I flipped some more. “Your ex-husband told you six months ago that he lost his job and couldn’t afford the rent and that you and the kids would have to find a less expensive place.”
“When was I supposed to do that?” Brenda asked. She was working long days in a bakery, which left her no time to set up appointments and check out possible housing. I had encouraged her to keep her job; I’d found a short-term shelter where the family could stay together, and a kennel that would board their dog, and city-funded summer programs for her children, including one where her oldest boy, Nicky, got to spend July with a wealthy and well-meaning family at their summer cottage on Nantucket. In August, she’d moved into a new place in Harlem, on a quickly gentrifying block filling up with young couples who wanted more space than they could afford in trendier neighborhoods but weren’t ready to abandon the borough.
That morning I found Brenda sitting on the couch of her still mostly empty apartment, on the twelfth floor of a fifteen-story building. Her eyebrows were plucked into thin arches; her eyes were heavily lined with black pencil. Her thin hair clung to her scalp and face in sticky clumps, her breath smelled like stale coffee, and her two-bedroom apartment had already acquired its signature scent of cigarette smoke and unflushed toilet, with accent notes of fast food and dog. Brenda’s pride and joy was a Siberian husky, a dog she’d told me she’d paid a breeder a thousand dollars for, whose breath made you think that a small rodent had crawled inside her mouth and died there. The dog, who was large and white and named Whitey, spent most of her time curled up asleep at Brenda’s feet, and at least once every ten minutes she’d let loose a long, mellow-sounding fart, like a low note on a clarinet.
“Who pays a breeder a thousand bucks for a dog when you can go to any shelter and get a dog for free?” I’d asked Amy during one of our dinners. We’d go out together, once a week, and were methodically working our way through all the cuisines in New York City. By then we’d sampled Ethiopian, Italian, Thai, and Korean. We were eating Indian that night, samosas and saag paneer and tandoori chicken. Amy had given me an indulgent smile and said, “Oh, grasshopper, you have much to learn.”
I shifted on the couch. Brenda pinched the sleeve of my jacket between two long-nailed fingers. “This is real nice,” she said.
“Thank you.” The jacket wasn’t anything special, but it would, I hoped, look formal enough to command some respect from the women I worked with, most of whom were older than I was. Lucky for me, my parents had bought me a leather tote when I’d graduated from Beaumont, and it was still in good shape, big enough to hold a day’s worth of case files, my wallet and keys, and the tape recorder and camera I needed to do my interviews or document conditions at a client’s home.
Brenda let go of my jacket and toyed with her hair.
“How have things been?” I inquired, keeping my voice intentionally mild. I’d learned, from shadowing Amy for three months, how to keep judgment off my face and out of my voice, and to try not to ask a question unless I knew the answer. When I’d arrived, I’d used the bathroom, where I had spied with my little eye a man’s razor and a can of Barbasol next to the sink, and whiskers in the bowl. Her oldest son was eighteen, small for his age, with no beard that I could see.
Brenda slid her gaze sideways. She knew she wasn’t supposed to have another adult with a paycheck sharing the apartment that had been approved for just her and her children. She also knew, or at least I guessed she did, that the amount of work and red tape it would require to evict the boyfriend was such that the agencies involved would probably decide to look the other way, in the event I decided to blow the whistle.
“What’s the story, morning glory?”
She shifted on the couch. “It’s just a friend who’s visiting. A guy I knew from my old job.”
I didn’t speak and kept looking at her. Another thing Amy had taught me was that strategic silence could be a social worker’s best friend. And it worked. Brenda kept talking.
“I just thought he could help out. With the bills. I’ve got electric, water, gas, cable . . .” She raised a finger for each utility, as if I was unfamiliar with what it cost to live in an apartment. Fresh paint on her nails, I noticed with annoyance. Brenda couldn’t get it together to feed her kids breakfast most mornings or to make sure they got to school half the time, and her phone was constantly being turned off—not safe, I told her; if there was an emergency, she’d need to be able to call 911—but she always found time and cash for a manicure. A manicure and a man, and she usually got pissy when I called her on it.