“All right, boy,” Quentin said as he and Chris exchanged the Vice Lords’ handshake.
In high school, Quentin used to run with the Vice Lords, a street gang that originated in Chicago. He was never very active in the gang, and the two times he had been shot were not gang-related. Quentin took his first bullet when he was nineteen. He and his friends were in a heated confrontation with a group of guys when suddenly a van raced up, and he heard the pop-pop of a 9mm. Quentin was shot in the leg. The second time came a year later, during a mugging. That time, the bullet lodged in his shoulder blade. The shootings left Quentin on “super alert.” A doctor later would diagnose him with stomach ulcers. Over the years, he had learned to relax. When tenants threatened him, he tried to let it slide. But every so often, something would happen, and Quentin would put on his black hoodie and black jeans, and Sherrena would shoot him a dirty look at the door but stay quiet because she had learned she couldn’t say anything when it got to that point, and Quentin would climb in the Suburban and call his guys and go deal with something. The last time the black hoodie came out, a tenant had intentionally and severely damaged one of his properties, out of spite.
Around sunset, after running between Home Depot and Lowe’s, where he was on a first-name basis with the cashiers, after transporting this worker and delivering that tool, Quentin popped his head into Patrice’s old unit. His uncle Verne had spent the last two days there, gliding polyurethane over the hardwoods and covering up the white paint Lamar and his boys had dripped on the brown trim. Quentin was done negotiating with Lamar, even after he painted the pantry. He left Sherrena to deal with him. One thing was certain: if they were paying Uncle Verne, they weren’t paying Lamar. He would have to come up with another plan, and fast.
Uncle Verne’s greasy hair rebelled from all sides of his Baltimore Ravens cap. His pants and flannel shirt were covered in brown paint. His eyes were cloudy and bloodshot. Crumpled aluminum carcasses of drained tallboys—Steel Reserve 211, “crack in a can”—littered the stairwell.
“I need my juice,” Uncle Verne told Quentin.
Quentin looked around. The work was shoddy but done. “It’s good enough for a tenant to move in,” he assessed.
“Huh. This ain’t Brookfield!” Uncle Verne laughed, referencing the predominantly white and affluent suburb.
“You know,” Quentin said, “it doesn’t even matter, ’cause all they gonna do is tear shit up. Sliding furniture, sliding tables, kids, dogs with claws….We don’t need to take no time, trying to do no expensive-type stuff to it, ’cause they just gonna mess it up.” Quentin reached for his wallet. “Boy, you racking up! That’s gonna be like seventy by the time you done?”
“Seventy? Nah, ’cause this room thirty dollars.” Uncle Verne motioned to the large living room.
“No. This room is twenty. ’Member we talked about this yesterday.”
“No. I was charging twenty dollars, and you was charging ten a room.” Uncle Verne laughed nervously.
“Well, then I’ll just have Tiny do this, then!” This was Quentin and Sherrena’s normal response when workers asked for more pay. They simply reminded them of their expendability.
Uncle Verne backed down. “Okay, okay!”
Quentin counted out the cash and gave his uncle a ride to the liquor store.
—
From their downstairs unit, the Hinkstons had been listening to Quentin and Uncle Verne the whole time. When the men left, Patrice and Natasha snuck upstairs to have a look. Seeing the freshly painted walls and floors, the women sucked their teeth. The new tenant (or at least her payee, Belinda) seemed to know what Patrice did not: your leverage as a renter was strongest before you moved in.
“It looks so pretty,” said Natasha. “I’m just, like, mad.”
“Unreal,” Patrice said.
“It’s like a dream house up here….And you in the rat hole!” Natasha laughed.
Patrice didn’t join her. Thinking of Sherrena, she said, “She wouldn’t survive a day in our house.”
11.
THE ’HOOD IS GOOD
As her plane touched down, Sherrena looked out the window and sighed. That morning, she and Quentin had been in Jamaica. Milwaukee looked chilly and damp, like a left-out dishrag. Sherrena switched her phone back on and saw that she had forty voice messages.
Jamaica had been amazing. Sherrena and Quentin took long walks on warm, white beaches, chartered a glass-bottom boat, and zipped around the Caribbean on Jet Skis. Quentin bought a walking stick and had it engraved. Sherrena got her hair done in two thick braids that met in the back. They had stayed for eight days.
Sherrena and Quentin always planned their vacations so that they were back before the first of the month, when their days went long with eviction notices to pass out, new moves to manage, and rents to collect. Because most of their tenants didn’t have bank accounts, collecting rent was a face-to-face affair.
A few of Sherrena’s voice messages were from Tabatha, a social worker who made weekly visits to the Hinkstons’ house. When Sherrena returned her call, Tabatha cited the plumbing situation at Eighteenth and Wright and tried to advocate for some repairs. Not long after Doreen paid a plumber herself, the pipes backed up again. Sherrena was not hearing it. “I can’t believe that you are on my phone complaining to me about the sink being stopped up when they’re the ones doing it!” Sherrena said. “They pull hinges off doors…have clothes piled to the ceiling. The whiff of shit hits you in the face when you open the door….I cannot believe that your organization is allowing her to have a house that looks like that.”
Then Tabatha made a mistake, telling Sherrena that Doreen was looking for another place. Sherrena got off the phone and headed for the courthouse. If Doreen was withholding rent so the family could move, Sherrena would call her bluff. Sherrena paid the fee and scheduled a court date, giving Doreen an open eviction on CCAP. Now moving would be much harder. If the Hinkstons were going to go, Sherrena decided, they would go on her terms.
After Quentin delivered the pink papers, Doreen called Sherrena to clear things up. “We do need a bigger place,” she said. “Natasha fittin’ to have a baby, and we can’t be stacked up in here like this. But I didn’t mean immediately. I can’t see myself trying to move in the middle of the winter….She be delivering sometime in May. Maybe then we can try to find something bigger.”
Sherrena told Doreen she wasn’t calling off the eviction.
“I got you,” Doreen said. “I got your money.”
But Sherrena refused to accept it, citing the stress the family was putting on her unit. “What if the state come up in there?” she asked. “Then they shutting my place down, and we all gonna be in trouble….I can’t have all those people living in my apartment like that. Too much wear and tear.” All Doreen could do was pray that Sherrena would change her mind before they met in eviction court.
—
On the first of the month, Sherrena and Quentin flirted and giggled as they drove from one property to the next. They had brought some of Jamaica back with them. Their skin was sun-kissed and their spirits were buoyed. They caught Ricky One Leg outside, waiting for UPS to deliver a computer for his daughter.
“A computer?” Sherrena asked when Quentin climbed back in the Suburban.
“Yeah.” Quentin smiled.
“See. See! He got money for a new computer but not for the rent. That’s okay. ’Cause I got ’em. The rent’s going up.” Sherrena paused for effect. “Inflation!”1
Laughter filled the Suburban as it pulled onto the street. Quentin’s seat was leaned so far back he was resting more on his hip than his rump. Air fresheners swayed from his rearview mirror and a large speaker in the back thumped bass whenever one of them was not on the phone, which was almost never.