Back in her apartment, Arleen took out the trash and swept the carpet and hid all of Jori’s clothes. There was little she could do about the bathroom—there was standing water in the clogged tub, and the sink didn’t work—but the light was also out, so maybe Carol wouldn’t notice. In the kitchen, Arleen stood over the sink, staring at a pile of dishes. Little rubbed himself against her legs and meowed for food. They were out of dish soap, so Crystal’s laundry detergent would have to do. As the water ran, Arleen placed both hands on either side of the sink. She scrubbed the pots. Her phone rang. “It’s nothing,” she said to the person on the other line. “Nothing. Nothing.” Then she allowed herself a hard cry.
Crystal, who had stayed on the couch and watched Arleen frantically scurry around, got up and embraced Arleen. Arleen cried into Crystal’s shoulder, and Crystal did not pull away. When Arleen stepped back, Crystal said, “I promise you, if you believe, you will have a house.”
The apartment looked decent when Carol showed up. Arleen had even sprayed Febreze. After a brisk walk-through, Carol sat down at the glass dining table. “This just, honestly, does not look good,” she began. “And, yeah, I understand your sister died and everything, but how is that your landlord’s problem?”
“I understand what you’re saying.” Arleen thought that white people liked it when she said “I understand what you’re saying,” and “I’m trying to get my stuff together and stop making dumb choices,” and “I’m going to start going back to school for my GED.” And eye contact, lots of eye contact.
“I’m not saying it isn’t terrible,” Carol continued. “But I mean, we actually have an employee whose mother died. And she had no insurance or anything. The county paid. You know, they give you three hundred dollars or whatever for the funeral. And that’s the funeral she got.”
Eye contact.
“So what changes are you going to make so that I’m not throwing you out in a month?” Carol tapped her pen.
At this point, Arleen had applied for or called on twenty-five apartments, and Carol was her only hope. Sensing that hope pulling away, Arleen played the only card left in her hand. She offered Carol the option of arranging a “vendor payment” with W-2, which would automatically deduct rent from each month’s check. “So that by the time I get my check you already have your payment.”
“I like that!” Carol responded, surprising herself. “That sounds like a good compromise.” Then she added, “The cat can’t come.”
“Okay.”
“I was going to say, you got to worry about feeding you and your kid.”
“I want to give you a hug because, let me just.” Arleen hugged Carol, who blushed and dashed out the door. Arleen hugged Crystal and ran around and danced. “I got a house! I can’t believe it! I got a hoooooouse!”
—
Carol told Arleen that she could move in the first of the month. Until then, Arleen planned to take her boys to a shelter and lock her things in storage. As a shelter resident, she would be eligible for Red Cross funds that would cover her security deposit. It was the only way she could give Carol all her money.1 Arleen collected cardboard boxes from neighborhood liquor stores and began packing her things.
“Don’t cry when I leave,” Arleen told Crystal as she placed dishes in a box.
“Bitch, you act like you gonna be gone forever. You gonna come around. ’Cause you can’t live without me now.”
“And you can’t live without me either.” Arleen smiled.
Crystal began clapping her hands and singing, “I ain’t going. I ain’t going.” Then she slapped Arleen on the back.
“Ow, Crystal!” Arleen said, and the two women wrestled a bit, laughing.
As Arleen resumed packing, Crystal asked, “Could you leave me some dishes?” Arleen set a few aside.
At sunrise on Thursday, the sky was the color of flat beer. By midmorning, it was the color of a robin’s egg. The still and leafless tree branches looked like cracks in the sky’s shell. Cars rolled slowly through the streets, caked with salt and winter’s grime. Milwaukee Public Schools canceled classes because of the cold advisory. Arleen’s boys weren’t going anyway. She needed them to help her move. Jori loaded a U-Haul truck that a family friend had rented for them. The cold gripped him. His fingers and ears began to sting. Icy air filled his mouth, and it felt like his gums were hardening into one of those plastic molds of teeth in the school nurse’s office. His breath was a thick white gauze circling his face. He smiled through it, happy to be useful.
After a few trips, Jori ate his pride and put on Crystal’s sand-colored coat. Crystal herself sat on the floor, covered in church-donated blankets, eating banana pudding and watching talk shows.
The night before the move, Arleen had glued on a new wig and cleaned her shoes. She wanted to look younger than she was because who knew whom she might meet at the shelter or Public Storage. No shelters had called back, and Arleen didn’t know where she and her boys would sleep that night. She would have to worry about that later. For now, she was focused on taking what she could to a storage unit.
The man behind the counter at Public Storage wore a pinky ring. His hair was slicked back, and he smelled of liquor and cheap aftershave. Arleen’s storage unit would be C-33, a ten-by-ten-footer. “It’s the same size as the truck you got,” the man said with a Texas drawl. “All you got to do is be creative.” Everything fit easily. Arleen had scraped together $21 for the discounted fee by selling some food stamps and a space heater. (Next month’s fee would be $41.) But she didn’t realize she had to buy a lock and $8 worth of insurance too. She didn’t have it. The Texan, whose weatherworn face told her that he had seen hard times too, found Arleen a lock and let her slide on the insurance. She thanked him before shuffling through the cold concrete lot to close the orange aluminum door to C-33. At least her stuff had a home.
—
They spent the night, then the weekend, back at Thirteenth Street with Crystal, sleeping on the floor.
Arleen called the Lodge and other shelters, but they were full as usual. On Monday morning, she tried domestic-violence shelters and secured a room at one she had stayed at years ago, when fleeing Jafaris’s father. When Arleen called Carol to tell her the name of the shelter for Red Cross money purposes, she learned that Carol had rented the apartment to someone else. Arleen didn’t ask why, but she figured Carol had found a better tenant, someone with more income or no kids. Arleen let out a long, emptied-out sigh and balled herself up in a chair. “I’m back to square one,” she said.
Soured, Arleen gathered their last remaining things in the apartment. She took down her curtains and remembered some dirty clothes that were in Crystal’s closet. She and Jafaris brought Little upstairs to Trisha.
“Take care of kitten,” Jafaris asked.
“I am, baby, I promise,” Trisha answered.
He thought and said, “Give him some food.”
Arleen planned on leaving behind her love seat, which had collapsed since Crystal began sleeping on it. Besides that and a scattering of clothes, blankets, and broken lamps, the place was barren. Then Arleen remembered that she had bought a $5 adapter that connected the stove to the gas line. She told Jori to remove the part, which would have rendered the stove useless.
Seeing this, Crystal screamed, “Get out of my house!” She began picking up Arleen’s things and throwing them out the front door. “I don’t need none of your shit!…Got me fucked up!”
“Stankin’ ass bitch!” Arleen yelled, getting in Crystal’s face.
“You call me stankin’, but whose clothes you got on? Mines. My shirt!…Three days in a row, you nasty bitch!”
“I’ll hit you in yo’ mouth!” Jori yelled at Crystal, running up. He put his nose inches away from Crystal’s face and cocked his fist back. “I’m fittin’ to scrap you!” he yelled. “I don’t give a fuck about no fucking police!”
Suddenly, Quentin was in the room. He had been showing prospective tenants the rear apartment when he overheard the commotion. Quentin walked in the open door and grabbed Jori by the shirt collar. “Hey! Hey!” he barked.
Jori lunged at Crystal. “Come on!” he yelled, his fists flailing. Quentin tugged him back. Crystal only stepped closer. “Look, boy,” she said, chuckling. “You are not hard as you think.”