What We've Lost Is Nothing Read online

>>>Should we not be recognized by who we are, not what we are? So we live near the west side. Fine. There will likely be crime associated with such a geography, an urban setting where the forces of poverty and its ills are constantly beckoning. I’m proud to have friends who are diverse, but NOT because of that diversity. Rather, because those friendships are fulfilling to my life.

  Sincerely,

  Ellen Lancaster

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  Messages in this topic (6)

  6c.Re: Mass robberies on Ilios Lane!!

  Posted by: “S_Perez” [email protected]

  Wed Apr 7, 2004 9:05 a.m. (CST)

  I think we need to separate what happened on Ilios Lane from how we feel about diversity assurance. As a minority, I am thrilled that someone from the majority culture allows this debate, and welcomes a variety of people and views. That’s the magic of Oak Park. But as a minority, I feel equally that my status should be defined either by my opportunities or my failings; there is a rather subtle bigotry I hear when diversity assurance is discussed around Oak Park and I would prefer not be spoken for. Allow me to speak myself. Ilios Lane, it has to be pointed out, has little or no diversity by Oak Park standards. Is this the fault of those residents? Certainly not. Do they care? I have no idea, but I can tell you that I don’t care. We’re an affluent area. An area that, quite honestly, welcomes minorities who fit certain economic standards. What Oak Parker would take issue with living beside an African-American doctor or lawyer, after all? But what about a family of four displaced from the west side, headed by a single mother and living off WIC and Section 8 and other social programs? The answer to that question, to me, offers a bigger truth.

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  6d.Re: Mass robberies on Ilios Lane!!

  Posted by: “ErinsWorld1” [email protected] Erin Ballantine

  Wed Apr 7, 2004 10:15 a.m. (CST)

  S_Perez, what you say makes a lot of sense, and I agree with much of it. I’ve always been skeptical of diversity assurance (and affirmative action). But it’s also imperative to remember the historical, institutional and socio-economic racism that Diversity Assurance was born out of. In an ideal world, no one would be judged by anything other than ability, but we don’t live in an ideal world. I do not believe for a minute—even in today’s climate—that were a white and a black with the same education and background up for the same job that it would go to the black ON MERIT as opposed to EOE. Had equal opportunity and affirmative action and diversity assurance never existed, we would still almost certainly be living in an age of blatant and even mandated discrimination. I’m not sure I see the wrong of having diversity as an open, and oft-discussed objective for all of us.

  On Apr 7, 2004, at 9:05 a.m. “S_Perez” [email protected] wrote:

  >>I think we need to separate what happened on Ilios Lane from how we feel about diversity assurance. As a minority, I am thrilled that someone from the majority culture allows this debate, and welcomes a variety of people and views.

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  6e.Re: Mass robberies on Ilios Lane!!

  Posted by: “C. Hughley” [email protected] Cynthia Hughley

  Wed Apr 7, 2004 11:00 a.m. (CST)

  Before I married and had children, I managed property in upstate New York. Lots of myths exist around household safety and burglaries and thought I’d share some of what I learned:

  a.Fences don’t work as well at keeping people out as they do at keeping people hidden.

  b.Burglaries happen MOST often during the day, while people are at work, rather than in the dead of night.

  c.Having signs of children outside the house—swings, toys, etc.—often signals a daytime presence in the home and can be more effective than alarm systems.

  d.Burglars WILL strike homes despite dogs and alarm systems.

  e.In multi-unit buildings, the top floor is just as likely as the ground floor to be targeted (fewer witnesses on top floors!).

  Be safe!

  —Cynthia

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  6f.Re: Mass robberies on Ilios Lane!!

  Posted by: “Pamela S. Merriman” [email protected] PSMerriman

  Wed Apr 7, 2004 11:16 a.m. (CST)

  Diversity Assurance is an Oak Park Fair Housing Ordinance aimed at establishing racial diversity in multi-unit buildings. The program began in 1984, and grew out of a village diversity policy established in 1973. In part, the policy was meant to combat drug and gang violence that bled over into Oak Park from Chicago’s west side. Do we know whether what happened on Ilios Lane came from west siders? Certainly, we don’t, not yet. But is it likely? Certainly, it is, I believe. There seems to be an equating of racial consciousness with “racism” as a general social ill. But is recognizing another race any different than recognizing, say, hair or eye color? I speak here not of the belief that any of us are better than another, but from the seeming belief that any recognition of difference—even in celebration or jubilation—is “racist.” But herein lies my question: does the recognition and consciousness of multiple races equal racism? Is that not simply what diversity assurance is attempting to answer? I would like to believe that we live in a post-diversity assurance society. Oh, how I would like to believe that. What is a valid point to me is the idea of taking pride in our diversity. Perhaps an attempt at no distinction—racially, or programmatically—ought to be the aim. In any case, my heart goes out to the Ilios Lane residents who surely feel this debate is very distant from the profound vulnerability and fear they must be experiencing. As we debate the merits of our community’s programs, let’s not forget where the current debate emerged from. . . .

  Best,

  Pam Merriman

  On Apr 7, 2004, at 10:15 a.m. “ErinsWorld1” [email protected] wrote:

  S_Perez, what you say makes a lot of sense, and I agree with much of it. I’ve always been skeptical of diversity assurance (and affirmative action). But it’s also imperative to remember the historical, institutional and socio-economic racism that Diversity Assurance was born out of.

  On Apr 7, 2004, at 9:05 a.m. “S_Perez” [email protected] wrote:

  I think we need to separate what happened on Ilios Lane from how we feel about diversity assurance. As a minority, I am thrilled that someone from the majority culture allows this debate, and welcomes a variety of people and views.

  Reply to sender | Reply to group | Reply via web post |

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  7.This week’s Iraq War protest MOVED . . .

  Posted by: “Pauline Shuman” [email protected] Pauline Shuman

  Wed Apr 7, 2004 11:39 a.m. (CST)

  PLEASE NOTE: This week’s protest against the illegal Iraq War will begin at Unity Temple at 9:00 a.m. sharp on Saturday, April 10. Please attend if you can, and if you believe the Bush Administration has broken international law with this invasion. All are welcome!

  For further information, contact:

  [email protected]

  708-555-6447

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  Chapter 21

  12:10 p.m.

  Mary took her finger and thumb and broke off a minuscule piece of cookie. She’d eaten two bites of salad before the thought occurred to her that something terrible, something green, might well lodge itself betwixt her teeth and ruin, absolutely ruin, her chances with Caz, who sat next to her on the white, plastic bench in the lunchroom, his hip touching hers. She was utte
rly frozen in place. His hip. Her hip. Her underwear went soft and wet the minute he sat himself casually down, not across from her, not inches away from her, but so close that his hip touched hers. Her entire body zinged from her toes up. How could she have held herself together through composition and social studies with Caz sitting just two desks behind her all this time? With his hips so alive, so charged. She was grateful that she hadn’t, until this moment, known of his electric hips, though she felt a vague but growing fear that she would never again be able to concentrate on the Mistakes Made During the Vietnam War and the Miscarriage of Justice That Was Watergate and the Tactical Long-Term Brilliance of the Marshall Plan, knowing that Caz and his hips were just two rows back.

  “Salad and cookie,” Caz was saying, “is like totally yin-yang, ya know? Like the balance of all things. Like how one keeps the other one in a kind of circle—no, like a hug or something, right? Like it all equals zero, nothing and everything.”

  Caz was blazed on a fatty of pure Hawaiian gold. Mary had an inkling about this, though she wasn’t paying much attention to what was coming out of his mouth with his hip being so near hers. She had no idea what he was talking about, except a vague admiration for her choice of foodstuff.

  “Nothing and everything,” she agreed. “Yin-yang.”

  They went silent and Mary’s mind buzzed trying to think of how to fill the void. She nibbled a chocolate chip. Caz did not play sports. He was not interested in cheerleading. He did not join clubs or participate in extracurricular activities, and he had a reputation for having purportedly passed only one class: small-engine repair. She could ask him about ecstasy, but even that as a diversion was so new to her she knew almost nothing about it, except how warm it made you feel and how much fuchsia buzzed around the periphery. He’d slept with dozens of girls, if one was to believe the stories, and so to be able to hold on to Caz for as long as a month, as Jenny Nellinger had, was a feat of intrepid and heroic proportions. Jenny’d been popular ever since, her 32B cups canonized in photocopied, black-and-white pictures on lockers all over the school. Not like Cindy Hamilton, caught at a house party with his dick in her mouth and her top around her waist, camera phones flashing like paparazzi, and she’d eventually had to get the administration and her parents involved in keeping the pictures from endless e-mail loops. She was thirteen years old then, and two years later she tried to kill herself. Mary, like everyone else who hadn’t been there at the time, agreed that Cindy was a stupid slut who had it coming to her by wearing braless tank tops and short shorts and screwing loads of guys all the time starting when she was eleven years old, because otherwise why had she allowed so many pictures that night? Eight, ten, twelve camera phones captured the moment—Caz’s head thrown back, eyes closed and grinning, and Cindy kneeling in front of him on her knees, her eyes closed, too. Caz had said he was doing her a favor, letting her blow him. She’d begged him, he said, and Mary, like everyone else, had said it was kindhearted of him when you really thought about it, to take an unpopular—smelly!—girl such as Cindy and let her have a piece of him.

  Mary did not want to remind him of any other girl at that moment, especially Cindy, who (it had to be pointed out) had never once sat in the lunchroom with him before the eyes of everyone. When Mary thought about it, she could only remember Jenny sitting near Caz at lunch. Not one other girl. Until now. Until Mary herself.

  But the silence was killing her.

  “So here’s a question,” Mary chirped finally. “You have to answer the first thing that comes to mind.”

  He looked at her sideways, nodded in slow motion.

  “What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you?”

  He stopped chewing his pizza. Mary instantly wished she’d asked something else, something about music. Yes. That would have been the subject. Hadn’t she heard a rumor somewhere that he played the drums? She turned her head away and picked between her teeth with a fingernail.

  “What the fuck kind of question is that?”

  Mary blushed. Suddenly, Arthur’s theory began to feel flimsy and inconsequential. She remembered her father telling her once that the key to sales wasn’t what you said, it was the confidence with which you said it. She tried to keep her voice steady. “Can you answer?”

  “I can. But why the fuck does anyone want to talk about the worst thing that ever happened to them?”

  Mary stared at him. His eyes were glassy and his long hair smelled like smoke and cheap shampoo. That was the key to Caz, she thought, the answer to that question, getting him to confess, to reveal himself. He may not have answered her, certainly; didn’t boys keep everything inside? Wasn’t that what she’d heard? But knowing there was a secret there at all was something. Even Jenny Nellinger probably didn’t know that. It was enough depth for one lunch period, Mary recognized. Don’t get all philosophical on him. Guys didn’t like it when girls were too smart. When they were too emotional. Keep it light. Keep it silly. She pushed her cookie away from her.

  Caz broke the silence. “So you were, like, totally home when that dude broke into your house? Like, he could’ve seen you, right?”

  “No one knows if it was a man or not.” Coy. That’s how she’d play it.

  Caz laughed. “Burglars aren’t chicks. They’re dudes.”

  “Chicks can be burglars,” Mary said, aware of this being her first attempt at the vernacular use of the term chicks in conversation.

  “Name me one chick burglar. Just one.”

  “You name me one dude burglar.” Mary wondered if he believed the burglaries were the worst thing to ever happen to her. She supposed they were, though all the stolen items belonged to her parents, and if the burglaries hadn’t happened, she’d never have been sitting here, right beside Caz’s hip with the whole lunchroom watching. So it’d be a hard point to argue. Helen Pappalardo had it bad, Mary thought. Helen was freaked-out, and her house had been turned into a disaster zone.

  Caz laughed hard, harder than her retort had earned, and she snapped back to the moment, to her hip touching his. “Right on,” he said. “But Al Capone was a dude.”

  Mary was aware of being watched. The whole lunchroom, she felt, was collectively watching and trying not to watch as Caz and Mary Elizabeth McPherson sat hip-to-hip laughing. Mary hoped people were noticing her not eat. And noticing how it was Caz laughing, rather than her. Translation: Mary Elizabeth McPherson was the source, as opposed to the brunt, of jokes currently amusing Caz Zaininger. This moment, she thought, could change everything for her.

  “Bonnie and Clyde,” Mary said. “Bonnie was a chick.” Then she added quietly, “A girl.”

  She felt something in the small of her back: Caz’s hand. He leaned toward her ear and whispered, “I didn’t know you were so cool.” His voice was low, sensual, a voice she’d never before heard come out of him. An intimate voice.

  She felt the hairs on her neck stand up. She could not respond. She could not move. Her only sensation, beyond the quiet buzz of his voice and the heated cloth below his hand, was the smell of ketchup and hot dogs that persisted in their school cafeteria.

  “Dude,” he whispered to her, “you’re making me so hot I could stick you right now.”

  Caz was a year older than Mary and was known for his epic parties, the various apartments he’d lived in over the years crammed to capacity with beer and bodies, and thus he’d long had a rather limitless supply of available girls. His experiences had started young and remained bountiful. He lived with his father, who was a truck driver and therefore only home every few days. Caz had more or less fended for himself since he was ten years old. It took Mary a moment to understand what he meant. A terribly antiseptic word for it flitted through her brain . . . i n t e r c o u r s e. Her body went imperceptibly slack for a moment and she slumped back toward Caz’s hand just the tiniest little bit. No one saw it.

  But Caz felt it.

  And he caught her
.

  Chapter 22

  11:40 a.m.

  Dara and Sary sat next to each other in the fluorescent-lit break room at FedEx. Of the residents of Ilios Lane, they were the only ones besides Susan to have gone to work as usual the day after the burglaries. Sary had again asked her eldest nephew from uptown to come over with his two younger brothers and stay with Sofia. It hadn’t occurred to her to call the landlord. It was the house she lived in, the house she had failed to protect. Responsibility, she believed, lay with her and Dara. Though she could not speak for the rest of her neighbors, she knew exactly why they had been victimized, which was subsequently why she and Dara sat knee-to-knee in the break room having a quiet, imperceptible-to-the-outsider argument.

  “We cannot do it,” Dara was telling Sary. “I cannot do it.”

  “You must,” she fumed. “You must build it.”

  Dara was frustrated. Sary refused to let go of her beliefs. Beliefs that to Dara seemed ancestral, outdated.

  “Neaktu had no home,” Sary said. “He must have a home. Think of your family. Your daughter. We have failed to keep her safe.”

  Dara felt a growing agitation between his shoulder blades. How many times would she say this? Neaktu had no home. Neaktu had no home. Dara wasn’t even sure he believed in Neaktu anymore. He tried a new tactic. “Neaktu does not come to America. He stays only in Cambodia.”

  Sary scoffed at him. “Don’t be a fool! Spirits are not contained by our land boundaries. We must build him a home or it will be worse next time. Think of it, Dara. Think of Sophea home alone while we are at work. She is vulnerable. She is unsafe.”

  This thought, Dara had to admit, chilled him. His only child, alone, while Neaktu the destroyer hovered around her. The real trouble, Dara knew but could not admit to Sary, lay with him. He feared he could not build the kind of spirit house that a protector such as Neaktu would find beautiful and welcoming.

  In Cambodia, men learned to make such spirit houses from their fathers and grandfathers. They were made of wood or cement, with horns on the roof and seven-headed naga snakes atop hand-carved walls. The roof had intricate, singular tiles laid one after the other. The windowsills and doorways had Sanskrit or Pali prayers carved into them, the languages of ancient Buddhism. In Cambodia, he’d been a pharmacist. Even the pharmacy had a small spirit house for Neaktu, to keep the sickness in their customers outside the shop. Without a beautiful house to entice him, Neaktu would never stay outside where he belonged. He would enter Dara and Sary’s house, anyone’s house, unless he was given a home of his own with offerings of fruit and money and incense, things to keep him satiated in the spirit world.