Part II

Day One

I am not brave and I hate to admit that.  A few summers back, I traveled to Peru as a teacher. I went to test myself.  I thought that if I could get through one simple summer, then I wouldn’t be afraid to enroll in the Peace Corps, I wouldn’t be afraid to  commit myself to 27 months of service.  However, I came home from Peru at the end of the summer after working through a teachers strike, after becoming overwhelmed by such massive need, after succumbing to a horrific fever, and after losing 10 + pounds...and I did not enroll in Peace Corps.  I was so disappointed in myself. 

I still fight with my bravery, or lack thereof.  After the awful shootings that have plagued my neighborhood of Uptown these last few days, I had resolved to try something extremely simple. I decided to devote time each day to sit on my balcony and to say “Hi” to every one who passed. But saying hi, I’ve found, requires bravery. I sat down on the balcony at about 1130 am on August 31st.  The first person wandered by..I told myself that I hadn’t started yet. Another passed, I left the balcony to get water. Four more passed and as each walked by, I took a deep breath to speak, opened my mouth and quickly closed it as nervousness took over. I saw a young white mother walking toward me with a child in a stroller. I inhaled, my heart rate racing, my knees shaking. “Hi,” I said. She looked up at me in surprise..”Hi?”  I quickly explained to her that I was just saying hi to every one who passed by. “That’s weird,” she said and went on her way.  Next I said hi to a young asian guy who ignored me outright. “Just perfect,” I thought.  This corner may be Vice Lord territory, but I am now on my way to becoming the “Corner Crazy.” My experiment was not working and I was starting to feel as if I were a sad cross between Rapunzel and Juliette on my balcony.  I needed an excuse to leave the apartment. Realizing that I had no cereal, I headed out the front door for a three block walk to the grocery store to pick up some Fruity Pepples and on my way I smiled and said hi to everyone I passed.  I said hi to a neighbor who I had seen the previous week at ‘Positive Loitering.’ I smiled and chatted with a couple guys painting woodwork on a local church and I said hi to a surprised boy circling the corner of my street on his bike. Upon reaching my doorstep, I sat down, fully knowing that if I went inside, my experiment would be over. I set my groceries on the ground, leaned back against the door and pulled a trashy romance novel out of my purse. (really..it’s not as though one could be reading ‘A Confederacy of Dunces,’ with any sort of conviction when one is actually focused on chatting up the neighbors..)

I ‘read,’ stopping frequently to say hi to startled passerbys. I talked with a young dog walker as he had passed me three times with three different dogs. I smiled at the usual corner kids, mentally making note of which homes they emerged from, who they talking with and what colors they were wearing. I counted the minutes between each time a cop drove by and occasionally, I did actually read. At one point, three pretty young black girls walked by. When they responded to my hello, I hesitantly asked if the kid who had bled all over our corner a few days earlier was ok. They assured me that he was and asked me if I had heard about the other shootings. They filled me in on the other two boys who had both been shot in their legs just a block from here. However, I did note that the incredibly polite teenagers failed to mention the guy who had been fatally shot in the head. (They did call me ‘Ma’am’ though..causing me to feel about 300 years old..)

After a couple hours of sitting and a well earned numb bottom, I picked up my things and headed inside for the day, happy that I had said Hi..

a little guardian.. ;)

Sitting Down.. Part I

 Written on Wednesday, August 31, 2011 at 3:14am

Last Sunday, August 28th 2011 at about 4:30 pm  I heard the gunshots while standing on my front balcony. The force of the sound caused me to instinctively drop down, rendering my watering pot useless. As gunshots have become shamefully common in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago’s north side, only a couple of seconds had passed before I deemed it safe enough to stand to finish watering my optimistic flowers. To my horror, I stared in disbelief as a young man attempting to run, stumbled past my front door bleeding heavily from a wound in his leg. I frantically raced into the condo, searching clumsily for my cell. I dialed 911 with shaky fingers while watching the injured kid lie down on the corner, his own blood pooling beneath him. I suspect that my conversation with the 911 operator was less than kind as I couldn’t understand the sheer lack of urgency in her voice, my vocabulary degenerating to a simple “F*cking get someone here NOW!!” I looked on as people began streaming towards the kid from all sides until the area resembled an oversized rugby scrum, but no one had covered his gunshot wound.  “Someone HAD to apply pressure,”I kept thinking. I shouted down to the familiar crowd of neighborhood kids that someone needed to put pressure on the wound or he would bleed too much.  They looked my way and one man shouted back “Don’t worry baby, we got this.” However, a boy immediately took off his shirt and leaned down to press it against the injured kid’s leg. As we waited, the sound of the sirens grew louder and people shouted and wailed. Kids with obvious gang colors and tattoos passed below my balcony loudly promising revenge.  As the police arrived, people began dispersing. Retaliation was inevitable..

Tonight the streets are more quiet than I have ever seen them. As I type, I have watched more police cars and SUVs drive by than when the president came for his birthday.(Ironically, there was a shooting that very night..the car parked in front of my husband’s had six bullet holes.)  Tonight, few people are leaving their homes, and certainly not the kids who wear their gang colors like giant targets on their bodies.  No one is headed out for a lovely summer evening stroll as it has been a busy week. About four hours after Sunday’s afternoon shooting, two more men were shot four blocks over. One man, a certain Brian, A.K.A Big Baby, was shot fatally in the head. This afternoon around 1pm, the police asked a group to disperse one block away from here, only to have shots brazenly fired in their very presence, leaving two more with gunshot wounds to the leg. Tonight the streets are deserted.   

As these shootings have increased, I find myself becoming obsessed. I spend hours searching the internet for gang information. If someone coughs to loudly, I race to the balcony to observe.  I took pictures of the sidewalk blood to make it impossible to forget, my camera and phone now always in reach. I watch the neighborhood cops intently with a distaste for their obvious antipathy mixed with anger at their helplessness to change things. I look directly at the kids on the corner and I nod to them, hoping they realize that I do not wish to see any more of them bleeding all over the sidewalk, yet I also do not wish to see them dealing drugs beneath my balcony.  I’ve ordered books on gang culture and structure and I do endless facebook searches to find local kids.. (one would be amazed at how many profiles are listed under ‘Vice Lord.’) I’ve image searched gang signs, tattoos, territory tags, colors etc.. I have no idea what this new knowledge will do for me but still, I am simply obsessed with a culture that I have no way of understanding. 

As I am sure many nearby people feel..I feel incredibly helpless. I have not lived in Uptown long as I recently married my husband and his condo. I have gone to positive loitering, and I have put in a few volunteer hours with the locally based ‘Inspired Youth,’ but it all seems incredibly small in comparison to the problems of this area. (However, teaching a young pianist to play Bruno Mar was pretty rewarding.. despite not being my finest moment of musical taste,)  Unlike some others in the area, I do not wish for these kids to ‘move on’ or simply disappear as they will only reappear elsewhere and their lives will continue down the same terrifying path. I look at them and I see strength, youth and potential, but they are putting me and everyone else around them in danger, They are risking their own lives and the lives of their little sisters and little brothers. They are risking the lives of their own children. There is no excuse for that. 

As I am incapable of doing nothing, I will challenge myself to step up...to sit down.  As I have been watching my corner obsessively already, I will challenge myself to set time aside each afternoon before I leave to teach, to sit on my balcony and to simply say hi and smile at everyone who comes within hearing. What do I hope to accomplish?  Honestly..I have no idea.  Perhaps I want it to be known that someone, however inconsequential, is watching, Or maybe, I just want to chip away at my own fears and biases...

I had thought that to find diversity, I had to fly to France or Spain. I used to think that to see true conflict, I had to travel as a teacher to Peru or some other such place, but in all actuality, diversity and horrifying conflict are already at my very doorstep..bleeding on it ...