As the heat rolls in

I suffer from frequent fits of nostalgia and remembrance in my loneliest and liveliest of moments. I have often stated to anyone and everyone around me that the 90’s were the best decade for living and breathing. It’s odd to feel this way about a period that was unquestionably the most destructive to me in more ways than I can ever be fully poised or confident enough to recollect without forcing back waves of dread and revulsion. And since I’ve been unemployed for so long now that I can’t tell the difference anymore between a week and a weekend, all I’m inclined to do is venture back to those ten years where I saw more than I should have as a young Chicana coming into her own with only a handful of compassionate souls to turn to when the worst got perversely demoralizing. As the heat unequivocally rolls in and settles over the city like a dense, oppressive shadow of searing red ardor and blinding white haze, I wonder if any people will die this week. The July heat wave of 1995 claimed the lives of approximately 750 Chicagoans, although officials were (and probably still remain) hesitant to produce an official death toll number. For about a week, there was no escaping the miserable and sweltering daytime temperatures in the mid-90's and low 100’s with heat indexes well past 100 degrees. Nighttime brought little in the form of relief as readings would only dip into the upper 70's or low 80's. July and August are typically the most daunting summer months for me, and I suspect for most as well. The combination of a clarion sky, scorching sun and suffocating humidity cause many a sweaty and irritable soul to wonder why the hell anyone would willingly choose to live in Chicago. In order to survive such extreme climatic conditions, one must remain confined within the cool walls of an air-conditioned building. And the two most vulnerable groups in a metropolitan as large as Chicago, the poor and the elderly, are hit the hardest when temperatures rise beyond a broiling level because even if they could afford to buy an air conditioner in the first place, they might not be able to pay the high electric bills generated by such a purchase. 1995 was a lonely and deadly year for the 750 mostly elder, fragile and isolated souls who lay in their stuffy, blistering rooms, slowly dragging in burning wisps of hot air, unaware, or perhaps sadly aware, that they would soon succumb to the fiery clutches of a heat wave. Back in my blazing part of the city on the north side, not only was I coping with the unbearable weather in a bedraggled two bedroom apartment that trapped more heat than it disseminated, but I was also trying to figure out how to escape the agony and trauma that will forever be Daniel’s doing and my undoing. During the entire week of the heat wave, my younger siblings and I wearily trudged over to the pool down the street, which was bound to be crammed with loud and perspiring bodies of all ages and sizes. Even the unruly guys who faithfully congregated on the sidewalks in front of every other apartment complex on our block decided to stumble over to the pool in order to catch some reprieve from the hostile and almost unnatural conditions trapping more than just heat in the neighborhood. As we lined up impatiently outside the gate that would lead us into a more tolerable and hospitable environment, we could all sense something sinister brewing in the muggy air, something disastrous that the newspapers weren’t printing or the newscasters broadcasting. Nobody could articulate how suspicious it appeared when the first bodies started to accumulate in large numbers on the south side. It was hot, they said. They were old and most of them assuredly died of natural causes, others offered. But even I in my tormented adolescent years could understand the abnormality and severity of such a high mortality rate swiftly unfolding within a matter of days. Leaning against the brick wall with sweat pouring profusely down my neck and the glaring sun stinging the top of my head, I knew the dead were too far away to be given more than an ancillary thought. It was disturbing, but we had our own urgent problems to confront in this part of town. Many of us constantly struggled to stay sane, cool and hydrated in homes without air conditioners. The streets were always “hot,” especially at night when the trouble could start up again. As soon as the sun would shift its ardent rays away from the city, we’d head outside to escape the stifling incubators that housed our sticky bodies. But it wasn’t smart to congregate in large groups because we’d attract the wrong kind of attention, either from cars with tinted windows that would creep up wondering who we were representing, or from the cops who were patrolling our part of the neighborhood in an attempt to keep order and safety. Yet the bodies kept piling up on the south side and nobody wanted to call it what it was or respond to it properly until it was too late. After the heat wave ended, nothing would ever be the same again in the city for me. Or anybody else. I remember the summer of 1995 as vividly as I recall the last time Daniel’s hands poisoned my flesh- those stained fingers with their distinct toxicity left their stamp on me just like all those unnecessary deaths left their mark on Chicago. Perhaps because I survived such a fatal and oppressive period that I see all the life that I was able to salvage from the mass death wave long after the dead were buried. It took over a decade to finally bury Daniel, and everything I value about life and what it has taught me about survival, I can directly trace back to the 1990's.