What We've Lost Is Nothing (23 page)

T
hough the characters and events of this book are entirely fictional, the Oak Park Community Housing Office is inspired by the real-life Oak Park Regional Housing Center. Oak Park's Diversity Assurance program is similarly based on an actual program in the Village (one of many throughout the years). I have collapsed several different programs under the umbrella of Diversity Assurance here for the sake of narrative clarity. Oak Park itself has been the study of demographers worldwide for many years. In the years it took to write this book, I read blogs, letters, Listservs, and community articles that discussed the diversity programs, and the area's longtime integration efforts, with more detail than any casual reader is likely interested in. But those sites showed me that while the methodology might not be agreed upon, the heart and soul of the real Oak Park community shares a deep and abiding commitment to inclusion.

My interest was more than academic, however. I first moved to Oak Park in 1992, right out of college, into a building on Austin Boulevard owned by Russell and Kevin Schuman, who had a company called RK Management. They believed in the mission of integration, and still do today, and I am profoundly grateful to have crossed paths with them. They owned several large buildings on Oak Park's east side, and had hired a resident manager for each. The woman who managed my building—Ann Maxwell—was also fresh out of college. Ann was the first community activist I'd ever met, the first person to show me that a neighborhood with diverse faces and voices and viewpoints offered a much richer experience, a better world, than one of homogeneity. In the early nineties, Ann used to hold potluck dinners for the tenants of the building so we'd get to know one another. She started what was then a radical program: having renters in a multi-unit building recycle their waste. She swept the alleyways and picked up trash and calmed tenants during stressful times. Once, when the power went out during a storm, she invited all the neighbors she could find to play cards by candlelight in her apartment. It is hard to capture all that she has added to my life over the past two decades. She is my soul sister, my closest confidant, and the person I most aspire to be like: humble, curious, brilliant, empathic, steadfast, and hilarious.

Eventually, I became a resident manager myself for RK Manage­ment, at a building three blocks west of Austin Boulevard, and just around the corner from Ann. On paper, my job was to clean the building, show apartments, and be a point of contact for complaints or issues. But my real job was to create community. We managers were the most visible and present manifestation of a belief system that said all people had a right to live where they choose, free from crime and racial intolerance. We tried to make neighbors known to neighbors, to foster friendships and relationships—things that often prove challenging among renters. Everything one could imagine happened during my five years in that job: fires, floods, break-ins, drug dealing, domestic violence. One girl who'd gotten addicted to crack was wheeled out of the building on a gurney multiple times; she was fifteen years old. When she eventually moved, we found locking mechanisms outside her bedroom—the sign of a mother perhaps in equal measures abusive and terrified. Another woman was regularly beaten by her boyfriend, but refused to cooperate with police when they were called to the scene—an act I only later discovered was likely her means of self-protection when the officers left. Those were some of the worst moments. We had many, many beautiful ones, too. One tenant taught his neighbors how to dance. Another group began an annual camping trip together. We planted a collective herb and vegetable garden, and held building-wide courtyard parties and potlucks. Of the many, many lessons I garnered while in that job, perhaps none has been more profound than the realization that if you come from the majority culture you have the luxury of racial oblivion, by which I mean you need not think that race is part of everything; minorities very often do not know such luxury. It is a lesson I try to impart on my daughter. Though she is only five, when I walk into a classroom—my own or hers—or an event or a party, I find myself instantly scanning the faces for diversity—in race, in culture, in gender. Too often, I am disappointed by what I see.

Though the mission of the Housing Center is controversial to some, at its core it was begun by a group of idealistic people who believed integration was a primary marker of both social progress and a rich and varied life, and who fervently espoused the view that decent housing in a safe community with a good school district was a basic human right. Even in the late sixties in Oak Park, it was entirely legal for Realtors to refuse to show properties to minority families. Roberta “Bobbie” Raymond began the Housing Center out of a church classroom, with the aim of correcting some of the grave injustices committed under the discriminatory practices of redlining and blockbusting—practices rampant in Chicago and many other cities across the U.S. in the early part of the twentieth century. Recently, she completed a DVD for the Oak Park Library's historical archives about what it was like to start the Center forty years ago. She and her colleagues received death threats at the time. But the question, she said in the interview, is the same today as it was four decades earlier: “How much do you intervene? . . . You wish that it all were not necessary.”

Indeed.

But as a writer and a humanist, I am grateful for the legacy—and the challenge to do better—that she and so many others have left me.

I
am thankful to my incredible support system of early readers: Ann Maxwell, David Corey, Andre Dubus III, David Keplinger, Danielle Evans, Stephanie Grant, Glenn Moomau, and Gayle Forman (who deserves extra kudos for answering a panicked call from me in the middle of the night from South Korea). For research help on police procedures and common burglary patterns, Deputy Chief Robert Scianna, Detective Robert Wile, Marcello Muzzatti, and Betty Ballester were integral. Dr. Arthur Shapiro deserves thanks for allowing me into his lab at American University and devising an experiment that enabled me to experience hemeralopia. Steve Carr taught me more about bridges than I could possibly include here, and I think of him every time I cross one. For all public radio wisdom: John Barth, Israel Smith, Vidal Guzman, and Nancy ­Robertson. Joellyn Powers and Bryan Freeland were fantastic research assistants; Debby Preiser of the Oak Park Public Library and Rob Breymaier of the Oak Park Regional Housing Center both offered eleventh-hour help. Bobbie Raymond took time from her holiday to keep me from embarrassing myself with historical inaccuracies; thanks to her ­fact-checking, but especially to her vision and passion.

I would also like to thank the following: Ted Conover, Richard McCann, Kyle Dargan, Elise Levine, Mia Jordanwood, Bree Fitzgerald, Alison Brower, Elizabeth Becker, Sarah Pollock, and Caroline Alexander, who first told me of a mass burglary in Georgia back in the 1980s while we were standing on a hilltop in South Vietnam with the U.S. Army, and which later became the seed for this novel. For twenty years, my agent, Susan Ramer, has fought for me and believed in me and cheered for me, and I wish for everyone to have someone like her fighting their corner. My team at Scribner was so beautifully engaged and enthusiastic that I feel both undeserving and profoundly grateful: John Glynn, Gwyneth Stansfield, Steve Boldt, and Dan Cuddy. My family has the fortune—good or bad—to be filled with writers and in particular my cousin, the poet Lance Lee, provides eternal inspiration and advice. My brother, David, inherited the best of my family while often enduring the worst. My Aunt Barbara and Uncle Wes have been surrogate parents to me. Thanks, also, to my father, Richard Snyder, my stepmother, Barbara Snyder, and my siblings: John, Josh, Kristi, and Doug. Finally, I thank my husband, Paul, for continuing to believe in me and for giving me the greatest gift I've ever received: my daughter, Jazz. The harmony and rhythm of my life. Who knew you could love someone this much?

Rachel Louise Snyder
is a writer, radio commentator, and professor of creative writing at American University. Her first book,
Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade
,
was featured on more than two dozen public-radio programs across the United States, including
This American Life
,
Marketplace
, and
The
World.
She has contributed regularly to NPR's
All Things Considered
and she hosted the public radio series
Global Guru
and
Latitudes
. Her writing has appeared in the
New Yorker,
the
New York Times Magazine
,
Slate
,
Salon
,
the
Washington Post
, the
Chicago Tribune
, the
New Republic
, and many other publications
.
Originally from Chicago, she has lived in Boston, London, and Phnom Penh, and currently lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and daughter. She received her MFA from Emerson College.
What We've Lost Is Nothing
is her first novel.

ALSO BY RACHEL LOUISE SNYDER

Fugitive Denim:
A Moving Story of People and Pants
in the Borderless World of Global Trade

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people,
or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual
events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 978-1-4767-2517-8
ISBN 978-1-4767-2522-2 (ebook)

Excerpts from “Fifth Avenue Uptown: A Letter from Harlem” © 1960 by
James Baldwin. Copyright renewed. Originally published in
Esquire
.
Collected in
Nobody Knows My Name
, published by Vintage Books.
Used by arrangement with the James Baldwin Estate.