Voices from the Rust Belt
Page 19
* * *
My wife isn’t from Flint.
I am.
Well, I grew up in the city until I was twelve, when my parents moved out to Flushing, a picturesque suburb that finally got its own coffee shop in 1997. That was the year I graduated high school. But even though I had a Flushing address, I auditioned for every play at Flint Youth Theatre and went to the Flint Central High School prom. I always considered myself a Flintstone and spent as much time as I could in the city. When I went away to college in Chicago, I always hoped to come back home. To me, Flint was a place of youthful energy and risk, frisson and connection. I was aware that I was the salmon swimming upstream, against the current of all the other people eager to leave, but I didn’t care.
When I met my eventual wife a few years later, I regaled her with all the stories of my friends and their fucked-up lives. The insane intensity of life in Flint. The city had been abandoned, I said. Physically abandoned by the company that built and nurtured it, and then again by half of its people left struggling in the wake of deindustrialization. Psychically abandoned by a state and nation that had little patience for what they saw as retrograde rust … the unrealistic expectations (they thought) of a populace that expected luxury but lacked the ingenuity and the work ethic to hold on to it. Were these assumptions justified? That was one question she might ask. I would shrug. Occasionally, I might say. Usually not. What was key, though, was that this place broke everyone, and the brokenness made us like Jesus. Conscious suffering, self-aware suffering, opened us up to beatification and grace. We Flintstones cracked open like Easter eggs that offered our provisional yolks as a sacrifice to testify to the flawed construction of the world and its human institutions. Or maybe we were just Buddhas who emptied ourselves inside out so that we could move forward as that best of blank slates: an erased American chalkboard, ready to be filled with knowledge and questions, to offer hope and transcendence to the world at large, and to find peace for ourselves. Inner peace that existed independent of external poverty.
For my wife, practical concerns edged out my visionary rants.
I wanted to go back to the place she said seemed to break everyone I knew (my fault for building the perception, after all, since I told her about the pedo that chased two friends through Woodcroft—the rich neighborhood—in his car, even while my friends in Civic Park and the State Streets—poor neighborhoods—saw neighbors’ houses light like jack-o’-lanterns and burn down on a fiery autumn night) … how on earth was I going to promise my children a happy, stable childhood in this, my fucked-up home?
“I got this,” I said.
I actually felt—and I’m not bullshitting here—more able to deliver that happy, stable childhood in Flint than anywhere else. See, in Flint, I knew the rules. It isn’t chaos. There are rules. There are especially rules if you’re 1) middle-class, 2) white, and 3) educated. And the college education supplied by my father’s almost forty years at GM under UAW-earned contracts got me there. My kids would have friends here. They would live in a stable neighborhood and go to a good school. They would have educational opportunities, we’d keep an eye on them, and it wouldn’t be any more difficult or risky than a life in Chicago, or New York, or New Orleans, or San Francisco. It would be safer, less risky, because I knew how Flint worked. I didn’t know how those other cities worked. I didn’t know their rules. I had the tools to control a child’s experience of Flint. Anything else, I’d be learning from scratch.
I said this with a lot of arrogance and a fair amount of truth, but hubris always lands the punch line.
When our first daughter was born, we decided to leave Chicago and move to Flint. Because of the fallout from the 2008 housing meltdown, we could afford a house south of Court Street, just east of downtown. When I grew up, this was one of Flint’s most exclusive neighborhoods. Now, a family on a single income could land a beautiful 1930s Tudoresque house for a down payment less than that of the tiniest Chicago bungalow, in the middle range of five figures. We could use the money we saved to choose any school for our daughter we wanted. We were close to my parents. We were close to friends. I planted a garden in our backyard and put up a swing set and a fort. The front yard was filled with dappled sunlight that streamed through the maple leaves each summer, enough shade to cool off, and enough sun to nourish the petunias, iridescent in their violet summer glory.
It was cool.
I knew the rules.
* * *
I didn’t know the rules.
The rules were bullshit.
I was thinking about classroom sizes and museums and violent crime and copper scrappers. I was thinking about street violence and friends from broken homes and arson and unemployment. Too many guns and too little supervision. These were the problems I was trying to puzzle out. Meanwhile, the city went under state receivership and started drawing water from the Flint River instead of the Great Lakes by way of Detroit. The rest is a sad story told across the world by now: the river water wasn’t treated properly; it leached lead and other junk from the pipes into tap water. A lot of people drank that water. A lot of people got very sick. Government officials tried to cover up the catastrophe, leading to more sickness, more delays, more damage.
I had never banked on the water going bad.
In all my youthful exuberance, my desire to bring my girls up here, in my community, my pride, my home, I thought I had covered all of the bases, but water is fundamental, the number-two necessity for humans after breathable air. A place that tries to damage you with its water is damaging in the most basic way. And so, I stayed alert each night, watching Ruby bathe, conscious that this isn’t right, that this is supposed to be safe, that she would only be safe, for sure, through our unfailing vigilance.
* * *
Ruby doesn’t know that the water in this city is bad. Dangerous.
Mary, her five-year-old sister, understands it in a straightforward way, like Darth Vader, like busy traffic, a risk to be avoided. She knows that she shouldn’t drink the water just like she shouldn’t talk to strangers in strange cars. This loss of innocence and the anonymous lies that prompted it make me sad and angry. Sometimes, it keeps me up at night, thinking of all the injury, the hurt, the real hurt, physical, mental; the loss of trust, the enormity of that loss, the immensity of betrayal; the contempt of those officials who have treated us—treated our children—like expendable animals. Lab rats. Numbers and statistics that might be converted into a political liability, and what a pain in the ass we are for that reason. I’ve dreamed about it more than once. What if the tests the city conducted on our household water were wrong? What if we didn’t act quickly enough? What was this place going to look like in fifteen years? Who was going to be left?
Mary is a bright five-year-old. She is old enough to understand some of this. Not old enough to feel the outrage, but old enough to notice the contradiction and confusion. “It’s expensive,” we tell her. “Why can’t we drink it?” she asks. “Well,” I tell her, “you can wash your hands in it, but don’t drink it. Don’t you drink it. Even if it’s the middle of the night and you’re thirsty, come and wake me up. I’ll get you a glass. You’re right. The world isn’t right and the world isn’t fair.”
Some of these are conversations every father expects to have with his child, but not so soon, and certainly not about the unsafe tap water that costs you $130 each month. Not in the first state to light its darkened city streets with streetlamps. Not in the U.S. state that put the world on wheels and taught it to move with speed.
Ruby isn’t even two yet. She doesn’t see the confusion or the contradiction. For Ruby, the confusion is much simpler: she likes to dip the plastic cup in her bathwater and take a drink when she can. We freak out, lunge forward, snatch up that cup, and toss it to the floor. Ruby yells in surprise and disappointment, at the loud noise, our worried faces, the brief chaos of moving hands and water spray.
She’ll relax again, in a few moments, when we soothe her with a song, or give her so
mething else to play with.
We’ll relax, too, when the last of the water has finally vanished down the drain.
Contributors
HUDA AL-MARASHI’s essays have appeared in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Al Jazeera, the Rumpus, the Offing, and elsewhere. Excerpts from her memoir-in-progress can be found in the anthologies Love Inshallah: The Secret Love Lives of Muslim American Women, Becoming: What Makes a Woman, and Beyond Belief: The Secret Lives of Women and Extreme Religion.
ERIC ANDERSON is the owner of Comics Are Go, a comic book store in Sheffield Village, Ohio, and the author of a collection of poems, The Parable of the Room Spinning (Kattywompus Press).
MARTHA BAYNE is a Chicago-based writer and editor whose work has appeared in the Chicago Reader, Buzzfeed, the Baffler, Belt Magazine, the Rumpus, Latterly, and other outlets. She is the editor of Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology, the founder of the Soup & Bread community meal project, and a member of Theater Oobleck’s artistic ensemble.
JOHN LLOYD CLAYTON is a writer and teacher in Chicago.
CONNOR COYNE has written two novels—Shattering Glass and Hungry Rats—and Atlas, a collection of short stories, all inspired by the past, present, and future of Flint, Michigan. His website is ConnorCoyne.com and he can be found on Facebook (facebook.com/connorcoyne) and Twitter (@connorcoyne). He lives in Flint with his wife, two daughters, and an adopted rabbit.
G. M. DONLEY is a writer, designer, and photographer. Donley is a longtime resident of Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
SALLY ERRICO is the deputy managing editor at strategy + business and the former web manager at The New Yorker. Her writing and editing also has appeared in The New York Times, The Independent, the Observer, the Rumpus, and Northern Ohio Live. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their two children.
DAVID FAULK is a PhD candidate in Germanic studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He writes about Arab-German literature of migration and fools himself into thinking that after years of studying Arabic he actually knows the language.
KATHRYN FLINN is a plant ecologist and assistant professor of biology at Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio. Originally from Indiana, Pennsylvania, she earned a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology from Cornell.
AARON FOLEY is the author of How to Live in Detroit Without Being a Jackass and editor of The Detroit Neighborhoods Guidebook. A Detroit native, he worked in journalism for ten years before leading a new neighborhood content site for the City of Detroit, where he currently works.
JIM GRIFFIOEN is a lawyer turned writer and photographer. His work has appeared in Harper’s, Vice, Time, Foam, The Baffler, Dwell, and many other publications. He has lived in Detroit since 2006.
BEN GWIN is the author of the novel Clean Time: The True Story of Ronald Reagan Middleton (Burrow Press, 2018). His work has appeared in The Normal School, Mary: A Journal of New Writing, Belt Magazine, and others. He lives in Pittsburgh with his daughter.
JEFF Z. KLEIN, born and raised in Buffalo, is a former editor and sportswriter at The New York Times and the Village Voice and the author of several books about hockey. Currently he writes and produces the “Niagara Frontier Heritage Moments” on WBFO radio. Klein lives in the Allentown section of Buffalo and in Manhattan.
JACQUELINE MARINO is an associate professor of journalism at Kent State University. She is the author of White Coats: Three Journeys Through an American Medical School and the co-editor of Car Bombs to Cookie Tables: The Youngstown Anthology.
LAYLA MEILLIER is currently graduating from Genesee Early College at the University of Michigan–Flint. She will transfer to New York University to study cinema and begin classes in the fall of 2017.
MARSHA MUSIC is a writer, poet, and self-described “Detroitist,” daughter of a pre-Motown record producer; she reflects on Detroit’s history and music in numerous books and periodicals, and on her eponymous blog. Ms. Music is a 2012 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow and 2015 Knight Arts Challenge winner, and a noted speaker, narrator, and storyteller featured in Detroit oral histories, podcasts, voiceovers and documentary films.
DAVE NEWMAN is the author of five books, most recently Please Don’t Shoot Anyone Tonight (Broken River Books, 2017). He lives in Trafford, Pennsylvania, the last town in the Electric Valley, with his wife, the writer Lori Jakiela, and their two children.
JASON SEGEDY is the director of planning and urban development for the City of Akron, Ohio. His passion is creating great places and spaces where residents can live, work, and play.
RYAN SCHNURR is a writer and photographer from northeast Indiana. He is the author of In the Watershed: A Journey Down the Maumee River.
AMANDA SHAFFER is a professional coach whose consulting practice serves mission-driven individuals and organizations across higher education and the social sector. Outside of work she is a volunteer with local and national nonprofits dedicated to advancing equity, inclusion, and social progress.
MARGARET SULLIVAN is the media columnist for The Washington Post. A native of Lackawanna, New York, she spent most of her career at the Buffalo News, where she became the first woman to hold the top editor’s position, one she held for thirteen years. She is a former public editor for The New York Times.
DR. HENRY LOUIS TAYLOR, JR. is a full professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, as well as the founding director of the Center for Urban Studies at the University at Buffalo. A historian and urban planner, Taylor has authored numerous books, articles, and technical reports on issues relating to the black urban experience and social justice in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean. He has received numerous awards for his research and practical activities.
ANNE TRUBEK is the founder and director of Belt Publishing. She is the author of The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting and A Skeptic’s Guide to Writers’ Houses, and the co-editor of Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology.
CAROLYNE WHELAN is a freelance writer and poet with a special love for the intersection between nature and humanity. Her first book, The Glossary of Tania Aebi, was published by Finishing Line Press, and she is currently working on a manuscript about cycling from Canada to Mexico along the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, listed as one of the hardest cycling routes in the world.
ERIC WOODYARD is an award-winning sports journalist working at MLive.com—The Flint Journal. He is a native of Flint and author of the novel Wasted. Woodyard has interviewed many notable celebrities such as LeBron James, Snoop Dogg, Russell Simmons, J. Cole, and Mike Tyson. He appeared on the ESPN’s E:60 and Outside the Lines in 2016. Ethan Woodyard is his only child.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Stephen Morrison for seeing the potential in this book, and Pronoy Sarkar for his enthusiasm and insights.
Thanks to Martha Bayne, who edited the essays that originally appeared in Belt Magazine. Thanks to Scott Atkinson, who edited Happy Anyway: The Flint Anthology; Eric Boyd, editor of The Pittsburgh Anthology; Anna Clark, editor of A Detroit Anthology; Jody Kleinberg Biehl, editor of Right Here, Right Now: The Buffalo Anthology; Jacqueline Marino and Will Miller, editors of Car Bombs to Cookie Tables: The Youngstown Anthology; Jason Segedy, editor of The Akron Anthology; and Richey Piiparinen, co-editor of Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology.
Neither Belt Magazine nor Belt Publishing would have been able to originally publish these essays without Nicole Boose, William Rickman, Karie Kirkpatrick, Michelle Blankenship, Meredith Pangrace, David Wilson, Aaron Foley, Anna Clark, Haley Stone, Matt Stansberry, Michael Jauchen, Jim Babcock, and the many generous members of Belt.
Notes
Introduction: Why the Rust Belt Matters (and What It Is)
1. http://beltmag.com/mapping-rust-belt
2. http://www.museumofthecity.org/project/the-deindustrialization-of-youngstown/
Will Blacks Rise or Be Forgotten in the New Buffalo?
1. http://www.thecyberhood.net/documents/papers/dawn.pdf
The Fauxtopia
s of Detroit’s Suburbs
1. Steven Watts, The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century (New York: Vintage, 2006), 14.
2. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/mar/29/david-starkey-historian
King Coal and the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum
1. http://www.wvminewars.com/
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/business/energy-environment/the-people-v-the-coal-baron.html
3. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-dark-lord-of-coal-country-20101129?page=6
4. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/business/energy-environment/the-people-v-the-coal-baron.html
5. Blankenship was found guilty in 2015 of conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards and in 2016 was sentenced to a year in prison, and assessed a $250,000 fine.
6. http://bloodonthemountain.com/
7. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-dark-lord-of-coal-country-20101129?page=6
Seed or Weed?
1. The 606 trail opened in June 2015 to wide acclaim; a few months later, the land where the garden grew was sold to a developer. In the summer of 2017, the last of a set of five luxury townhomes was under construction on the site.