Fourteen years later, the city appeared much prettier. It was another July, and the sun sparkled through the deep green
trees. The boats were out of their moorings, their distant sails like the wings of doves across Lake Michigan. Marty had
told me that he would be busy those first few days, and so I was left on my own. I had bought a map, and I followed
Martin Luther King Drive from its northernmost to its southernmost point, then went back up Cottage Grove, down
byways and alleys, past the apartment buildings and vacant lots, convenience stores and bungalow homes. And as I
drove, I remembered. I remembered the whistle of the Illinois Central, bearing the weight of the thousands who had
come up from the South so many years before; the black men and women and children, dirty from the soot of the
railcars, clutching their makeshift luggage, all making their way to Canaan Land. I imagined Frank in a baggy suit and
wide lapels, standing in front of the old Regal Theatre, waiting to see Duke or Ella emerge from a gig. The mailman I
saw was Richard Wright, delivering mail before his first book sold; the little girl with the glasses and pigtails was
Regina, skipping rope. I made a chain between my life and the faces I saw, borrowing other people’s memories. In this
way I tried to take possession of the city, make it my own. Yet another sort of magic.
On the third day I passed Smitty’s Barbershop, a fifteen-by-thirty-foot storefront on the edge of Hyde Park with four
barber’s chairs and a card table for LaTisha, the part-time manicurist. The door was propped open when I walked in,
the barbershop smells of hair cream and antiseptic mingling with the sound of men’s laughter and the hum of slow fans.
Smitty turned out to be an older black man, gray-haired, slender and stooped. His chair was open and so I took a seat,
soon joining in the familiar barbershop banter of sports and women and yesterday’s headlines, conversation at once
intimate and anonymous, among men who’ve agreed to leave their troubles outside.
Somebody had just finished telling a story about his neighbor-the man had been caught in bed with his wife’s cousin
and chased at the point of a kitchen knife, buck naked, out into the street-when the talk turned to politics.
“Vrdolyak and the rest of them crackers don’t know when to quit,” the man with the newspaper said, shaking his head
in disgust. “When Old Man Daley was mayor, didn’t nobody say nothing about him putting all them Irish up in City
Hall. But the minute Harold tries to hire some black people, just to even things out, they call it reverse racism-”
“Man, that’s how it always is. Whenever a black man gets into power, they gonna try and change the rules on him.”
“Worse part is, newspapers acting like it was black folks that started this whole mess.”
“What you expect from the white man’s paper?”
“You right. Harold knows what he’s doing, though. Just biding his time till the next election.”
That’s how black people talked about Chicago’s mayor, with a familiarity and affection normally reserved for a
relative. His picture was everywhere: on the walls of shoe repair shops and beauty parlors; still glued to lampposts from
the last campaign; even in the windows of the Korean dry cleaners and Arab grocery stores, displayed prominently, like
some protective totem. From the barbershop wall, that portrait looked down on me now: the handsome, grizzled face,
the bushy eyebrows and mustache, the twinkle in the eyes. Smitty noticed me looking at the picture and asked if I’d
been in Chicago during the election. I told him I hadn’t. He nodded his head.
“Had to be here before Harold to understand what he means to this city,” Smitty said. “Before Harold, seemed like
we’d always be second-class citizens.”
“Plantation politics,” the man with the newspaper said.
barré
(Barré)
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