“Please, let me give you something to drink; then we can talk more easily.”
Given a choice of instant coffee or orange Kool-Aid I started to refuse anything, but remembered in the nick of time the important hospitality rituals in South Chicago. Romeo Czernin was right: I had been away from the ’hood too long if I was going to turn up my nose at instant coffee. Not that my mother ever served it—she’d do without other things before giving up her Italian coffee, bought at a market on Taylor Street—but instant was certainly a staple on Houston Street when I was growing up.
Baby propped on her shoulder, Rose Dorrado poured some of the water she’d been boiling to heat the bottle into two plastic mugs. I carried those into the living room, where Julia, in jeans, had reestablished herself in front of her telenovela. Josie’s two young brothers had come home, too, and were fighting their sister over the channel she was tuned to, but their mother told them if they wanted to watch soccer they had to mind the baby. The boys quickly fled back down to the street.
I sipped the thin, bitter coffee while Rose fretted out loud about the future of her boys without a father; her brother tried to help out, playing with them on Sundays, but he had his own family to look after, too.
I looked at my watch and tried to push Rose Dorrado to the point. The story, when it came out, wasn’t the tale of personal violence I’d been imagining. Rose worked for Fly the Flag, a little company on Eighty-eighth Street that made banners and flags.
“You know, your church, your school, they want a big banner for parades or to hang in the gym, that’s what we do. And we iron them if you need that done. Like, you keep it rolled up all year and you want it for your graduation march, only our shop has the machines big enough to press one of those banners. I been there nine years. I started even before my husband left me with all these children, and now I’m like a supervisor, although, of course, I still sew, too.”
I nodded politely and congratulated her, but she brushed that aside and went on with her tale. Although Fly the Flag made American flags, those had just been a sideline to their main business until September 11. They’d always produced the outsize flags that schools and other institutions liked to spread across an upper balcony or wall, but before September 11 such enormous flags had had a limited market.
“After the Trade Center went down, there was a very big demand for them, you understand, everyone wanted a flag for their business, even some rich apartment buildings wanted to hang them from the roofs, and suddenly we had a lot of orders, almost too much, we couldn’t even keep up with it. Everything we do is by hand, you know, for this kind of banner, but for the flags we use machines, and so we even had to buy a second machine.”
“Sounds great,” I said. “South Chicago needs more business success stories.”
“We do need these businesses. I need this job: I got four children to feed, plus now Julia’s baby. If this business don’t stay in business, I don’t know what I can do.”
And now she came to the crux of the matter. Since the summer, work had fallen off. Fly the Flag was still running two shifts, but Mr. Zamar had laid off eleven people. Josie’s mom had a lot of seniority but she was afraid for the future.
“It sounds very worrying,” I agreed, “but I’m not sure what you want me to do about it.”
She laughed nervously. “Probably it’s all my imagination. I worry too much because of having so many children to feed. I make good money at the plant, thirteen dollars an hour. If they close, if they go to Nicaragua or China, like some people think, or if Mr. Zamar—if some accident happens to the building—where else can I work? Only at By-Smart, and there you start at seven dollars. Who can feed six people on seven dollars an hour? And the rent. And we’re still paying for María Inés, for her birth, I mean. The hospital, they charge so much interest, and then she needs her shots, all the children, they all need shoes…” Her voice trailed off into a sigh.
All during Rose Dorrado’s rambling remarks, Julia continued to watch the television as if her whole life depended on it, but the tension in her thin shoulders showed she was acutely aware of her mother’s words. I drank my coffee down to the last undissolved crystal: I couldn’t waste anything here.
“So what’s happening at the plant?” I tried to bring her back to her problem.