Larraine understood “Eviction History,” but not “Collections from the State of Wisconsin.” When she called to find out more, she was told she owed property taxes. “Property!” She laughed after getting off the phone. “I’d love to know how I owe property taxes.”9
Betty thought Larraine should appeal. She looked over the top of her large glasses and said, “You have to fight, Larraine. I had to fight for my Medicaid.”
“I don’t have the energy,” Larraine answered. “And I don’t feel like getting rejected again.”10
Betty nodded. She understood.
A few days later found Larraine in an especially religious mood, her church’s Truth Class fresh in her mind.
“When you look at Jesus, what do you see?” Larraine asked Betty.
“A hottie,” Betty replied without missing a beat. A long, unlit cigarette shot out of her lips like a plank from a ship.
“Oh, Betty!” Larraine giggled.
Betty sauntered over and tapped the Jesus picture. “Hottie,” she repeated. “I’ve always liked men with facial hair.”
“Naughty, Betty,” Larraine cooed.
The new friends talked and laughed into the night. On the couch, they fell asleep at the same time.11
19.
LITTLE
The cheapest motel Pam could find charged $50 a night. They checked in and started calling friends and relatives, hoping someone would take them in. Two days passed without any luck, and Pam began to worry. “Everybody we knew weren’t answering our phone because they knew we needed a place to stay,” she said.
Then Ned lost his part-time construction job. He was fired for the two days of work he missed when helping his family move from the trailer park. Job loss could lead to eviction, but the reverse was also true.1 An eviction not only consumed renters’ time, causing them to miss work, it also weighed heavily on their minds, often triggering mistakes on the job. It overwhelmed workers with stress, leading them to act unprofessionally, and commonly resulted in their relocating farther away from their worksite, increasing their likelihood of being late or missing days.2 Ned’s firing wasn’t out of the ordinary, but that was little consolation for Pam. Their money was running out.
Even so, Ned refused to call his family. Typical, thought Pam. Ned called home to brag but rarely to ask. So Pam worked her phone, calling almost everyone she knew and even churches. Nothing. Finally, a friend agreed to take the girls until Pam and Ned got back on their feet. They dropped off the three oldest girls and kept two-year-old Kristin with them. Then Ned’s phone rang around ten p.m. It was Travis, a buddy they used to party with in the trailer park and who had since moved into a nearby apartment complex. Travis offered his couch. Pam breathed a sigh of relief. At least she wouldn’t have to bring her new baby back to a cheap motel.
Travis was their first godsend; Dirky was their second. A muscular, white-haired man with a professional-grade mechanic’s shop in his garage, Dirky gave Ned an off-the-books job customizing motorcycles. Ned had met him through a mechanic buddy.
After a month at Travis’s, Pam and Ned sensed he was about done with them. When Kristin got fussy, Travis would tighten his jaw and shut his bedroom door, and not only because he had to be up at four thirty the next morning for work. The last time Travis let someone stay with him, it was his brother and nephew, and those two drunks got him evicted. Ned would tell Pam to hush her kid, and Pam would tell him that she was his goddamn kid too.
One morning, they drove to Dirky’s garage, Kristin and her Care Bear buckled up in the backseat. Pam was due in nine days; they were no closer to a new home than they were the day Tobin kicked them out of the trailer park; they might have to live on the near South Side, with the Mexicans; Ned was out of cigarettes because Pam was smoking more to offset stress and hunger pains; Kristin was throwing a fit because her lovey teddy got thrown in storage after the eviction; Dirky wanted Ned to do a transmission, which would probably mean working deep into the night; and he hated that his family had to rely on Travis. When he turned toward the booming music and saw a car with two young black men in the lane next to him, he hated them too. “Fucking niggers,” Ned bit.
A few minutes later, Ned spotted a rent sign in white, working-class West Allis and told Pam to write down the phone number. She missed it.
“I told you,” Ned said. “I told you the fucking number, and you just can’t write it down?”
“Not when you say it so fast!”
“I’m not the one with the fucking problem!”
They circled back and got the number. “Hi, I was calling about your place on Seventy-Sixth and Lincoln?…What’s that, a two-bedroom?”
“Yep,” a man’s voice said. “It’s six hundred and ninety-five a month with heat.”
Pam didn’t hang up. Maybe he was flexible. “Okay. When is it available?”
“Now.”
“It is? Okay.”
“And who would be living with you?”
“My family.” Pam paused and then decided to tell him about most of the kids. “I’ve got three children and one on the way. But they’re all girls!”
“Oh, no, no, no. We’re trying to keep it to all adults.”
“Oh, okay. Thank you.” Pam brought the phone down. “They don’t want kids.”
Ned was wearing a black Ozzy Osbourne cutoff T-shirt and a Harley-Davidson cap turned backward. He whistled through his teeth. “I know. As soon as you say you’ve got four fucking kids, we’re fucked.”
Pam knew it didn’t even take that. When house hunting a few days earlier, two landlords had turned her away on account of her kids. One had said, “We’re pretty strict here. We don’t allow no loud nothing.” The other had told Pam it was against the law for him to put so many children in a two-bedroom apartment, which was the most Pam and Ned could afford. When talking to landlords, Pam had begun subtracting children from her family. She was beginning to wonder what was most responsible for keeping them homeless: her drug conviction from several years back, the fact that Ned was on the run and had no proof of income, their eviction record, their poverty, or their children.
Children caused landlords headache. Fearing street violence, many parents in crime-ridden neighborhoods kept their children locked inside. Children cooped up in small apartments used the curtains for superhero capes; flushed toys down the toilet; and drove up the water bill. They could test positive for lead poisoning, which could bring a pricey abatement order. They could come under the supervision of Child Protective Services, whose caseworkers inspected families’ apartments for unsanitary or dangerous code violations. Teenagers could attract the attention of the police.