“Well, all right!” Quentin congratulated his wife.
Sherrena felt accomplished if unsurprised. On multiple occasions she had taken a tenant’s entire paycheck. Once, a young mother had offered Sherrena her debit card.
—
On Eighteenth and Wright, Mikey was trying to do his homework at the kitchen table. Math. He wasn’t confused, just distracted. There was so much noise. Ruby, who could fly through her homework before the bus pulled up to their stop, was practicing the Stanky Legg in front of the television. Patrice’s middle child, Jada, was banging on different things with an empty Mountain Dew bottle. And Natasha was trying to comb Kayla Mae’s hair, typically a three-hour war.
Natasha’s belly was growing. The ultrasound had revealed only one baby, a bigheaded boy, just as Doreen had guessed.
Doreen and Patrice sat around the table, opposite from Mikey, and debated what to do about Sherrena’s eviction notice. Doreen had had no luck finding another apartment. When she called one number listed in the RedBook, she heard a recorded message that listed prequalifications: “No evictions in the last three years. No money owing to a landlord. No criminal arrests in the last three years.” Even though Doreen had withheld her rent after the incident with the plumber, they didn’t expect Sherrena to start the court process so quickly. Patrice thought it was Social Worker Tabatha’s fault. When Doreen told Patrice the reason Sherrena had given for the plumbing being neglected—Quentin had lent someone his truck for a month—Patrice rolled her eyes. “You’re in Jamaica,” she said, “and we can’t even take baths….All that money they got, she sound dumb. If I believe that, then slap me dead.” Her hand fell hard on the kitchen table, and Mikey’s head snapped up from his math problems.
Mikey took his papers to Jada and Kayla Mae’s mattress. Before he got back to work, he pulled out a small American flag from its special hiding spot. His teacher had handed the flags out the day Obama was inaugurated. Before that, the North Side had been covered in political posters, those dark-blue signs planted firmly in lawns, taped to cracked windows, tacked up in people’s bedrooms, and lining littered sidewalks. Wright Street had erupted in cheers the night Obama won. Neighbors had unbolted their doors and stepped out on their porches just to look at one another. Mikey stretched out on the mattress, holding the flag at attention and staring at the ceiling.
On the day of her eviction court hearing, January 27, Doreen limped out of her house and found the bus stop. She had wrapped her head and put on white Velcro sneakers. The shoes felt like they belonged to someone else. Doreen went barefoot when she was inside, which was almost always. She had become as much of a permanent fixture in the apartment as the floorboards and doorframes. She hated the idea of taking a bus downtown to eviction court. Plus her foot was throbbing. The night before, the back door had fallen on it. It first fell on Ruby when she had attempted to prop it back up, pinning her to the ground. When Doreen tried to free her daughter, she slipped and the heavy door came down on her foot. It had swollen up plump and watery. The doctor on the phone had advised going to the ER; but Doreen refused. “I’m just gonna end up waiting all night in that room,” she said. Doreen didn’t trust doctors any more than her father had.14
Doreen watched the icy city roll past her bus window. She didn’t know how eviction court would go, so she allowed the new baby to occupy her mind. The thought of Natasha as a mother—fickle, youthful Natasha—made Doreen laugh. Doreen remembered when Patrice was born. They delivered her through a cesarean section because she was so big. Doreen had had to trade her baby clothes for bigger sizes. Natasha was big and C.J. too. So when Ruby came out weighing only six pounds, Doreen didn’t know how to handle her. “She made me mad. I couldn’t hold her.” Natasha had recently applied for W-2, and Doreen worried that it would affect her benefits and cut into the family’s food stamps. It would balance out if Natasha stayed in the house and helped pay the bills, but lately Malik had been asking Natasha if she wanted to move into his mother’s place in Brown Deer. Natasha swore there was no way she would, but Doreen sensed that she was seriously considering it.
Sherrena left later, answering her phone as she drove downtown. A woman on the other end was saying that, during her break, she had walked out of her ten-dollar-an-hour temp job at Landmark Credit Union. “Chelsea!” Sherrena yelled, her voice thick with disappointment. “I don’t think that was a good idea….I’m gonna talk with you about it when I come out of eviction court, but you know I’m gonna fuss at you, right?”
“I know,” Chelsea said.
“I’m on you. I’m killing you, Chelsea!”
Sherrena was trying to help Chelsea “get her credit together.” For $150, Sherrena offered to examine her credit report and use a technique called “rapid rescore” to improve her score. Clients like Chelsea got their money’s worth. Sherrena was a hard coach who worked for real results. She knew the value of a good credit score, especially when it came to selling her properties to her clients.
Sherrena had been dabbling in rent-to-own ventures. She would rent one of her more stable tenants a house for six months. During that time, Sherrena would attempt to rapid rescore the tenant’s credit. If successful, she would then help that tenant secure a loan for the price Sherrena was asking for the property. The Federal Housing Administration often required only a 3.5 percent down payment, which most working tenants could cover with their tax refund. Sherrena had seen some of her properties double in value during the housing bubble, and she knew the inflated assessments wouldn’t last forever. She was trying to sell a rent-to-own tenant one property for $90,000, a property she owned free and clear, having purchased it at a far lower price. Sherrena would reinvest the cash in more properties, and the new homeowner would inherit a massive debt. Sherrena would say that was better than not owning a house at all.
In years past, Sherrena had marketed her credit-repair-to-home-loan services to physically and mentally disabled people on SSI. “A whole bunch of those people came and bought houses. They ended up losing them, but the thing is they need to be policed a little bit more….Wasn’t nobody saying, ‘Johnny, pay your mortgage!’ They just may not have been mentally capable.” They say the foreclosure crisis started on Wall Street, with men in power ties trading toxic assets and engineering credit default swaps. But in the ghetto, all you needed was a rapid rescore coach and a low-income tenant hungry for a shot at the American Dream.
When Doreen and Sherrena met in the courthouse, Sherrena was not in the best of moods. The conversation with Chelsea had annoyed her, and on top of that, the day before the city had pulled almost $20,000 in water bills and taxes from her bank account. The deduction was unexpected and left Sherrena with exactly $3.48 in her business account, $108.32 in her personal account, and a couple of un-cashed checks in her pocket. Sherrena was not used to being broke, but the first of the month was a few days away.
In the hallway outside Room 400, Doreen explained that she wasn’t trying to scam Sherrena by moving out quickly; she was looking for housing to plan for tomorrow. Sherrena was already savvy to the story. Unbeknownst to Doreen, Tabatha had called Sherrena that morning to plead her client’s case. If she got the Hinkstons into this mess, she would try to get them out. When it looked like Sherrena would agree to a stipulation, Tabatha flattered her by saying, “You are a gangster when it comes to your money!” It made Sherrena laugh with pride.
Sherrena drew up a stipulation agreement. If Doreen wanted the eviction dismissed, she would have to pay $400 extra next month and an additional $50 the following three months. Doreen signed the papers. Saving for their move would have to wait.
12.