Stateway's Garden Page 22

  “It was my fault she became who she is,” I said after finishing the story. “I have to look out for her.”

  My wife told me the only woman I should be concerned with was her, and that Stuffy Stephanie Worthington meant nothing. She made me agree before we moved back together. Funny thing is, she continued calling me “Jake” no matter how much I may have hated it. So, in return, I never stopped thinking about Steph. About the way I used to fuck her. Or about what we were from. Or where.

  On late nights, when I’d think of Steph and me partying downtown or in some motel with concrete landings, or maybe after I’d sneak out while my wife slept and drive by Thirty-fifth where the buildings once were, I’d call Steph’s phone. She didn’t answer. She didn’t even answer once. I kept calling, though, continuously, once a day, once a week, once a month, once a year, repeatedly, because I owed.

  EPILOGUE

  THE BATTLE OF SEGREGATION, 1958–2007

  And now imagine all that you’ve just read actually happened. Imagine it.

  But more important, just for a second think that you, yes, you the reader, were created of the stone made for someone somewhere else. The architects and developers said there was initially an intricate plan for the projects as a whole, a plan to make the city more diverse and look better.

  We Stateway Gardens housing projects were built to help slow down the segregation. Maybe even to stop it. The developers figured if you construct buildings high, solid, and in the middle of the city, everyone would want to move in. Even the whites. Well, preferably the whites. In fact, we were originally meant to be built right after the housing shortages of the First World War and also strongly considered as a solution to the plague of the Depression. Didn’t know that, did you? Years ago, before you were born, or at least before you were very tall, there was a president named Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He said it repeatedly, from a self-constructed wheelchair around 1933 or 1934, that adequate housing was a birthright for all citizens of the United States. That it was considered part of a New Deal. Funny. Congress didn’t altogether agree. The people as a whole surely didn’t. They all eventually went along with the plan. Most demurred during the process because FDR’s attempts at welfare reform were scaring the hell outta the citizenry, and ironically those with little resources at all, most of whom claimed it to be de facto socialism. But The Economy, that burly and austere and implacable giant living on the unreachable hill, finally determined that our buildings would be built to succor families on welfare who couldn’t afford Chicago rents. City rents were quite expensive at the time. In comparison, and factoring inflation, they probably were higher than the rates of the present day. Citizens waiting in food lines while carrying a suitcase of influenza, pneumonia, and definitely tuberculosis couldn’t afford that. Therefore, we were built for those people. So don’t be confused. Because it was assumed they’d be willing to come from Uptown and Edgewater and whatever area they previously lived in for the affordable rents. The only trade-off was that the poor people moving in would have to mix with other citizens of the city. There were quotas, ratios, statistics, and neighborhood composition rules that if adequately met would mean segregation ultimately could be ended or, as I mentioned, at least hindered a bit. Honestly, that was the goal. It really was.

  People have said many times that the segregation of Chicago couldn’t be changed nor could segregation anywhere else in the United States. Dr. King and his march through Marquette Park while being pelted with the nuggets of stone we were created from couldn’t do it; his entire civil rights movement didn’t really even cause a stir in the North; all he walked away with was stitches. Race riots in Baltimore and pretty fancy Frisco with the hills and trolleys of fire simply did that: burned. The cataclysmic 1960s riots in Detroit didn’t manage to make a single dent in the battle against segregation nor the bathos of LA stars walking Chicago’s Michigan Avenue talking equal rights in the ’70s. In fact, the city of Detroit still hasn’t recovered from those riots. There was once this thing—I don’t know when it was exactly—called the Gautreaux case…heard of it? Either way, it meant and changed nothing much either. Lyndon Johnson and his Great Society…Nice idea. He didn’t even stick around to see that one through. The 1974 Housing Act, which included what is widely known as Section 8, was altruistic and surely wonderful. It was an attempt to step right in front of the segregation train and stop its momentum. But pieces of that shattered document are still flying around in Chicago’s wind. And in the end, although we project buildings were created to merely slow down the process of segregation, ironically, we became its enabler, the anathema. It was simple math.

  Let me explain it further: We were some of the first. We were among the very first skyscrapers of Chicago. No one ever mentions that kinda thing when we’re discussed. We, the Stateway Gardens projects, were just a small idea in 1953, and by 1958—before the John Hancock Center and its crossbars created by the architecture of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, before the Sears Tower (haha, now it’s called Willis) and its quondam and silly title of world’s tallest. That childish cachet lasted for the Sears Tower nearly twenty-five years. Our buildings were before Rockefeller’s Standard Oil on Randolph Street, with them stolid white pillars everyone knew was basically a copy of them twin buildings from New York City.

  Did I already mention Skidmore, Owings and Merrill? Don’t get annoyed. They’re famous architects. And they’re important. ’Cause we were supposed to be built by them as well. Wouldn’t that have been something to see? The Stateway buildings, as part of the corridor to what became a concrete wall of penury being designed by the minds of the Olympic Tower in New York or the beautiful and opulent curvature of Chase Tower in Dallas. I know they’d have given us convex windows and reflective sheets of long metal. Bet we’d have attracted enough people, energy, and sunlight to brighten Alaska in a winter month. That didn’t happen, though. Those spoils went to Henry Horner’s West Side project buildings on Madison Street. There, residents had an upstairs and downstairs in their apartments. Harold Ickes’s short nine-story projects just north on State were built by SOM as well. Those ridiculous buildings had thin side panels and odd-colored poles as streetlights that I’ll admit gave ’em a crumb of character. There were even different shades of brown surrounding the buildings’ outlines. Our Stateway projects weren’t much to look at. We were arid and mushroom-colored, surrounded by what looked like a swamp of salt marsh if it rained hard enough. They left us as stiff arrangements, monolithic and moribund, standing at attention within the top lip of State Street as it drooled along Chicago’s southern boundaries. We were lifted into air with what was to be one measly fucking splash of paint and fit with windows acting as bars. Funny thing is, for a seventeen-story set of buildings, those windows had no safety bars. Maybe that was just the best way to hold the residents inside.

  Hey, don’t front when I ask this, ’cause I know you remember Mayor Daley. No, not that one. The first one. Yeah, it’s mostly his fault. He’s the person decided it best to keep everyone segregated and “separate.” If you think about it, the two words are similar enough. Keep the unwanted people away from quiet-clean-calm neighborhoods, keep Chicago from emulating those riots of Detroit and D.C.

  And there it began. The battle. The political back-and-forth concerning attempts at mixing the poor. Those against segregation never even considered that maybe certain people preferred the separation and wouldn’t want to move into our buildings, because ultimately, living there meant they’d have to do the unthinkable, live and mix with all other races of poor. Man, people will stretch their dollars to the city limits and struggle check to check to avoid that kind of integration. All the races of people living together? Be serious. Therefore, Daley had a head start. But let’s be honest, all poor people, no matter their color, do belong stacked together, don’t they?

  Nah, the poor can be separate as well. Some can even fly. Those people glided south in hatchback Fords with
mismatched tires and invisible hubcaps, headed for the altitude of Chicago’s Heights and its Stegers, or maybe the Hills of Country Clubs and Lands of High that were way out and made with Forests and Parks. Wish we could’ve gone. Yet here we were. Nobody with any resources during the early ’60s wanted to live very close to downtown anyway. There was nothing but traffic and people commuting back and forth with taxi horns popping in here and there for pause. So put them there, Daley said. Yup, we’d stay on State, line up in a Great Wall creating reservations of separation no one could destroy. Put them there.

  After a while, we began to look at it as an honor. We’d have a people of spirit living within; there’d be big plots of land, open space with no inconsistencies, maybe grass green enough for children to play on, and swings with fresh chains connected to bright yellow, blue, and red rubber seats everyone would find comfortable. Our apartments were to be laid out in two and three bedrooms with solidified walls residents couldn’t possibly nail a picture to. They would have large kitchens displaying tables for eating bowls of white rice without butter or salt and on good days smoked ham hocks with black-eyed peas. We’d have the tenants nobody wanted. And welcome them. Because we did. We’d use our elevators grand enough to carry two couches and three love seats and even fit a queen-size mattress if you folded it like a slice of bread. Sure, the space between apartments would be minimal, noise could pose an issue, privacy would certainly be at a premium, but we’d all be safe from insults and attacks. A space of their own. Finally, a space of our own.

  Jimmy Baldwin had the audacity to call us hideous and colorless and bleak and revolting. Said we were cheerless like a prison. Maybe he was right. But maybe not. We’d have block parties in the middle of the courtyard with seventy-five-foot welcome banners stretching from building to building; there’d always be BBQ short ribs and fried chicken wings dipped in hot sauce and even the Nehi soda pop everyone loves. The music could be loud and residents’ kids would smile easily. Parents might share gossip and laugh at each other; men of any age might shoot dice at first chance against the handicapped person’s incline ramp, yelling “Point is ten or four!,” and when police drove through our parking lots they’d not flash their lights. That doesn’t sound so bleak. We became part of one another over time. Inseparable. We became known for one another. No matter what happened from that point, or who built replicas, our Stateway buildings in Chicago would be the model of an urban future.

  The wind slowly began blowing north, though.

  One day, outta that blue sky, our land developed value. The people, not so much. It was whispered that commuting to the suburbs had become tedious and overrated. The noisy lights of downtown grew attractive. Street cleaning on State and Federal was starting to be done frequently. Thirty-fifth Street too. Patrol cars one by one disappeared from the area, abandoning it almost entirely.

  Men in black and gray day-to-day suits arose from nowhere and stood in front of us pointing, nodding, pointing higher, shaking their heads…I could see their mouths moving. “It’s the Plan for Transformation” was what one of them said. What does that mean? What did they want?

  I yelled down at them, “What do you want?”

  No answer. Not even an acknowledgment of my voice. Did they hear me?

  Again, “What do you want?”

  A head lifted. I saw his glasses reflecting light from the sun. He pointed and I swear he said to me, “We’re here for you.”

  How vividly I can remember those sheriffs coming back in squads and squads of cars. They had them letters in hand with them pink envelopes and names spread in bold print. They also had their pistols displayed.

  After passing out eviction notices seemingly at gunpoint, the developers ultimately tried to say that my bricks had begun falling one by one, smacking residents in the head like rainwater. They even established scaffoldings alongside my frame, which made me resemble an Erector set. Guess we finally got the wish of being treated like skyscrapers. The repairs they incessantly preached about to the city council and judges in court obviously never happened. The entire subterfuge was merely a setup to justify it all. To raze.

  We pleaded and pleaded. Then pleaded some more. How could they be unwilling to accept that after fifty years we’d become something together, a team, that we had a value of our own? The residents kept us as secure as possible. They mopped and polished the scuffed floors of their apartments often. Busted lights were replaced where needed and those weren’t so important anyhow because our residents have always been good at feeling their way through the dark. I know they kept the toilets unclogged, and the trash barely fluttered. Graffiti was cleaned regularly, at least once a month. I think I even saw a few residents washing the windows of an abandoned car or two. Our Stateway projects became homes. A true community.

  Don’t get it twisted. We fought ’em. Man, they didn’t know us and what we were about. Without lapse, we fought.

  On an early morning, while nervously gazing into the clouds with no smoke or pollution about, we saw them coming. Whoa. Like the Soviet army marching into Berlin they came from a thousand directions, lined up thirty-stock in squares of eight across and twelve to the rear, down State Street, down Federal, streetlights not affecting the rhythm or vibration of their pace.

  The soldiers in the front were saluting, stomping, chanting, sweating, stomping, saluting. They carried measuring tapes, drills, screwdrivers, and hammers as rifles attached to their shoulders. Those rifle edges were as sharp as a bayonet and ready for pulling nails. Bulldozers with steady tracks along their bottoms followed, all while placing holes in State Street concrete that were never to be refilled. Work platforms were pulled, carrying generals and lieutenants with hats harder than they’d need for even the sturdiest portions of my frame. Excavators hauled missile launchers. And in the distance, we actually shivered a bit after spotting the cranes and cannons of wrecking balls that would take us out of this war in seconds.

  They hesitated for a few brief moments, began chanting and stomping in place with repeat, then came forward. Completely.

  I’m not gonna fool you, we stood tall. Even tried to prepare. The residents began digging holes as bastions throughout the concrete with extended tunnels connecting back to the buildings for replenishing ammunition. They then lifted and crooked their necks about like ferrets on lookout.

  Didn’t matter. I can remember hearing the metal of that explosive chain before feeling it: BOOM. Again. BOOM. Then again.

  BOOM.

  Those sounds seemed to start as simple murmurs in the distance. But that initial one hitting from behind began a process. The heavy weight of the ball and cable nearly knocked us over immediately. But we tried to continue standing erect. We did. Residents came out of their homes buzzing like bees guarding a hive with small knives they’d sharpened on their walls. They jabbed and poked at the soldiers relentlessly. Abandoned cars were doused with gasoline and lit ablaze, then pushed into tanks and recon vehicles shipping other soldiers and weapons. Our residents picked up rocks they found to throw at howitzers and made cocktails using books of matches with dirty socks as the combustible. Even the children in green gear came, wearing no shoes, and they laid mines and threw bottles or whatever they could muster. Rusted shopping carts were filled with old newspapers and photos of loved ones in graduation-hat smiles, and then soused with bottles of isopropyl alcohol. The carts were quickly set afire and thrust into the infantry. More eruptions. BOOM. Then loud. BOOM. Louder. BOOM. The grounds of our battlefield continued and continued to burn effortlessly.

  Yes, we stood.

  I heard one of their generals say, “Shoot at anything! We need to clear the entire area! Destroy whatever moves and whatever doesn’t!”

  Our goal was simply to drive ’em back. But they catapulted bombs and shells that splattered with shrapnel, piercing our residents in the arms, or in legs or spines.

  BOOM! BOOM!

&nb
sp; The explosions acquired their necessary volume. BOOM! Residents one by one went to their knees looking up at a cloud; our snipers were shot from windows with eyes in the backs of their heads. After death, they’d hang from sills in the wind like clothes on line to dry. Then their broken bodies landed on the concrete with thuds. Those bodies vanished immediately as though they were never even there. The ferrets lay on the ground with thin limbs missing…then they were gone. Explosions went for hours everywhere on State Street and Federal. BOOM! BOOM! We attempted to surrender. BOOM! Lifted our hands and waved everything white we found. BOOM! The artillery continued. BOOM! Continued. BOOM! Nonstop. BOOM! BOOM!

  And then it all was just over.

  When the smoke of the bombs cleared and the bayonets, rifles, and machine guns were holstered, we no longer had any windows at all. The residents were lifeless. Everything was silent. Pipes were scattered about. Roofs were missing. Large piles of bricks now were in their place. I heard one of the lieutenants say, “We got them! It’s over now! We finished them all off!” He was right because chunks and chunks of our front surface had disappeared. We barely stood there, hollow interiors resembling the empty spaces of a honeycomb. You have to know, I tried to help hold who we were, what we’d become, what we once had. We all really did try…

  …There’s a Starbucks and a Papa John’s where I was. Right there. But, a long time ago, there was a community. They don’t want to admit that. It was all finally destroyed in the Battle of Segregation anyway. So when the politicians say we never existed, or never should have, using new green grass they finally planted and dollar-an-hour parking meters as proof, someone somewhere will stand up, stand tall like I did, like we did. Because the beige dust of our concrete is there. You better believe it’s still fucking there. Just look. Yep, that dust: dry, tasty, remaining warm, the palliative that politicians all once desired.