In the fall of 1997 the nurse who had served Cabrini for my then-employer left abruptly, and the word came down that if I wished to keep my job I would take a turn as a visiting nurse seeing Cabrini residents. Had there been another job on the horizon I would have taken it, and when I made that first trip between the metal posts, heart in my throat, off-duty Chicago police officer at my side, I fully expected to be on the job market as soon as the holiday season passed. But in the meantime something happened: I fell in love.
Cabrini was dangerous in those days, there's no doubt about it. Gangbangers loosed pit bulls on one of my colleagues and her police escort. Gunfire rang out nightly. Even in broad daylight there were those whose judgment was impaired by the effects of alcohol and various street drugs. Poverty and hopelessness triggered acts of desperation.
Cabrini was in disrepair, and dirty. The elevators ran sporadically, and weren't safe when they did, so "my" cops and I climbed lots of stairs. My record was 34 flights in one morning, a number duplicated many times. Vomitus, urine, feces, trash, broken bottles and their contents, rodents dead and alive, and drug dealers plying their trade were common in the stairwells. The most meticulous housekeeper couldn't forestall the cockroaches invading from neighboring apartments. Garbage accumulated on the walkways despite the seemingly perpetual sweeping of workers and residents.
And there was resignation. I treated people who wouldn't even trouble to wake up, much less get out of bed, for the nurse. Many others did not take their medicine, keep their appointments, or attempt to heed counsel about ways to improve their health, having learned over the course of years that nothing they did made a difference or mattered much anyway. No food, no money, no shoes, no problem. That's just how it was, how yesterday had been, how tomorrow would be. Get by somehow, or not.
What was I to do? I wondered this more than once. Many times during my initial evaluation of a patient I felt overwhelmed and helpless: "I can't do this. I don't know what to do, where to start, what to try." But I had to go back, or lose my job. And so I went. And learned something: No matter how hopeless a situation seemed during my first visit, by the second visit somehow an avenue opened. I never knew what it would be, where it would lead, or quite how the patient and I would proceed, but the next step to be taken, an opportunity to be explored, a need that could be met, something, appeared. I learned to go back. To show up. Because it was all I could do. And that's when the miracle happened.
Showing up was what was needed. Every program, every service, every charity had tried and failed, it seemed. The history of generations that had grown up knowing only that life, with no other role models, resources, or life skills was too daunting. But those programs, services, and charities had their own (undoubtedly well intended) agendae, and crafted by and large by educated, professional, white people, those agendae simply didn't fit. How far can you walk in shoes that don't fit? Not very, I'd wager. When something doesn't fit we leave it behind, no matter how "good" it might be.
But I am educated, professional, and white. Only the grace of helplessness and powerlessness moved me to set aside whatever agenda I might have had and simply show up to see who and what was there, and what we might do. And see I did. And connect we did, as well as my world and that of Cabrini can.
Little remains of Cabrini now, but then there was true community. The gangbangers, dope dealers, and ne'er-do-wells constituted but a small minority, and were as disliked and distrusted by the other Cabrini residents as by "outsiders." In the "real" community, people knew and cared about one another. Children always had a family member, older neighbor, godparent, "play" relative, or friend to take them in. Somebody had a little money, somebody had a car that could be coaxed to life for an essential errand, somebody had food to spare, somebody knew what had happened to the patient I couldn't find. Although I never saw evidence of a family meal, I saw a lot of cooking: Cooking for the church, cooking for a sick neighbor, cooking for a party or holiday. Sunday mornings were a sight to behold: Church ladies in bright dresses and big hats; gentlemen out of their worn jeans and into dapper, if worn, suits; children scrubbed and polished. Neighbors actually were neighborly: They visited on the streets as long as the gangs were quiet, they visited in one another's homes, they helped if someone was sick, they passed judgment on conduct not up to their standards. And they welcomed visitors, be they even professional, educated, and white, as long as those visitors were authentically present and not there to superimpose alien ways . . . that is, as long as those visitors sincerely and genuinely showed up.
The people of Cabrini touched me as few have (although perhaps that is because I fail to show up as authentically elsewhere): The grandmother whose son was in jail and daughter on drugs, who had adopted her grandson and "forgotten" that homework was important (Did she ever know? Did her son and daughter do homework before jail and drugs?). The five year old who asked everyone in his home for a pencil, because the kindergarten teacher had said he needed to bring one to school. And every person scolded and cursed him for asking, interrupting, crying, disturbing them. Later he attempted to scale the refrigerator to reach a box of cereal to make himself breakfast, only to be chided for doing something dangerous instead of asking for help. If he asked he was scolded, if he tried to help himself he was scolded. In a few short years a street gang would offer welcome refuge. The blind grandmother contracted in a fetal position with 18 pressure ulcers on her body, lying in urine on a worn bed in a dark room with a sticky floor and an exhausted daughter caregiver. My team and I got those wounds healed and that grandma walking, and the daughter cleaned that house and cared for her mother to the day she died. The amputee whose cancer surgery left her with a crater in her belly that became infected, trapped in a highrise with an elevator that didn't work. The therapist taught her to strap on her old prosthesis and navigate the treacherous stairwells so she could get to her doctor, and soon I saw them walking all over Cabrini. The young men with gunshot wounds, all innocent victims who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time; just ask them, they'll tell you. And it will be quite a story, I promise. The man who pored over the Bible and talked of serving God, but didn't hear his seriously ill wife begging for help from the next room. The old woman whose rowhouse was so clean I would have eaten there, the many who cared for their families and neighbors, the single mom rearing six children who received scholarships to private schools while she worked two jobs (she died, and one daughter is in jail, I learned last week). The young wife who refused to accept her husband's terminal diagnosis; he recovered and she died; go figure. But the love in that home was palpable. There were so many. And I was privileged to show up, and listen and watch, and learn their stories, and try to figure out what I might offer in return. I kept that job until the company that employed me was sold years later, ever astounded that my onerous assignment had been transformed over a few months into a labor of love.
One Sunday morning two or three years ago I delivered a box of excess fresh produce to a mother and daughter recently settled into a newly constructed apartment on the fringes of the housing project. Longtime Cabrini residents, they talked of its history and of all that was lost when the problem was reduced to no more than substandard housing and residents scattered far and wide to "better" dwellings. Families and neighbors who had been like family were separated, stressed-out parents and caregivers lost their support systems, suddenly there was no one to go for medicine or groceries, no one stopped in to visit, there were rules against congregating in "public areas," and with children no longer able to stop at Grandma's or Auntie's after school, working parents had to choose between their livelihoods and their children's safety. Mother and daughter spoke of the old life and the new, and of how if they could they would give up the nice new apartment to have the connections, community, and caring they had before.
"You should write a book," I said. They laughed dismissively. "Really," I insisted. "This is a story that needs to be told. The lives people had, complexities incorrectly reduced to a single issue, and the unfortunate aftermath. A people and a way of life are being destroyed, and their story needs to be told."
There was silence, nods. And then the mother spoke: "You write it. You tell it. Because you tell it good." And the daughter's nod added the period and underscore: "You tell it good."
I don't know that I can tell their story, or anyone's, including my own, "good," or even well. But having been given the gift of access to their lives, and to the lives of so many, and the gift of so many opportunities as a professional nurse, for three and a half decades and counting, it is time to try. Time to open a new dialog, time to offer whatever insight and wisdom those years might have given me, time to raise bothersome questions, time to be a bridge between those who have gone before and those who will follow. Come with me through this history and into whatever the future brings, and I shall do my very best to
tell it good.
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