ONE
Say Nice Things About Detroit
So says the mural at the grocery store.
Detroit. The whole city is a bench with three old guys sitting on it all day, talking. The only topic is Detroit.
Detroit looms large. It demands your constant attention. I begin to know the city.
I drive down Woodward Avenue where a couple is sitting outside having lunch in the sunshine and a young man is being arrested around the corner — out of sight.
***
The Detroit River blue, bluer than other rivers I’ve seen. Not a dark sapphire or a muddy river green. A bright blue that invites you to be still.
Walks taken at the riverfront with T. on a Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon. I push his empty stroller. He crab legs his balance bike — now pushing, now coasting. GM employees take a lunchtime walk. Attendants work the riverfront coffee shop that has no customers. A man makes slow circles on his bike. He plays “You’re No Good” from a stereo strapped on the back. Amy Winehouse just died.
Meet you downstairs in the bar and hurt
Your rolled up sleeves and your skull t-shirt
The man on the bike nods at me, smiles at T. You say hello in Detroit, I soon get used to it.
The riverfront is quiet, always calm. It feels like this place is just for us.
In the summertime children play in the Ren Cen fountain squealing with delight at the foot, not in the shadow, of the gleaming GM towers. A fortified building constructed so you can’t find the front door. Designed so that office workers can drive right in and never set foot on Detroit pavement. But when you do come, please don’t park your foreign cars in our garage — no, we’re serious. American-made inside. Japanese-made can park on the street.
***
You are making a statement if you live in Detroit; one of these is true:
You choose to be here
or
You cannot leave
Also an option: You choose to be here and cannot leave.
***
I drive down Gratiot. I drive and drive and drive. Thirty minutes go by, and I am still in Detroit. The city is too big, too much room. People live out here. All the way out here. A woman pushes a baby in a stroller and crosses the street, heading where? There are only miles of street.
In a city, people need to live by other people. Like in a church, how do you get everyone in the pews to come down — sit up front, don’t be shy, squish together — when there is so much room in the city?
Street after street, abandoned gas station after abandoned gas station. There is life here but so much space. An empty city that people still live in.
I take a side street. Seward Street. This house is empty. This house is empty. This house is not — freshly mowed grass, saffron colored geraniums in planters on the deck, trash bins lined up neatly in the driveway. This house is empty. This house is empty.
TWO
Why is there so much traffic on Jefferson? I need to get to the grocery store. Detroit doesn’t have traffic. What is this traffic?? Oh, it’s Slow Roll. I want to find this charming — thousands of people on bikes ride through the city on early summer evenings to celebrate community and take back the streets — but I also just want to get to the good grocery store, the one just over the city border. I make it out, get my groceries, then return as the sun has set. Now stopped at a light I witness magic. Detroit magic. There, in the Wendy’s parking lot, a hundred bicycles are covered in lights that flash on and off with multicolored bulbs. Bikes are trimmed with ropes of lights in fuchsia, blue, green, and yellow. They line the handlebars, twist around the frame, snake in and out of spokes. The lights hang from seats as men straddle their bikes, chatting easily with friends. Others ride laps around the parking lot, their illuminated wheels create a nighttime kaleidoscope. Danny Brown thumps from a stereo because there isn’t a scene in Detroit if there isn’t music. If Slow Roll hadn’t made me late, I would have missed it.
***
T. and I lie on our backs on his bedroom floor and look out the windows, up at the branches of the honey locust trees, spindly and delicate. The Craig Fahle Morning Show is on the radio. Every topic is about Detroit.
Our neighborhood was designed by Mies van der Rohe. It is an example of modernist architecture nestled in the middle of Detroit. We live in a German aesthetic of black metal structured townhouses with floor to ceiling glass windows. There are so many windows that the outside feels like it’s inside.
T. is napping and I’m washing dishes in the kitchen. Here come the architecture tourists, dressed head to toe in black. Bless them, it’s cold today. What dedication they have. They walk in a line, heavy expensive cameras around their necks. I glance at the entryway and decide to move the pack of diapers out of the window. Architecture tourists don’t want diapers in their architecture photos.
***
Pop-pop-pop
Gunshots? Fireworks? Gunshots?
What day is it? Is it a day where people set off firecrackers?
It’s the Freedom Festival.
The Lions won.
October 30th, it’s Devil’s Night.
Oh ok good, it’s probably just fireworks then.
THREE
I tell my friend that the ladies in the office at T.’s school don’t seem very keen to speak to me when I go in to talk to them.
“What do you say to them?”
I just go in and ask them my question.
“No no no,” she shakes her head at me, laughing. “These are Detroit ladies. You can’t just go in and start talking right off.”
I thought I was being polite by getting to the point and not wasting their time.
“No,” she tells me, “you gotta go in and talk to them first. Ask them how they’re doing. Say, ‘Boy, it’s a cold one out there, I’m looking forward to getting home and warming up. Putting on my flannels.’ Converse a little.”
Oh dear, they must think I’m so rude.
“You’ll be alright,” my friend says.
***
Detroiters have their preferences.
Potato chips have to be Better Made.
Ice Cream has to be Stroh’s.
We get takeout at work for lunch one day. A colleague takes a sip of ginger ale from a styrofoam cup and grimaces. “Not Vernor’s,” she says and pushes it away.
FOUR
I’ll be honest, Detroit, I love you in the summer and fear you in the winter.
***
Detroit is not a driving city it is a walking city. Wait 45 minutes for a city bus that may never come? Better to just start walking. A mother walks with her 4-year-old and toddler. Pick up the toddler, walk some, get tired and put him down. He toddles along holding Mommy’s hand but he’s tired. Pick him up again. A heavy load is heavy, doesn’t matter which way you shift the weight.
People walking, walking.
An old man rides a rascal scooter down Livernois, rolling along between parked cars on his right and traffic on his left. Can’t fit on the sidewalk, too crowded with ice and snow. It’s too much to walk and too far to go. He’ll get there when he gets there. Can’t go any faster than this.
***
Now it is the time of the Polar Vortex. A cold I’ve never encountered before. I step outside just to see. The cold makes everything quieter. The snow is dry, it crunches under my boots, like Peter in A Snowy Day. Crunch crunch crunch.
Back in the house the cold creeps in. The frost spreads along the door jam, inside the door frame, along the windows, up the mullions — like crystallized salt left to dry in the sun. I didn’t know cold could do that.
My car won’t start in the Polar Vortex. I turn the key in the engine and only hear a soft tick-tick-tick. Gary from next door appears.
“You having some trouble?” he says.
“Yeah, the car won’t start. I think the battery is dead.”
Now Isham is here.
“Car won’t start?”
Now Gary again.
“She says the car won’t start.”
“I have T. in the back already, I don’t want him to be out here too long in the cold.”
Now Andy is here. “Your car won’t start?”
“Yeah, the car won’t start, I think the battery is dead. And I have T. in the back already.”
Now Gary.
“I’ll get my cables.”
Now Isham.
“Yeah you’ll have to jump it.”
“I’m just going to bring T. inside.”
Now Gary, Isham, and Andy:
“It’s probably the cold.”
“Battery is dead, you might need a new one.”
“We’ll have to jump it. We’ll take care of it.”
“Ok, thanks so much, I’m just going to put T. inside. I don’t want him to get cold.”
In my neighborhood they say that people come for the architecture but stay for the neighbors.
***
In Detroit, calculations need to be made. I’m picking up T. from school after work. Better put my purse in the trunk now. If I don’t do it now, I’ll have to do it after I park the car on the street. Someone might see me and try to break open the trunk. Better to put the purse in now.
I need to get gas but I can’t get gas at that one gas station because someone was mugged there the other week. Or was it the other gas station, on Lafayette, where the person got mugged? Calculations need to be made.
Did you hear Bob’s stepdaughter had her iPhone stolen — at gunpoint — when she was walking through the park?
What was she doing walking through the park talking on her iPhone? my neighbor says.
I make a note: don’t talk on an iPhone when walking through the park.
She should have been paying attention. You need to be aware of your surroundings.
I make another note: pay attention when I walk through the park. Be aware of my surroundings.
(Though, if someone pulls a gun, does it make a difference to not talk on your iPhone in the park, pay attention, and be aware of your surroundings?)
FIVE
I take a left here, then a right, is this where Avalon bakery is? No, wrong turn. Here instead is a house with a fallen roof but a turret — no, two turrets — still standing. And five-foot-high weeds blocking the steps. Grass and weeds grow in the house, too. You look and look and are not sure what to think. I must think something, feel something, learn something. It’s the amount of ruined homes and left behind lives that grips me. The slow motion destruction. What does this say, America? But I don’t know. I’m not a native Detroiter, I’m still just a visitor here. This is not my battle to fight. I stand near the battle, watch the battle quietly on the side. An empty house with a falling down roof — there must be something to understand. But it just is, with or without me.
***
Detroiters have style. Like Parisians.
It’s time for the Spring concert at school. A grandfather arrives in a light gray suit wearing a canary colored fedora with red tufted feather in the band. An auntie sweeps in with a chevron patterned blue and silver spangled ankle length duster. T. wears his checkered shirt and new green bow tie. I am underdressed.
The Kindergarteners sing a song about blooming flowers. T. forgets most of the words. It’s time for the 4th graders to sing now. The music teacher asks, could all the mothers and grandmothers and aunties please stand up? Yes, please stand up so we can all see you. The 4th graders sing “A Song for Mama” by Boyz II Men. All the mothers and grandmothers and aunties start crying. I’m crying. Everyone is crying. The 4th graders didn’t realize. They’ve been singing this song for weeks to an empty multi-purpose room, they didn’t know we would all cry. The teachers stand on the side, pleased and amused. They knew we’d cry.
SIX
I can say nice things about Detroit. I can say nice things and surprising things and shocking things. It feels sometimes that I can forever say things about Detroit.
In Detroit I ask questions and eavesdrop and watch. I read books about Detroit and talk to my friends about Detroit and listen to poets speak about Detroit. I watch my child grow and flourish in Detroit. I fear for our safety and delight in our joy. I mourn falling down houses and the families that once lived in them. I ask questions of old Detroiters. I accept the bitterness of their adult children who return for visits but never want to live there again.
Half of my friends swap the names of Michigan summer rentals. The other half swap the names of which libraries offer free lunch for kids. We run into each other in all the same spots, Detroit is a small town in a big city.
Whether you choose to be here, or cannot leave, everyone owns at least one item of clothing that says “Detroit” on it. Residents wear these mottoes on their chests.
Detroit Hustles Harder
Outsiders come to the city to gawk at the “ruins” while Detroiters carry on with their lives. Working, living, loving.
Detroit vs. Everybody
I begin to understand why, in an empty city where people live, you always smile, nod, and say hello as you pass. In an empty city people need one another. To thrive, to bear witness, to remember. To say we are here. Our city is still here.
Detroit Love