the message. In the heat of the fight, she had made sure to tell Crystal, “I’m not leaving without taking my stuff out of here.”
Jori sat on his mattress in the bedroom. He felt dejected, and Arleen knew it. Later on, after things were resolved, Arleen sat down next to Jori and tried to explain herself. “What kind of parent am I to just listen to her and not listen to you?” she said, softly. “But this is what comes when you lose your house. This is what comes.”
13.
E-24
When Beaker found out that Larraine had moved into his trailer, he cussed from his hospital bed. Angry but helpless, he fingered the scar from his triple bypass, a nine-inch pink worm that puffed up from the middle of his chest. Larraine was breathing heavily when he got her on the phone. “Beaker,” she said, “we’re starting out fresh! I’m throwing everything out.” She had spent the morning cleaning the kitchen, tossing the left-out black applesauce and fly-covered ribs before deciding that everything had to go, even the cans of food because bugs were crawling on them. Beaker suggested Larraine take the back bedroom, but she refused because it was filthy. She took out her steamer and worked it over the couch. She would sleep on its cushions, next to the mound of things she had rescued from her trailer.
When Beaker came home from the hospital, he planted himself at the kitchen table and dashed his cigarettes into a disposable plastic bowl, the kind you fill with olives at the deli. Beaker’s real name was Robert, but everyone called him by his childhood nickname. A brooding and taciturn man, with slicked-back black-and-gray hair, Beaker had retired from driving a city bus a few years back, when his health began to deteriorate.
Beaker asked Larraine to split the rent, but Larraine said she couldn’t because she had to make steady payments to Eagle Moving. They fought, and Beaker settled for Larraine covering the cable and phone bills. Then they fought over what to watch on television. Beaker preferred shows like Ice Road Truckers; Larraine demanded So You Think You Can Dance. Then they fought over Beaker’s refusal to share his dinners from Meals on Wheels because he was still miffed that Larraine threw out his canned food. Larraine’s food stamps had been cut off—in the turmoil of her eviction she had forgotten about a meeting at the welfare office—so she began asking neighbors for spare plates and visiting church pantries.
During her first visit to Eagle, Larraine gave her name to a black man behind the counter who was wearing a backwards cap and gold crucifix.
“And when I pay, can I go look at my stuff?” Larraine asked.
“No. This is a bonded storage, ma’am. I can’t let you back there.” Riffling through your things and pulling out, say, winter clothing was not allowed.
“All right.”
“You got the in fee, the out fee, and the first month’s storage,” the man said. “That adds up to three seventy-five. Then each month after that, it goes up another hundred and twenty-five.” The man suggested Larraine try to get her things out soon so she wouldn’t have to pay on another month. But having just given him what amounted to over half her SSI check, Larraine knew this was impossible. It would take her several months to save for a new apartment while still paying Beaker and Eagle.
—
In the trailer park, Larraine tried to lie low and avoid Lenny and Office Susie. She knew that if they found out where she was staying, they would tell Tobin, who might throw her out, and Beaker along with her.
Lenny and Office Susie were crucial to Tobin—and to his tenants. They could get you evicted just as easily as they could get your toilet working again. Susie pushed for Pam and Scott to be kicked out, but she would also run down the Cadillac and yell at Tobin if she thought he was overcharging someone or moving too slow fixing a porch railing. Most important, Lenny and Susie were cultural brokers, bridging the gap between Tobin and his tenants and smoothing things over when he crossed the line: like the time he approached a tenant’s kids, telling them their father owed rent. On numerous occasions, Lenny literally placed himself between Tobin and an enraged tenant. This was a common practice—outsider landlords hiring people from the community, usually their tenants, to manage property.1
The kids Tobin had approached about the rent belonged to Donny, a
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