Dream Come True

Which was my dream come true, do you think?

A. Saturday afternoon, my student interior designer and her husband came down and put in new light fixtures. So, instead of three-bulb "interrogation lights" (as the guy who delivered my futons called them), I now have two large white globes, one dangling in the living room, the other in the home office space, and two smaller ones on a swag of golden chain suspended over the dining room table.

B. Saturday late morning, Dawn showed up asking if she and her two buddies from Big Picture could borrow my dining table to have a spot to work on their exhibitions (end-of-quarter projects). Their advisor somehow got locked out of the building and they needed a quiet, convenient place to prepare. So three girls and their teacher spread out their stuff-photos of a diabetic who lost a toe mixed with Marilyn Manson and Dawn's neverending trail of loose notes.

I tapped her shoulder, laughing, as I picked up some of her looseleaf notes off the floor for the second or third time. "You are just like me," I marveled. "Always leaving a paper trail!"

Her buddy Gloria (for the purpose of this blog) did a full-dress rehearsal of her exhibition, which took 45 minutes. She was very well-prepared.

Las Medias Blancas

...otherwise known as the White Sox. I went to Dawn's house last night to find out how Joey did on his big science project. Their mom very generously switched off her telenovela in favor of the game and we all watched it.

First, the science project news. He got nine wrong answers according to the kid who corrected his paper--his teacher hasn't seen it yet. He's supposed to give his oral report tomorrow and the teacher was keeping the MRI and his notes in school. This makes me nervous since I think he'd be better off with some extra practice before getting up in front of the class, but he's on his own with that now.

Now for baseball. We watched up until about the 7th inning, so we saw the Sox come from behind and cheered for a few runs. Their mom has a touch of the flu, so she was kicking back in the recliner with a yellow blanket wrapped around her. Meanwhile Joey was running around in soccer shorts and no shirt, proclaiming he was not cold. He went back in the kitchen and then kept lurking between his bedroom door and the bathroom door, playing I spy or hide-and-go-seek or just trying to get us to laugh at him, which we did. I did, copiously.

Then he put on a cape and his vampire teeth and came back in to scare us while we watched the game. He is a funny character! He gave his sick mother a couple of hugs, too, for moral support. Apparently he and his dad are the only ones in the house who haven't been hit by the bug yet.

His mom wanted to know how long the game goes on, so I explained its nine innings unless they're tied at the ninth, when it goes on to extra innings. Little did we know how many of those there would be!

At ten, Joey's mom sent him to bed and I sent myself home. I knew nothing more until I got to work and saw the headline on the Tribune and realized they won. But it took until lunch for me to find out about the win in the 14th inning! Good thing we didn't stay up until 1:30!!!

More Bones

Yesterday's cloudy, cold, drizzle was the perfect backdrop to stay in the house and knock out the rest of Joey's science report. We sat at the dining room table and Dawn turned off the loud Mexican music and put the radio on in her room so we could concentrate. She's getting sick--sore throat, hard to swallow. Her big brother is sick too but he has a job at a pizza place so he was working. Let's hope it's not bird flu, right?

Preparing the oral presentation was interesting. Joey and I talked about what was on the MRI and I made him practice saying "anterior cruciate ligament." After he got that down, I tried to get him to learn "magnetic resonance imaging" but that was just too hard. So we made a note card about how an MRI is different from an X-ray and just left it at that.

He had eight note cards. It was really hard to get him to say a complete sentence without it on the card, so I ended up printing out simple sentences on most of the cards. On one I drew a figure of the leg bones and their connections to hip and ankle, but had to write it out in the end because it was easier for him. He was really good at pointing out the femur and the tibia while talking, though.

Dawn loaned me their cell phone because it shows the time. He went through it for me maybe five or six times. The first few I had to coach/interrupt him, but the last two or three he was getting through it OK on his own. It came in a little short--about two minutes, instead of two and half to three--but it was OK. He told me last time they had oral presentations he didn't even get to do one. "I'm really excited for this," he said.

I went to Chavez this morning in hopes of meeting his teacher, but it didn't pan out. There was a long line and the clerk was not mean but not extra helpful, and if you didn't know who you were looking for, she wasn't going to help you out. She sent me to the other building because I said I was looking for a fourth grade science teacher. Joey told me he was in the main building. I went over and asked there who his teacher was, and they sent me back.

Fortunately, when I came back, my friend Ms. Kelly was at the desk and she helped me figure out who the teacher I wanted was. But by then it was almost five to eight, so I just wrote her a note explaining who I was and that Joey and I spent about 10 hours on that report and she should call me if she had any questions.

I saw him coming in, just ahead of the bell. "Hey, you got everything?" I asked.
He nodded quickly and kept going--I suspect partly because he was barely awake and partly not to be late.

This morning I called DePaul. They have something called a Reading and Learning Lab that helps bilingual kids with learning problems. Of course they have a waiting list. They're sending me information. We'll see.

It kills me that it is so hard to get him somebody who knows how to teach phonics and spelling. At this rate, I'll have to learn Orton-Gillingham (a method of teaching kids reading and spelling) myself:

http://www.ortonacademy.org/approach.html

It's two years before he could even start at San Miguel.

Them Bones

Joey's science project is due Monday, and it's a killer. Because Chavez is on a year-round schedule, every October the kids have three weeks off and the teachers send them home with these fat packets of work, especially in science. On top of all the worksheets, usually they have to do some kind of project.

Last year I helped Danny with his project on density. We went to Food 4 Less and got liquid laundry detergent, dishwashing liquid, and a bunch of other fluids, into which we dropped an egg to see whether it would float. The only one it floated in was salt water. I'm afraid I'm not the greatest science whiz, so Danny only got a C on his project. But I wonder how much he would have gotten done at all without a grownup fool enough to waste a few bucks and five or six hours on experiments and writing them up.

This year it's Joey's turn. He's learning about bones. I got a couple of books out of the juvenile section at Harold Washington, one in English and one in Spanish, and every night but Wednesday of this week we've been working on his worksheets for about an hour and a half. He can get about two pages done in that time. He knows the stuff--it's spelling the words that's the killer.

We've hardly done anything about the really hard part. He's supposed to give a three-minute oral presentation about some bone topic. They suggested a bunch of ideas and we adapted one of them. The sheet suggested bringing in an X-ray and explaining the bones, what they connect to, and what the X-ray shows. He liked the idea of doing that with one of the old MRI's I have from when I tore my ACL.

Right now I'm just trying to make sure he remembers the words femur and tibia. I have no idea how we're going to turn this into an oral report and get the rest of his worksheets done before Monday.

It's enough to dampen my late-30s enthusiasm for motherhood, that's for sure.

Today's Do List

1) Read at daily Mass this morning
2) Call Rep. Lipinski's foreign policy aide and get him to find out what happened to a Colombian guy who was kidnapped by paramilitaries last weekend.
3) Bike to work
4) Email foreign policy aide more info.
5) Give a principal the teacher's union office number so I can get a quote from her for my day job (yes, I'm trying to do work today).
6) Call the U.S. Embassy in Bogota about the guy who disappeared.
7) Send a note with prayers and support to my friend, whose son just got wounded in Iraq.
8) Make a couple more work-related calls.
9) Go to the library and get better books on bones for Joey's report.
10) Pick up photos from 20th high school reunion.
11) Beg other friends to write/call the Embassy on behalf of this guy.
12) Clean desk.
13) Work some more.
14) Bike home.
15) Help Joey with his bone report and other homework.
16) Measure the length of the back fence to put barbed wire on it.
17) Ask Joey's dad about making iron bars for the back window.
18) Pray about a lot of things.

Attempted Break In?

Saturday morning the paint crew (Dawn, my interior designer, her friend, and Ms. Ribs' nephew) and I discovered someone had slit the screen to the back window in the kitchen, and scratched up the window glass in a square like they were trying to get in. It was a pretty half-assed attempt, and strangely, the screen was torn and also raised--like they sliced the screen, then raised the window, then scratched the glass. If they were really trying to get in they didn't do a very good job.

The police evidence tech told me he didn't think that was the point. "I think somebody just wants to bother you, scare you," he said. "People get jealous when they see other people having things they don't have."

Nevertheless, I'll admit I was spooked. Good thing the paint crew was around all day and we had a lot of work to do in between two visits from the cops--one for the report, one to collect evidence.

There was some lemonade in the lemons. The first sweet part was that my interior designer's paint scheme impressed the woman officer who took the report, so they traded numbers and Designer Gal might get a real gig as a result. The next bit of sugar came when the evidence tech made friends with Dawn, who is interested in police detective work. He agreed to let her come to the station next week to do an interview. How cool is that??

In between making Ws on my wall, I picked up the phone and called lots of folks in my address book, inviting them to an impromptu "let's scare away the burglars" party. Four people showed up: my neighbor, the other white lady who bought further up the street, a friend from Su Casa, my friend the cop (really glad he made it!) and Dawn stuck around for a while.

In fact, Dawn's mom came by with Dawn and Joey after the other guests left and let them stay over. It was my first slumber party for kids. Dawn's mom is my hero--I don't know if I would have done that if I were in her shoes. She was so nervous she spoke two words of English: "My son!"

"I know!" I said. I gave her a big hug and cheek kiss of appreciation.

We stayed up way too late pulling tape off the walls and ceiling. Joey made a tape ball out of the pickings, and I kept singing "Tape Man, he's a tape tape man, yes he's a tape man..." to him. (The tune was a song called "Ape Man" which I think is by the Kinks but I forget. Anyone out there remember???)

The next morning we had eggs and rice--Aurora made rice Mexican-style. You fry the dry rice a little first, then add onions, tomato, water and spices. Joey and Aurora drew pictures and Joey dressed himself up as a witch/bruja, by wearing my big navy terrycloth bathrobe, Redi-shade clips stuck to his head, cheeks and chin, and riding the broom all over the house. He can roll his eyes way up into his head, too. Perfect! I probably haven't laughed so hard in months.

But I'm thinking about getting some barbed wire for the top of my back fence. It seems like that's the source of all the trouble.

Dinner Party

So last night I was expecting to have friends of mine, a married couple, over for dinner. They are transplanted North Siders like me who have lived for a year in McKinley Park, just north of Back of the Yards. For months we have been saying we should get together for dinner, and it took until last night to happen.

Plus, it didn't go off quite as planned. First, the wife of the couple had to work late, so the husband and I snacked while the pasta was boiling, then sat down for pasta, garlic bread and salad.

As we were wrapping up, the doorbell rang. Dawn and her mom wanted the phone number for Neighborhood Housing Services. Hurray! I've only been nagging them for months to call and get their help in preparing paperwork for a mortgage. What tipped it over the edge was that their new landlord told them this week he wants them out at the end of the month. Apparently Dawn's big brother and his friends look like gangbangers to the landlord. Too bad he can't tell the difference between boys who go to Curie and read the Da Vinci Code and boys who drop out of school and shoot people. Even the nice church lady down the street has better sense than this landlord. She said of Dawn's family: "They are nice people. They're quiet. They have their kids under control."

Anyway, my friend, the husband of the couple, speaks excellent Spanish and helped explain what Neighborhood Housing Services does--it's not a bank, it's not a mortgage company, but they help people prepare documents to apply for a mortgage, they can lend money or refer to banks, and they rehab and sell properties, too, like they did with my former two-flat, which they converted to a single family house.

My friend got a workout in translating last night, because the doorbell rang again a few minutes later. It was School Lady and her oldest daughter and her next-to-youngest daughter (my favorite!). Oldest daughter is a freshman at Richards High this year, and everything is OK except for her biology teacher, a "morena" (black woman) who refuses to let students speak Spanish in her class, even when they don't understand what's going on. Oldest daughter tried to help her friends out by speaking Spanish and ended up in an argument with the teacher and got in trouble. She has all As and Bs in every class except biology, where she has a D. Other parents and students are having similar problems and a group met with the principal once already. Things improved for a couple of days and then went back to where they were. School Lady was among a group of ten parents who met with the principal today, for the second time, to talk about the situation.

I suggested they see what comes out of this, but if it doesn't improve, I offered to help them get in touch with some people downtown or at Designs for Change, an advocacy group that works with parents on school improvement, including on bilingual education issues.

Mr. Translation's wife arrived shortly after School Lady and her kids left, so we fed her a small bowl of pasta and a glass of wine and gave her a house tour. My friends thought the new colors on the first floor looked rather Southwestern, so maybe my eclectic (not to say eccentric) vision of Mexican meets Japanese may yet be realized.

Design on a Dime

Until Saturday, my house looked pretty much as it did when I bought it a year ago. I hadn't lifted a paint brush or driven a nail. Yes, I did buy some furniture, and there's less echo in there than when I first closed on the joint, but interior decorating isn't something I have much interest in or talent for.

Over the past year I bought two futon/sofas for the living room and a pair of runners. A guy I know called last fall and handed off some chairs out of the back of a truck, including a wooden armchair that gets approving nods from designer types but isn't very comfortable to sit on (not padded). The wrought-iron table and chairs my old roommate and I got from Ace Hardware for our old porch now grace the dining room. The window treatments are Redi-Shades (about seven bucks at Home Depot, by the way). The guy who delivered my futons referred to the ceiling fixtures as "interrogation lights."

All of this is beginning to change. Through a friend who teaches history at a for-profit bachelor's/trade school, I found an aspiring interior designer. I think we're getting Japanese meets Mexican more by accident than design. I'd say the Mexican part is the color scheme, which I'm having trouble swallowing. We painted two walls last Saturday--one is yellow, another is purple. The back wall and the kitchen. It's to stop the bowling alley effect of the long, open first floor.

The wall ate a lot of the purple paint. It's only the first coat so I shouldn't freak about the paint job, but it's uneven. The dark color totally sucks up the light. I used to love how the light hit the wood floor. Now you can hardly see it. She's not touching the upstairs--which is still white, thank God.

She's making screens for the lower halves of the first floor windows, so the top halves will be bare. Hopefully this will offset the loss of light somewhat, but I'm not betting it will bring back my beautiful light on the floor.

The upholstery, window screens and light fixtures should be worth it, but I don't know how long I'll put up with this paint job. It does feel warm in the winter, and it's dark out anyway. Painting is a pain though and I wasn't planning to go through it twice.

When it's done maybe I'll post photos for public comment. I'm going to regret this when I get this winter's heat bills, too. Why did I waste money on paint I don't even like when this winter's gas bill may double last year's?

Science and Ethics

In case anyone's interested, I saw some cool research on the speed of gravity while surfing Google after talking with Joey on Sunday. Yes, someone pointed out the real reason is that everything is moving forward at the same speed, but it was still cool to think about how fast gravity works.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/gravity_speed_030107.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/gravity_speed_030116.html

Now for the ethics. Another recent poster wanted to know if I found it difficult to draw a line between trying to be helpful to someone and getting in their business/habits in an intrusive and patronizing way. I do worry about this. Am I just some missionary colonizer in taking away Priscilla's crack pipe? And yes, that's part of why I asked her if she wanted it back. The other, more practical part is, she was in my house and she could probably kick my ass if I took away her stuff without her permission.

And really, some days I don't want to be friends with people, I just want them to get off the block and out of my hair. But I'd rather lean to the missionary side and push myself to be open and friendly than take the tack of buying one or more Dobermans and not extending myself to the people who are here. Yes, you've got to be prudent, but I'd rather open the door, literally and figuratively, than close it. What kind of moral position would I be in if I acted like everyone on the block was scary and dangerous? A friend of mine in Little Village made fun of her white neighbors for jogging accompained by both their Dobermans. They probably don't even realize how deeply they offended their neighbors doing that.

Smart or Not?

Yesterday I went to St. Joe's for the 5:30 Spanish Mass. There was a baptism. When Fr. Ed and the family went to the font, all the kids came out of the pews to bless the water and we all turned around. And there was Dawn and her whole family in the front of the back section. (I was in the back of the front section.) So I went over and sat with them.

Afterwards they invited me out for dinner, so we all piled in that infamous white van--which their dad fixed before driving to Indianapolis last week for a cousin's birthday--and went to El Tio for hamburguesas and tacos.

While we were in the van, I told Joey I found the old MRI's of my knee from when I tore my ACL. He has to do a report on bones and joints and they said one way to do it was to bring in an X-ray. Hopefully an MRI will do. We were talking about his report, and out of the blue he said, "I used to be smart when I was seven." He's eight now.

"So what happened?" I said, teasing.

"I don't know. But I think I'm not so smart now."

"Oh, I don't know about that," I said. "I think you're pretty smart. And you're going to get smarter from doing this report."

"I'm pretty smart about bones," he admitted. But I know he's worried about school.

However, five minutes later, as we were stopping at a red light on Ashland and 49th, he asked me, "Why doesn't this hit me in the head?"

"What?" I said. He'd been tossing a football up in the air. He wanted to know why, when you throw a ball straight up in the air inside a moving vehicle, you don't catch up to the ball before it falls down. Now that's a pretty brilliant question from somebody who thinks he's not that smart, right?

I think the answer is because gravity pulls the ball down faster than your head moves toward it, right? Any Mr. Wizards out there with a better answer? I'll have to do some Internet research.....

October CAPS

Good news: lots of people showed up, the sergeant told us about what had been done over the last two months, asked us if we'd seen any changes, which we told him, and clearly defined what his priorities will be in the next month, based on what we said.

Bad news: no Spanish translation, the former facilitator (Blonde) is back, very apologetic and not as difficult as before, but I don't know how she was restored to power. And I didn't find a way to ask the leaders of the coup what happened.

Apparently the reason we've had a sudden flood of dealers, hypes and hookers (a la Priscilla's appearance) in the last month or so is that the camera on 51st and Wood has been displacing the action to other blocks. Now the word is that because crime went down in that area, the camera will go away. I've been told each camera costs $11,000 a piece and there aren't enough of them to go around to all the neighborhoods who want them.

For any of you pro-privacy folks who don't like the idea of cameras recording everyone's every move in a public place, I share your distaste, but when I hear that business went up substantially in restaurants on 47th when they had a camera because people felt safe enough to go out, it makes me rethink my position somewhat.

A few lucky breaks

The Big Picture High School a couple blocks from my house announced it has five openings for freshmen. My neighbor, Victoria, who is friends with Dawn and came to do yoga at my house once, got one of them. Whoo-hoo!

I went by Victoria's house last night to congratulate her. She wasn't home but her mom was. "She should be congratulated," she said. Her mom was an elementary ed major and a basketball player at a college in Pennsylvania, but dropped out when she became pregnant with Victoria. Mom is excited about Victoria going to a school where parent participation is welcomed and encouraged.

Dawn asked me last night to talk with School Lady about sending her oldest daughter there, too. I expect to see her at the Chavez LSC meeting tomorrow. Let's hope my Spanish is up to the task of persuading her to give it a try.

The only worry I've heard is that the girl who jumped Dawn last year might be trying to get in. I'd really rather not have them in the same school together. Much as my inner idealist would like her to have the chance to change her life, I'd really rather not take the chance that she won't seize the opportunity in a constructive way.

Priscilla Stops by in Absentia

...but it's a good thing. Last night when I got home, the white plastic bag was still on the bottom step. Priscilla's sneakers were gone and my old ratty sandals were inside.

No other sign of Priscilla last night. Let's hope, but not expect, she did go to treatment.

Priscilla Stops By II

It took Priscilla at least 20 minutes, maybe half an hour, to fall asleep. She was twitching and scratching herself in that way crack addicts have before her breathing slowed and she stilled.

Earlier, we had been talking while she ate. "You got a lot of novels in here?" she asked me. She picked up Mark Kurlanksky's Salt and I laughed.

"That's a boring-ass book," I warned her.

"You don't have any V.C. Andrews?"

"No, I don't. You like V.C. Andrews?"

"Yes."

"What else you like to read?"

"Dean Koontz." She told me she read Cujo once but Stephen King is too long and too scary for her. Dean Koontz is OK and maybe she read some R.L. Stine, too, when she was a kid.

She told me she flew to Colorado once, when she was 12. She went mountain climbing there. I told her my sister and her husband do rock-climbing in California.

"I don't think I could do that," she said.

"Oh, I think you could," I told her. "You have the arm strength." She smiled shyly at that.

She told me she's been doing crack for six months. "I'm 21 years old. I look like I'm 30. I feel like I'm 60," she said. "I don't want to do this anymore."

We talked about where she could go for treatment. She knows of some religious place on Hermitage that offers treatment. It's not Teresa House (they don't do treatment).

When I went through her jeans pockets before putting them in the wash, I found her crack pipe. It was the only thing she carried. It was very small. I set it on the dryer.

About 11 p.m., when her clothes were about halfway dry, I woke her up and made her take a shower. She stumbled to the stairs, eyes still red from drugs and lack of sleep. She was ready to fall asleep on the guest bed after the shower, but I wouldn't let her.

"Please, could I stay the night? I won't steal anything."

"I am not ready to do that yet," I said, very calmly.

"I understand," she said, with just a hint of disappointment.

When she was dressed, bandaged (her feet had cuts and blisters) in socks and sandals, and five dollars richer because that's how much it costs to stay the night with some lady who takes in overnight guests to make a buck, I showed her the pipe.

"I found this in your pants pocket," I said, holding it out to her.

She took it, then said, with a slight edge of resentment, "Why did you have to give me that back?"

"Because it's yours. Do you want it?"

"I could give it to somebody..."

"Is that really helping them?"

She handed it back to me. "I'm going to that place on Hermitage in the morning," she said.

I hope to God she did, but I don't expect it.

As she left, I told her, "Priscilla, you know this is the last time, right? No more money, no more food, no more showers. If I see you again on the street, I'm going to ask you about treatment, because that's the first thing you need. Do you understand?"

"Yes," she said. "I respect that."

Then she asked me to leave her sneakers out on the steps for her to pick up in the morning.

This morning I left them in a white plastic bag on the bottom step.

Priscilla Stops By

This weekend I went to my hometown, a small city in an oft-forgotten state, for my 20th high school reunion. At the Saturday afternoon picnic in a state park, my oldest friend's five year old daughter had a small problem and went looking for Mommy.

Though I didn't see the event that set her off, I saw her running with a very serious, purposeful expression on her face until she got within eyesight and earshot, at which point the waterworks and sound effects went off. She ran up wailing. Mommy, who hadn't seen her coming, went right into consolation mode.

"She was fine until she got in range," I noted to another friend, also a mother, who laughed knowingly.

Last night the same thing happened to me, except it was Priscilla the minute I got out of the cab from Midway. I even saw her coming. I was picking up the soggy copies of Hoy on the front sidewalk when I saw her small, lithe shape coming from across the street. "Oh, shit, it's Priscilla. Here we go," flashed through my head.

She wasn't crying then, but she was when she got within range. "I just need to talk to you," she wailed. "Yup-yup beat on me." We sat on the stoop. I thought I saw Rosa getting out of her white car with the different-colored doors and wished I was talking with her instead.

Priscilla and I sat on the stoop while she sobbed out a story to which I paid very little attention. The story involved her boyfriend, whoring for crack (this time she used the words "going on dates" as a euphemism), how she wants to get off the stuff but he got mad when she didn't bring any rock home to him, etc. etc. She says two ladies prayed for her on Sunday and she was able to stop using for half a day. It's a start. I had an arm around her, which she appeared to want, but my inner purpose was to judge her arm and body strength in case something bad happened and I would have to use force to defend myself. She's strong for her size, and it's harder to stop someone on crack.

When she started to wind down, I had her breathe deeply and long on the exhale until she was quiet. "Are you really hurt anywhere?" I asked her, with a serious not syrupy tone.

"No," she said, equally serious. It's so hard to know when the actor's mask is off with an active addict, but that word had the ring of truth.

"You're probably hungry," I said. "I don't know what I've got in the house, but let's see."

She was soggy and cold (it rained all day--it was sunny in my hometown). I let her eat. She asked for a t-shirt to wear while her clothes were in the washer. I went upstairs and found an old t-shirt with the word "Boss" small on the chest and large on the rear. It was a gift from a friend when I became board president of her youth-focused nonprofit. It has a stain on it now and was the easiest of the t-shirt memorablia to part with. Besides, it's probably Hugo Boss, so Priscilla could be styling in it.

She took a nap in the living room while her clothes went through the washer. It's hard not to feel affection for someone while you're watching them sleep. But that still didn't mean she was going to spend the night at my house, which she was angling for.

to be continued...

More good than scary neighbors

Quick update on the scary neighbor front: the good neighbors are helping out. I've had an offer of a place to sleep--thanks Rose and Junior and family---and my neighbor the principal is going to take a walk up and remind the guys on the corner that she lives here too, so there's another white lady to pick on about calling cops. Fr. Ed suggested I bring on the prayer brigade. Not sure how that's gonna work, but we'll give it a try, right?

Maritza's Wild Ride Part II

I couldn't remember exactly how to get to the museum parking lot, and the kids began to smell smoke from the engine at Lake Park Avenue just before we turned on to Stony Island. The gauge didn't show anything--the needle was smack in the middle between C and H. I can't smell because of my allergies, but the engine light came on just as we were coming to the museum. Anyway, what was I going to do, stop????

The official museum parking lot is at the bottom of a hill. Oh, great, I thought--this will be fun getting out. I had barely started down when I saw the LED lights: Parking $8.00

I spent all but two bucks on gas when we left home. "Hey, I don't have money for this!" I started trying to turn the car around. Ready fire aim--then I asked, "do you guys have eight dollars between you?"

"We have money," Aurora said, quite calmly. Tires squealing, I lurched the van around again. The turning ratio just cleared the curb and we went down in the garage.

"Eight dollars," said the attendant.

"Could I park this thing and come back to you?" I said over my shoulder, rolling away, with one foot on the brake and the other on the gas pedal.

Once the car was parked, Joey put his hand on the hood. "Ow! It's hot," he said, shaking his hand to cool it. Aurora pulled out the family cell phone and called her dad to warn him that the engine was overheating and we might need a ride back. Aurora then paid the attendant while I took a few deep breaths.

We had a lovely time at the show, and the engine had about two hours to cool off. Another good thing was that, unlike me, most people knew where the free parking was and avoided the garage. We were among the first back there after the show and bolted out ahead of the crowd to avoid getting caught on the hill.

"Aurora, could you turn on the heater and crank it up as high as possible?" She fumbled with the controls while I got us up the hill and back onto Stony Island. Since we were going home in the dark, I found out a few more of the car's idiosyncrasies--its lack of interior lighting, for example, making it impossible to read the speedometer, any of the gauges, or read the gears on the shift. One of Dad's old cars was like that too--oh no, it was just that the speedometer was broken, that's right. Anyway, I knew I'd had some good practice driving blind thanks to my old man. And he was definitely enjoying the ride with us last night, I'm sure.

The other good practice of yore that came in handy last night was to run the car heater to let the heat out of the engine. I learned that one the summer after I graduated college, on a ride through Phoenix at 108 degrees. That trick kept the engine light off most of the way home last night, too. By this time, I was really getting that shifting down and feeling my way into just enough pressure to keep the engine idling not whining at stoplights.

We really lucked out at the end--the parking spot was still there! It was big enough to drive into, and though the van's tail was sticking out a little relative to its head, I figured Dawn's dad could deal with that if he didn't like it.

I came in to give back the keys. Dawn's mom asked how it went. "Ella era nerviosa," Aurora told her.

"Si, era nerviosa!" Yep, I was nervous. "Pero no mate tus ninos." I didn't kill her children, and by 9:17 I was home drinking what I felt was a very deserved beer.

Maritza's Wild Ride

Last night Dawn and her friend Janice and her little brother Joey wanted to go to the free Redmoon Theater show at the Museum of Science and Industry. I had made reservations for us a while back, and the plan was we would take the Garfield bus out there and get a ride home. But my friends with the car bailed at the last minute (totally OK--wedding plans take precedence), so we were faced with taking one bus home through uncomfortable territory or two buses home on a school night.

So Dawn's parents offered to let me drive one of their cars. Great idea, right? But these are the same people who left one of their cars on my parking pad, remember? It's still there, still with a beer can on the seat, still not running yet because Dawn's dad and brother haven't had time to work on it. Last night's car was an older model white van, I forget the make, in only marginally better condition.

Dawn's brother, who's officially not allowed to drive because he messed up when his parents did let him--the fact that he's only 15 now is apparently immaterial--was deputized to show me how to drive the van, since he could explain the fine points in English. He hopped in the driver's seat, gave it some serious gas, and explained that if you let your foot off the accelerator, the car will stall out. "So you drive with two feet," he said, demonstrating the use of the brake with the gas on an automatic car. My dad drove that way all the time, I thought. Then he pointed out the wisdom of shifting to idle at prolonged stops, as if you were driving stick. Pop, I thought, you better come down from heaven and take a ride in this car. You are the man for this job. Especially since the driver's side seat belt was broken.

"No voy a matar tus ninos," I promised Dawn's mother. Fortunately, she laughed. I really wasn't going to kill her children--after all, their seat belts were working.

"Say a Hail Mary before we start," I suggested, more than half seriously, but didn't enforce it. Given that I drive about three times a year and the last time I got behind the wheel I rear-ended someone at a tollbooth and ended up out $500 between the car I hit and the one I was driving, I really did want Dad's spirit along for the ride. We certainly had our share of rolling stops at stop signs, but eventually I did manage to shift into idle without provoking the enging into agonized wailing.

Joey tried to play with me on the way to the gas station. "What's that noise?" he asked.

Aurora could tell it was no time for games. "Joey, hush!" she said earnestly. He did.

I managed to keep my cussing to down to one east of the expressway and one west. The first cuss was on the one slope we were stuck on, just before the Ryan, where I nearly front-ended someone trying to shift out of idle on the tiny slope. "Fuck" escaped me at that moment. I'm sorry.

Twenty feet later, the other curse emerged. "Shit, would you get in a lane!" I said as a truck with a busted taillight hand-signaled past me.

"Can we go on the highway?" Joey asked.

"No way, buster," I said. At least he made me laugh through my gritted teeth and leg cramp from keeping my left foot ready to brake at any moment.

to be continued...

Ring My Bell

...but please, not at 3 a.m., like you did last night, whoever you are.

Dinga-dingadingadinga-ding-dong. Really loud and really fast. It took two or three of those before the doorbell called me into full consciousness. Who is it? Dawn? A prank? No, probably Priscilla, I thought, fumbling for my glasses, checking the clock, pulling on jeans and a baseball shirt.

Priscilla stopped by night before last in search of five dollars. She met me earlier this summer, when she cut through my yard and Mr. Worrisome worried on my behalf that she was trying to steal something. I invited her to set on the stoop with me and have a drink of water and some cherries.

The other night she rang the bell at a decent hour, maybe 8:30. "I remember you. You were nice to me. I need five dollars for my baby's Pampers," she told me. From the number of times I've had women addicts tell me they needed money for Pampers, it must be official code for a nickel bag. "I'll come wash your windows, whatever you want. I don't want to go whoring for it," she added so matter of factly I thought I felt some truth in there. [But damn, addicts are such good actors she might have been playing me with that line, too.]

"No, that's not necessary," I said, in a tone just as matter-of-fact, though surprised inside to hear someone speak so casually of "whoring." The words that really caught me were "wash your windows." They're filthy and I've been thinking about washing them for two months, but haven't gotten to it. An extra pair of hands would help. "I could use some help washing windows. Why don't you come by Saturday morning? I think I've got five dollars in here."

I went to dig up what I had in my wallet. Frankly, I was broke til payday (today) and knew five dollars was going to wipe me out. Priscilla started pushing for seven.
"You're getting what I've got," I said with just enough truth and just enough edge that it stopped her. "Here's four. I think I've got a dollar in change...." I had to go down to dimes and nickels but I got it and gave it to her.

She seemed pretty enthusiastic about Saturday. She's squatting in the same house down the street where Jesse is. She informed me that Yup-yup (named for his call on the street) just got out of prison. A while ago, little Junior asked me, as casually as Priscilla spoke of whoring, if Yup-yup was the guy whose brains got shot all over the pavement back in July. I knew Yup-yup was alive, didn't know he'd been in prison, but we hadn't heard his call on the block for a while. Priscilla suggested Yup-yup could help me find her Saturday if I didn't spot her right away.

I didn't think more about it until the doorbell rang. There was a lot of noise early last night--I couldn't tell whether it was in the alley, on the corner, or down the block. There could have been some of all three. It was also hard to tell whether it was loud talking or the kind of arguing that warrants a 9-1-1 call. Frankly, I was too tired to investigate and didn't even feel like picking up the phone. So I didn't. Maybe I should have. I'm superstitious enough to see one way of looking at the 3 a.m. doorbell as karmic revenge.

No, I wasn't planning to answer the door, by the way. I promise I'm not that stupid. But I did go to the front top floor windows and look out to see who was there. By the time I was looking, no one was on the front step. I went down and looked out the back first-floor windows and no one was there, either. It felt like it took an hour to get back to sleep. In that time, Priscilla got a few Hail Marys out of me on top of the five bucks.

Near and Distant Relations

I went by Dawn's house last night to see how the first week of school was going. We were chatting on the front porch when her mom brought out some family photos. I got to see Dawn getting baptized in Mexico, Joey when he was just a baby, even Dawn's mom when she was about Dawn's age now. They do look fairly alike.

Joey was supposed to bring in something from his culture for a school assignment. He wanted to bring a photo of him and Dawn riding horses in Mexico.

We got to talking about baptisms. Joey is eight and has yet to be baptized. His mom--I am so embarrassed I am not sure of her name but for here we will call her Elizabeth--says they don't have anyone to serve as his godparents. Godparents are a big deal in Mexican families. It's not just that they promise to raise the child if the parents die--that's pretty standard Catholic folk legend that people take seriously but priests try to fight, saying it's more important that godparents help kids grow up as people of faith--but they shell out lots of bucks at the baptism and at other key life points. I make that point because as an Irish-American godparent I'm not really expected to do that for my godson/nephew. Dawn's family would want a padrino and madrina who could really be second parents, compadre and comadre, with them. That's pretty different from my experience of godparents, both the ones I had and the godmother I am now.

Supposedly today was grandparents' day at Chavez. Joey wanted me to come as his grandmother. "The only thing is, you're a lot whiter than I am," he said, which cracked me up. Really the whole thing had me laughing pretty hard--I'm only a year or two older than his parents, hardly abuela/grandma material--but I was like, "sure, why not--if it's OK with your mom." I've been wanting to go to school and meet his teachers. So we went to talk to Elizabeth about it.

She was in the back making dinner for her husband--Joey and Dawn's dad works nights so he eats dinner (or is that breakfast?) around 9:30 before he goes to work. I believe he fixes cars at an all-night garage or something. When Joey told her his idea, both his parents busted up laughing. Loosely translated from Spanish, she said, "You don't have any grandparents here. Maureen can come to school and meet your teachers another day."

They do have family here--at least one uncle and an aunt or two, I think. But it's hard not to have grandmom and granddad around when you're little.

Oh, Joey also made me laugh when he said I remind him of his abuelito when I nag him about finishing his homework. Apparently Grandpa would poke him in the shoulder when they were doing something and he got distracted. Then he would say, "Come on Joey, hurry up!"--which is what I say when I'm trying to get him to get through his homework. So I guess I'm his honorary granddad.