Be it Mozart, Beethoven or Bach. Be it a suicide, a riot or a murder. Or maybe the beginning or end of the world: I always have to have some sort of classical music playing, no matter what. You could pass me on the block and never know I had Mahler booming between my headphones. On Monday afternoon, I get on my bike and put on Symphony No. 5 and am amazed as the South Side becomes a concert. The chemical plant hums in D. The pigeons atop a hair salon sing in Gb. A bus closes its doors in E#.

I meet my brother outside his junior high. He stands in a black sweatshirt, sloop-shouldered, hiding under his hood. He gets on the back of my bike and we ride down Central Park toward 95th, going slow past the statue of King Kong on top of the muffler shop. The statue is the only thing I still like about this neighborhood.

I glance over my shoulder and ask my brother if he has his money and he says he does. At the streetlight, both of us glance around, watching our backs. You can still get jumped on a bike; it’s happened to me twice. There is no immediate danger, but a block later we pass a fearsome-looking dog, barking at its own reflection in the window of an abandoned hair salon. Wild dogs have been roaming the streets ever since people began moving out of the neighborhood a few years ago.

Daniel has been my brother for most of my life. He’s always been there in the corner of my eye, at the edge of my peripheral vision, for as far back as I can remember. Both of our parents are eastern European, my mom Polish, my father Croatian, and it’s always set us apart on our block. Aside from the endless Polish jokes, we are the only Poles or Croats in our neighborhood on the southwest side of Chicago, where everyone else is working-class Irish. The classical music my parents played, the odd Yugoslavian poetry, the strange gray food, the way they dressed us in out-of-date clothes from the 1980s, all of this made our lives difficult as we negotiated the narrow confines of our lives.

At the age of 18, it seems better to become invisible, to try to be anonymous. It’s what my ancestors, other eastern Europeans, had to do for so many centuries, first with the Romans, then the Turks, the Russians, the Austro-Hungarians, the Germans and then the Soviets again. Better to be a no one then have your cranium unceremoniously split open.

But Daniel is not interested in that. A few months ago, at the age of 12, Daniel fell in love with hip-hop. My cousin Benny, who recently came over from Poland, brought a suitcase of CDs of early ’90s hip-hop with him, which my brother began to play nonstop. To see him, standing in front of the mirror, brushing his teeth to Biggie Smalls or Tupac, the expressions he makes, how he seems to connect to this music, it’s amazing and also slightly off-putting.

It’s become his fatal flaw. He’s been threatened, beaten up, had his book bag thrown up into a tree by the blockheads from our neighborhood, all for liking music that other people refuse to appreciate. He says he wants to be a hip-hop performer when he’s older and I frown and ask how many Polish MCs do you know? None, zilch, zero, not on our block anyway. I look at him and think: How do you save someone who’s so intent on destroying themself? How do you help someone committed to tragedy?

…

Today he’s asked me to ride him up to the record store on 95th so he can buy a record by someone named Common without getting jumped. I wait outside as he goes through the record bins. He selects two or three CDs and a long play record, then looks over at the counter and hurries back out.

“What happened?” I ask.

“I got scared. I didn’t like how the clerk was looking at me. He looked like a barbarian,” which is the word we use for the many unsophisticated people who happen to live in our neighborhood.

“If you’re going to be the first Polish MC of all time, you need to be able to buy records for yourself.”

He frowns, unconvinced.

“Give me the money,” I say and go inside and grab the records for him.

When I come out, I hand him the records and his change and he counts it.

“Wait,” he says. “You stiffed me five dollars.”

“Service charge,” I say. “Anyways, I have to get back to work. Come on, I’ll drop you by the water reclamation plant,” and he hops on the back pegs of my bicycle and the two of us wobble off again.

…

I deposit my brother at the water plant, which is where he likes to spend his time, listening to music and writing lyrics and “pondering,” or so he says.

“Thanks,” he says. “Have fun at work.” I do not have the nerve to tell him I lost my job a week ago when the machine shop where I was employed laid off 10 of its workers. So I have been filling out job application after job application like crazy, trying to find some way to pull the rent together.

There are eight of us over at my mom’s friend Joan’s and I’m responsible for $150 each month for me and my brother. My mother’s been in and out of rehab for the last year and a half with lung trouble, and my dad disappeared a few years back. Joan is kind but unforgiving when it comes to paying on time, and I only have two more weeks to get it together.

…

On my bike, I pass the boarded-up factories on Western Ave. and ask why my parents, why their parents, why anyone would choose this place? It has become a question I cannot answer. Who can say why we fall in love with the objects, the places, the people, the music we do?

For instance, I have tried to explain my love of classical music to other people, particularly younger women my age. But it always feels like a joke with no punch line. What they don’t know is that when I hear those compositions, I become aware of something beautiful, undeniable, the soundtrack to a place in myself I did not otherwise know existed.

…

I do a loop in the neighborhood, drop off more applications, then call my cousin Benny and ask if he knows anybody who is hiring. He says he could use my help. He gives me an address and tells me to meet him there in an hour.

An hour later, I find myself holding the bottom of an unsturdy-looking ladder. My cousin balances at the top with some difficulty, his closely shaven head glowing in the winter sun.

He hands down a five-gallon bucket of blood from the roof of the butcher shop. Like a number of other stores in the neighborhood, the butcher shop recently went under. Sensing an opportunity, Benny has improvised an entrance through the building’s second story and is now handing me down whatever products were so thoughtlessly left behind.

The buckets of blood, he says, will be traded with some Serbian roofers in exchange for a cello, which is also “borrowed.” The blood will be used to make blood sausage. He explains all this as he hands down another bucket. I nod and go put it in the back of his van, then hurry back to the ladder.

A moment later, my cousin yells something, but I can’t quite hear what he’s saying. It’s like his enormous Polish face is blocking out all sound. Seconds later, a bucket of pink slurry comes tumbling down, covering me in unimaginably pungent slime.

I begin to yell and wipe the gunk from my face. Benny climbs down with another bucket and apologizes. A few moments after that, a dog appears near the bottom of the ladder. I shoo it away. Before my cousin has gotten the other buckets into the back of the van, there are three or four more dogs, all circling me.

Benny offers me one of the buckets as payment and I wave it off. He sighs and hands me three dollars. I ask him where are the other 17 bucks he promised me? He sighs again. Silently, I shake my head, pick up my bicycle and ride off.

…

On my bike, a parade of dogs follows me all the way home. It is like being trailed by a black hole waiting to suck you up with snarling, drooling chops. Some dogs run along the sidewalk, some out in the street. Kids and elderly people stop and stare, watching the dogs following, adding to the humiliation. I am careful not to ride down the alley where the body of a girl was found a few years back. If I go by the spot, I know I will have trouble sleeping.

One of the dogs leaps at me and almost knocks me off my bike. I go into the liquor/party store on the corner of Cicero and try to hide, dragging my bike inside. More dogs circle in front of the glass door, snapping their jaws.

I explain to the elderly Irish woman behind the counter that I am being followed by a pack of wild dogs. She only blinks behind her oversized glasses and says unless I am going to buy something, I need to go back outside. I look around, point to some balloons. Some are pink, some are red, some are blue, all of them say: SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS. Ten in all. I ask how much and she says three dollars.

I go out the back door with the balloons. I ride down the street, and when I pull up on our block everyone stares. But being covered in blood doesn’t even faze me.

…

I bring the balloons to my mother at the rehab center the next day and, for a moment, listen to her talking in her sleep:

Once one of your great-grandmothers was locked up in the top story of her house in Croatia by her father and so she taught herself how to sing to keep herself company. Your great-grandfather heard her as he was walking by one day. He began working at your great-great grandfather’s limestone pit just to be close by. Every day he put an extra stone in his pocket before he went home. For years he did this until he had enough to build a stairway to the window of the big house. Then he climbed up and rescued her and both of them declared their love for each other.

I smile and wait for the ending that will obliterate everything. Before they could make their exit, the guards caught them and beat them both. Your great-grandmother was disinherited. They were forced to live the rest of their lives in poverty and shame, overcome by tragedy.

I look over at her and smile, unsurprised, as this is the way all her stories seem to end.

…

When I come home, my brother and cousin are crowded in the little room we are renting from Joan. Benny has traded some of the buckets of blood for a four-track recorder, and they are trying out various beats. My brother and cousin are both convinced Daniel has what it takes to be big in hip-hop. The plan, for now, is for Benny to be the manager and Daniel to perform.

“Check this out,” Benny says.

For a moment, I humor them and sit on the corner of my bed.

My brother looks over at me, unsure. My cousin presses play on the four-track. Daniel closes his eyes and begins mumbling, getting louder as he goes:

Just like the wolfman, got dirt on my hands, asking
where I am
But no one knows for sure
from the looks of it

I think we got a problem
Eight wonders I’m the eighth wonder

Of all the eighth wonders
Ain’t no other, having to find my own way in this world
Word to your moms
Milosevic came and dropped bombs
Criminally unjust
Like all my rhymes, just like my lines
Cool as 4 and 3 and 2 and 1

Eventually he stops rapping and just sort of looks down. I glance over at Benny, shaking my head.

“What?” Benny says. “It’s great. In Poland, he’d be considered very good.”

“This isn’t Poland. That was bad.”

“You’ll see. We’re going to make a demo. There’s an open mic coming up in a few weeks. That’s the first step.”

“How many steps do you think it’ll take?”

Benny takes out a small notebook from his coat and checks. “Thirty-seven. It’s a long process.”

I tell them maybe they need to practice their stage show first. Both of them nod and Daniel continues rhyming.

I shake my head again and try to forget everything I’ve just seen. I realize the rent is due in a week and I still only have $10.

I go outside and put Verdi on my headphones and leave some more applications around the neighborhood and accidentally pass the one spot I’ve been trying to avoid all month.

…

All I know or what I can still remember: my father in the passenger seat, turning to explain to my mother why he had no choice but to leave. He murmured something about the South Side not being the South Side if there was no work.

Both Daniel and I were in the back seat of the station wagon, looking at him, like Where are you going? Why is this happening?

It was the year 2000. I was 12. Before I knew it, my father climbed out of the car, closed the door and disappeared. The truth of the matter is that was when my mom began losing her marbles. Stranger and stranger conversations. Food in the washing machine. Sleeping all day. The oven on, with nothing in it. Singing and playing records and pacing the house all night. One day we came home and found our belongings out on the front lawn. Said she couldn’t live with anything that reminded her of my father anymore. After that, hospital after hospital, then the problem with the fluid in her lungs.

But the thing I remember is being in the back seat and climbing up front. I put my hand on my mother’s arm, and we just sat there, the three of us. And then I put on the radio, and the speakers began to play something by Beethoven or Brahms, some composition I had never heard before. Believe, the music told me. It was the first time a piece of music let me know everything was going to be alright.

…

Other days pass without any word from places where I have left applications: bars and restaurants, video stores, a Chinese restaurant. I ride my bike up and down Western, then up and down 111th, 103rd, then 95th. It turns out the K-Mart on Pulaski is hiring. To be honest, I don’t have many other options, so I take what I can get.

For a week I am a cart chaser, a stocker, a bagger. No one makes any mention of letting me anywhere near a cash register. I like to go outside and round up the shopping carts. You never know what you are going to find—baby pacifiers, half-eaten candy bars, handwritten notes, a pair of dentures, once a DD brassiere with the tag still on. I like to imagine these objects as signs, wondering what will be in the bottom of the carts, what images will point the way for the rest of the day. Once, I find a kid’s drawing of the moon and put it in my pocket.

Mostly I hang out by the checkout aisles and put people’s recently acquired purchases into non-recyclable plastic bags. Here are your X-L spandex shorts. Your endless rolls of toilet paper. Your fanny pack. Your blueberry scented candles. Plastic knock-offs of a popular toy. The detritus of a consumer society sinking under its own weight. Go on and have a nice day.

One afternoon a kid goes missing. Everybody gets all excited about it, calling out, searching up and down the aisles. The manager, Clark, tells me to go over to the customer service desk and make an announcement on the loudspeaker. I have never done this before. I walk over to the desk, tell the middle-aged woman in her red vest what I am supposed to do, and she shrugs and hands me a small black receiver attached to a lengthy cord. I press down the bottom button and say, “Everyone, good morning, K-Mart Shoppers. It looks like we got a kid missing. His name is Thomas,” and the woman in the vest at the counter shakes her head and says:

“You’re not supposed to say the name!”

I just shrug and hold down the button again and say, “Okay. We got a kid, doesn’t matter what his name is. The important thing is that there’s a missing child in this store. He’s probably scared so, everyone, let’s all work together. If you have ill will towards children, then maybe the best thing for you to do is exit now. If you don’t feel like helping, that’s cool also. Everybody else, let’s stop what you’re doing and try and find this child. Out.”

I hand the device back to the woman, who looks at me angrily, then I walk around, careful not to call the kid by his name.

…

A half hour later, someone finds the boy hiding in a circular rack in the women’s section. He is maybe three or four. His mother drags him from the store, pulling hard on his arm. I feel bad for both of them, actually for everybody involved.

I think it’s a good day, but then Clark writes me up for inappropriate comments on the loudspeaker. I have done my best, and so I decide not to come back the following day. I go outside, unlock my bike and pause, watching some kid ride around on the mechanical carousel in front; all of the ponies’ faces look chipped and doubtful. I am like one of those ponies going nowhere, I think.

I put on a Bach composition on the way home and let the music really sink in. Now’s not the time for sadness.

…

On my bicycle again, I go by the convenience store and call my friend Tommy from the pay phone out front, and he says he has an uncle who owns an entertainment company. Apparently people will pay to have strangers dress up in big costumes like Big Bird and Scooby-Doo to appear at car sales, birthday parties or corporate events.

“How much does it pay?” I ask.

“It pays,” Tommy says. “Just be grateful for the opportunity.”

…

The first job I get sent on is with a young woman—who’s 24 and named Molly—who says she’s been doing this for a couple of years. She drives us over in her purple Saturn. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a purple car before, but she’s got fingernails to match. She’s supposed to put on a Little Bo-Peep costume and I’m supposed to be a wolf.

I tell her I don’t think there is a wolf in that story. The young woman looks at me, snapping her gum and says, “Your costume’s in the back.”

I nod and climb out. She opens up the hatchback and there are two industrial-sized garbage bags. One has a Bo-Peep costume, complete with a big gold hook, and one is a wolf, which is made of mottled gray fur. I hold it up and it looks like it is molting.

“Where do we get dressed?”

“Usually in the parking lot.” She puts out her cigarette and begins pulling on a pair of giant baby-blue bloomers.

“Do you ever take this stuff home? You know, to wear around the house?”

She rolls her eyes, trying to get this odd-looking curly blonde wig over her head.

“What kind of event is this?” I ask.

“I think it’s some kid’s birthday.”

“Okay.”

The birthday party is in one of those small apartments on Western Avenue, above a shoe-repair store that has gone out of business.

Bo-Peep—Molly—gets the kids to play games while she and I dance around, making fools of ourselves. I try to get the birthday boy’s little brother to dance, but he just sits there staring. I try to get him to clap his hand but he doesn’t seem to respond. I take his hands and clap them together but it is like he doesn’t understand what I’m doing, can’t interpret the music.

“He’s deaf,” the boy’s mother says, kneeling beside me, and I quietly nod, then hide in the bathroom in shame for most of the rest of the afternoon.

…

When it is over, we go out in the parking lot and split the money up, and I have a feeling Bo-Peep is holding out on me.

I go by to check on my mom at the rehab facility on the way home. Today she is sleeping again, telling herself another story:

Once your great-uncle from Warsaw was so poor he was locked away in prison to work off his debts. This was during the Second World War. When the Germans attacked, they put all the men in prison to work at a factory making pistols for the S.S. The Poles made the best firearms because they could be quiet, they knew how to be patient, but they are also very cunning. The men began to smuggle parts of guns out one piece at a time until they had enough for several weapons. Then they killed several S.S. officers on a train. All of the men from the factory were put in jail again, and were awaiting to be shot, which is how your uncle learned how to fly. It was just like climbing a staircase, he said. Over the wall he went. But because he was always forgetting things, he forgot how to do it as soon as he landed. He was later shot in the back of the head in an alley.

I take her hand and tell her I’ll be by again soon. I wait for her eyelids to flutter before I leave.

…

When I get back home, Joan tells me I am not allowed to leave Daniel alone in the house anymore. Apparently, he got caught sneaking into other people’s rooms.

“What were you doing? You’ve never done that before,” I ask as he sits on his bed, looking regretful.

“I was looking for jewelry. For like my image. For when I perform.”

I shake my head and call him a fool.

…

The next day, I get a call to dress up as a bear. Molly is going to be Goldilocks. She comes by and picks me up in her purple car, and because my brother can’t be left alone anymore, he has to come with.

It’s some kid’s birthday once again. Under the bear costume, I can barely breathe. Goldilocks leads musical chairs and then hot potato. She has a boom box with a microphone to keep the kids in line. As we’re handing out the cake, Daniel picks up the mic and starts rhyming to himself, beatboxing over a few nursery rhymes, getting some of the kids to clap along.

People call me Daniel
Others know me as MCD
While other players be player-hating
I’ll be playing with myself

One mother looks up at me, slightly shocked. I shrug, holding my hands up. Goldilocks signals for me to grab the mic from Daniel but I relent. For a moment, my brother looks amazing, confident, somewhat capable. The kids are clapping along. It seems like everybody is having a good time. Daniel keeps going:

I’ve got the baddest beats
The sweetest meats
The tightest lyrics any of you mother-fuckers ever did see

Goldilocks grabs the mic and then walks over and shuts off the music.

“Sorry about that,” she says, and the rest of the party continues in an uncomfortable, stilted daze. I look over at Daniel, sitting in the corner, and for some reason I can’t describe, I feel proud of him.

…

Outside, Goldilocks scolds both of us, putting the costumes in the back of her car. “You’re ridiculous and your brother is really terrible,” is what she says.

When we get back to the office, Tommy’s uncle shakes his head at us. He says neither of us are getting paid. Molly threatens to murder both my brother and me. We don’t have enough for the bus so we start walking home.

Almost a third of the houses on our block have been foreclosed or have been put up for sale or are empty. The beginning of the housing crisis has just started to take hold, and in lower to middle-income neighborhoods like ours, it is felt. Everything has begun to fall apart, all the things you thought you could count on. We pass the candy store, which just closed for good. Daniel turns and says, “Even the candy store is going under,” and I nod. He murmurs, “Cash rules everything around me,” a lyric I have heard him repeat from the Wu-Tang Clan before. Both of us keep on walking.

I call my friend Chris-Chris for help. If you call her Christina, she will hang up the phone so quick it will burst your eardrums, so I am very careful when I call her. We used to be in marching band together in high school. That’s when she started selling for her older brother. Since then, she’s become an entrepreneur, has been able to go to college, is saving up for an apartment downtown, has begun living something resembling an adult life.

“What up?” I ask.

“Yo. What’s going on?”

“I need a little help over here.”

“What kind of help?”

“Money help. Financial help. Can you get me a package?”

“What?”

“I need a way to make some money quick. My brother and I are about to be thrown out.”

“No. You don’t want to fool with any of this.”

“I just need to do it one time. We’re doing really bad over here.”

“Okay. Let me see what I can do.”

…

Two days later, she comes by and shows me how to bag the product. She opens the package on my bed and I take in its earthy, green aroma. She asks, “Have you ever done this before?”

“No, but how hard can it be?” I ask, as I quickly begin to divvy up the weed into smaller plastic bags.

“Are you stupid? People get busted all the time.” She takes a small amount, weighs it on a postal scale she has brought and carefully puts it in one of the bags. “No, no, you have to weigh everything. Here.”

And she pulls the green product from my hands.

“Do it in eighths and tenths. Like this.”

I am bad at math and everybody knows it. I can’t get the weights right and she rolls her eyes in frustration. “You’re the worst. You can’t go around shorting people! You’re going to get both of us busted. Or killed. Forget it. Let me handle this.”

She divvies it up into several bags and then shoves the backpack at me.

“Don’t mess this up,” she says. “It’s not kid’s stuff.”

“No problem,” I say, even though it is clear I have no idea what I’m doing.

…

I go by the convenience store the next day, standing by the payphone exactly like a drug dealer from an after-school special. What am I doing exactly? Who am I trying to be? What would Beethoven or Brahms or Mozart have to say if they saw me like this?

Before anything happens, I lose my nerve and bring the bag back over to Chris’s house. I explain and she simply nods, then gives me a hug.

“Don’t call me again unless it’s about music,” she says.

I nod. Then she asks how short I am on the rent, digs into the back of her jeans and gives me $150, cash.

“I owe you,” I say.

“I know it. I’ll take that Puccini record you’re always talking about as collateral,” she says. “And that other one by Brahms.”

I nod and give her a hug.

…

On the way back home, I go by the rehab center and find my mother still asleep. I wipe some drool from the corner of her mouth and try to rearrange her hair. For a second, her eyelids shift as if she knows I am there. I take out my headphones, put in a disc of Chopin’s Étude Op. 25, No. 11 and then press play. Then I gently slip the headphones over my mother’s ears. For a second, her face goes soft, then completely changes. I sit and watch, imagining everything she’s hearing and not hearing, the past, the present, the future. The room falls away and the tiny hairs on the back of her hand stand up. Everything goes quiet, everything is still and everything feels possible, for at least one small second.