When Doreen phoned Sherrena to complain, she often found herself being complained about. “Every time we call about something,” Doreen said, “she tries to blame it on us, and say we broke it. I’m tired of hearing it….So, we just fix it every time it breaks.”
“Fixing it” often meant getting on without it. The sink was the first thing to get stopped up. After it stayed that way for days, Ruby and Patrice took to washing dishes in the bathtub. But they weren’t able to catch all the food scraps from going down the drain, and pretty soon concrete-colored water was collecting in the bathtub too. So the family began boiling water on the kitchen stove and taking sponge baths. Afterward, someone would dump the pot water down the toilet and grab the plunger, causing a small colony of roaches to scamper to another hiding spot. You had to plunge hard. It usually took a good five minutes before the toilet would flush. When the toilet quit working, the family began placing soiled tissue in a plastic bag to be tossed with the trash.
When Doreen finally did call Sherrena about the plumbing, she could not get ahold of her. After a week of voice messages, Sherrena called back, explaining that she and Quentin had been away in Florida. They had recently purchased a three-bedroom vacation condo there. In response to Doreen’s complaint about the plumbing, Sherrena reminded her tenant that she was breaking the terms of her lease by allowing Patrice and her children to live with her.
To Patrice, it was déjà vu. Before moving upstairs, she had inspected the unit. It needed a lot of work—the lint-gray carpet was worn thin and filthy, the ceiling in the kids’ bedroom was drooping, the balcony door was unhinged, and the balcony itself looked like it would collapse if you tossed a sack of flour on it—but Sherrena promised to attend to these things. Landlords were allowed to rent units with property code violations, and even units that did not meet “basic habitability requirements,” as long as they were up front about the problems.6
Patrice took Sherrena at her word and handed her $1,100: the first month’s rent and security deposit. But the repairs came slowly. Patrice’s bathtub stopped draining, but Sherrena didn’t return her calls. That time, she and Quentin were away on vacation. Patrice went two months without a working sink. When Patrice discovered a large hole in one of the walls, Sherrena gave her a pamphlet about how to keep her children safe from lead paint. When the door came off the hinges, “she sent her dope men over to our house to fix it,” Patrice complained. Things came to a head.
“I’m gonna get an attorney and sue you!” Patrice shouted.
“Go ahead.” Sherrena laughed. “But my money is longer than yours.”
“If I’m giving you my money, why ain’t my stuff fixed?”
The next month, Patrice tried a different approach. If Sherrena wouldn’t respond when the rent was paid, maybe she would respond when it wasn’t. Patrice gave Sherrena half the rent and said she would get the rest after she completed the promised repairs. As it was, the rent took 65 percent of Patrice’s income. It was hard to give up such a big chunk of her paycheck to live in such conditions.
Patrice’s plan backfired. Sherrena refused to work on Patrice’s place unless she delivered her rent in full. To Patrice, it felt like a catch-22. If she was paid up, Sherrena often didn’t answer the phone until the first of the month rolled around again. If she withheld rent, Sherrena refused to fix anything until she paid. “I’m not going to rush and bust my ass to take care of a bunch of issues, and you didn’t pay me all my money,” Sherrena said. Still, Patrice wanted to stay. She liked living above her momma and thought the apartment could be nice. Then Patrice’s manager at Cousins Subs cut back her hours, and she lost what little leverage she had. After Sherrena served her the eviction notice, Patrice couldn’t catch up. She promised to give Sherrena her tax refund, but by that time it was too late. Belinda, the payee and Sherrena’s new best friend, had called asking for a place, and Sherrena jumped at the opportunity. Patrice’s place would be available in a few weeks, Sherrena promised.
—
After two months without a working bathtub or sink and with a barely working toilet, Doreen decided to call a plumber herself. Having paid for a plumber the first time things got stopped up, Sherrena was not keen to do so again. And after what had happened at Thirty-Second Street, Doreen knew better than to call a building inspector. The plumber charged $150 to snake out the pipes. He concluded that the plumbing system was old and vulnerable and advised Doreen to catch everything she could from going down the sink. The first thing Doreen did after the man left was to run a hot bath and soak in it for an hour.
Doreen decided to deduct the $150 from her rent. When Sherrena responded by saying that would earn her an eviction notice, Doreen went ahead and withheld all her rent. If she was going to get evicted, she might as well save her money to put it toward the next move.7 It was a common strategy among cash-strapped renters. Because the rent took almost all of their paycheck, families sometimes had to initiate a necessary eviction that allowed them to save enough money to move to another place. One landlord’s loss was another’s gain.8
If Doreen had to move, she knew she wouldn’t be able to find a much cheaper place, especially for three adults and five children. At the time, median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Milwaukee was $600. Ten percent of units rented at or below $480, and 10 percent rented at or above $750.9 A mere $270 separated some of the cheapest units in the city from some of the most expensive. That meant that rent in some of the worst neighborhoods was not drastically cheaper than rent in much better areas. For example, in the city’s poorest neighborhoods, where at least 40 percent of families lived below the poverty line, median rent for a two-bedroom apartment was only $50 less than the citywide median.10 Sherrena put it like this: “A two bedroom is a two bedroom is a two bedroom.”
This had long been the case. When tenements began appearing in New York City in the mid-1800s, rent in the worst slums was 30 percent higher than in uptown. In the 1920s and ’30s, rent for dilapidated housing in the black ghettos of Milwaukee and Philadelphia and other northern cities exceeded that for better housing in white neighborhoods. As late as 1960, rent in major cities was higher for blacks than for whites in similar accommodations.11 The poor did not crowd into slums because of cheap housing. They were there—and this was especially true of the black poor—simply because they were allowed to be.
Landlords at the bottom of the market generally did not lower rents to meet demand and avoid the costs of all those missed payments and evictions. There were costs to avoiding those costs too. For many landlords, it was cheaper to deal with the expense of eviction than to maintain their properties; it was possible to skimp on maintenance if tenants were perpetually behind; and many poor tenants would be perpetually behind because their rent was too high.
Tenants able to pay their rent in full each month could take advantage of legal protections designed to keep their housing safe and decent. Not only could they summon a building inspector without fear of eviction, but they also had the right to withhold rent until certain repairs were made.12 But when tenants fell behind, these protections dissolved. Tenants in arrears were barred from withholding or escrowing rent; and they tempted eviction if they filed a report with a building inspector. It was not that low-income renters didn’t know their rights. They just knew those rights would cost them.
“I think callin’ a building inspector is only gonna cause more problems,” Doreen told Patrice.
“It does,” Patrice answered. “She can put us out if we call a building inspector.” What Patrice meant was that Sherrena could evict them because Doreen had violated the terms of her lease—Patrice and her kids were “unauthorized boarders”—and that she likely would if DNS were phoned.
When tenants relinquished protections by falling behind in rent or otherwise breaking their rental agreement, landlords could respond by neglecting repairs. Or as Sherrena put it to tenants: “If I give you a break, you give me a break.” Tenants could trade their dignity and children’s health
for a roof over their head.13 Between 2009 and 2011, nearly half of all renters in Milwaukee experienced a serious and lasting housing problem.14 More than 1 in 5 lived with a broken window; a busted appliance; or mice, cockroaches, or rats for more than three days. One-third experienced clogged plumbing that lasted more than a day. And 1 in 10 spent at least a day without heat. African American households were the most likely to have these problems—as were those where children slept. Yet the average rent was the same, whether an apartment had housing problems or did not.15
Tenants who fell behind either had to accept unpleasant, degrading, and sometimes dangerous housing conditions or be evicted. But from a business point of view, this arrangement could be lucrative. The four-family property that included Doreen’s and Lamar’s apartments was Sherrena’s most profitable. Her second-most profitable property was Arleen’s place on Thirteenth Street. In Sherrena’s portfolio, her worst properties yielded her biggest returns.16
—
Shortly after Doreen told Sherrena she would be withholding her rent, Natasha discovered she was four months pregnant. When she told her momma, Doreen laughed and said, “I told you so!” She had noticed the changes Natasha had tried to ignore. Doreen was thrilled. “I’m about to be a proud grandmother again,” she crowed. Natasha’s boyfriend was thrilled. A new pregnancy, legitimate or otherwise, was something to celebrate—unless you were a young woman trying to live free and independent.17 Natasha was devastated.
“It’s probably a bigheaded boy!” Doreen teased.
“I don’t see how in the world I got pregnant,” Natasha whined. “I don’t even like pregnant stomachs.”
Natasha and Malik had been dating for about a year. They had met at Cousins Subs, where Malik worked with Patrice. He was shorter and darker than Natasha, with cornrows and a strong face. He had a gentle way about him, and although he was thirty-three, this would be his first child. Natasha liked him okay. But her heart still belonged to Taye, gunned down in a botched robbery two years earlier, when he was seventeen. In her purse, she still carried his funeral program, which listed Natasha as “a special lady friend” among his survivors. Ruby was crazy about that boy too, and sometimes with Natasha’s prodding she would tell Taye stories. As Natasha listened quietly, she would smile like older people do when they’ve put some distance between themselves and the pain. In those moments it was as if some cruel force had wedged a vise between the sisters and sprung the crank, propelling Natasha beyond her years.18
Per Hinkston family tradition, Patrice would be the one to name the baby. Malik had other plans. When Natasha told Doreen and Patrice that Malik wanted the name to be Malik Jr. if it was a boy, they scoffed. “We don’t do juniors,” Doreen said. “We messed up once. I hate that I did that.” C.J. was named after his father, but so the family wouldn’t have to utter that man’s name, they shortened Caleb Jr. to C.J.
If Natasha had to be a mother, she knew this much: she was not going to bring her baby into that house. Now that she was pregnant, she worried more about the apartment and about where they would go if Sherrena decided to evict them. But Doreen had carried the family on her back before, and Natasha believed she would do it again. “My momma, she strong,” Natasha said. “And she’s got us out of way worse situations than this. I mean, from shelters, livin’ on the street, churches, cars. I got a lot of faith in my momma. Yeah, we’ve been on the street a few times, but my momma, she always had it.” Only this time, Natasha didn’t like her momma’s plan. Ever since learning about an upcoming family reunion in Brownsville, Tennessee, Doreen had been thinking about moving the family down there. Patrice liked the idea; she was done with Milwaukee. “This a dead city,” she said, “full of crackheads and prostitutes.” But Natasha didn’t want to take her baby away from its father.
Doreen and Patrice didn’t think this was a legitimate concern. “He’s not dependable,” Doreen said. But Malik had been acting extra-dependable since learning he was going to be a dad, pulling double shifts, saving money, bringing Natasha food, and looking for an apartment for the three of them. The truth was that Doreen and Patrice didn’t expect much from Malik, not because of anything he had done, but because of their own experiences with men. Patrice’s and Natasha’s fathers had left Doreen; Ruby and C.J.’s daddy was in prison. The fathers of Patrice’s children played a negligible role in their lives, and her current boyfriend had recently put her through the dining-room table.19 Doreen and Patrice did not see why a man needed to be involved in family decisions about where to raise a child, let alone what to name it. Said Doreen to Natasha, “There was no one around to rub my stomach when you were kicking me.” Said Patrice, “We didn’t have a daddy. My kids don’t have no daddy. And your kids don’t need no daddy.”
Someone from the doctor’s office called. “I gotta come back in for another ultrasound,” Natasha told Doreen, getting off the phone. “They said they found somethin’ hidin’.”
“What do you mean they found somethin’ hidin’?”
“Hidin’. Hidin’, like behind the other baby.”
Doreen gasped. “Natasha, are you going to have twins?”
“But I don’t want no babies!” Natasha stomped her foot.
“Too late to say that now!” Doreen laughed.
“That’s too much.” Natasha slunk down on the couch and Coco jumped on her lap. “Coco, come here. Momma’s havin’ a bad day.”
Doreen tried to cheer her up. “I’m gonna make sure you get a very big room when we move,” she said. “Down the hall from me. Maybe downstairs. Yeah, I hope we get a house like we had on Thirty-Second.”
“That would be a blessing,” Natasha said, stroking Coco.
“Yes, it would.” Doreen turned to Ruby, who had been sitting quietly on the floor, holding her knees to her chest. “What you think, Ruby girl, wanna move?”
“Of course,” Ruby said. “I hate this house.”
7.
THE SICK
Scott worked for cash here and there, but his main job was taking care of Teddy. He did the cooking, cleaning, and shopping. In the morning, he helped Teddy out of bed and the shower. Scott felt he had a calling for that sort of thing. It was why he had become a nurse. Thirty-eight and bald, with a ruddy complexion, dimples, and eyes that matched the blue flames of a gas-stove burner, Scott had a gentle, broken spirit. As for Teddy, he was a small man, bone thin, with scabbed-over arms displaying shriveled tattoos. He could hardly walk. Scott made him anyway, and Teddy would shuffle slowly around the trailer park, dragging his left leg behind him and looking much older than fifty-two.
Pam and Ned had left to go stay in a cheap motel for a few days, but Tobin was still moving forward with Teddy and Scott’s eviction. They had fallen behind two months ago, when a neck X-ray and brain scan set Teddy back $507. Teddy’s health problems began a year earlier, when he woke up in the hospital after tumbling down some steps around the Sixteenth Street Viaduct. The space beneath the viaduct was one of his favorite drinking spots, the cars zooming overhead and the valley floor below. He had gone there with a bottle and some men from the rescue mission. In the hospital, Teddy was told that he was partially paralyzed on his left side, that the doctors had had to fuse his neck back together, and that all the pins and screws were there to hold everything in place.
Scott put the eviction notice on their cluttered table, next to bills, beer cans, an old Polaroid camera, and a large ashtray. It was late morning, and the two men sat drinking cans of Milwaukee’s Best. Teddy poked the eviction notice. “I suppose he wants to get a little more in his pot. His pot is a lot bigger than my pot.”
Teddy had looked straight ahead when he said it, his back perfectly flat against the chair. Sometimes Scott would walk in and find Teddy sitting on the couch, motionless, arms limp at his sides, not watching television or flipping through a magazine, just sitting. The first couple times this happened, Scott leaned in to make sure Teddy wasn’t dead.
“Maybe,” Scott answered. “But what did Tob
in do wrong?”
“He is purely an asshole. If you like him, that’s your business….If I was in the shape I used to be, I’d already have gone up there and punched him in the nose.”
“That’s effective,” Scott said sarcastically.
“I’m a hillbilly. You can take the boy outta the country but you can’t take the country outta the boy.”
Teddy went on—he could talk when he wanted to—and Scott sat quietly listening. He didn’t interrupt the old man when he launched into one of his monologues, drawn out long and syrupy, like his Tennessee accent. Scott stared into the living room. There was nothing on the wood-paneled walls except a large painting left behind by the previous tenants: Jesus and the two thieves hung on crosses, all reds and purples. A year ago, the men had moved in with little and had acquired little since. Teddy’s prized possessions were his fishing rods and tackle. Scott’s was a large plastic container filled with photographs, certifications, and mementos from his old life.
When Teddy had finished, Scott looked up from his beer and out the window. Across the way, he saw Ned and Pam’s trailer, now abandoned, and Dawn’s, where he sometimes bought morphine or, if he was in a pinch, Vicodin. Randy Shit-Pants, who thought his dead father was living in his trailer’s heating vents, was filthy on his porch, smoking a clove cigarette and mumbling to himself. An airplane roared in low.
“I,” Scott started. “I don’t want to live here.” He picked up the eviction notice. “You know what this is? The kick in the ass to get me out.”
—
Scott had grown up on an Iowa dairy farm that later went to pigs. He once got a horse for Christmas. Scott never met his biological father, who, during a date, had forced himself on his mother. To save the family some embarrassment, Scott’s mother, Joan, was made to marry the rapist. She was sixteen. But Scott’s father soon made a clean break, never to be heard from again. The next husband was a mean cuss, a hitter; before they divorced, Joan had one child by him: a daughter, Clarissa. Then Scott’s mother found Cam, a cowboy, and they had three more children. One of Scott’s brothers became a firefighter; another delivered water for Culligan; and his youngest sister was a nurse. Clarissa was an alcoholic who lived in the worst apartment complex in Scott’s hometown. Locals called it the Beehive because tenants buzzed in and out of it.
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