assignments, as we must navigate nondescript mazes designed to confound the casual driver and discourage those who don’t belong. Residents approach idling ERVs expecting emergency relief, only to be told we are dispensing, well … emergency relief—with qualifications. Ostensibly, only those unable to independently access a water distribution site are eligible for water delivery. Who can blame them for asking? Emergency relief seems, after all, to be the mission as advertised. Such a system works far better in neighborhoods of single-family homes, where the whole transaction can take as little as five minutes. Scratch a DRV circling a townhouse complex of multi-family residences, and reveal dun-colored, low-level dread.
He needs ten cases. Apologizes profusely—his place is on the third floor. I stack six cases on the hand truck, my partner and the man carry two apiece, and off we go, parading across a parched expanse of weedy lot. We unload on the stoop, one case to prop open the door. My partner stays with the ERV while the man and I lug water up six flights. It’s sweltering in the airless stairwell. The man pauses on the second-floor landing, coming back down. His breathing is shallow, color bad. I ask if he’s okay. He nods, hands on knees, gasping for breath. I suggest he wait by his door while I bring up the remaining water. Task completed, the man thanks me, extends a hand. Both of us are winded and find it hard to talk. Does he share my sense of having experienced a rare moment of human connection stripped of artifice, momentarily free of the burden of presumption and mistrust acquired over a lifetime? Perhaps we’re just dehydrated, a sip of water all we need to bring us around.
I take care to remove my damp, filthy work glove. Later, driving out of the complex, I spot him walking toward the rental office. I wave, but he seems not to notice, relaxed and at ease among a group of men, laughing among themselves at some private joke.
THIRTEEN
I knock for a minute or two, listen, knock again. Long minutes later, I hear muffled stirring upstairs. A large woman finally appears, flushed from the effort of having descended the stairs, instantly rendering petulant my impatience. She says she’s recovering from hip surgery and hasn’t had a delivery in over a week. She needs ten cases. We stack them down the hallway, leaving only a narrow pathway disappearing into gloom at the back of the house. Water-frescoed plaster sags overhead. She’s eager to talk now that she’s made the effort of answering the door. Two adult sons are asleep upstairs, one autistic, the other debilitated by head injury. I listen, frown, nod my concern. Having spent thirty years as a special educator, I’m familiar enough with the challenges she must face day in and day out that I’m rendered speechless. A sense of helplessness washes over me.
What will become of this woman and her sons? How will they manage, I wonder? Climbing back up the stairs will require fortitude, if not outright physical assistance. I find myself hanging, toes a hairbreadth off the ground, on the horns of a moral dilemma. Who to blame, goddammit. Men in power, the clockworks of the universe? If there’s a God in heaven … and so forth.
On the way out, I wish her luck, remind her to have a nice day. It would be impossible to feel more ineffectual; a sense of fecklessness pooling about me as if my pants had suddenly dropped to the floor to the tune of “Stardust.” I step into soft morning light caressed by a gentle breeze, endless blue sky overhead. A hallelujah chorus of forsythia erupts, yellow and shameless, serenading me loudly, mercilessly, as I slink back to the ERV.
FOURTEEN
My mother was the heart and soul of the family. If my father was the bringer-home of bacon, hand on the wrench that kept the cars running, oxygen thief—every room he entered depleted of air—she was constant as the Morning Star. The singer of songs, reciter of rhymes and maid of make-believe. We danced—to forty-fives, the radio—Bill Justice’s “Raunchy,” Hank Williams’s “Kaliga,” and the York Brothers’ “Hamtramck Mama.”
Hamtramck, Michigan. Encapsulated by the City of Detroit, urban beetle in amber. Historic gateway to immigrants from central and eastern Europe, Appalachia, the Ozarks, and, over time, the Middle East—late, from Africa and east Asia and pioneering suburban kids seeking cheap studio space. My parents took a flat on Caniff, near Joseph Campau Avenue, sharing a bathroom with an older Polish couple, the Geibors. Ornate Catholic churches, Polish social clubs, and unassuming shot-and-a-beer bars abounded. The sprawling Dodge Main plant dominated the neighborhood.
She may have fantasized about life as that latter song’s free-spirited namesake. I remember her dancing and popping her fingers. She’d vamp, twirl around the room to Arlen and Mercer’s “Blues In the Night”—probably the Rosemary Clooney version—pantomiming the chanteuse, thin dowel of a red Tinker Toy standing in for a saucy cigarette. She was a drop dead-ringer for Patsy Cline. They were the same age, Tennessee gals born eight days apart.
One night in 1963, she returned from Kresge’s with a big surprise; a forty-five of “I Want To Hold Your Hand”—“I Saw Her Standing There” the B-side. I can still see the orange and yellow Capital swirl spinning hypnotically on the little turntable. We stood there for a moment, transfixed, my mother, brother, and me, stung by the sublime revelation of the Beatles. Once my father abandoned the field for the basement, we Twisted our asses off like Chubby Checker, lighting fresh Tinker Toys off the stubs of the old.
FIFTEEN
Over the weeks and months, I encounter more than a few people who have had their water cut off for not paying their monthly water bill. People who have no choice but to go on living in their home. I’m curious to know how they manage, maintain some minimum level of hygiene, let alone sanity, but dare not ask the question. Flint and Genessee County had some of the highest water rates in the state prior to the water crises. High rates levied by the Detroit system, coupled with an unfinished pipeline project from Lake Huron connecting to a new regional water treatment facility, contributed to the decision to draw water from the Flint River in the first place.
Everyone I speak with complains bitterly of the devil’s bargain they’ve been handed—forced to pay high water and sewage rates in exchange for an essential service that dooms their children to a life sentence of brain damage, exposes everyone in the house to potentially fatal illness, and destroys the hard-won value of everything they have worked and sacrificed to achieve. Most pay, though they can ill afford the burden. Money for lead-tainted water means less money for things like food, rent, and prescription drugs. Never mind transportation, clothing, and cable. Medical care? Forget it. Various programs exist to help those in need. The governor pressures GM to reconnect with the municipal system, in order to bolster tax revenue. Revenues do, in fact, increase, but are woefully insufficient to pay the cost of replacing pipes system wide. The pipeline from Lake Huron is eventually completed, but Flint won’t be granted representation on the Great Lakes Water Authority Board until 2019 .
Throughout the crisis, many continue to use water from the tap, run through commercial filters we hand out for free. Absolutely no one I speak with believes the free faucet filters are safe and effective. Boiling is a common, but ineffective practice, as are brief showers or sponge baths that limit exposure to toxins. Pets are at risk. Basic functions like brushing teeth, cleaning wounds, washing hair, doing laundry, washing dishes, keeping babies fresh, take on new, upsettingly onerous dimensions. Food preparation, of course, has been transformed into a tedious, time-consuming exercise in opening and emptying dozens of plastic bottles. Now and then we stop for coffee. I half convince myself that McDonald’s is scrupulous in their water filtration regimen. I’m amazed, as the long, hot summer progresses, that Flint’s residents don’t resort to acts of civil disobedience or defiantly take to the streets to express their frustration and rage at their predicament. Attempts at mollification by the authorities, at this point, seem such an affront to dignity as to be morally indefensible.
SIXTEEN
