Evicted

by Matthew Desmond

  “But you shouldn’t speak that over yourself, ’cause everybody’s not out to get you.”

  “Everybody they is, though….You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know what I been through. You don’t know what it’s like to have your father molest you and your mother not care about it!” It was her stepfather, the minister. She was ten when it started and sixteen when it stopped.

  “Oh, yes I do,” Crystal said. “Yes, I do! I know exactly what that’s like ’cause my stepfather molested me when I was just a little girl, and that’s why they sent me to the foster care. I swear to God I know exactly what you been through! I swear to God.”

  Arleen took it in. Jori had led Jafaris into their bedroom and turned on some music, which drifted into the living room as the women let a moment of shared comprehension pass in silence. Each knew something of the other’s pain. The boys were sitting on a mattress, playing with Little. Arleen dropped her head, saying, “I’m sick of getting hurt.”

  “Okay, you know what?” Crystal said. “I remember this like it was yesterday. I had been going to church for a month or so, and the spirit moved on me, and I told God: ‘I’m tired of hurting. I’m tired of crying. I’m tired of suffering. I’m tired of people hurting me.’…But it’s just to build and make you. Because me being hurt, me being lied on, me being talked about, me being abused. Everything. Me being in foster care, me not having no momma, me not having no daddy, siblings don’t care, aunties don’t care, uncles don’t care—made me….If you want me to love you, how can I love you if you don’t trust me? How can I comfort you?…Can’t nobody help you unless you allow them to do it. You’ve been molested? I’ve been molested too….At ten, I had a flashback, and I was five years old. I looked at my mother, and my mother was still doing drugs. My mother stayed with this man….My mom did the crack pipe. She was pregnant with me. My dad beat my mom, and my mom got stabbed in her back eleven times. So, I know God got a calling on my life, but if I don’t allow him to use me to do that calling, how can he do it?…Church was awesome. I could see the Spirit of God. I can feel the Spirit of God. I know when the Spirit moving in church because it be real smoky. And people might think I’m crazy for believing like that, but, I mean, that’s how I believe….My pastor treats me more like a daughter than my mother. I can say that much. And once again I can’t say how you feel because you don’t have a mother, but once again I can….Everybody goes through stuff in life. And you’re going to continue to go through. Your situation, it’s to make you. It’s to build you….I went through it all summer. All summer. Felt like I didn’t have nobody. Was ready to do crack this summer. But I prayed a prayer that my pastor prayed over me two years ago, and I firmly stand on that word and believe in it. I didn’t even tell my pastor that my momma did crack at this time, and my pastor walked in the aisles, laid her hands on me and said, ‘Momma did crack. You ain’t gonna do crack.’ All I could do was cry.”

  Crystal’s last word lingered in the air until it dissolved in the chattering of the television. Arleen sat there, stunned. Her phone rang and snapped her back. A friend had a lead on an apartment. “Does he do background checks and stuff?”

  “Come here,” Crystal said once Arleen was off the phone. Arleen obeyed and Crystal held her. “What’s the rent at that place?”

  “You know what, I didn’t even ask him.” Arleen called back, learned it was $600 a month, and hung up. “Nope.”

  Crystal left to inspect Sherrena’s other apartment. “It’s gonna be all right,” she told Arleen. “If I can’t promise you nothing else, it’ll be all right. That much I can say.”

  16.

  ASHES ON SNOW

  When the first of the month came, commas once again returned to Sherrena’s bank account. It wasn’t any ordinary month either; it was February, when tenants received tax credits and wrote big rent checks. One had cashed her tax return and paid Sherrena $2,375. Doreen came up with $950, as her stipulation dictated. Lamar paid $550 but, since his painting job had earned him nothing, was still behind as far as Sherrena was concerned. He would have to be evicted.

  Maybe to fully efface the recent memory of being broke, or maybe just for the hell of it, Sherrena and Quentin took themselves to the casino on a Wednesday night. Sherrena put on a Rocawear sweatsuit, maroon and gold. Quentin sported a G-Unit leather jacket, a straight-billed black cap, and a large pinky ring. He found a handicapped parking spot near the main entrance of Potawatomi Casino and hung from his rearview mirror the necessary permit, a gift from a handicapped tenant.

  As they made their way to the bar and grill, past the robotic jungle sounds from all the machines, Sherrena smiled impishly and said, “I hope you don’t have nothing planned for the morning.” She could pass entire nights at the casino, staying until three or four a.m., long after Quentin had gone home to sleep.

  After dinner, where they discussed Sherrena’s upcoming presentation on “The Art of the Double Closure” over burgers and Long Island iced teas, they headed to the blackjack section. Sherrena walked slowly through the tables and decided on the one with two white men, one alone and smoking, the other jittery with a high-fiving blonde on his shoulder. Sherrena placed $100 on the table—the minimum bet was $25; she rarely played for less—and pulled up a stool. She stayed quiet at the table, tapping her finger for a hit and slicing two through the air to pass.

  Across town, at Eighteenth and Wright, Lamar dealt the cards as Luke, Eddy, Buck, and some of the other neighborhood boys gathered around the table. It was a bitterly cold night, and the warmth of their bodies was fogging up the kitchen windows. The game had a different rhythm, slower and less boisterous, because Kamala was there. Lamar had been asking Kamala to join him at spades ever since she moved upstairs, and she finally said yes, arranging for her father to stay with her daughters as they slept. Kamala had a man, Devon, the father of her children, but Lamar flirted softly with her all the same. The presence of a woman had a way of altering the house’s chemistry. Before she was pregnant, Natasha once had caused so much tension at the spades table, solely by being beautiful and desired, that Lamar cut the game short and kicked everyone out. But the boys were on their best behavior around Kamala. They didn’t talk much about girls and refrained from calling Lamar a “monkey’s ass” as they had been doing since he shaved his mustache. Kamala was only a few years older than Natasha but seemed much more of a woman to them, encased as she was in a hard shell of dignity and world-weariness.1

  Lamar’s New Year’s resolution was “to honor God, stay clean, and find a new place.” Sherrena had been ignoring his requests for repairs: the kitchen sink had been leaking for the better part of a week and was now running onto the floor. Lamar figured Sherrena would not let him stay much longer anyway. Maybe it was for the best, he thought. Maybe his next place could also be a safe haven for all his boys. Lamar didn’t understand why Sherrena treated him like she did. “Why would you fuck someone that’s not trying to fuck you?” he wondered. Sherrena wondered the same thing. Lamar said the sink was broken. Sherrena said he broke the sink.

  Quentin didn’t join Sherrena at the blackjack table. He never did. Instead, he watched from a distance and made sure nobody got angry or fresh with his wife. Whatever pleasure he took from being at the casino had to do with seeing Sherrena happy. Quentin hated gambling. “Bam, there goes fifty dollars right there,” he murmured after Sherrena lost another hand.

  Cards fell. The night unfurled. Quentin took a phone call, hung up, and approached the blackjack table. He brought his face next to Sherrena’s and whispered that Eighteenth and Wright was on fire. She immediately collected her chips and followed Quentin out the door.

  “Doreen’s?” Sherrena asked when she caught up to Quentin.

  “No. The back unit.”

  “Lamar’s?”

  “No. The upstairs. Kamala’s.”

  Quentin sped away from the casino. “Lord, please, please let this be something minor,” Sherrena prayed, holding on to the door handle as th
e Suburban careered through the back roads that lead to Eighteenth Street. Lifting her head, she fretted, “Shame on them….I hope my shit ain’t burnt to a crisp.”

  When Quentin tried turning down Eighteenth Street, he met a roadblock. “Already that motherfucker lit up like Christmas down here,” he said. He could see fire trucks in front of the property, their red and white lights shooting out in every direction, but not the house itself. Quentin tried another route, then another, but fire trucks and ambulances had blocked off the surrounding streets and alleyways. As he maneuvered the Suburban, Sherrena caught brief glimpses of the scene as it flashed up through breaks in the neighboring houses. Finally, Quentin tried a back alley a block behind Eighteenth Street. Through the Suburban’s window, the shadowed rear of a garage gave way to a snow-covered abandoned lot, and the property showed itself in full view.

  Sherrena lost her breath.

  “Damn! That’s real bad, Sher,” Quentin let out.

  The house was engulfed. Flames were leaping from the roof and disappearing into a milky column of smoke and steam towering into the winter sky. Quentin and Sherrena watched firefighters’ silhouettes dash around what had been Kamala’s apartment, now a gutted, charcoaled shell. What was not burning was slicked in ice from frozen hose water.

  Quentin headed toward the house. Sherrena stayed put. The fire reminded her of the time a disgruntled mortgage customer tossed a homemade bomb through her office window. Since then, the sight of fire disturbed and reduced her.

  Quentin recognized Luke as Lamar’s eldest son, even as he was crying with his head between his knees. A teenage girl consoled him on Doreen’s steps. It was hard to hear over the noise: the grumble of diesel engines, the jackhammer whirring of the water pumps, the sizzle of water meeting heat, the splitting of wood under axes. Patrice was outside too, shivering in only a T-shirt and jeans. She motioned to Quentin and, lifting her voice, hollered in the direction of a firefighter, “He the landlord!” The firefighter nodded and approached Quentin. Bystanders’ faces glowed orange out of the darkness when the flames burst upward. Patrice allowed herself one more look at the paramedics gathered at the rear of an ambulance and went inside.

  The Hinkstons’ house, separated from the back house where Lamar and Kamala lived by only a small patch of mud and weeds, was crammed with people. Doreen was sitting near the front door, cradling her youngest granddaughter, Kayla Mae. Natasha was on the floor next to Ruby, draped in a blanket. The rest of the Hinkston kids sat in a row on a mattress, wide-eyed at the weight of the moment. Lamar was slumped in his wheelchair, rubbing his head and drying his eyes. Eddy and Buck stood by his side. White people in hard hats milled through the crowd, apologizing and collecting information. “I’m sorry. Can I get your name?”

  Patrice, who had seen a firefighter carry something to the ambulance under a white sheet, looked to Kamala. She was writhing on the floor, screaming, “My baby! My baby!” Her hair had been burnt off on one side. She arched her back and pressed her face into the ground. An older woman nobody recognized tried to hold her. “Whoa!” she would say as Kamala lurched. “Whoa.” When the old woman grew tired, she let go, and Kamala collapsed onto the floor, wailing.

  Devon walked into the house, carrying two of his daughters, both toddlers. He pushed the scared girls past the crescent of police officers who were surrounding their mother. Kamala sat up and pulled the girls in. She clung to them, kissed their faces all over, and pressing her head into theirs, spilled her tears onto their hair.

  An older firefighter stepped into the Hinkstons’ house. He knelt down beside Kamala and told her what she already knew. Her youngest daughter, eight months old, was dead. Kamala fell back and let out a trembling, otherworldly groan.

  “He killed my baby!” Kamala screamed, convulsing. “I’ma kill him! I’ma kill him!”

  Devon began pacing the room with clenched fists. Over and over, he whispered, “That’s the second one. That’s the second one.” At one point, he stopped and stood over Kamala. The room hushed and looked on. Devon looked to be on the verge of violence. But the moment passed, and he resumed his pacing and mad chant. “That’s the second one.” They had lost a baby just a year earlier, a daughter who was stillborn. Kamala and Devon wore her ashes around their necks in matching lockets.

  “Oh, God,” Sherrena said when Quentin told her. “I hope they didn’t leave that baby at home by herself.” Sherrena’s mind drifted back to earlier years, when she was a fourth-grade teacher and Kamala her student. “She was always a good girl in school,” she said.

  Back at home, Quentin and Sherrena tried putting the pieces together. “Devon and Kamala—” Quentin began.

  “Was downstairs,” Sherrena followed.

  “Playing cards with Lamar. And maybe left something on….And by the time they realized it was a fire, they tried to run upstairs, but it was too late.”

  Quentin keyed the computer to see if the fire had made the news. It had. “Firefighters did not hear smoke detectors when they arrived,” he read. “There is a smoke detector in the kitchen,” he said.

  “There’s supposed to be one in each sleeping area,” Sherrena replied. “I thought we had put some smoke detectors up there. I can’t remember right now.”2

  —

  The following day, Sherrena heard from the fire inspector. He said the fire had started when one of Kamala’s daughters climbed out of bed and knocked over a lamp. Kamala’s father had either fled without grabbing the baby or, more likely, left the girls alone earlier in the evening. Both Kamala and Luke had tried to rescue the child, but the fire was all-consuming. Kamala’s other two daughters walked out themselves, before the fire got out of control. Nobody had heard a smoke detector go off.

  The fire inspector told Sherrena she “didn’t have anything to worry about.” She wasn’t liable for anything that had happened. Sherrena then asked if she was obligated to return Kamala’s and Lamar’s rent, since the fire happened a few days after the first of the month. The fire inspector said no, and that settled it in Sherrena’s mind. “They are not getting any money back from me,” she said. Sherrena figured both Kamala and Lamar would ask for their rent to be returned, and she was right.

  Sherrena planned to tear the place down and pocket the insurance payout. “The only positive thing I can say is happening out of all of this is that I may get a huge chunk of money,” she said. That—and “getting rid of Lamar.” The Red Cross would find Lamar and his sons a new place to live, giving Sherrena one less eviction to worry about.

  Earlier that morning, loud knocking had pulled Doreen out of bed. She opened the front door in her nightgown to find reporters with cameras and microphones. After a few questions, Doreen shut the door and told herself not to answer it for the rest of the day. She walked through the kitchen and looked out a back window. Kamala’s second-floor apartment looked like a dark cave. The windows had been broken out and a large section of the roof was gone, leaving only support beams. Runoff had left the siding streaked with gray grime. The snowy ground was blackened with ash. Scattered about were roof shingles, long pieces of wood, the skeletons of furniture and other household items—a gnarled junk heap all charred and coated with hardened foam from the fire hoses. Water had frozen into thousands of icy bulbs that appeared to drip off the tips of surrounding tree branches. Doreen lowered her eyes and saw, on the house’s front porch, six white lilies tied with a cream ribbon. Spring in the dead of winter.

  PART THREE

  AFTER

  17.

  THIS IS AMERICA

  Arleen was in the living room at Thirteenth Street, shivering. She didn’t have a winter coat, so she pulled on another T-shirt and an oversized hoodie. The Milwaukee weathermen had been working themselves up. They said it was going to be the coldest week in a decade, that the temperature could bottom out at forty below with the wind chill. The local news kept flashing a warning: FROSTBITE TIME: 10 MINUTES. People were urged to stay inside. Arleen had three days to find another apar
tment.

  Sherrena was done with both Arleen and Crystal. The conversation with the Milwaukee PD had spooked her; she decided to have the sheriffs remove Arleen and deliver Crystal an eviction notice. “I’m not gonna be arrested because of those people over there,” Sherrena said. “I’m not gonna have them take my property because of them. I’m tired of this shit….Arleen is being real selfish. She doesn’t care about anybody else but her and her kids. She doesn’t care about me.” Sherrena faxed a copy of Crystal’s eviction notice to the Milwaukee PD. A few days later, she received a letter back: “Your written course of action is accepted.”

  Arleen had made an appointment with a landlord and was waiting outside her apartment complex when the woman pulled up in a Subaru, thirty minutes late. Tall and white in a North Face fleece and new tennis shoes, she rushed through an apology and introduced herself as Carol.

  Carol’s apartment was a small and plain one-bedroom unit renting at $525 on the northern edge of the North Side. It took Arleen all of thirty seconds to scan the place and say that she’d take it. She didn’t like the apartment or the neighborhood or the fact that the boys would have to switch schools again if they moved there. But all that was secondary. “It don’t matter,” she thought. “A house is a house for now.”

  Carol decided to screen Arleen on the spot. She sat down on the floor in the empty living room and asked Arleen to spell her name and provide her date of birth and Social Security number. Carol’s first substantive question was, “Have you been evicted in the last three years?…I’m going to check CCAP, so you might as well get it out in the open.” Arleen had given Carol her real name and wasn’t sure which evictions were attached to it. So she decided to tell Carol what she had been through since being forced to move from the condemned house with no water. She told her about the drug dealers on Atkinson and her sister dying. This took a while. There were so many moves and so many details, and soon Carol’s confusion turned to annoyance. She cut Arleen off and asked about her income: “How long have you been on W-2, and what’s the reason?”