I said.
He wrote his name on a receipt in blue ink. Tell me when it comes out, I’d like to see it.
It’ll be out August 7th, I said. You can get a copy… I stopped. Did he even have two dollars to spare? Why would I make him pay when I’d send a copy to someone I interviewed who had an address?
Absolutely, I said. I will give you a call. Absolutely.
It’s a promise I am not going to break.
*
You hit the golden nugget with that guy. Jorge says, as we get into the car. I am a little shocked.
Yeah, I say. I know.

INTERNSHIP: Jorge Mujica, community organizer and a journalist's best friend

13 July 2009

The Jumping Bean (Pilsen) to 26th Street (Little Village)

This is how I became famous during the immigration reform debates, Jorge Mujica said to me as we bumped along in his dilapidated greenish van, back windows curtain with moldy green curtains to match. I am always doing this kind of things for journalists. I may not be the person leading the press conference but they come to me, they say Jorge, what’s going on? And I tell them.

His hand holding the pipe was on the windowsill and the smell of sweet tobacco surrounded us as he continued: I used to be a reporter myself, so I understand, he said.

I was joining the ranks then, of journalists who couldn’t believe their luck at meeting Jorge Mujica. Himself a former undocumented immigrant, he has spent the past twenty years as a community leader in Latino Chicago and at the forefront of both Chicago and national immigration debates. He knew everything there is to know about the community and as we sat in a small Pilsen café over coffee and mint tea, he had to stop periodically to kiss old friends who wandered in and launch into jovial conversations in Spanish about their lives. He was just as friendly and open with me, his acquaintance of an hour- an intern who was questioning him about homelessness in the community for her StreetWise story. It was obvious why journalists loved him—he answered all my questions, peppering them with statistics and anecdotes. And he was willing to have an adventure like the one we were having right now.

Two minutes before, we had still been in that café. We were laughing, getting along well and talking about Obama’s visit to the same café on his “tour of a Chicago, Latino neighborhood”, when Jorge said, suddenly. What are you doing now? Want to go to 26^th street? C’mon, I’ll take you there.

Twenty-sixth Street, he told me, had the second largest economy in Chicago after Michigan Avenue and it was the Mexican shopping district of the Midwest. As we bumped along, he and I both knew why he was so popular with journalists. He didn’t just know about everyone and everything at the Jumping Bean; he also knew about everyone and everything in all of Pilsen and Little Village, Chicago’s Mexican areas.

We jolted down residential streets and talked about the labor unions he organized. He threw his slogan at me—We don’t want to be poor and documented any more than we want to be poor and undocumented. We need unions to fight for our rights.

As part of his community organizing, he had organized strikes against many of the buildings we passed. One was a tortilla factory. While striking there, he saw evidence of the huge market for the Mexican businesses in this area. We had trucks coming from all over: Iowa, Idaho, Ohio, he said. They could trust the tortillas in this factory and were buying them to bring them back to little Mexican restaurants and stores all over.

Shortly after our entrance through the historic Mexican arch that marked the beginning of 26^th Street commerce, I saw a tasty looking restaurant. Jorge casually said, oh we picketed that place for months.

Why? I asked.

They used a commercial Laundromat we were protesting, he said. They got so mad. We protested all these restaurants all over the city that used that service. One was Ditka's—a restaurant owned by the Bear’s manager. He was so mad—he was so mad I thought he’d shoot us.

He pointed out street vendors on every corner, peddling colorful wares. I thought them atmospheric.

We started seeing a bunch of them this last winter, he said. More and more. It’s a sign of how hard it is to find jobs. Used to be there’d be one every two or three blocks, now there are a couple selling things on every corner. Balloons, shaved ice, you name it.. what’s the word in English? You get the ice and put the stuff on top…

I think it’s SnoCone in English, I said, feeling a little ridiculous.

And right here, you see how the economy has hit this place. Two years ago, there was a waiting list to get a business here, maybe eighty business long. And now? Look—you see. He pointed out a particularly empty block. Three out of six stores stood vacant.

I know! he said.

Back to the vendors, he pointed at a cart selling hats and balloons outside of a barber shop.

You see, probably, that shop belongs to his cousin. And so he says, ok, ok, you can sell here. You see that all along. People selling everything—tamales, corn, shoes… look, there’s shoes.

He pointed to the man pushing a handcart with bells and ice cream. That’s more traditional, but there’s more of them, too, these days. 

We continued along the street until the small commerce ended—so no more prom dress stores, supermercados, or piñata-filled windows. We were in an industrial area. The pea green van squealed into a parking lot, to turn around, I assumed. But no, he turned in to home depot. Something clicked.

Is this the home depot where…? I began

Yes, he said. Look, over there.

We drove the ridiculous van straight towards a group of three men standing by a stop sign. It was hot, sun beating on them, their backpacks and their beers, though a cool breeze from the lake offered relief.

Are they waiting for work? I asked. But it’s so late in the day. It was already past four.

Jorge squealed up next to them and parked with a jolt.

How’s your Spanish? he asked.

Minimal, I said.

So, you speak like three words? he laughed his horsey laugh. Ola and amigo and…

… and gracias, I finished.

He laughed again and undeterred, he leapt out of the car speaking rapid and friendly Spanish, arms waving. He introduced me as the journalist--  ne habla espagnol.

Immediately a chubby man with a sweet, baby face switched to English, his language almost unaccented. I introduced myself.

I’m Brenna, I said.

Mark, he said. Marcos.

Something serious to consider.

Chicago Center Director's Critique, read 12 July, 2009.

Great start to the journal—some great reflections and analysis, Scott wrote. Your descriptions, while dramatic, tend to lead the analysis by crating the reality you then respond to. Race difference, as constructed in your journal through dialect, appearance, caricatures, and encounter, dominate in a way that threatens to diminish or obscure the human connection and to concede the race an absolute that historically has functioned in the interest of Euro-Caucasians. Consider your own relationships to race is a necessary starting point. 

In explanation: I suppose I do seek to make a story out of my life. I let myself be affected by images and instances. Sometimes, I suppose, my viewing lens is blurred—colored by my emotionalism and my Caucasian understanding of the world. It's a disconcerting situation to be in-- to learn that the reality one truly sees is one's own creation in some ways. I no longer trust my gut feelings for the same reason-- because my gut feels in a racially preconditioned way. 

This tendency that Scott describes is something for a journalist to fear. My own embedded prejudices and naivete are nakedly apparent when I seek to tell these stories. I cannot seek to fill predetermined roles in my head when I see the world. Not if I seek the truth. How to escape these confines? But here, in my journal, I record life and life is made only of impressions. You can’t live life over again and take a more candid, more analytical look at what you see. What must change is the sharpening of that lens. 

INTERNSHIP 6: In the Office with Ben

Most week days from June 18-July 3^rd, 2008

The StreetWise office soon feels like home. I share an office with Ben, a former Chicago Center student himself; he interned at StreetWise, got a job after a summer of work here and has now moved on to running the magazine. He writes articles, takes photos and most importantly designs the entirety of the magazine: managing content, finding photos, doing layout, editing stories to make them fit, designing a cover and each subsequent page. He is the one that gets the magazine to press each week and makes sure it’s good. While other people handle the selling of ads and the vendor aspect of the publication, Ben is the reason that there is a magazine to sell each week.

At first, the office was quiet. We smiled at each other, he got me set up with an internet hook up and gave me a few directions. It was peaceful. Often, besides Ryan, the desk attendant, we were the only two in the office so early. I enjoyed his presence as I spent my mornings researching. But one day we started talking and after that, we never wanted to stop.

Since then, Ben has become my unofficial guide to the city, to StreetWise, to working with the homeless, to the Chicago Center, to life in college and after college. He gives me the inside scoop on the dealings and the people at StreetWise. I have started to him each time I formulate a suspicion or an observation. I begin my sentences with “I have noticed Grace…” or “I was talking to the vendor…” or “When I am on the bus, I feel…” Inevitably, Ben has an explanation and has stories and understands completely where I am coming from. Yes, our backgrounds are similar. He, like me, is from Kansas and remember, he first came to StreetWise as an intern with the Chicago center. I have began to trust him like no other to understand where I am coming from and to explain what I am seeing.  When I mentioned to him one of my worst realizations in Chicago—that I am prone to revert to close minded stereotypes about people—he even had a name for it: Oh, he said, like it was utterly natural, something we all went through, you are just Caucasian-ing out.

That’s it, I thought, so simple and so true.

With him, I also have the remarkable friendship that I have with other journalists—friendships that I have found with my good friend Sonya, another journalism student, or John, a photographer. It is a friendship of people who love people, love their stories and are incredibly eager to share them. Ben wants to know about everyone that I have met and tells me incredible stories about the woman with the cigar store he wrote a story about once or the vendor who began to tell him about seeing Jesus in a cemetery. I return to the office bursting with new information and experiences and know that Ben will love to hear it all.

He and I also share a loving way of noticing other people’s quirks and loving the stories they create. He uses this loving sense of humor to let me know how to deal with the people around me. We laugh together when Suzanne, our editor, arrives in at two pm (Ben has been there since 8.15 am but accepts that Suzanne is just like that), when Greg talks about StreetWise TV (the weekly public access edition that has about two viewers but Greg adores), when Grace arrives with her perfectly coordinated outfit and perfectly portioned yuppie sack lunch or when I engage in a long, winding conversation with a vendor who normally does that, according to Ben.

Ben’s friendship with his restaurant recommendations, 411 on the workings of StreetWise, brilliant sense of humor and ear ready to listen has been an incredible part of my summer in Chicago. Yes, it has meant hours of office time spent in conversation and not necessarily in research. But at the same time, the knowledge I have accumulated could not be found anywhere.

INTERNSHIP 5: A Routine is Born

Or, The Self Indulgent Part you would probably skim in my autobiography where I record the minute details of my daily life that I will revel in reading in later years and will bore you to tears presently (You may skip this entry).

Most week days from June 18-July 3^rd, 2009

My first few weeks at Streetwise were spent in easy rhythm. While I love to explore and love adventure, there is a wonderful feeling to establishing a routine—especially one that makes you excited to get up every day.  I’d get up at six and pound along the lakeside, then loop behind the museum, through the ivied University of Chicago campus, then up shady residential streets back to Blackstone. A shower, the making of tea, the spreading of peanut butter on a banana, the frantic reading of as many news stories as I could fit in before I inevitably ran for the bus, clutching my pink mug, spilling hot tea and banging my laptop painfully against my hip. Sometimes I’d run, and just barely catch it. Sometimes I’d run and then wait for what seemed like hours and once was upward of twenty-five minutes. I used to question each bus driver—is their a scheduled time you come to this stop? No, was the general consensus.

The bus was usually pretty full and demographically consisted of entirely African-American passengers and me and maybe one other white person (usually a weird looking University of Chicago student or one of my fellow classmates at the Chicago Center headed to their respective internships.) At the 51^st Street Greenline stop, I’d hop off and ride the shaky escalator up to the platform.

I soon learned to stand pretty far down on the platform, because trains are shorter than you might think and I’d have to run for the very last car. There was another reason too—my first few days, I’d run to the last door of the car and it would open to reveal an emerging man-- a mountain of a man, slobbery and strange looking, in an electric wheelchair. He would rant loudly as he bumped onto the platform, looking like he might pitch forward and be left beached on the platform. I’d watch, breathless, hoping he wouldn’t fall until it got too disturbing for me. I haven’t seen him since, but then again, I make sure to stand farther up to platform. It may be a cruel choice but I was too disturbed by his angry talk and precarious bulk.

The ride is always smooth and lovely. I read my book—Always Running by Luis Rodriguez (a tale of barrio gang life in LA), The Autobiography of Malcolm X or Dreams of My Father by Barack Obama. Each one of those touches Chicago in a major way and in haunting prose helps me to understand my surroundings. My train passes Bronzeville—which is Chicago’s own version of the Harlem of New York and birthed and nutured such figures as Gwendolyn Brooks. I then enter the loop; tall buildings springing up on either side of me. The tea is finished, banana is consumed and I have moved on to scrawling in my journal when the train pulls into Ashland.

As I hop off onto the platform, I call my mom (it’s routine) and chat with her as I walk the four blocks, once sketchy which have now become familiar. I pass a park often filled with yelling children enrolled in summer sport’s camps, then enter a desolate stretch of warehouses populated by a strange assortment of people. I see dogs bathing in a pool in a dog daycare. I see the occasional business professional. I see a place to buy wholesale meats and outside of it is a truck where a Chicano couple sell breakfast to the workers there. Our conversations are often interrupted by a speeding train going over head. I have learned to keep talking

Soon, I arrive at the StreetWise Office (or warehouse), give my mom love, and buzz to be let in. 

INTERNSHIP 4: On the Beat at StreetWise

Working at StreetWise equals fulfillment of my own idiosyncratic dream: I am their immigration beat reporter. My editor let me develop my own series on homeless immigrants and the stories that I am writing now will become cover issues in the next month. Everything is self-initiated; I can call whomever, go wherever. I have the freedom to research and really know my topics and the freedom to travel the city and interview people from all different organizations and walks of life I have the press pass of being with an actual magazine. I only have to check-in occasionally with my editor. I have utter support from my editor and my co-workers and StreetWise is a base of incredible knowledgeable people from which to work.

I spend most of my time in pursuit of the stories I am writing, but when I am not doing that, I am taking the amazing assignments and opportunities handed to me by my editor. My third day, my editor had me connected to a phone conference with national advocates from immigration reform. I researched each participant beforehand and took frantic and voracious notes as I listened to them speak. After they spoke, the floor was opened for questions. The first question came from a reporter from NPR. I couldn’t believe it: I was in the same phone conference as NPR. The story I wrote about Obama’s meeting on immigration reform was spiced with quotes from these experts and was turned in the next day, for publication in the issue going to print early the next week. 

And my stories, oh my stories. I have traveled the city, uncovering truths and hearing people’s stories. I am writing about what happens to the homeless in the three largest immigrant communities in Chicago—Mexican (Chicago is the third largest Mexican city after Mexico City and LA), Polish and Indian. The more I discover, the more important these stories seem to me.

Yes, she trails off… it is a dream come true. And now that you all have the basics of what I am doing down, I can start describing the experiences I have had there. 

INTERNSHIP 3: Interview #3, In These Times

It had been roughly thirty seconds since the confirmation call from StreetWise to say that I would indeed be their intern and my phone rang.

Chicago number.

Hello? I said.

This is Joel Bleifuss, editor of In These Times, said the deep voice at the other end.

In These Times had been my number one place to intern. I had discovered this publication when first looking at Chicago internship sites back in February. I had been wowed immediately by their all star staff—Barbara Ehrenreich, my personal hero and author of the book Nickel and Dimed, all about minimum wage jobs in America, had started out writing for them. In These Times was Kurt Vonnegut’s favorite magazine. And the articles? Wow. Cleverly and articulately written, they were all about the issues in the world and in this country that I care most about—politics, injustice and the human casualties of it all.

When I had arrived in Chicago and contacted them, Mr. Bleifuss had apologetically told me that they already had enough interns for the summer and they wouldn’t be needing me. I was devastated. I e-mailed him my resume, all the same: Just in case, I said.

And now, it was Mr. Bleifuss on the other end. One of our interns had to leave, he said. Would you like the position?

I was shocked. This was not just an offer for an interview. This was an offer of a position at my dream internship. And literally thirty seconds before, I had accepted at StreetWise. My initial response was to thank him, but to explain the situation. I expressed regret, he sounded sad. I hung up.

I started to pace. Had I really just hung up on In These Times? I called the Chicago Center and asked for their advice. See if you can interview there all the same, Althea said, Go check it out.

I called Mr. Bleifuss back. When are you free? I asked. Can we talk possibilities?

Anytime today, he said.

I hung up, rushed to get ready, looked up directions and I was off.

*

When I arrived at the site, I called my journalism advisor at KU before I went in. I also called my mom. I agreed to call them back after I had interviewed.

I entered the dusty hallway sandwiched next to a discount clothing store. I almost missed it, except for the peeling letters that said In This Times on the glass door. Surrounding me were large cardboard boxes, stuffed with copies of the magazine. Up until now, I had only seen it online. Now, I saw the beautiful copies in person. They were wonderful, so much prettier than StreetWise, I thought wistfully, flipping through one.

I climbed up the rickety stairs and entered a space just like how I imagined it would be. Shelves were stacked with books I lusted after: alternative titles, journalistic accounts of injustice and human rights cases. Other shelves held copy after copy of the magazine. Someone’s bike was parked in the corner. Incredible posters of past events and local art shows graced the walls. I wandered the sunlit corridor until I stumbled upon Mr. Bleifuss’ office.

Mr. Bleifuss is an academic, a former reader from Colombia, Missouri, where he was a sociology professor. He became editor several years ago. He spoke with a slight lisp and seemed eager for me to start as soon as possible, barely skimming the resume and work samples I handed him.

He spoke of the magazine’s projects—a companion magazine about immigration and worker’s rights in Spanish (my eyes lit up—I’m your girl, I think I said—exactly what I said at StreetWise.)  He spoke about the other interns—assembled from the best schools in the nation. I was a little awed to be counted among them.

But, all the same, I had a little bit of a sinking feeling. I wanted so much to intern here; to be amongst the other hotshot interns and to have In These Times glowing on my resume. But at the same time, the more I talked to him, the more I realized that the kind of work I would be doing, while it would be for an exciting magazine, would not be inherently exciting. I’d be reviewing books occasionally, but mostly, I’d be proof reading the work of others. I’d be expected to blog a little, but I doubted very much that anyone would read it. Even Mr. Bleifuss himself seemed to only be including the blog component to keep up with these modern times, he even said he didn’t care much for it.

When I talked to another intern, she confirmed this thought.

I wandered away, shocked at the feelings that were swirling in my stomach. I had been offered my dream internship and my heart told me to take the one at a low-budget street paper instead.

*

I had the weekend to decide. I flirted with doing both for awhile—one day a week at In These Times, just to be in that climate and to get the name on my resume. But in my heart, I knew that wasn’t the ticket. I had a learned a hard lesson about overbooking myself last semester and I didn’t want to let anyone down again. I needed to throw myself into whatever internship I decided to do. Philipp, my room mate, counseled me to do the same, pointing out that if anyone asked, I would have to explain how little time I spent at each site.

And so, Monday morning, I called Joel Bleifuss at In These Times and my friend Gabriel Piemonte at The Hyde Park Herald. I left messages and penned a e-mail to each. I’d be going with StreetWise, I said, but it was a hard decision. Neither of them ever got back to me and I don’t really blame them. One little intern who says no isn’t that important in the long run to the running of a magazine. I am sure they were each a little bit miffed and each very busy.

And soon, I’d be busy myself. Because I had just made one of the best decisions of my life. 

What I see at the 51st Street Station, Green line

23 June 2009

what I see at the 51st street station, green line (southside chicago):

one empty vodka bottle

an abandoned toy car, flipped over in the dust

one naked, baby bird, sprawled on its stomach on a railing, blind eyes staring at me. dead before it had a chance

What I’ll remember from Graceland Cemetery

5 July 2009

On the Southern edge of Graceland Cemetery, you asked me: “What about you and boys?” and I told you about me and boys as we trudged across a gravel parking lot and found no entrance through the chain link fence, entwined with weeds.

On the Eastern side of Graceland cemetery, we passed a tiny playground where a little girl played against a backdrop of tumbled weeds and you said: “It’s just so different here. They want to get as many partners as they can. They just don’t understand. Like the more girls you can get, the better you are. Try in the middle of one of their brag sessions to say that it’s always better with that one person you really care about—when you know each other-- they don’t even stop to listen.”

On the Northern side of Graceland cemetery, as we walked a broken concrete path past rushing cars, you told me about the girl you were with in Nebraska, and how you were the first boy this awkward, Christian girl kissed, then the first boy she slept with and how before you first kissed her, you told her—“I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t know what we can have, I’m leaving no matter what after the school year” and how she said, surprising you: “I can imagine a pretty physical relationship.” You shrug. “She was amazing, the best girl I ever had. I truly believe when people are ready, they just are.” I walked and I wondered if from her side, it was as easy to walk away from their relationship as they agreed. Somehow, I guessed not.

On the Western side, we found the entrance and we wandered in, you reading the tombstones in German of Vater und Mutter, Alina und Otto. We ate impossibly sweet mulberries, juice staining our fingers as I told you about my grandmother, buried under the same tombstone as the man who abandoned her: Rest In Peace. 

Where my Momma Walked

Corner of Grace and Janssen

5 July 2009

Here I sat, on the sun warmed curb at the corner of Grace and Janssen—the street sign said so. Behind me, just like my mom said, there was an elementary school. I gazed in front of me at the house on the Southwest corner. It had obviously been rebuilt recently, changed since the days when my mom lived here. A pretty, purple and grey brick, yuppy kind of house stood behind a classy iron fence. I tried to picture what I guessed had been a ramshackle student dwelling. I pictured my mom, looking out of her window, and writing a poem about the elementary school. These days, she only remembered one line, something about Crossing Grace Street. I thought about how we’d have been friends, I’d have read that poem, hung out on shady steps with her, talking and having tea like we do now. I got up, took a few photos, left a message on my mom’s phone and went to explore the cemetery where she used to walk—that, I was certain, wouldn’t be gone. 

The Apple of Despair

5 July 2009

The man pounds up and down the aisle of the red line train, talking fast, frantic.

“I’m just askin’ for something, some change for my daughter. Anything, some food, anything. We ain’t got nothin’. I tryin’ to get the money to go to court, see I used her momma’s Link Card when she was alive and then, they said I owed $685, ‘cause it wasn’t my card. We don’t got anything.

Please. I just tryin’ to raise my daughter right, just tryin’ to keep her fed. We ain’t got nothing.”

‘A Link Card is food stamps,’ Philipp whispered.

I turned around in my seat and I saw a tiny girl, too small to even reach the seat, watching her Daddy, her eyes wide, confused. She had an oatmeal cream pie in her doll-like hands and there was something scary in the way she ate it, so focused on gulping it down.

My heart broke.

You can’t, just can’t give money to people who ask you on the street; especially a to men. I had been swindled too many times by sob stories; been cornered by women asking for money to escape from their abusive husbands, who produced real tears, then became hard faced as they counted the money you gave them and asked for more.

But the little girl. I couldn’t bear it. Hadn’t he asked for food, too? I’d do that—at least I’d know where it was going to. I found an apple in my purse, newly purchased, shiny, mottled yellow and red. I wobbled down the aisle, clutching it.

‘I don’t have any change but… can I give her an apple?’ I asked.

‘Anythin’, anythin’’ her daddy said.

I knelt down by her. She was so small. I placed the apple in her tiny, outstretched hands. It seemed too big, too shiny, too beautiful for the context. It was an apple for a fairytale, not for this story. It dwarfed her, making her look like a little, fragile Thumbelina.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked. Something to remember her by.

‘Janeshka,’ she whispered, mouth still full of oatmeal cream pie.

‘Her mouth full,’ he said.

‘How old is she?’ I asked, straightening.

‘Three,’ he said.

The train jolted to a stop and the man yanked on her little arm, darting out of the sliding doors and onto the next car. She seemed to fly behind him, like he was a child dragging behind him a little, lost doll with a shiny apple in her hand.

At the Magic Box Theater

5 July 2009

This would be a fun place to work, I say to the woman at the Magic Box, a movie theater.

You know, she says from behind the register, I got this niece and nephew in Colorado and now they’re married but it’s this joke they still say. You know, when they were kids they’d always say, just laughing, just crackin’ up ‘Auntie—teeheehee—hey, Auntie?’ ‘Yeah,’ I’d say, rolling my eyes. ‘-teeheehee—doncha work in a movie theater? Do you still work in a movie theater?’ ‘Yeah’ ‘And you doncha—teeheehee—doncha NOT like movies?’ I’d sigh—‘No, I don’t like movies!’ ‘Teeheehee, teeheehee--- Auntie works in a movie theater and she don’t like movies. That’d be the joke, they’d say it all the time. They still say it, say—‘Auntie, doncha work in a movie theater but you don’t like movies?’

It’s like tamales. When I was little, we’d have them for Christmas and New Years and they were special. Well, then, my dad lost his work and my mom and I went to work selling tamales. We used to sell them. Well, at first, I’d pinch a little here, a little there—a little meat, a little onion-- but soon, I just didn’t want ‘em anymore. They just lost their taste. Every once and a while, but no, nah, not all the time.’

ASSIGNMENT: Architecture, or The Enchanted Urban Jungle

5 July 2009

Philipp and I exited the theater and into the city magic of downtown Chicago. It’s breathtaking to cross the river, look at sparkling water below and flashing cars alongside. Your eyes slide up the tall buildings, examining black, white, grey stone. The ornate, like the Tribune building adorned with a gothic chapel, stand next to those sleek and modern. In the dark, the urban jungle becomes an enchanted forest arching into the night sky. And then there are the lights—millions sparkling against the black; workers working late suddenly becoming bright as Christmas lights, little jewels in the darkness. The air was warm, yet fresh, and I spun around on the bridge, watching the urban landscape already so strange and magical, twinkle.

Struggling to Grow at Altgeld Gardens, Chicago

The nasal voice of the goofy man with thick glasses and a Tuskeegee airman shirt was touting the dangers of environmental hazards to the only five kids in school on a Saturday. For a Saturday class, they were pretty decently behaved. Granted, Diamond looked bored and shrugged her shoulders when questions were asked and Maqueze, a whale at twelve years old, was probably thinking about lunch. Alisha, however, and the sweet-faced brothers Charlie and Malcolm, were doing their best to come up with the answers that their instructor was fishing for.

It wasn’t the type of scene that you would guess would evoke grim fascination or a weighty sense of dramatic irony in any bystander.

That is until the assistant teacher piped up from the side of the room something the students may or may not have known.

“Did y’all know that you have one of the highest rates of PCB’s in Cook County?” he asked. “You know that lot over there by the closed General Foods? They left a bunch of transformers there for years. The chemicals in it leaked into the ground. Kids used to play there until they started coming to school with their hair falling out and somebody finally got it tested. Levels out the roof. Right here in Cook county.”

A few minutes later, on the subject of air pollution, the helpful assistant mentioned the nearby factory and the fumes fill the air the students breathe. And following that, in a discussion of how burning waste produces toxic ash, the assistant discussed the nearby dump, which still burns methane each night.

The lesson was taking place in the decrepit high school in the Chicago housing projects located in the far Southside of Chicago. The projects, so long established they are considered a historic landmark, lie so far South that it took me two hours to travel on public transit there. Needing to travel for an hour just to reach the nearest Red line stop, the residents are cut off from grocery stores, drug stores and any economic opportunity the city might have to offer. There’s no jobs here, just a boarded up store, a library with the doors locked and several charities located in isolated buildings with torn blue awnings.

The name of the projects evokes a kind of irony—Altgeld Gardens. For the three to four thousand residents crammed into several blocks of public housing , it’s less like gardens and more like a forgotten hell on earth. The warnings the assistant teacher gave were no joke. On one side of the high school and elementary school are blocks and blocks of shiny, new projects. On the other side, the brick buildings are closed—haunting rows, their windows like eyes with patches over them.

“They closed because people got sick,” our tour guide told us when I first drove through the projects. He spoke of  people getting cancer and mysterious illnesses. Children are born without genitals, a little boy goes blind after playing in the grass. Residents complain of the drifting stench from the landfills, nauseating on a warm summer’s day.

I couldn’t face being a voyeur on the situation. Sitting in that van, I vowed to go back. I wanted to see what life was really like in the projects. I wanted to meet the people scraping out life in impossible circumstances.

I signed up to tutor the kids at Carver High in French and on a Saturday morning, in I walked on this lesson.

The kids were now trying on gloves and masks. There were giggles from some, and from all when Maqueze couldn’t get his mask to stay firm over his double chin.

Charlie had his pushed up like a crown, then flipped it down and to the side like a baseball hat. When he walked out of the room to the bathroom, he strutted like a king.

I smiled with the kids, laughed with them, and put on my own gloves and mask at their urging. I looked at these sweet-faced kids and wondered how these flowers could grow in such a toxic place. Those who should have been caretakers and gardeners—the government, social services, the privileged, you, me—had mistaken these bright little seedlings for weeds, lacing their home with chemicals and for the most part, abandoning them in a garden without water or sunlight.

Isaiah and Cornelius: A Love Story

The impossibly tiny little boy glared from his seat, seeming to send angry lasers out at everyone on the bus. His gaze seemed to rise up from the center of his being and shoot out from his eyes over the sippy cup of pink lemonade he was drinking. I had never seen a baby as cute, nor as intense. His dad, a skinny man with snaggled teeth and the look of someone who had been through hard times, was talking about the little boy in an amicable voice to the woman across the aisle.

His mama as black as I am, he said.

Really? ‘Cuz it look like you got a white baby. She laughed.

I know!

Nah, but you can tell, ‘cuz his hair, he ain’t white.

The man looked down adoringly at the little boy’s soft black curls. If the little boy was projecting a death glare, all things good in the world were encompassed in this one man’s glance. Love showered down on the imp in radiant beams.

He may look cute, but he bad. The man grinning, seemed oblivious to the little boy’s death stare. I had no trouble imagining he had some tricks up his tiny sleeve.

Somehow, at this point, we got invited into the conversation.

Terrible twos, Peggyjoy commiserated.

That’s right! The woman answered. I ain’t never had that with my boy, ‘til now, she said, indicating a sullen little boy of about seven sitting next to her.

What’s his name? Peggyjoy asked.

Tavian, the woman answered. I noticed that she had My son, my heart tattooed on her arm and even though her son was in a sultry phase and she might complain about it, her love was apparent too.

What’s his name? I asked, returning to the tiny little man still glaring from his seat.

Isaiah, the man said proudly.

How old is he? I asked.

He be two in a month, the man said. He been with me seven months.

He’s not yours?  PJ asked, surprised.

Nah, the man said, but then added, beaming all over, But I in the process of adopting him.

You with his mother? She asked.

He shook his head. We both free. Nah, I just took him on to raise him. Couldn’t deal with him bein’ fatherless. And besides, his mama—she a good mother—but she slow. She do things that no mother, no woman with sense would do. I’d go over and be like—Nah, did you just…? Stupid things.

Like what? I asked.

Like… like, she’d leave the house—leave the house—with his face all dirty. Or put him in dirty clothes. And when I first gave him a bath, he just screamed and screamed.

Oh, like it was his first one? I said, horrified.

Yeah! He exclaimed.

You think he slow, too? The woman asked.

Nah! Nah! The man said. He so smart. He beamed at Isaiah, just smiling with every fiber of his being. He so smart. He gave him a squeeze, then looked at us. When I decided to take him on, I changed my life around. I was a mess seven months ago. Wasn’t I different seven months ago?

You was different seven months ago, the woman agreed.

But when I realized I’d be taking care of him, I had to get my life together, he said. I quadrupled my salary since I had him. I had to!  But he just gives me joy, he just my life now.

He scooped little Isaiah onto his lap, wrapping his arms around him. The little boy relaxed into him, still glaring out at the world, but obviously in the safest space in the world.

He not gonna fall asleep unless he on someone, the man said, looking down at Isaiah’s soft head.