a pen and scrap of paper and wrote, “Vitamin C, Zinc, and Echinacea.” “That’s what I would recommend,” he said.
Scott didn’t go back to Iowa. Instead, he decided to go to rehab. On the morning he planned to check himself in, Scott woke up while it was still dark, trimmed his beard, and tucked in his T-shirt. He wanted to climb back out. He felt nervous but ready.
When Scott stepped out of the elevator at seven a.m., an hour before the clinic’s doors opened, he saw that he was late. Fifteen people were already in line. There were older black men who had dressed up for the occasion; a foulmouthed white woman, fifty perhaps, in cowboy boots; a pair of young Mexican men sitting on their feet and whispering in Spanish; a twenty-something black man whose pants were falling down; a brooding, white teenager who had pulled her bangs over her eyes and her sleeves over her hands. Scott slumped against the wall at the end of the line.
After a few minutes, the elevator opened again and an older Mexican woman stepped out. Her hair was long and black except for a streak of gray down the middle. She wore a walking cast and looked over her large glasses with eyes the color of floodwater. She resigned herself to a spot on the floor next to Scott.
The woman told Scott she had been there the day before, but they only took four people. When social workers began appearing at desks behind the glass, she observed, “They are calling the county to see how many spots are available.”
“For what?” Scott asked sardonically.
“For you. You’re here to get treatment, right?”
Scott looked up at the ceiling’s fluorescent lights and inhaled slowly, purposefully. He was trying to endure. “Yes.”
“Look at that girl,” the woman motioned to the white teenager. “She looks suicidal. I’ll bet they take her in. You have to camp out to get a spot.”
Scott began to tap his foot.
At 8:10 a.m., a woman wearing gold earrings and a silk blouse opened the door and announced that they could take five people today. A man emerged with a clipboard. “Number 1. Number 2,” he began counting. The line stood and tightened. Scott stepped toward the elevator and pushed the Down button. He could have tried again the next day, but he went on a three-day bender instead.
15.
A NUISANCE
The day after Crystal and Arleen’s argument, Trisha came downstairs from her apartment after Chris had gone to work with Quentin. Trisha liked Crystal. She was much more youthful and silly than Arleen. That morning, the two women passed the time fooling around and playing pattycake. Their palms slapped together as they sang:
Shame, shame, shame.
I don’t wanna go to Mexico
No more, more, more.
There’s a big fat policeman
At my door, door, door.
He grab me by my collar.
He made me pay a dime.
I don’t want to go to Mexico
No more, more, more.
Arleen watched unamused. She was reviewing apartment listings and making notes on a notepad with HOUSE written in block letters at the top. She regretted not going to a shelter after eviction court. But she hated shelters; mostly she hated the other residents. Collecting her papers, Arleen nodded at Crystal and left to find a new place to live.
Arleen was able to call on two dozen places before heading back to Thirteenth Street. She had no leads but was undefeated. “If I keep being persistent, I’ll find me a house,” she told herself. She also believed that Sherrena had dismissed her eviction. She had not.
When Arleen came back, the apartment was quiet, and Crystal looked troubled. After Chris had gotten home from work and Trisha went back upstairs, Crystal had heard him yelling at her for smoking his cigarettes and drinking his beer. She had heard other noises too.
“The lady upstairs getting beat,” Crystal told Arleen.
“Who cares? I don’t,” Arleen answered. She had painful menstrual cramps and just wanted to lie down. “I kind of figured that was going to happen when he got here.” Arleen didn’t feel she had enough space in her head or her heart to consider Trisha’s problems. Her own problems were enough.1
After night fell, more sounds came through the ceiling. There were blunt and muffled thuds, interspersed with loud pounds when Trisha slammed into the floor. Arleen covered her head with a pillow, but Crystal stewed. “I ain’t fixing to see no woman getting beat up by no man,” she said. She wanted to help Trisha, but she also couldn’t help
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