Arleen told the young woman that Sherrena had thrown everything out. The woman looked doubtful, but Trisha backed her up. The previous tenant and her people left before discovering the lie. Once they were gone, Arleen and Trisha nodded at each other.5
After that, Trisha took to telling people that the women were old friends, that they had met outside a corner store years ago, when Trisha was just a girl and Arleen had told her, “You a pretty female.” There was more to the story—about Arleen meeting Trisha’s mother in prison, about Trisha waking up in the hospital and Arleen being there—but it was all in Trisha’s head. It was hard to know if she believed it or not.
Trisha came to Sherrena through Belinda Hall, who was the best thing to happen to Sherrena in a long time. A black woman, not yet thirty, with a round face and glasses, Belinda ran her own business, working as a representative payee responsible for handling the finances of SSI beneficiaries found incapable of managing on their own. Sherrena liked finding tenants through social service agencies, which often vouched for tenants and put up some cash. But Belinda was a special catch. “I’ve been helping this girl as much as possible because I want her to fill up my properties,” Sherrena reflected. “The rent comes directly from her every month. So that’s a damn good situation to be in.” Sherrena told Belinda that she would empty out all of her units if she wanted them for her clients. “I’m serious. Because I know I would get my money.” Trisha was the fourth tenant Belinda had given Sherrena since the two women had met three months earlier.
Those poor and disabled enough to receive SSI but not clean enough to be welcomed into public housing made up Belinda’s client base.6 Belinda estimated that rent payments took between 60 and 70 percent of her typical client’s monthly income. Many clients had little left over after Belinda paid for rent, utilities, and food.7 Because stable and affordable housing was a major problem for Belinda’s clients, she cultivated friendships with landlords, whom she could then call upon in an emergency. Belinda once phoned Sherrena around five a.m. because the heat in one of her client’s buildings had gone out and she needed to relocate her that day. The faster Belinda could address clients’ housing problems, the more clients she could take on—and the more money she could make. Belinda charged each client $37 a month for her services. When she met Sherrena, Belinda had 230 clients.
What Belinda could offer Sherrena and other landlords was steady, reliable rental income, and what Belinda got in return was a growing customer base, which meant more money in her pocket.
—
“Press 1 to leave a voice message.” Sherrena pressed 1. “Arleen, this is Sherrena calling. I’m calling to find out if you had your rent. Remember we agreed that you were going to pay a little bit over to get caught up with the three twenty you owed for—” Sherrena stopped herself from finishing the sentence with “your sister’s funeral costs.” She went on: “Um, I will be expecting the six hundred and fifty. Go ’head and give me a call.”
Arleen didn’t regret what she had done. Usually when there was a funeral, she couldn’t even afford to buy Jafaris new shoes and would just scrub his best ones. She had missed funerals in the past because Jori and Jafaris didn’t have anything to wear. But this was her sister—not in the biological sense but in the spiritual sense. They were close. She had long been a sickly girl, overweight and diabetic; her heart quit after she’d been hospitalized for pneumonia and a series of other health complications.
Arleen didn’t have the money, but neither did anyone else. She would have been ashamed of herself if she hadn’t pitched in. She gave half of her check to Sherrena and the other half to New Pitts Mortuary.
Sherrena felt bad when she heard about Arleen’s sister. She made her new tenant a deal. Arleen could stay if she paid $650 for three months to recover the lost rent. Even if Arleen signed over her entire welfare check each month, she would still be short. But Sherrena was betting that Arleen could put in a few calls to family members or nonprofit agencies. Arleen took the deal because she had no other option.
Sherrena and Quentin were in the Suburban when Arleen called around the beginning of the next month. Sherrena hung up and looked at Quentin. “Arleen said her check didn’t come.”
This was a half-truth. Arleen had received a check, but not for $628. She had missed an appointment with her welfare caseworker, completely forgetting about it. A reminder notice was mailed to Atkinson, or was it Nineteenth Street? When Arleen didn’t show, the caseworker “sanctioned” Arleen by decreasing her benefit.8 Arleen could have given Sherrena her reduced check, but she thought it was better to be behind and have a few hundred dollars in her pocket than be behind and completely broke.
Quentin kept his eyes on the road. “Story of they life,” he said.
6.
RAT HOLE
Three generations of Hinkstons lived in the brownish-white house on Eighteenth and Wright, the one in front of Lamar’s. Doreen was the mother hen. Broad-shouldered and broad-bellied, she was a moonfaced woman with glasses and dark-brown freckles flecking her lighter cheeks. For as long as she could remember, she had been overweight and tended to move slowly through her days. Doreen had four children—Patrice, Natasha, C.J., and Ruby, ages twenty-four, nineteen, fourteen, and thirteen—and three grandchildren from Patrice: ten-year-old Mikey and his two younger sisters: Jada, four; and Kayla Mae, two. There was also a dog, Coco, a football-sized ankle-biter loyal only to Natasha.
After Patrice received Sherrena’s eviction papers and moved herself and her children from their upper unit to the downstairs apartment where Doreen lived with Natasha, C.J., and Ruby, all eight Hinkstons (and Coco) found themselves living together in a small, cramped space. Patrice, Natasha, and C.J. responded by spending as much time as they could out of the house, walking the block in good weather or passing evenings in the back apartment, playing spades with Lamar. But at night, everyone packed in. Patrice claimed the smaller of the two bedrooms. If she was going to pay half the rent, she argued, then she should get one bedroom to herself, even if it didn’t have a door. In the other bedroom, Doreen and Natasha shared the bed while Ruby curled up in a chair at night. Mikey bedded down with C.J. on a sheetless single mattress in the living room, next to the glass table and head-high piles of clean and dirty clothes that didn’t fit in the bedrooms. Patrice’s daughters slept in the dining room on a single mattress, its corners split open, exposing innards of springs and etiolated foam.
No one slept well. Natasha had a habit of kicking Doreen in her sleep, and Doreen had a habit of rolling over on Natasha or stealing Natasha’s pillow and hitting her with it when she tried to tug it back. The older children often missed the early-morning school bus. The little ones fell asleep at random times throughout the day. Doreen would come out of the kitchen to find their tiny heads resting on the table or some piece of clothing on the floor.