Dear readers, I posted yesterday asking people to give me a reaction to a short story I was thinking of entering in a competition. It was actually a short play of mine that had been produced quite successfully about a hundred years ago (in the 1980s), and I tried my hand at adapting it as a story. Twenty of you read it or at least started to read it, and no one commented. I’m taking that as an indication that I didn’t pull it off, and that helps me a lot. Thank you. I’m very grateful that I have a way to get valuable input, even when it’s silence.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
I Could Use Your Help . . .
Dear readers, I’ve decided to submit a short story to some contests. I really need some reactions. If you have the time and inclination to read and offer some criticism, I’d be grateful. Here’s the link: Kindness.
By the way, Ellyn, this will be familiar to you and Sandy.
P. S. I almost have two more chapters of Just Another Writer ready. Thank you for your patience.
The Booklady’s Kids
As some of you know, I’m the Booklady in my neighborhood. When we first moved here, I started giving away books to the kids who live here. It’s an easy thing to do and very rewarding. I go to thrift shops and buy books, children’s and young adult, usually for around twenty cents each. That means I can get fifty books for about ten dollars. I keep a couple of boxes of books just inside my front door and, when a kid comes up on the porch to get one, I haul them out and let her choose one book.
The one-book-a-day rule is important in this whole business. I want the kids to value the books, even though they’re free. So at first some of them put a lot of manipulative energy into trying to get more than one book. I’ve even had kids try to hide an extra book under a T-shirt. They also insist the second book is for their brother. I tell them their brother can come get his own book. (I make occasional exceptions for “baby” brothers and sisters, but they only get baby books.)
One little guy from next door, about four years old, tries to stonewall me. He comes over for a book and takes it home. Then he comes over again, just a little while later, and claims he hasn’t been there that day and didn’t get a book. You can’t shake him. One time, after I kept explaining that I knew he’d already got a book, he looked at me fiercely and said, “I need a book!”
Well, I could certainly sympathize with that sentiment, but I didn’t cave. I’ve had ten years experience in not caving, and it’s a good strategy. Now kids bring new kids to the porch and explain the rules to them. Other Booklady rules are simply what I grew up with. No grabbing, hitting, cursing, or tattling. And no skates on the porch. (I don’t want to be responsible for any broken limbs.)
Over the years, some of the kids have become friends. One of the dearest was Julian. When he first started coming by he was probably seven or eight. He and his friend Giovanni came to get books for a good while. Then I made the mistake one day of giving them each a marble. They started asking for marbles every time they came. I had to make myself forget about the fact that I had a large jar of marbles and could easily have made them happy. The Booklady is about books, not marbles.
After a while, Julian started coming by to talk. When I opened the door and asked whether he wanted a book, he’d say, “No.”
I’d say, “Do you want to sit on the step?”
He’d shrug, and we’d sit down. Then we’d talk. I learned that Julian had six sisters. His mother had kicked out his father, apparently after he threw her down the stairs. Julian yearned for him. I suspect Julian was a shoplifter, and I know he was a con artist; he told me that school was really easy. All you had to do was pretend you were dumb and they’d put you in a class where you didn’t have to do anything.
When Mac Austin and I were working on America’s Children, one of our print documentaries, I gave the book kids disposable cameras and asked them to take pictures of each other. Two of the pictures actually made it into the book. They were both taken by Carolina, who showed a real talent for composition. She was kidnapped and impregnated when she was fifteen, and I never saw her after that, so I don’t know how things worked out for her.
I have a lot of other stories about the kids, but I won’t go into all of them here. All of you who are teachers have those stories, too. I just wanted to tell you a little bit about being the Booklady, in case some of you want to give it a try in your neighborhood.
Now and Then
Things remain fairly quiet in the neighborhood, although there was some encroachment on the garden. Or, more accurately, the park. Because that’s what our lot came to be. You may remember, if you’ve been following our story, that a huge branch had fallen from the mulberry some time before we started Green on McLean. On our second workday, some of the neighborhood men used their chainsaws to cut it into “stumps” that we grouped under the magnolia for people to sit on. Soon, dog owners took to sitting on the stumps while their dogs ran around the grass. Mothers sat and talked with each other while their kids played tag. Then, at one of our garden parties, the father of a couple of young teenagers hung a tire swing from a high branch of the mulberry, and the neighborhood kids started to use it. We also had a few older guys who sat on the stumps in the early morning and drank their beer. They filled watering jugs and helped keep the lot cleaned up. The garden is a source of great pride and it gives the kids something to do, but the “park” has become equally important.
We were warned from the beginning that the gangs would co-opt the seats, but it didn’t happen, not for a long time. We learned that our particular gang leader, the older guy who was clearly in charge of the youngbloods, had been keeping them out of the garden. Then that leader disappeared, along with most of the gangbangers. It seemed to happen suddenly but was actually the last stage of a long, hard struggle.
However, there were a few of the younger guys who showed up on the corner from time to time. After awhile it became clear that they were on duty, probably to redirect potential customers to another selling point. It was two of these younger guys that the kids and I had to throw out. (Bits of the Neighborhood and Pieces of My Life) It was other guys like these who started sitting on the stumps under the magnolia when it was hot or when they got tired of standing on the corner. (The only other place to sit is the fire hydrant, and it’s not exactly comfortable.) Someone even put gang signs on the stumps with a Sharpie.
After three of the kids reported guys smoking dope while the kids were watering the garden, we decided the stumps had to go. Beth, one of our garden supporters, asked for a stay of execution and proposed scattering the stumps around the lot, more out in the open and not together. That seems to be working.
If you’re wondering why we have to throw out guys for smoking dope–especially when we let the older guys drink their beer in the garden in the morning–I’ve decided to put in another remembrance of things past. This is a bit of a journal I kept just a couple of years ago.
June 17th I hate waking up to something that might, or might not, be gunshots. Especially in the early hours of the morning. Michael was sure they were, and I had to admit that they didn’t sound like firecrackers, so we called 911. They always ask how many shots. I wonder why. It makes sense that they ask how many people when we report that the gang guys are arguing or drinking or smoking dope in the street. The police have to know what they’re walking into. But when we call about shots, why is the first question “how many?”
About five minutes later, there was another volley. This time it was pretty clear that they were shots. We called 911 again.
June 18th It was a night. The gang guys were “loud-talking” until the early hours. Mac says that’s what it’s called these days. It’s a fairly descriptive term. They don’t actually shout, but somehow they make their voices heard all over the neighborhood. And, of course, they use the f-word as though it were “the” or “and.” I don’t actually mind the obscenity. There’s no connection between their use of that word and anything resembling sex. I mind the anger and violence behind it.
Anyway, it was a long night. I was awake for way too much of it. I called 911 a few times and then did a lot of deep breathing. I thought about my book. I even worked out a new approach to the introduction. I fell asleep sometime before the sun rose.
June 19 Michael had to leave for work at the crack of dawn. I slept too late and then called the doc and left a message asking him to call the pharmacy and okay my Paxil refill. The morning was cool and grey, and I decided to cook the pot roast I had thawing in the refrigerator. It’s some special grass-fed beef Michael got from one of his horticultural friends. I put it in the oven about 1:00 and an hour later the day had turned warm and muggy.
Michael left Mac and me the car today when he went downtown, so we abandoned the spelling program around 4 o’clock and went shopping. Mac picked up cat food at PetSmart while I bought half a yard of fabric that I may eventually make into a scarf. Then we went to the thrift shop. Michael met us there because it’s only two blocks from his El stop, and we drove home to eat pot roast. My shrink called on the way home to ask how I was doing before he okayed my Paxil refill. I was strongly tempted to refer him to Buddha [one of the gang leaders], but I just said I was getting better.
Mac and Michael dropped me at Armitage Produce because I needed some carrots. All I had at home were those expensive little baby carrots, and you don’t put them in a pot roast. On the way from Armitage Produce to our house, I passed a cluster of gang guys at the Quicker Liquor corner. They pretended they didn’t see me.
I only made one 911 call tonight.
June 20 It was a green tarp night. The tarp went up over the yard across the alley at about 4 in the afternoon. Before long, the sound system had cranked up, and the oompah loompah music was blaring so loud it was hard to talk over it. Michael and I stayed outside as long as we could because the evening was pleasant and the garden was beautiful. Then we went inside and ate leftover pot roast while we did his show prep. Before I went upstairs, I found a window fan and took it up. With that in the bedroom window, and earplugs in my ears, the noise was pretty much bearable. I fell asleep.
June 22 It was very quiet last night. At any rate, nothing got through the fan and the earplugs. This morning, Mac and I went to the diner on Western to have breakfast and work. I feel a lot better when I’m out of the neighborhood, even in the morning, when nothing’s going on anyway. From the diner, we went downtown.
Down at the County Archives, I looked through criminal records for our genealogical client. While I was staring at the microfiche reader, I struck up a conversation with a guy waiting for a divorce record for his buddy in Arizona. Or really, I think he struck up a conversation with me. He was waiting for the clerk to find his papers and he was bored. He was also mad because he was a cop and he’d been dissed by a CTA employee.
We ended up talking about the Imperial Gangstas because that’s what I do these days. I talk about the gang. I think about them, worry about them, hate them, and talk about them. The guy told me not to give up. He also said he was a scene of the crime officer and, when there wasn’t a scene of the crime for him to go to, he drove around the North Side. Sometimes he just parked and provided a “police presence.” He said he’d come to our neighborhood tonight. I felt like crying with gratitude. I also worried that there wouldn’t be any gang activity and he’d think I was a nut.
Olga called while Mac and I were coming out of the archives, and our phone connection was terrible, but I finally got the message. Olga had gone on the Chicago Police Department website to look for another number for the District. When she saw a place to click to see Chicago’s Most Wanted, she clicked. She recognized the first face that came up. She says it’s one of the new guys[older gang members who had just got out of prison] that are hanging out at 3516. She recognized him immediately. He’s wanted for murder.
Mac and I went across the street to get some tea and see if we could connect to the net. We did. Thank God for free WiFi. I went to the CPD site and found the Most Wanted. I didn’t recognize anybody. Of course, it hadn’t occurred to me to ask Olga for a name.
I’d feel hopeful, thinking maybe Olga’s imagination was burgeoning under the stress, but the fact is that I haven’t been making eye contact lately. Osama Bin Laden could be hanging out on the porch and I doubt that I would recognize him.
So, I came home and made myself a cold dinner and went out onto the front porch. Michael had a softball game and a Godot rehearsal. I accessed the CPD site and pulled up Chicago’s Most Wanted. Then I did some research on my book. When anyone showed up at 3516 or 3519, I went back and looked at the Most Wanted list. I felt ridiculous.
This evening there were only the younger guys.
. . . . . . .
That’s as far as I got on the journal. I realized that writing about the gang every day was starting to make me obsess. Now, you probably think I was obsessing already, but this was a whole new level. I didn’t need to be bringing my focus onto the gang once a day when they were always there, filling up the background of my life.
So I stopped writing the journal and just made notes from time to time. Most of it is way too clear in my memory anyway. Indelibly etched, to coin a phrase.
Anyway, I called Officer Torres at the 14th and told her about Mr. Most Wanted, Fernando X. She put me on hold while she called a detective, and I talked to him. He gave me his cell and told me to call him if there was any other information. Within a few days there was.
Obed Garcia told his wife that she was right. X was visiting 3516. As a father. The four beautiful children next door were his, and while he was in hiding, wanted for murder, he came by to see them. Obed got the information from one of the guys hanging out there. I passed it on to the detective.
And then, for a long time, nothing happened. That is, no progress was made. Plenty happened. I continued to watch drug deals going down in front of our house, standing two or three feet behind the beveled glass in our Victorian-era wooden door, under the crystal chandelier I had restrung with bright green and dark amber beads. Michael and I continued to wake up at 3:00 AM under the quilt my mother made and the bedspread my grandmother crocheted and grope for the phone to call 911.
We learned how to get the 911 dispatcher to pay attention and get the squad cars there. We had long since stopped using words like “kids,” “guys,” and “people.” We said “gang member.” “Gang members on the corner of St. Louis and McLean.” “Gang members hanging out on the porch of 3516 W. McLean.” “Gang members in the street, 3500 block of McLean.” Now we also stressed escalating arguments and potential violence. “No, I can’t see whether they have weapons, but it’s starting to sound pretty scary.”
And that was true. It was scary. But less than two months later came the event that would begin the change in our neighborhood. It started with a CAPS meeting held on our corner. Two squad cars, three police officers, thirty neighbors and friends, and State Representative Luis Arroyo met and talked. I’ll go into more detail about how that happened and what followed in the next blog.
Bits of the Neighborhood and Pieces of My Life
I was standing in the darkening garden next to Jose from down the street as Michael projected our garden videos, one after another, for the three dozen or so neighbors who had come to the party. A few of the kids were still playing on the swing that Marco’s family hung from one of the branches of the mulberry tree, and their squeals interrupted the strains of Jean Goldkette & Orchestra’s 1927 recording of “I’m Looking over a Four-Leaf Clover” playing in the background of one of the videos. I looked over at Jose and said, “It’s really been quiet lately.” He nodded.
“Of course, they might come back,” I went on, not wanting to seem foolish to a man who has lived in the neighborhood longer than I have and has had to raise a son here.
He looked over at me and said, “How long have you lived here?”
“Eleven years.”
“It’s never been like this before. I’ve been here since 1996. It’s never been like this before.”
. . . . . . . . . .
Yesterday, I was taking the Fullerton bus back from a chiropractor’s appointment. Four Latino boys of fourteen or fifteen were sitting near me, laughing and joking with each other, passing chips back and forth, and generally having a good time. They weren’t loud, just happy. Beside one of them sat a middle-aged woman who looked a great deal like African American presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm. She was beaming at the boys for blocks and then miles. At Kedzie, she stood up to leave the bus. But first, she turned in the aisle to face the boys.
“I have been listening to you, and you have not used any vulgar language. Good job. Keep up the good work.” Still beaming, she got off at her stop.
One of the boys turned to another and said, “What did she mean?”
“She meant we weren’t cursing.”
“We’re too smart,” said the first boy, laughing. And it occurred to me that he was absolutely right. The understanding that cursing on the bus is not cool is a major survival tool.
. . . . . . . . . .
It was Tuesday afternoon a week ago, I think, when four of the garden kids, boys between the ages of five and ten, came to our door. They told me with considerable concern that some guys were smoking in the garden. I have to admit that this didn’t seem all that terrible to me, but the boys practically pulled me to the garden. When we got there, I saw two young gangbangers about fourteen years old, sitting on the stumps under our magnolia tree. They were both familiar to me, and I actually knew one of them from when he very occasionally came for books several years ago.
I began my explanation of why it was important to keep the garden a safe place, but Florian broke in. He is a serious, sturdy boy of nine years whose father moved to South Dakota to get away from his own gang involvement. Florian spoke directly to the boy I knew a little.
“Our mom won’t let us come down here if anything bad happens here. And we’ve worked really hard on this garden. We need to be able to come here. Do you understand?”
Sean, Florian’s equally sturdy and serious seven year-old brother, spoke then. “Yeah, Alexander. We worked really hard.”
As he talked, Sean patted Alexander’s shoulder, comforting him as he told him that he had to get out of the garden. Then Florian, Sean and I went back to my house, where LeDaryl and Damian were waiting on the stoop. They all started talking and suddenly I heard the word marijuana.”
“They were smoking weed?” I asked. The boys looked at me as though I was a little slow, which I clearly was. Then they assured me that what the gangbangers had been smoking was not a tobacco product.
I lit out back to the garden and there they were, Alexander passing a Swisher Sweet to his fellow banger. (That’s how marijuana is smoked in our neighborhood. The guys use tweezers to pull out a good part of the tobacco and then put in the weed.)
“Get out of the garden,” I said. “Now. Get out of the garden. You heard what the boys said, and now you do this. Go on. Get out.”
They got up, moving slowly, as only two teenaged boys saving face could move, walked their bikes out of the garden and rode off. They haven’t been in there since, but Florian made me promise that, if they come back, I’ll call the cops. I’d rather put my hand in a bucket of hot lead, so I talked to Mabel and Juan. They’re both former gangbangers who continue to have friends in the gangs. Both of them assured me that they would take care of it. When I saw Alexander a couple of days later, he smiled and waved . . . from outside the garden. Let’s just hope.
A question for Just Another Writer readers
I would really appreciate any response to this. Do you want more about the other players in the story. I know you’ve had a lot of me and Andra. But what about James, Paul, Kathryn, Eunice and all the others? I’ve been trying to focus on the writing and not invade the privacy of the people I shared my life with. But I’m getting the sense from some of them that they wouldn’t mind at all if I told more. And some people have indicated curiosity about one or another of them. What do you say?
Like Mercury . . . and Just as Toxic
Something very strange is going on in the neighborhood. I don’t want to jinx anything, but it looks as though the whole new batch of gangbangers is gone. Gone. Not here anymore. This is not to say that we are now a gang-free neighborhood, but . . . Let me explain.
If you read my last post, “The Start of the Gang House Era,” you know that the police, some years ago, got the gangs off the corner of St. Louis and McLean at last. Unfortunately, they then moved into a house four doors east of us. The way it works is that a woman, often with children, rents the apartment. Then, she allows the gang to use it as a hangout and drug-selling post, in exchange for whatever–drugs, rent money. Starting in the summer of 2004, this is what happened at 3506 McLean.
There are a lot of things the Chicago police can and will arrest someone for. Sitting on your front step is not one of them, even if everyone in the neighborhood knows you’re on the lookout for drug buyers. Drinking all day, if you stay in your yard, is not one of them. Standing on your porch and yelling obscenities at each other is not one of them, even if you can be heard a block away, even if you don’t stop when the parade of mothers walking their children home from school passes by.
The irony was painful. It was as though a doctor had cured a bad skin rash only to have the disease move into the vital organs. When the gang left the corner and moved into 3506, life became almost unbearable. With the exception of a few hours just after dawn, the gangbangers were on the porch day in and day out, drunk and stoned and mad as hell at each other and the world. They hardly ever actually fought, but they pushed each other a fair amount and yelled like you wouldn’t believe, and one of them got shot in the leg in a drive-by.
Then the same thing happened at 3519, just across the street and down two doors. There, it was the gang leader’s mother who rented the apartment and let her son, Buddha, run his drug-selling business from there. Buddha was a hugely fat man who smiled a lot. Once, late at night, I saw him passing out oversized white tee shirts to his guys out of the back of a station wagon. “What were they wearing?” “Uh, white tee shirts and baggy jeans.” “Thanks. That helps.” The guys moved back and forth between the two houses all day.
One night I heard a commotion on the porch. I opened the door to see one of the older gangbangers lying on our steps. A couple of others were high-tailing it away. The guy on the steps was clutching his stomach and moaning. I called up to Michael, who was upstairs. He started down the stairs just as the guy forced himself into the front hallway and onto the bottom of the stairway. This meant the guy was between me and Michael, and he kept trying to get me to rub his stomach. (When I think about it now, it’s almost funny. Big tough gangbanger asking me to rub his tummy.)
Michael grabbed the upstairs phone and called 911. In the meantime, I realized what was wrong with the guy. There had been a story on the news about some bad heroin making the rounds in Humboldt Park, just across Armitage from us. I reassured the guy that we would get him to the hospital, but he was almost out of his senses with pain. He heard nothing. Fortunately, the police and ambulance got there in just a few minutes. Three or four people died from the brown heroin. I don’t know whether he was one of them.
One afternoon, I was moved to write a poem about what had just happened.
Gunfire
I was almost home when the shots
rang out. I’d gone to the thrift shop
for more books to give the neighbor
kids, then taken the bus west
on Armitage. It was windy.
Trash had blown into the parkway
barberries at the corner house.
Isaac and Ishmael sat on their
bikes, in front of the house next door.
They don’t ride their bikes much, just sit
on them, with a hand on the fence
for balance. Sally, their mother,
sat on the steps talking to Stella,
watching them.
I had almost reached my own steps
when the gunfire started. “Run, run
inside,” Sally shouted to the
children as the two bikes clattered
to the ground. I dropped the books
on the porch on my way inside
to call 911. Michael passed
me in the doorway, going out
to see.
I dialed the phone and reported
the shots. “How many were there?” “Four,
I think. Or five. I saw some boys
running west.” I went back out
to the front porch to get the books,
then into the kitchen to put
vegetables into the steamer
Michael went back to his laptop
to look at a blog. “Welcome home,”
he said.
Two days later, Joey came by
for books. “Did you hear the shots then?
I was at the playground. There was
a paddy wagon and a black
and white. I been reading that book
you gave me about Merlin.”
This is when we started making 911 calls in earnest and going to the CAPS meeting. And this is why, when things get quiet and the gangs seem to disappear, I look around and wonder. Where will they turn up next?
Oh, and just to remind you to keep laughing, here’s the latest outfit on our yard art goddess.
This Writer’s World . . .
My friend Jim began pestering me to start a blog a couple of years ago and, as I do with most of Jim’s suggestions, I resisted. (Still not on gmail.) Then one day as I was telling him about my yoga class in an arts center supported by a pawn shop, I realized that, while I might not be all that interesting, the world I live in has a definite quirky appeal. It took me another two months to decide whether I really wanted to blog about the three-hundred pound female gangbanger down the street who scares the wadding out of me. (She also scares the beat cops, so I’m not particularly embarrassed about my timidity.)
Then I started blogging for the Green on McLean community garden, and I found myself wanting to write about more than squash. I strayed often into other neighborhood events. Or wanted to.
What clinched the deal is that I realized I could use the pages of this blog to put up some other stuff I’m working on–stories, articles, books, even photographs and videos. Maybe someone will look at them and give me feedback. Writers love feedback, even though it often sounds as though you put two microphones too close together and got, you know, feedback.
Anyway, I guess I’m now a blogger.
And here’s a picture of the boat house at the Humboldt Park Lagoon, a couple of miles from our house. No, it has nothing to do with anything except that the boat house is just one more surprising thing in this poverty-stricken, gang-ridden part of Chicago.
