limit “kin dependence” by giving mothers who lived alone or with unrelated roommates a larger stipend than those who lived with relatives.6
The family was no longer a reliable source of support for poor people. Middle-class kin often did not know how to help or did not want to.7 And poor kin were often too poor or troubled or addicted to lend much of a hand. Legal entanglements got in the way too. This was why Crystal believed her aunt Rhoda refused to open her door to her after she aged out of foster care. Rhoda had caught a case for her son, his dope found in her apartment, and was serving two years on probation. This meant that law enforcement officers could inspect her apartment. Knowing this, Crystal asked if she could sleep outside on her porch. Rhoda said no.
It was next to impossible for people to survive deep poverty on their own.8 If you could not rely on your family, you could reach out to strangers, make disposable ties. But it was a lot to ask of someone you barely knew.9
—
A week after Crystal moved in, Arleen sat at the kitchen table, circling apartment listings in the newspaper and RedBook, skipping the addresses that included “background checks.” Jafaris played with a caulk gun Quentin had left behind. Arleen’s plan was to move by the first of the month. “I don’t want to live in the inner city ever again,” she said. That first meeting with Crystal had felt like a blessing; so Arleen decided to be picky. What she would love was a two-bedroom downtown apartment for under $525.
When Jori walked in the door, Arleen straightened her back. He dragged his backpack into the kitchen with his head bowed, wearing his new shoes. “You already know your teacher called me.” Arleen’s voice was sharp. Jori tried to explain himself, but Arleen cut him off. “I don’t want to hear it, ’cause it’s always a problem at every school you go to.”
“Nah, ’cause he, he stepped on my shoes. I—I, I turned ’round, like, ‘You done stepped on mine.’ And teacher gonna say, ‘What you say? What you say?’ Everybody in that school, they say the teachers get slick with all the kids.”
“I ain’t trying to hear no excuses.”
“Because you believing nothing,” Jori snapped back. “That teacher already runnin’ on people! Even the teacher cuss at the kids.”
“All that what you doing, you can stop it,” Arleen yelled.
Jori sniffed and tried to stop himself from crying. Arleen told him to start his homework, and he sulked back to their bedroom.
Grabbing the newspaper, Arleen left to look for apartments, leaving her boys with Crystal. She headed to Teutonia Avenue, a main thoroughfare that cuts diagonally through Milwaukee’s North Side, and considered the snow. Arleen didn’t remember seeing this much snow since she was a child. On Teutonia, she began calling on rent signs. Some landlords didn’t answer; others wanted more rent than she could give.
Arleen found herself in the neighborhood where her brother Martin lived. She spotted rent signs but decided to move on. “Martin think he can eat off us any dang minute,” she thought. Earlier, Arleen had looked in an area where Ger-Ger’s father lived. She avoided that area too. “Those are just too close to him.”10
Arleen was able to call on nine units before she answered her phone and heard Crystal screaming. “You gotta get the fuck out of my house tonight. Tonight! Get your shit and go to-night!”
Arleen stayed on the phone a few more seconds, then hung up. “This is too ridiculous,” she said to herself. Crystal had said something about Jori being disrespectful, but Arleen sensed Crystal really was saying, I’m hungry. There was no food in the house, and Crystal had been complaining. Buying food was never part of the bargain, but Crystal was broke and her food stamps cut off.11 “As long as we have food, she fine,” Arleen thought. “But when we don’t, it’s like this.”
Arleen stopped at a nearby corner store and ordered a $99 meat deal, an inner-city staple consisting of forty-five pounds of chicken wings and legs, pork chops, neck bones, salt pork, pig feet, turkey wings, bacon, and other cuts. The man behind the counter speaking in Arabic on the phone threw in two sacks of potatoes for free. Checking out, Arleen added soda and potato chips, paying in food stamps. (She received $298 in stamps each month.) She paid for a pack of Newport 100s with cash.
When
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