This is a story from Barack Obama’s neighborhood, a place I have called home for the past decade or so; one I recently saw described as the “Center of the Presidential Universe” and have referred to it thus ever since. It’s just a story, really, but for me, it confirms what Marian Robinson once said about the south side of Chicago (a place I’ve often described as one where the ghetto and Gucci coexist):
I keep saying this: Michelle, Barack, and my son are not abnormal,” Marian Robinson said. “All my relatives, all my friends, all their friends, all their parents, almost all of them have the same story. It’s just that their families aren’t running for president. It bothers me that people see Michelle and Barack as so phenomenal, because there’s so much of that in the black neighborhood. They went to the same schools we all did. They went through the same struggles.”
(source: The Atlantic)
The Misses B4 and B were an unlikely pair: Miss B4--5 foot one, bout a hundred pounds, sprite-like, and white as an eightball burning a hole in some corner thug’s pocket, with a 3-foot long mane of dark brown hair flapping down the length of her back to cast a strand of doubt on what was at best a “dubious” identity in these parts. Miss B: coffee-colored black, with a close-cropped natural fro died clockwork orange and color-coordinated brows to boot; pear-shaped at 5’3”, she was too big to buckle the belt in Miss B4’s bucket back seats. The two had much in common: chatty as Cheshire cats, tough as teriyaki beef jerky and gritty as the city they both called home. Some folks—‘specially the upwardly mobile Buppy types who didn’t get around to supporting Obama till the first Black president’s wife dropped out of the race—thought it unseemly that this PhD’d professor-executive-director-type (uh, that would be B4) got on with the lowly little-big-woman cleaning lady and cook (and that would be B). But the two worked well as a team. Try as they may to keep their collaboratin’ and commisseratin’ under wraps, everyone knew: the two of ‘em were tight as uncracked pistachio shells.
The Misses B4 and B had a mutual friend and acquaintance: Miss M. who was firmly ensconced in the middle of the socially accepted hierarchy of seemliness and so was equally entitled to collaborate with Miss B4 and to commiserate with Miss B without anyone raising an eyebrow. No one could complain, ‘specially since Miss M had retired and was no longer subject to the rigorous constraints of the city’s personnel politics that kept everyone in the community in their proper place.
So anyway. Miss B4 was in the middle of a busy month. Last Wednesday, she was scheduled to teach 4 consecutive classes of 25 kids in a rundown dilapidated school on the south side, then round up three child performers and get them to a school on the other side of town for a presentation about an hour after the last class. Mission impossible. Miss B4 enlisted the services of Miss M, who was scheduled to pick up the three kids and deliver them to the school, where she would meet Miss B4 promptly at 2 PM.
Weeeeelllllll. The Misses B4, B and M had one thing in common that set them apart from about 90% of their neighbors—they’d kept the same phone number and the same address for over a decade (an ancillary effect of their chattiness, and of their commitment to community). In a place where phone numbers and addresses change more quickly and more often than the light at the corner of the Midway Plaisance and Ellis, it almost put them in a league of their own.
When Miss B4 started calling Miss M to confirm their plans the Friday before the show, she didn’t think much about the fact that Miss M wasn’t answering her phone. But by Sunday, when she started getting “this mailbox is full” messages, she was beginning to wonder. It wasn’t until Monday that she started to worry. So Miss B4 got on the horn to Miss B.
“Hey, Miss B, what’s up with Miss M? I been trying to call her since Friday, and she’s not picking up the phone.”
“Gimme her number, let me try, I’ll get back to you.”
So the Misses B4 and B spent the better part of Monday trying to get through to Miss M before Miss B said, “Ok, I’m going to call Miss P and make sure the number’s right.”
Miss P confirmed: that’s Miss M’s number, been the same for as long as she’s been living down there on C-street.
“Down there on C-street”: that was the problem. Miss M’s house is one of the few remaining houses that’s not boarded up, and the area is so bad that Miss B4 often runs into Miss M taking a walk in her neighborhood (just a half mile north and a couple of blocks east of that corner on C-street where Miss M has lived ever since her daddy first bought the place sometime in the mid-60s), and Miss B4 lives in a neighborhood that the University of Chicago warns its incoming freshman to avoid in its orientation literature: DO. NOT. VENTURE. SOUTH. OF.THE. MIDWAY. OR. WEST. OF. COTTAGE—but Miss B4’s always considered that just more divide-and-conquer bullshit from the university elite:
“What you doin’ over here Miss M?”
“You know I can’t even take a walk down there without having to listen to the Motherfucker this, motherfucker that...”
“Amazing how much difference a couple of blocks can make, innit? Well, good to see you anyway!”
So it’s getting late in the day on Monday. Miss B4’s working herself into a tizzy worrying about whether Miss M’s going to come through for the carefully orchestrated performance plan on Wednesday. Misses B4 and B both frantically calling the tried-and-true number at increasingly short intervals, till finally, both of them get through: and a creepy old man answers the phone, telling both of them “Ain’t no Miss M living here!”
Oh my. Miss B4, driving down from the far north side, to MissB: “I dunno, Miss B, I got some creepy guy on the phone tellin’ me Miss M. don’t live there no more.”
“Yeah, me too. I done called him 5 times by now.”
“So what d’ya think? I’m getting worried. That phone number worked just fine last week. I know that’s Miss M’s number, and she would have told me if she was going out of town. Now I’m worried that something’s happened. Maybe we gotta go down there and check it out.”
“Yeah, we better go check.”
“OK, I’m about a half hour out. I’ll stop and pick you up.”
By the time Miss B4 arrives at Miss B’s little house down on 78th, it’s dark, and cold as Ann Coulter’s left shoulder on a good day....Miss B Jumps in, fastens the seat belt behind her back to outwit the dinging safety mechanism on Miss B4’s fancy late model car. The two of them drive down to that corner on C-street—Miss B4 knows how to avoid the potholes, but isn’t quite sure what to do about the crackheads.
The two of them finally locate the house—Miss B relying on memory (“I know I been to Miss M’s house before, it’s gotta be this one”), and Miss B4 on the house number she’d written on an envelope less than a week before. But the house is dark—and creepy. There’s a steel grate pulled shut on the porch, with a padlock hanging unlocked from the hinge. They pull back the gate, start banging on the doors, and making a ruckus—frightening the neighbors who are suspicious of the white chick and figure it’s gotta be the cops.
Miss B goes up to the house next door, rings the bell and asks the neighbor if he’s seen Miss M. He claims not to know her.
Misses B4 and B get back in the car. “I don’t know, Miss B, alls seems pretty strange to me. I’m not leaving here till we know Miss M’s OK.”
“I think I see someone peeking out that window upstairs.”
“Yeah? You think there’s someone in there?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“OK. Let’s get out one more time.”
Finally, the guy upstairs comes down. Tells the Misses Miss M was just there an hour ago. OK. He forgives them for scaring the be-gee-bees out of him and half the neighborhood by bringing some white chick down there and making a ruckus!
So they leave a note: MISS M. YOUR PHONE IS NOT WORKING, PLEASE CALL ASAP.
Turns out, AT & T was the culprit. They’d been mis-routing Miss M.’s calls to some guy somewhere, probably not far from that corner down on C-street where the Misses B4 and B were afraid they might find Miss M duct-taped to a chair at gunpoint in the basement.
When Miss B4 finally got to talk to Miss M, Miss M reported that the guy upstairs was really confused—told her some blond had been there—he wasn’t sure if she was Mexican or what. Miss M attributes his confusion to alcoholism.
Before hanging up, Miss B4 says one last thing to Miss M: “Oh, btw, don’t forget to call Miss B, OK? She’s been trying to get in touch with you, too.”