Being There

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 47th 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.