With ICE harassing Chicagoans, scheduling home repairs gets complicated
From a handyman to a high school friend, how can Black women protect minority men from being attacked?
When I walked in the door after the new year, I beelined for my Monstera, arrowhead and corn plants, making sure they were still in reasonable condition, especially after somebody in my condo building turned the heat off during Thanksgiving week. (My Monstera went into shock and half of that tropical plant died.) This time, all three were doing OK.
While my dog marched in the other direction to collapse into her crate in my bedroom, I started taking down Christmas decorations. (I’m a Scrooge. I take down Halloween decorations on November 1 and Christmas decorations the millisecond people start saying “Happy New Year” — and some years I remove them on December 26.) About an hour later, I was unpacking almost two weeks worth of clothes and other random belongings when I heard the sound of water.
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While my white noise machine does play the sound of rainwater, a waterfall and a dripping faucet, this water audio sounded a little less … pretty. My eyes widened when I poked my head into the kitchen to see it was raining. Inside. Water was drizzling down my cabinets and (luckily) into my sink. I took off running out of my door and upstairs to my neighbor to figure out what was going on. She had no idea that she was leaking water into my kitchen and explained that she was just washing dishes. She immediately stopped. I shook my head. What a way to start the year.
Why I wanted to tag along with the Latino painter
Never underestimate water damage. While fire is just as dangerous as water, you know exactly what’s destroyed after a fire. (I learned this the hard way after my electric baseboard heater caught on fire but was quicker to stop a lamp light bulb from starting a second fire.) In January, I thought that raining kitchen was a thing of the past. (It turned out to be the result of a sink sprayer that was not properly connected between the washers and mounting nuts.)
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Over the next few months, I watched my cabinets start to get lower and lower, sagging like pants. But it happened so slowly that I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me at first, until a one-centimeter gap became a three-inch gap. It was time to contact contractors and my homeowners insurance, two tasks I probably should’ve done 10 months ago but had no idea that the water damage was that bad. When the claim was approved and the handyman arrived to secure my cabinets and remount my over-the-range microwave, he took some measurements, realized he needed different screws than the ones he had and notified me that he was making a trip to Home Depot.
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I took one look at this clearly tan Hispanic man and gulped. I looked from my dog on the other side of the pet gate, who had been staring at him and pacing around any time he turned on the drill, to this guy and I wondered if I should tag along. With Operation Midway Blitz going on, ICE arresting more than 1,500 people and federal agents shooting moronic G.I. Joe-style videos in helicopters while harassing Black people sleeping, I didn’t want my handyman to leave. I stopped him and pulled out my own toolbox and extra screws in hopes that he could use whatever I had already. No dice. He needed to go to Home Depot.
Words are powerful and I didn’t want to speak my inner thoughts into existence, so I stood there quietly while he smiled, waved and strolled to his truck without a (visible) care in the world. He either rarely watched the news or had arrived at a point where he refused to not do his job even if ICE was kidnapping people at Chicago-area Home Depots. I went to the window, watched him drive off and looked at my stove clock, timing how long it would take him to return from either hardware store nearby.