Evicted (25 page)

“Oh, wow.” A pause, then: “That's not funny, and it's not nice, Jafaris. You hear what I'm saying?” Jafaris's face fell. He just wanted to do something sweet for his momma. Arleen knew this and was touched. She would return the earrings later, but for the moment, she put them on. Jafaris smiled.

They had one more stop to make. As the sky grew inky blue and temperatures fell, Arleen met a white landlord in a flannel shirt and tool belt, fixing up a two-bedroom apartment with such haste and stress Arleen wondered if the inspector was coming the next day. She filled out an application, and Jafaris used the bathroom. It was too late when he discovered the toilet didn't flush. Arleen thanked the landlord and, taking Jafaris by the hand, rushed out.

A few minutes later, her phone rang. “That was very rude!” the landlord was yelling. “And I don't like children like that.”

Arleen and her boys could stay in the shelter for twenty-nine more days.

The Lodge sat on the corner of Seventh and Vine Streets, near downtown. On most days, residents gathered near the entrance, talking, smoking, and running after their children. That was where Crystal had been spending most of her time since the final days of February. On Crystal's eviction court papers, Sherrena had checked the box next to “the LANDLORD desires the premises for the following reason(s),” writing in: “Causing substantial disturbances with upper and lower tenants (with police involvement). Also, unauthorized subleasing to an evicted tenant.” Crystal was confused by the whole process. Could Sherrena call Arleen “unauthorized” when she knew about their arrangement from the start? She packed her things into two clear garbage bags and left without going to court, wrongly assuming that doing so would keep her name clean.

Crystal hated the food at the Lodge, and some of the maintenance men propositioned the residents for sex, offering fresh sheets, snacks, or extra shampoo.
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But she liked her room. It was warm, clean, and free. Said Crystal, “I ain't paying no five fifty and feel like I'm getting nothing.” Plus, she was on the hunt for a new friend, and the Lodge was a great place to find one. It collected under a single roof dozens of people who had found themselves in especially desperate situations, who were all “going through a thing,” as shelter residents put it.
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People were attracted to Crystal. She was gregarious and funny with an enduring habit of slapping her hands together and laughing at herself. She would saunter out the doors of the Lodge, singing gospel, her hands raised in praise. Crystal had some suitors, but what she wanted most of all from her new friends, and what she had wanted from Arleen, was a mother figure. She found one in Vanetta.

Vanetta Evans had been staying at the Lodge since January. At twenty, she was not much older than Crystal, but she'd grown up fast. Vanetta had her first child, Kendal Jr., when she was sixteen; then a daughter, Tembi, the next year; and a third the year after that: a boy named Bo-Bo. You might say Vanetta was raised in the Robert Taylor Homes, Chicago's infamous public housing towers, or you might say that her mentally challenged mother, whom Vanetta and her siblings unaffectionately called Shortcake, raised her “in almost every homeless shelter in Illinois and Wisconsin.” Crystal liked the way Vanetta carried herself. She was always put-together, with her hair pulled back tight in a small ponytail. She even wore her cell phone on a belt holder, like a landlord. Vanetta's dark-brown skin matched Crystal's, and she had a smoky, lounge-singer voice that she almost never raised at her kids. She could snap them in line by giving them the Look. When Kendal Jr. acted up, Vanetta pretended to call Big Kendal, his father, on the phone. The boy knew she was faking but would calm down anyway. When Bo-Bo had seizures, she rushed him to the hospital.
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The two women began swapping cigarettes, each keeping mental note of the number of Newports given and received. Soon they upped the ante, taking incremental but expedited steps toward establishing a relationship of reciprocity. They exchanged snacks, then small bills, then meals purchased at fast-food restaurants. Through passing references, they began learning about the other's resources—Vanetta received $673 a month from welfare and $380 in food stamps—as well as their character and temperament. Crystal and Vanetta began calling each other “sister.”
4
After a week, they decided to look for housing together. Roommates inside the homeless shelter would become roommates outside of it.

Crystal didn't think she needed to worry about Vanetta's upcoming sentencing hearing. “Prayer is a powerful thing,” she said. Vanetta thought her chances of avoiding prison were decent even without Jesus. It was her first offense.

The trouble had started when Old Country Buffet slashed Vanetta's hours. Instead of working five days a week, she would now only work one. Her manager blamed the recession. After that, Vanetta couldn't pay her electricity bill. We Energies threatened disconnection unless she paid $705. There was no way she could pay that and the rent. But she worried that Child Protective Services would take her kids away if her lights and gas were shut off. The thought of losing her children made Vanetta sick to her stomach. Then she fell behind in rent and received an eviction notice. She felt helpless and terrified. Her friend, who had also received the pink papers, felt the same way. One day with Vanetta's boyfriend, the two women sat in a van and watched another pair of women walk into a Blockbuster carrying purses. Someone suggested robbing the women and splitting the money; then all of a sudden, that's what they were doing. Vanetta's boyfriend unloaded his gun and handed it to her friend. The friend ran from the van and pointed the pistol at the women. Vanetta followed, collecting their purses. The cops picked them up a few hours later.
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In her confession, Vanetta had said, “I was desperate to pay my bills, and I was nervous and scared and did not want to see my kids in the dark or out on the street.” When she turned eighteen, Vanetta had put her name on the list for public housing. Becoming a convicted felon meant that her chances of ever being approved were almost zero.
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At her plea hearing, the judge told Vanetta that she could be “subject to a fine of up to a hundred thousand dollars, forty years of imprisonment, or both.” Vanetta tried not to think about that. After her hearing, she was fired and then evicted, which was when she took her kids to the Lodge.

Crystal and Vanetta agreed to look for an apartment exclusively on the Hispanic South Side. When they felt God smiling on them, they even looked in white neighborhoods. They refused to consider the North Side. “It would be nice to get away from these black motherfuckers,” Crystal said.
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They began making daily bus trips to the South Side and calling on rent signs. Even in the age of online apartment listing sites, the humble rent sign remained a visible and effective beacon, especially in minority neighborhoods. Only 15 percent of black renters looking for housing relied on the Internet. By not consulting print or online listings, Crystal and Vanetta constricted their options to what they could see with their own eyes, often from a foggy bus window.
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The new friends looked at a small two-bedroom unit but turned down an application when they learned the landlord didn't allow smoking. They hung up when a landlord answered in Spanish. “You want six fifty for a two-bedroom? You outta your mind,” Crystal told one landlord. After calling a dozen apartments, Vanetta suggested they try Affordable Rentals. You wouldn't know it from its tiny, storefront office on National Avenue, one of the South Side's main motorways, but Affordable Rentals was a giant in Milwaukee's low-income rental market. The company owned over three hundred rental units and managed almost five hundred more.
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“Don't get ghetto in there,” Vanetta reminded Crystal as they walked toward the door.

Inside, they put down a deposit and the receptionist behind thick glass handed them a master key so they could inspect the units on their own. The places were small but clean, except for the one with diapers and tires in the backyard. The gem of the bunch was a two-bedroom apartment—with a tub—renting for $445. Vanetta wanted a tub so her kids could take baths. The women rushed back and filled out an application. A paper taped to the wall announced Affordable Rentals' screening criteria:

Crystal and Vanetta paid no mind to the sign. On their rental application, Vanetta listed her twin brother as a reference. Crystal listed her spiritual mom.

As she waited to hear back from Affordable Rentals, Vanetta wondered if they needed to look at units priced over their $550 limit. But she didn't want to go higher, mainly because she didn't know if Crystal was able to hold on to her money. At the Lodge, Vanetta had watched Crystal spend down her check on clothes, fast food, and even slot machines at the casino. “Girl, I'm gonna punch you in the mouth,” Vanetta would vent. A healthy chunk of Crystal's money also went into the offering basket the first Sunday of every month.

“I'm sowing seeds,” Crystal said as the women sat down at George Webb. It was Crystal's treat. She had won $450 at Potawatomi Casino the night before, using a $40 birthday present from her foster care agency to play the slots. The waitress brought Crystal the cup of hot water she requested. She slid her silverware in the cup to clean it. “Remember how I explained to you last time? If you a farmer and you plant your seeds for your corn and your vegetables and all that, and you water and take care of it, your crops gonna come. That's how I look at it when I sow seeds in the church. I need something from God. So I sow a seed….I need a house. I need financial breakthrough. I need healing from stuff. I need to be made
whole
. That's how I'm gonna put it.”

Vanetta held her chilled look. “That's why I don't creep with your church, 'cause they don't have nothing to offer you, but they got a lot to say. And I don't like that. And then you go to them and tell them the situation that's going on, and it's like they don't care.”

Crystal looked at her food. “I dunno,” she said. “It's, I'm just waiting to move.” She tried to change the subject. “That cheesecake bangin'.”

But Vanetta was not through. “Don't ball up your face,” she said. “Motherfuckers smile in your face when you tithe.”

“Nuh-uh!” Crystal shook her head.

“You be throwing all that money in they basket! Don't say ‘nuh-uh' 'cause I seen it when I went Sunday.”

Vanetta knew how much Crystal's church meant to her. She had heard Crystal run on about Minister Barber and the bishops and the Holy Ghost and all that. She had watched Crystal take herself to church on Sundays, Tuesdays, Fridays, and sometimes Saturdays for special services. If the congregation at Mt. Calvary Pentecostal wasn't Crystal's family, who was? But Crystal's church was Vanetta's biggest competition. Every seed Crystal sowed in the offering basket left Vanetta with less money for their budding household. Vanetta didn't know if what she'd said had penetrated until later that day, when she came upon Crystal crying into her phone and praying in tongues: “
Eeh Shanta. Eeh Shanta.
”

When late afternoon arrived, Vanetta had to be back for her GED class. “Don't go,” said Crystal.

“I can't miss. I want that diploma,” Vanetta answered.

“You can't miss?”

“Only in a real emergency.”

“Bitch, you looking for housing. This
is
a real emergency.”

Vanetta smiled and left.

Crystal was supposed to continue the housing search, but she decided to stop by her church instead. Mt. Calvary Pentecostal Church was on Sixtieth and National, on the far Southwest Side of the city but still accessible by bus. It was a handsome brick building with stained-glass windows and rain gutters painted fire-engine red. It was Monday night, so the church's food pantry was open.

Crystal picked up a bag of groceries and accepted a hot dog from her minister. Bishop Dixon teased Crystal about texting during the service, and Crystal countered by asking the old man if his teeth ever fell out when he was giving the blessing. She told Sister Atalya to bring her dog to church. “Why not? Maybe she can get the Word too.” They laughed. Elder Johnson was there, in a preachy mood. “If we really got Jesus in our souls,” he said, “I'm supposed to be able to feel your pain, and you're supposed to be able to feel my pain.”

Elder Johnson didn't feel Crystal's pain. It wasn't that he didn't care, like Vanetta thought; it was that he didn't know. Elder Johnson, Bishop Dixon, Sister Atalya—none of them knew Crystal was staying at the Lodge. Only Minister Barber knew. Crystal didn't want members of her church to reduce her, to see her as an object of pity, a member of “the poor and the orphaned.” She wanted to be seen as Sister Crystal, part of the Body, the Beloved. Crystal received a bag of food once in a while; and congregants had opened their homes to her for a night or two. But her church was in no way equipped to meet Crystal's high-piled needs.
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What her church could offer was
the peace
.

“What's your favorite verse, Sister?” Elder Johnson asked. He had seen Crystal lift one of the nearby Bibles.

“Don't be trying to put me on the spot.” She smiled. Then she said, “ ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.' ”

Crystal and Vanetta kept looking for a place to live. Sometimes Vanetta took her kids with her; sometimes she took them to the day care or to stay with her older sister, Ebony. Vanetta had them with her when she and Crystal visited their thirty-second apartment, on Fifteenth Street and Madison. The landlord stepped out of his Saab and opened the door to a small two-bedroom unit. The showing was scheduled in the evening because the landlord had a government day job in Madison. He was a well-fed Puerto Rican man in pleated slacks and a dress shirt.

The place was small, dumpy, and without a bathtub. After a walk-through, Vanetta asked the landlord if he had any other units with tubs. He said he did and began describing another apartment. It was bigger and somewhat nicer than the place he was showing Vanetta and Crystal, but the rent was the same. Then, suddenly, as if forgetting something, the man stopped himself. His hand went for his pocket, and he answered his cell phone. It was obvious to Vanetta and Crystal that no one had called, but he pretended to have a conversation. Hanging up, the landlord said that it had been his partner on the other line and that he had just rented out the bigger and nicer unit.