“It’s a methadone clinic,” Scott was saying. “Do you know what that is?…I’ll go to them every day to get the medication. And that’ll help me with the opiate addiction and depression….I’ve kind of tried to do all this and beat this without; I didn’t want you guys really to know the whole, you know. But it’s not working that way.” Scott drew a breath. “Mom, does this make sense to you?”
All Joan knew was that her son, who almost never asked for anything, was asking for help. She came up with the $150.
The next morning, Scott sat in the Tenth Street Methadone Clinic, waiting his turn. The clinic had four stations. Reception took your money, and Collections took your piss. The nurses greeted regulars by their nicknames or numbers. “Hey, Deano!” “Your lucky day, 3322.” The third station was the bathroom, equipped with a camera to make sure you weren’t swapping urine. At the last station, the methadone dispensers sat behind a thick door on which someone had clipped an article from The Onion with the headline EVERYTHING TAKING TOO LONG, accompanied by a photograph of a man staring impatiently at a microwave. Once buzzed in, patients stepped through the door and punched their number into a dispenser, which would squirt the bitter red liquid into a small plastic cup.
Scott thought the most diverse place in all of Milwaukee had to be the methadone clinic at seven a.m. Through its doors had walked a twenty-something white woman in full makeup carrying a designer purse, a grunting Mexican man leaning on a walker, a white woman holding a newborn, a tall black man with earrings whom Scott enjoyed looking at, a fat painter, a burly construction worker, a white woman in pressed slacks and a pink blouse, and a man in an accountant’s suit. When a bent-over Chinese woman who looked to be in her eighties shuffled into the clinic, a Puerto Rican woman with a cane walked over and hugged her.
“You new?” someone asked.
Scott turned around to find a young white woman who looked like she belonged on the East High School track team. She was maybe eighteen with a ponytail, freckles, orthodontic-straightened teeth.
Scott nodded yes.
“Well, my advice”—the girl scooted closer—“is don’t get on this stuff. I mean, they say they want to get you in to get you off, but it’s all a lie. They just want your money. I’ve been on this for who knows how long, and I’m still taking a hundred milligrams.”
Scott raised his eyebrows, recalling that 100 milligrams was the dose that had sent him to the hospital the last time he had tried methadone. As he remembered it, he had mixed the dose with Xanax and succumbed to the cocktail soon after leaving the clinic, stumbling into oncoming traffic. The responding officer injected him with Narcan, sending him into a convulsive withdrawal that landed him in the ICU.
“How much do you pay?” Scott asked.
“Three hundred and seventy,” she answered, referencing her monthly bill.
He nodded and wondered how he would make the next installment.
When it was Scott’s turn, he swallowed the red stuff, swished a little water in the cup, and downed the rinse. Those last drops could make a difference.
Before he left, Scott met with a methadone counselor, a black man around Scott’s age.
“How many times in the last thirty days have you used heroin?” the counselor asked.
“Thirty.” Scott went on to tell the counselor about his mother lending him the $150. “I guess it’s my fault for underestimating her,” he said. “Maybe I just cut her out of everything.”
“You’re as sick as your secrets,” the counselor said.
Because he couldn’t afford both methadone and rent on his Serenity Club check, Scott went homeless. He checked into an eighty-six-bed shelter called the Guest House. Every morning, he bused to the methadone clinic, and every evening he slept on a bunk bed in a large room with other homeless men. Methadone made him sweat and gain weight, and it smothered his libido. But it worked.5
Most people who began methadone treatment dropped out within a year.6 Scott stuck with it. Over time, he became a resident manager at the Guest House and started helping people again. Four days a week, Scott worked in one of the Guest House’s satellite shelters, an unmarked three-story home with bay windows, tucked in a quiet South Side neighborhood. He scrubbed bathrooms with bleach and guided old-timers to the backyard picnic table, where they sat and tapped their cigarette ash into a repurposed Folgers coffee can.
A year and almost $4,700 later, the county agreed to help Scott pay for his methadone, lowering his monthly bill to $35. Then, through a permanent housing program offered by the Guest House, Scott was able to move into his own place, paying one-third of his income to rent. He chose the Majestic Loft Apartments, on Wisconsin Avenue, right next to the Grand Avenue mall. He had always wanted to live downtown and had been a regular at the mall after first arriving in Milwaukee; back then, to an Iowa farm kid at least, the mall was a vibrant social scene. The fourteen-story Majestic was built in 1908, originally for offices and a vaudeville theater. After it was converted into residential apartments, developers installed a fitness center, an indoor basketball court, a small private movie theater, and a putting green with artificial turf.
Scott’s apartment was on the tenth floor. It had clean, wheat-colored carpet, unblemished white walls, mini blinds over person-length windows, a generous bathroom, and a working stove and refrigerator. The Guest House furnished the apartment with a dark brown love seat and matching couch, a few lamps Scott preserved by leaving the plastic wrapping on the shades, and a full-size bed that Scott hardly used—falling asleep on the couch had become a habit. There was even a stacked washer and dryer. It felt too good to be true. At first, Scott half-believed that the Guest House would call and say they had made a mistake. The apartment rented for $775 a month; Scott only paid $141.
It took a good month before Scott was able to accept the apartment as his own. Once he did, he acquired a bathroom rug, a navy-blue coverlet, hand soap, scented candles, throw pillows, mouthwash, dishes, and a welcome mat on which to place his shoes. The apartment made Scott feel affirmed, deserving of something better. It motivated him. One day, Scott used a magnet from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul to stick a note on his refrigerator. It read:
5 YEAR PLAN
Back to nursing
Make a lot more money
Live as cheaply as possible
Start a savings account
Two years and three months after losing his license, Scott was finally able to start scrimping for the lab tests he would need to become a nurse again. He even started collecting loose change for this purpose, keeping the coins in a kitchen jar.
In the trailer park, Scott had felt stuck. “I just didn’t know how to fix anything,” he remembered. “It felt like the end of the earth down there, like none of the rest of the city existed.” During that time, Scott often thought about killing himself. He’d have done it with a monster hit of heroin; but he never could find enough money. Scott’s new place was such a stark contrast to his trailer and everything it represented that he began to think back on his time in the park as “one big camping trip,” removed from civilization. Sometimes, when he remembered those days and all he had lost, he would leave his apartment and wind his way through the Majestic’s narrow, dimly lit hallways and come to a door. He’d open it and emerge in the middle of the Grand Avenue mall, as if stepping through a secret passageway. Walking the mall’s floors, Scott would take in the lights, music, food smells, and people and remember how he used to feel, years ago, when the city was still full of wonder and promise.
24.
CAN’T WIN FOR LOSING
When Arleen dialed the number, she gave Jori her “here we go” look. A landlord, Number 90, had left her a voice mail, saying to give him a call. The message was from the landlord’s son, actually, who had been the one to show Arleen the unit. He was in his early twenties with a backwards cap and a braided ponytail. “Call me Pana,” he had said. Arleen remembered living in his father’s building in 2003, in a two-bedroom unit that
back then rented for $535. Now that same unit went for $625. So when Arleen applied this time, it was for a $525 one-bedroom unit. What a difference six years could make.
The phone rang, and Arleen thought about what she had told Pana. She had lied about her income, saying she received $250 a month in child support, but had been straight about her evictions. Mainly, she had begged him. She told him she’d take the unit before looking at it. She didn’t much consider the neighborhood or the condition of the place. “Whatever I get is whatever I get,” she figured. She had said, “I’m in a shelter. Please.”
Pana answered. “Yeah, so, we checked you out. Everything was what you said it was. So, we gonna work with you.”
Arleen jumped up and let out a muffled “Yes!”
“But you know, there is no room for error here.”
“I know.”
“You’re on a fixed income. So you need to pay your rent and not get into trouble.”
Arleen thanked Pana. Getting off the phone, she thanked Jesus. She smiled. When she smiled she looked like a different person. The press had loosened its grip. From landlords, she had heard eighty-nine nos but one yes.
Jori accepted his mother’s high five. He and his brother would have to switch schools. Jori didn’t care. He switched schools all the time. Between seventh and eighth grades, he had attended five different schools—when he went at all. At the domestic-violence shelter alone, Jori had racked up seventeen consecutive absences. Arleen saw school as a higher-order need, something to worry about after she found a house. Plus, Jori was a big help. He would bound down the street and memorize numbers off rent signs or watch Jafaris when Arleen left with her HOUSE notepad. He was good for a laugh too. When things looked bleak, he would try to make his momma smile by freestyling (badly) as the city rolled past their bus window.
Aye, aye, aye
Looking for me a house to move in.
That was my old school.
That’s my old block.
That’s my old gas station.
We looking for a house.
If Jori worried about finding a home, he never showed it.
Jafaris cried when they left the shelter, holding on to the remote-control car and stuffed Elmo a social worker had given him as parting gifts. “I can’t look,” he said as the car pulled away. Arleen rubbed her boy’s head and told him he should be happy leaving the shelter. Jafaris didn’t understand why. It was quiet and warm, and there were toys there.
Their new apartment building was at the busy intersection of Teutonia and Silver Spring, in a more industrial part of the North Side. Arleen climbed the steps to the third-floor apartment while Jori and Jafaris took a giggling ride in the creaking elevator. Inside, the walls were freshly painted, and the gray carpet was thick and clean. There was an air-conditioning unit and fixtures on every light. There was a small kitchen with light wood cupboards, each one of which had a handle. The hot water worked. Arleen took her time inspecting the place but couldn’t find anything wrong. She opened a window and looked out over the cars driving by and Auer Steel & Heating’s distribution center across the street. She felt “good but tired.”
Once all the trash bags of clothes and boxes of canned food were moved in, Arleen sat on the floor. She found a soft bag and leaned back on it. She felt at peace, at home. It had been two months since her eviction hearing with Sherrena. Jori sat down beside Arleen and pitched his head into her shoulder. Jafaris followed, lying on Arleen’s legs and resting his head on her belly. They stayed like that for a long time.
—
After a few quiet days, Arleen learned that Terrance—everyone just called him “T”—was dead. T was one of the only people Arleen still kept in touch with on Larry’s side of the family. His cousin P.A., whom Arleen also loved, had shot him. During an argument, T had hit P.A. over the head with an ax handle, and P.A. went to get a gun. Before he returned, he called T’s mother, saying that he was going to kill her son. Then he did.
T’s death interrupted Arleen’s life in the usual way. She wept for him and reminisced with old friends and arranged for Jafaris to stay over at his old foster mother’s home during the funeral. He was too young to go, Arleen thought. Some people were talking about going to Ponderosa Steakhouse after the funeral. Those who couldn’t afford it donated plasma so they could have a place at the table.
When Arleen and Jori visited T’s street memorial near Fond Du Lac Avenue, on the Northwest Side, she straightened the flowers and stuffed animals. It was a handsome memorial, adorned with a large cream ribbon, poems, silk roses, and several bouquets of white and yellow daisies, carnations, and alstroemeria. Arleen walked to T’s house and stood on the steps, walked back to the memorial, then walked to the steps again.
“Time is going fast, ain’t it?” Jori said. “I bet when we get down to the funeral, time will be going slow.”
On the morning of the funeral, Arleen put on dark jeans, a Rocawear T-shirt, and a blue hoodie. As she and Jori descended the stairs on their way out, they met Pana on his way up.
“I need to talk with you,” he said. “About two nights ago.”
Arleen’s mind raced. That was when she had called 911 because Jafaris was having an asthma attack.
“This is a nuisance building,” Pana said. “We can’t have police coming up in here.”
“Just the fire department and ambulance came,” Arleen said. “Police don’t come for an asthma attack.”
Still, that wasn’t the only issue. A neighbor had complained that one of Arleen’s friends had knocked on his door and asked for weed. (Trisha. She was babysitting the boys at the time.) And Jafaris had been caught dropping something out their third-story window. “If things don’t get better, we are going to ask you to go.”
Outside, on her way to New Pitts Mortuary, Arleen shook her head. “If it ain’t one thing it’s another,” she said. Besides trying to stay in Pana’s good graces, Arleen was having a problem with her food stamps. She had submitted the necessary change-of-address form, but there was some holdup. Then there was the problem of getting everything out of storage. She needed to find a way to move her things fast or, come the first of the month, she would fall behind on payments—either that or fall behind in rent. And now T was gone and, in a way, so was P.A. Poverty could pile on; living it often meant steering through gnarled thickets of interconnected misfortunes and trying not to go crazy. There were moments of calm, but life on balance was facing one crisis after another.1 At least Arleen had a home, a floor of her own to sleep on.
Arleen hesitated in front of the door at Pitts. Built in the 1930s, the funeral home on West Capitol Drive was a North Side institution. Fashioned in the French Revival style, the Lannon stone building was adorned with an octagonal stair tower; thin, elegant windows; a deep-maroon entrance canopy stretching across the sidewalk; and steep roof lines, with a towering chimney. Jori drew up next to his mother, and they walked in together. The sanctuary was packed. Teenagers and children huddled together wearing personalized shirts with T’s face or the face of someone else who had been cut down young. Grandmothers and grandfathers were there in cream and brown suits with matching felt hats. Big C, T’s brother, was up front in a crisp blue T-shirt with matching bandanna and sunglasses. Uncle Link showed up with a half-finished cigarette behind his ear. A towering man walked down the aisle slowly as his wife leaned her face on his back and wept. Arleen took a seat at the rear, reflecting her status in the family.
T looked good, dressed in a long-sleeved black T-shirt and a new Oakland Raiders cap. He had almost made forty. The preacher looked down on him. “It seems like every time I come over here, I see someone who looks like me, lying in a casket, gone too young,” he said, shaking his head above a fat Windsor knot. Then he boomed, raspy and impassioned, “What has happened to the love amongst us? What has happened to the concern?…Can’t nobody help us but us!”
“Go on!”
“Tha’s right.”
“That was my baby!”
—
The next day, no one was calling, and Arleen got back to making her apartment a home. She enrolled the boys in new schools. She got her stuff out of storage and hung pictures on the wall. A neighbor gave her a couch. Arleen’s old apartment on Thirteenth Street was usually messy because cleaning didn’t do it much good, what with its cracked windows, ravaged carpet, and broken bathroom. But Pana’s father kept a nice place. It could look respectable if Arleen kept it nice. She did. Over the sink, she wrote a little note to Jori: “If you don’t clean up after yourself, we are going to have problems.” On the counter she set out a candle for St. Jude, patron saint of difficult cases. When people saw Arleen’s apartment, they would say, “Your house so pretty.” Some even asked if they could move in. Arleen would feel proud and say no.
Jori tried to adjust to his new school. He was technically in eighth grade but so far behind that he might as well have been in seventh. It was frustrating. And on top of that, T’s death had unsettled him. It had come out that when P.A. called T’s mother, he had called from Larry’s phone. The police questioned Larry but released him. It still twisted Jori up inside. Why was his daddy with P.A. that night? Exactly two weeks after the funeral, a teacher snapped at Jori and he snapped back. He kicked the teacher in the shin and ran home. The police followed him there, the teacher having called them.
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