She had looked into it before. Her question wasn’t a question; it was a message to Eric, Mark, Kathy, and everyone else in the room that she would do almost anything to get the rent. Many white landlords knew money could be made in the inner city, where property was cheap, but the thought of collecting payments on the North Side, let alone passing out eviction notices, made them nervous. Sherrena wanted them to know that she could help. For the right price, she would manage their property or consult with them about where to buy in the ghetto; she would be their broker to black Milwaukee. After that meeting, white landlords had surrounded Sherrena, who had worn a denim jacket with MILLION DOLLAR BABY $ bedazzled in rhinestones on the back. She poked fun as she collected business cards: “Don’t be afraid of the North Side!”
As people started to leave, Sherrena and Lora found a quiet spot in the hallway. “I got drama,” Sherrena began. “Drama for your momma! Me and Lamar Richards are going at it again—the man with no legs. He shorted me on my rent this month.”
“How much?” Lora’s voice, with soft traces of the island accent, belonged to a librarian. She was older than Sherrena and that night was elegantly dressed in dark slacks, gold earrings, and a layered red blouse. She folded her fur-lined coat on her lap.
“Thirty dollars.” Sherrena shrugged. “But that’s not it. It’s the principle….He already owes me two sixty for that bad job for the painting.”
When Lamar and the boys had finished painting, he called Sherrena, and she came over. She noticed that the boys had not filled in the holes; had dripped white paint on the brown trim; had ignored the pantry. Lamar said Quentin had not dropped off hole-filler or brown paint. “You’re supposed to go and ask for it, then,” Sherrena snapped back. She refused to credit Lamar a cent toward his debt.
“And then,” Sherrena continued, “he did his bathroom floor over without my knowledge and deducted thirty dollars out of the rent.” When painting, Lamar had found a box of tile in Patrice’s old place and had used it to retile his bathroom floor, securing each piece with leftover paint. “I told him, ‘Do not—do not ever deduct any more rent from me ever again!’ Plus, how can you deduct when you owe me?”
Lora recrossed her legs. “He’s a player, that’s all he is. Time for him to go….They just try to take, take, take, take, take.”
“The thing is”—Sherrena circled back to Lamar’s painting job—“I would have never paid anybody two sixty to do that.”
“I can get painting done in five rooms, thirty bucks a room, a hundred and fifty dollars.”
“No, no, no. Our people do it for twenty dollars a room, twenty-five at the most.”
“Exactly.”
“As far as I’m concerned, he still owes the two sixty. Excuse me, now it’s two ninety.”
The old friends laughed. It was just what Sherrena needed.
3.
HOT WATER
Lenny Lawson stepped out of his trailer park office to burn a Pall Mall. Smoke drifted up past his mustache and light-blue eyes and disappeared above a baseball cap. He looked out over the rows of mobile homes bunched together on a skinny strip of asphalt. Almost all the trailers were lined up in the same direction and set a couple steps apart. The airport was close, and even longtime residents looked up when planes came in low, exposing their underbellies and rattling the windows. Lenny had spent his entire life in this place, all forty-three years of it, and for the past dozen years he had worked as its manager.
Lenny knew the druggies lived mostly on the north side of the trailer park, and the people working double shifts at restaurants or nursing homes lived mostly on the south side. The metal scrappers and can collectors lived near the entrance, and the people with the best jobs—sandblasters, mechanics—congregated on the park’s snobby side, behind the office, in mobile homes with freshly swept porches and flowerpots. Those on SSI were sprinkled throughout, as were the older folks who “went to bed with the chickens and woke up with the chickens,” as some park residents liked to say. Lenny tried to house the sex offenders near the druggies, but it didn’t always work out. He had had to place one near the double shifters. Thankfully, the man never left his trailer or even opened the blinds. Someone delivered food and other necessities to him every week.
College
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