sparse

“What are you doing here?” said the pair of eyes behind the counter. Good ques­tion. John and I were going to find my grandmother’s house in Hyde Park, an upscale sub­urban com­munity north of the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago. To get there, we had to walk through Chicago’s notori­ous South Side. What the Viet­namese man in the fast food shop meant was “What are you, two white guys, doing in this hard-up black neigh­bor­hood on Christmas?”

The air was clear, bright, and crisp. The wide sub­urban streets were nearly deser­ted. A half hour passed before we saw any­one; a couple of kids rough­hous­ing on the other side of the street. Walk­ing through the neigh­bor­hood from the 47^th St. sub­way sta­tion to my grandmother’s, the whole world seemed quiet and still. Christ­mas was cold in Chicago, but it had been warm the night before and every­one seemed to be stuck in the ice. We stopped to give a push sev­eral times along the way.

It wasn’t a long walk, but imme­di­ately upon enter­ing the neigh­bor­hood it was clear we were in a dif­fer­ent Chicago, and curi­os­ity pulled us off course. It seemed like a ghost town, Christ­mas or not. There were a few churches, run down corner shops, and plenty of vacant lots.  Some of the cars obvi­ously hadn’t been moved in some time. There was also plenty of fresh ply­wood on every street, some­times whole rows at once. Many of the big, beau­ti­ful, turn-of-the-century houses were boarded up. One new build­ing was aban­doned half fin­ished. This was the sub-prime mort­gage crisis in action.

We walked for a long time, weav­ing through the side streets until we got cold and hungry. Finaly we came upon the Viet­namese place. “Hot tea?” John asked. “No,” the woman replied “ice tea only” and then con­tin­ued to drink the steam­ing bever­age in her hands. We settled for pop and spring rolls (the unfried Viet­namese variety).

We sat in what could really only be described as the wait­ing room, which had four tables, a tele­vi­sion blar­ing the bas­ket­ball game, and hand-lettered poster on green bris­tol board advert­ising spe­cial hol­i­day cater­ing. The late after­noon sun was stream­ing through the bars over the win­dows, and I was finally start­ing to warm up. I felt good, that con­nec­ted and present feel­ing of inter­act­ing with a new and inter­est­ing place. Then the woman’s hus­band pushed the spring rolls onto the counter and delivered his ques­tion. It wasn’t insult­ing, just mat­ter of fact, unvar­nished, and amp­li­fied by his deliv­ery in halt­ing English.

Until that moment I hadn’t felt unsafe. In fact, every­one we had met was friendly and kind, open even. One man even entrus­ted us with the keys to his car while he went around the corner to get his truck so he could pull his car out of the ice. I’d been to scary places before, down­right dan­ger­ous places too, but I’d never been in a segreg­ated neigh­bor­hood. Until that moment, I hadn’t really under­stood that segreg­a­tion meant that this was a place where there really were no people like me.

I plan on going back again. This trip is over, but it won’t be the last time I come to Chicago.

The spring rolls were delicious.