Tag: storytelling

Lunch Money Reparations

Lunch Money Reparations

At the Goodman Theater Chicago’s Storytelling class, teaching artist Julie Ganey prompted us to write a “story of changed perspective” based on Goodman’s production of Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad. 

I had a story in the can, Lunch Money, about a changed perspective, and decided to revise it for the storytelling assignment before I saw the Penelopiad performance. When I finally saw Peneliopiad, I couldn’t see the change in perspective theme—still can’t. Did Penelope change her perspective? Did Odysseus? Who? What? 

Had I seen Peneiopiad first (one of the best productions I’ve ever seen in any theater anywhere), I would have written about an experience in honest storytelling.  I have lots of those. But, alas, it’s best I don’t sermonize on truthtelling. The following is my change-in-perspective story, which I’ll soon be reciting in person at the Goodman Theater’s “Lobby Stories.” If you’re a regular blog reader, thank you; you’ll understand why retelling this story is important.

Lunch Money Reparations

Reparations are a program of acknowledgment, redress, and closure for a grievous injustice. — From Here to Equality, Reparations for Black Americans in the 21st Century, by William A. Darity, Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen 

When I started working as a part-time receptionist in downtown Chicago, I lived with my nine-year-old son in a high-rise apartment and periodically spent more money than I had. Glitzy earrings or a new red lipstick often called to me as I passed through Marshall Field and Company on State Street. I once had my entire purse stolen off the counter as I adjusted my scarf in the mirror. 

Over the years, I’ve faced down quite a few street scams and purse snatchings. The worst was the time three teenage boys trapped me in a revolving door at the old Carson, Pirie Scott building. One had yanked on my purse as I entered, but I grabbed the shoulder straps while the accomplice pushed the door in the section in front of me. The accomplice stopped abruptly and held his hands on both glass doors. This left each of us stuck in a different section of the revolving door, awkwardly staring at each other through the glass. They all ran off when a security guard came to my rescue.

I added this grievance story to others like it. Joining the ranks of privileged pseudo-traumatized victims, I loudly condemned an exaggerated version of the bands of criminals marauding downtown Chicago. 

As a pensioner, I’ve inoculated myself against criminal assault by carrying nothing but my iPhone and a pocket-size purse where my bus pass, credit cards, and a small amount of cash are stored. Costume jewelry and cosmetics are no longer a retail draw. But I cannot resist accepting Dutch treat lunch invitations from friends, paying no attention to my budget or bank balance. 

One day, I sat waiting for a fellow retiree, Peter McLennon, in the lobby of a busy hotel where we’d planned to have lunch. I delved into my ever-present iPhone with heightened curiosity to see if anything big had happened between the time I had gotten off the bus, walked the two blocks to the hotel lobby, and plopped down in the overstuffed chair. 

I was so engrossed in the breaking news of a car accident on a distant highway that my senses were dulled to a body stirring in the chair next to me. When the body started in on her story, I momentarily jolted to attention. 

“My husband beat me for the last time. I been hidin’ in a women’s shelter but he found me, and now I need to move.”

“What?” I said as much to her as to myself since I was not quite tuned into her voice, my mind drifting in and out of her story while half-wondering what happened to the people in the car crash that was reporting out of my phone behind the now blank screen. 

“My social worker found a place in Cincinnati. They gonna hold a room 24 hours. I need $19 for the bus. Can you lend it to me?”

“What?” I looked around to see if Peter was nearby to rescue me. 

She repeated her story, adding some details about injuries inflicted by the husband. 

“As soon as I get situated in Cincinnati with a place to stay and a job, I’ll pay you back.” 

I tested her by asking if she was taking the mega-bus since $19 didn’t seem like enough money for a bus to Cincinnati. That stumped her, but she recovered nicely by describing where the bus station was. 

And for one shimmering split second, we caught each other’s eyes and I sensed she knew I was on to her. But she kept up the hustle. I admired that. She was working hard for her money.

I unzipped my little red purse and happily handed her my $20 lunch money. Before I zipped up, she was gone. The scam worked. Relief washed over me as I exhaled the stress of her desperation. Even if I doubted her, she deserved all the money I had for all the years I’d spent harboring both silent and noisy racial bias.

When Peter arrived, he commented on how serene I looked. As we walked toward the restaurant, I asked if he could pick up the tab for lunch. 

“Yes, of course.” He said.

And I didn’t even have to tell the story. 

 

May Day! Mothering Rough Seas

For a few years, my son and I lived at the Jersey Shore with his stepfather, Jack, on the confluence of a fresh water river and a saltwater bay. The east-west Toms River begins in the swamps of the Pine Barrens, widens and swells its way east, eventually slamming into the Barnegat Bay. Sailors love the Toms River, especially during the summer’s prevailing southerlies.

I am not a sailor. 

In our family, swimming, passed down from one generation to the next, was a right of passage for a three-year old.  Water is in our blood. Our sandy backyard, bulkheaded rich brine that nourished vibrant sea creatures and, in turn, fed migratory bird colonies. Life on the water with my inquisitive six-year old was pure joy.

Jack arrived home one day with a used polystyrene Sunfish trailing his ’65 Mustang. For fifty dollars, the previous owner threw in a booklet on ‘how to sail’. A 1971 ad in Boating magazine called the thirty pound Sunfish the “Volkswagen of sailboats. A perfect learner’s boat” 

I called it a styrofoam bathtub.

Joe and I practiced our new book-learned sailing skills, 100 feet offshore, moored to the bulkhead. On our first untethered day at sea, Joe rigged the sails. We lulled away the dead calm until Joe spotted our German Shepherd swimming our way. As she approached the boat, I stood up, pointed toward shore and shouted “go home!” Which of course she did. She was, after all, a German Shepherd.

The next time Joe and I unmoored, we sailed expertly into the middle of the widest part of the river. We took turns at the tiller, successfully jibing and tacking as the wind took us west. But then we tacked to come back downriver. The sweet southerlies that had funneled us upriver suddenly turned on us like a mad dog turning on its master. The rogue wind bared its teeth. Thunderclouds whipped up the tide. And the sail luffed out of control. We. Were. Trapped.

The boat, too light for wind-churned waters, threw us around like a sea monster. I reassured Joe we were safe since we were both good swimmers. 

“We can’t leave the boat,” pleaded Joe.

“We won’t!” I assured him. But truth is, he’d seen the thought to abandon the boat cross my brow. I could swim to shore with one arm around Joe’s chest but I couldn’t pull the Sunfish with the other. 

Private docks, woods and marinas dotted the riverfront. I spotted a sliver of sand and rowed furiously. We pulled the boat up, tied it to a tree and ran to the door of a stranger who drove us home. The next day the Coast Guard towed our Sunfish home. 

“No markings on this thing,” the officer said. 

“You should name her ‘May Day.’”

At twenty-seven years old, I had no reason to believe motherhood would come naturally. All my choices to that point had been daring, radical, reckless.  Only four years before, I’d taken LSD, left toddler Joe with his father and trekked to Woodstock in a station wagon full of Rolling Rock chugging hippies. I was separated from them on the first night while swooning over Richie Havens’ performance of “Freedom”. During the muddy aftermath, I smoked opium with a stranger and hitched a ride home with him to New Jersey.

Ancestral maternal instincts swelled up out of nowhere that first day battering around in the Sunfish on the roiling Toms River. No matter how afraid I was, I had to show no fear, lest my six year old become traumatized and frightened by open water for the rest of his life. 

“Let’s try again,” I announced one day and we eagerly sailed into the prevailing southerlies on a sunny calm morning. Upriver, nature turned against us again.

“We need help,” Joe shouted in the sea spray. And we beached the boat once more.

Our sailing adventures made for wild-eyed good stories with our friends and family, but I feared my recklessness may have given Joe a subconscious dread of the sea  into adulthood.

I needn’t have given it a second thought. In his fifties now, Joe and his family leave their midwestern flatlands to vacation on tropical seas—snorkeling, bodysurfing and scuba diving. 

But.

No sailing.