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Demusev
]1oIIIevar
The clouds hung low in thin served as a fence between her
gray strings, weaving sloppily house and the main office build-
between the rusted smokestacks ing of waste management. Her
and crumbling roofs of East De- house was a one-story rancher,
troit. I took Exit 21 toward with lime-green siding and shut-
Dempsey Boulevard, a narrow, ters that had probably been
pot-holed stretch of road that white in 1971 , when the house
leads to only three places in the was new and hadn't been
world: the City of Detroit Waste exposed to the wind. Dempsey
Management plant, Dempsey Boulevard was a vortex unto
Boulevard Industrial Park, and itself. The wind would billow in
my grandmother's house. from the north, filter through the
We hadn't heard from her in narrow spaces between the in-
three and a half weeks. She dustrial park buildings lining both
would usually call Mom every sides of the street, and would get
other day to talk about the trapped in, creating a tunnel of
weather or how much money a roaring, blasting air. The waste
contestant won playing Plinko on management complex and the
"The Price is Right." But she surrounding industrial area stood
hadn't called once in nearly a staunchly, holding their ground
month, nor had she answered the without flinching. But Mom-Mom
phone when Mom tried her Sylvie's house had no prayer of
house. So on a wet Saturday withstanding the merciless
morning, I found myself making thrashing of the wind. It had
the two hour and twenty minute ripped her white shutter paint off
drive from our home in Spring- in chunks, along with roofing
tide to the outskirts of the city. shingles, and even a couple of
her chimney bricks. The high-
Mom-Mom Sylvie's house reaching office buildings in front
was wedged between a parking of and alongside her blockaded
lot and a recycling station. any trace of sunlight from ever
The five hunter green dumpsters
32 Contrast 2005
