As she waited to hear back from Affordable Rentals, Vanetta wondered if they needed to look at units priced over their $550 limit. But she didn’t want to go higher, mainly because she didn’t know if Crystal was able to hold on to her money. At the Lodge, Vanetta had watched Crystal spend down her check on clothes, fast food, and even slot machines at the casino. “Girl, I’m gonna punch you in the mouth,” Vanetta would vent. A healthy chunk of Crystal’s money also went into the offering basket the first Sunday of every month.
“I’m sowing seeds,” Crystal said as the women sat down at George Webb. It was Crystal’s treat. She had won $450 at Potawatomi Casino the night before, using a $40 birthday present from her foster care agency to play the slots. The waitress brought Crystal the cup of hot water she requested. She slid her silverware in the cup to clean it. “Remember how I explained to you last time? If you a farmer and you plant your seeds for your corn and your vegetables and all that, and you water and take care of it, your crops gonna come. That’s how I look at it when I sow seeds in the church. I need something from God. So I sow a seed….I need a house. I need financial breakthrough. I need healing from stuff. I need to be made whole. That’s how I’m gonna put it.”
Vanetta held her chilled look. “That’s why I don’t creep with your church, ’cause they don’t have nothing to offer you, but they got a lot to say. And I don’t like that. And then you go to them and tell them the situation that’s going on, and it’s like they don’t care.”
Crystal looked at her food. “I dunno,” she said. “It’s, I’m just waiting to move.” She tried to change the subject. “That cheesecake bangin’.”
But Vanetta was not through. “Don’t ball up your face,” she said. “Motherfuckers smile in your face when you tithe.”
“Nuh-uh!” Crystal shook her head.
“You be throwing all that money in they basket! Don’t say ‘nuh-uh’ ’cause I seen it when I went Sunday.”
Vanetta knew how much Crystal’s church meant to her. She had heard Crystal run on about Minister Barber and the bishops and the Holy Ghost and all that. She had watched Crystal take herself to church on Sundays, Tuesdays, Fridays, and sometimes Saturdays for special services. If the congregation at Mt. Calvary Pentecostal wasn’t Crystal’s family, who was? But Crystal’s church was Vanetta’s biggest competition. Every seed Crystal sowed in the offering basket left Vanetta with less money for their budding household. Vanetta didn’t know if what she’d said had penetrated until later that day, when she came upon Crystal crying into her phone and praying in tongues: “Eeh Shanta. Eeh Shanta.”
When late afternoon arrived, Vanetta had to be back for her GED class. “Don’t go,” said Crystal.
“I can’t miss. I want that diploma,” Vanetta answered.
“You can’t miss?”
“Only in a real emergency.”
“Bitch, you looking for housing. This is a real emergency.”
Vanetta smiled and left.
Crystal was supposed to continue the housing search, but she decided to stop by her church instead. Mt. Calvary Pentecostal Church was on Sixtieth and National, on the far Southwest Side of the city but still accessible by bus. It was a handsome brick building with stained-glass windows and rain gutters painted fire-engine red. It was Monday night, so the church’s food pantry was open.
Crystal picked up a bag of groceries and accepted a hot dog from her minister. Bishop Dixon teased Crystal about texting during the service, and Crystal countered by asking the old man if his teeth ever fell out when he was giving the blessing. She told Sister Atalya to bring her dog to church. “Why not? Maybe she can get the Word too.” They laughed. Elder Johnson was there, in a preachy mood. “If we really got Jesus in our souls,” he said, “I’m supposed to be able to feel your pain, and you’re supposed to be able to feel my pain.”
Elder Johnson didn’t feel Crystal’s pain. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, like Vanetta thought; it was that he didn’t know. Elder Johnson, Bishop Dixon, Sister Atalya—none of them knew Crystal was staying at the Lodge. Only Minister Barber knew. Crystal didn’t want members of her church to reduce her, to see her as an object of pity, a member of “the poor and the orphaned.” She wanted to be seen as Sister Crystal, part of the Body, the Beloved. Crystal received a bag of food once in a while; and congregants had opened their homes to her for a night or two. But her church was in no way equipped to meet Crystal’s high-piled needs.10 What her church could offer was the peace.
“What’s your favorite verse, Sister?” Elder Johnson asked. He had seen Crystal lift one of the nearby Bibles.
“Don’t be trying to put me on the spot.” She smiled. Then she said, “?‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.’?”
—
Crystal and Vanetta kept looking for a place to live. Sometimes Vanetta took her kids with her; sometimes she took them to the day care or to stay with her older sister, Ebony. Vanetta had them with her when she and Crystal visited their thirty-second apartment, on Fifteenth Street and Madison. The landlord stepped out of his Saab and opened the door to a small two-bedroom unit. The showing was scheduled in the evening because the landlord had a government day job in Madison. He was a well-fed Puerto Rican man in pleated slacks and a dress shirt.
The place was small, dumpy, and without a bathtub. After a walk-through, Vanetta asked the landlord if he had any other units with tubs. He said he did and began describing another apartment. It was bigger and somewhat nicer than the place he was showing Vanetta and Crystal, but the rent was the same. Then, suddenly, as if forgetting something, the man stopped himself. His hand went for his pocket, and he answered his cell phone. It was obvious to Vanetta and Crystal that no one had called, but he pretended to have a conversation. Hanging up, the landlord said that it had been his partner on the other line and that he had just rented out the bigger and nicer unit.
The women stood outside and watched the Saab pull away. Crystal reached for her old MP3 player and put in headphones. Vanetta was shaking. “I’m so angry,” she whispered.
“Get it together, you have to heal your heart,” Crystal sang, eyes closed, swaying back and forth.
“He just like, ‘Oh, they black. They trash the place anyways.’?” Vanetta wiped a tear away with a quick swipe and sucked in her quivering bottom lip. Her kids looked up at her, confused.
“Get it together, you can fly, fly,” Crystal lifted her voice.
Most Milwaukeeans believed their city was racially segregated because people preferred it that way. But the ghetto had always been more a product of social design than desire.11 It was never a by-product of the modern city, a sad accident of industrialization and urbanization, something no one benefited from nor intended. The ghetto had always been a main feature of landed capital, a prime moneymaker for those who saw ripe opportunity in land scarcity, housing dilapidation, and racial segregation.