The Low-Income Apartment

Published in The Louisville Review, Spring 2022 

Ester Brook’s bedroom shared a wall with a couple who fought. After waking up from a night of partying, they’d get ready for their low-paying, under-the-table jobs, and she’d hear chairs scrape against the floor, and the microwave beeping for attention. His voice would get louder and faster, and she’d cry: “I’ll do better! Just give me a chance! I need another chance!” The fighting seemed unfair, and made Ester feel protective towards the young woman.

When she wasn’t substitute teaching or taking care of her children, Ester worked in her bedroom, which was also her office. There were three children. The girls shared the other bedroom, and the boy, the youngest, slept on the couch. Still, Ester had her own room, and the room’s saving grace was a giant widow which overlooked the city below.   

⁂

            One morning while the children were seated at the kitchen counter, eating oatmeal and orange slices, Ester said: “This won’t last forever.” She was referring to the incessant fighting next door, and their tiny second-story apartment, one of 200, which was very different from their previous house, a stone house with the swing set near the university. Still, groves of mature pines and spruces, and tall forsythia mixed with bayberry softened the apartment complex’s landscape. “We do this for now. Everything changes, and you might not always notice the change, but that’s the way of the world. Nothing ever remains the same.”

            “Like birds migrating,” Leah said. “They have to, to live.” At 12, she was the eldest and already considered herself a scientist.

            “Right. And we all need to be flexible and patient.”

            “Why are they always fighting?” Leah said.

“They’re trying to communicate to one another, but there are better ways to get across your point. I think fighting is just a bad habit.” Ester’s parents had bickered about everything, and she vowed never to inflict that on her children.

            “Like biting your fingernails,” Leah said.

            “Farting,” Paul said, and giggled. He was six.

            “Sometimes you need to fart,” Ester said.

            “I agree with Mom,” Ruth, the middle one, said.

            “To break a bad habit, substitute a good one,” Ester said. “Most of what we do or think is habit.” She glanced at the three of them and it seemed to her that they were listening.

“Maybe for arguing you could substitute slow, quiet talk with long pauses. That kind of talking is a skill so you’d need to catch yourself, and say, ‘Oh my gosh! I just raised my voice. Bring it down,’ or ‘Slow it down,’ because I did not give that person a chance to say what she wanted to say. It’s hard to think when you’re upset, when your heart is beating like a galloping horse.”

            Ester said a lot to her kids, and she was never sure what resonated with them. Having just moved to the East Coast, she lacked the sounding board of a close friend. Her family lived hundreds of miles away. As the kids finished their breakfast, Ester stood at the kitchen counter, spraying diluted bleach on the stove and inside the cupboards. The battle with the roaches was constant: as soon as one fell, another six took up the cause.

            The arguing could go on for an hour. Still, Ester was fond of her neighbors, Jayla and Josh. A few weeks ago they were partying with friends and she knocked at the door and asked them to turn down the music. They surprised her by complying immediately. The next day, Jayla stopped by and apologized. Women did that, Ester thought, not men.

⁂

            Before Ester divorced, her mother-in-law visited her to announce that where she came from in Europe couples did not divorce, and whatever disagreements Ester had had with her husband would pass. Ester knew differently and she braced herself for punishment. Her mother-in-law’s last words to her were: You will be a single mother living in a cramped, dirty, low-class, drug-infested apartment with three young and impressionable children. And you, Ester: you will have no friends. You will be lonely.

            Ester did find an affordable house. The backyard was mostly woods and there was a metal swing set that needed only two new seats. The children could stay in the same schools. But she couldn’t afford the down payment until the marital house was sold, and Ester’s ex, who still lived there, refused every single offer. There was nothing Ester could do. There were other things she had little control over. Paul, for instance, often soiled himself the night before visitations with his dad, Ruth did not laugh as much, and Leah, the most sensitive one, began scratching her face until it bled, and tormented everyone with nightly screaming fits. Once, Ester slapped her on the face, not a hard slap, but it made an impression on Leah. The screaming stopped? a therapist said. It did, Ester said. The therapist suggested Ester write a contract that stipulated an immediate and meaningful consequence; if Leah screamed for more than 10 minutes, she would get one slap. The second slap, Ester’s mother had always said, is My Anger. Within two days, the screaming stopped.

            The children were tasked with figuring out how to share the bathroom, the computer, and food decisions, so Ester introduced the tennis ball: only the possessor of the tennis ball could talk. The others had to listen.  

⁂

One night after dinner, as Leah was washing the dishes and the children were playing Chutes and Ladders, Jayla appeared at her apartment door. “Please,” she said, “we need a ride to the hospital!” Her eyes gushed with tears. Josh, who was leaning on Jayla, wheezed, his drawn face barely registering anything. 

⁂

Jayla paced back and forth along the tile floor. She was not allowed in back. The lights were bright and it was cold in the empty waiting room, but a TV propped near the ceiling made the room feel more populated and purposeful.

“I really need a smoke,” Jayla mumbled, her eyes wide. Her tread was heavy and slow, and she’d get to one end of the room, and she’d stop as if she was working something out, grit her teeth, then turn around and relax her face, then pace in the opposite direction. She was a tall woman with black hair that went every which way, and she carried her beige purse with her like some kind of talisman. This went on for a while. The kids looked from the TV to Jayla, then back to the TV. Jayla didn’t have money for a taxi and Ester thought she could use the company, so they stayed in the emergency room.

Jayla was summoned to a lighted cubicle where a young receptionist with purple hair sat. A discussion ensued, then Jayla turned around and reported that Josh needed to be observed, that it would be a half hour or so.

“We’ll wait,” Ester said.

“Can we get something from the vending machine?” Leah said. Ester gave Leah three quarters and the tennis ball, and said, “Figure out how to share.” The three children stood before the vending machine with its shiny packages of cookies and candy, and Leah, jiggling the quarters in one hand. She gave the tennis ball to Ruth.

“Snickers bar,” Ruth said smiling, as if this was the best thing that happened to her all week. Then she gave the ball to Paul. He pressed his index finger against the glass, indicating the M&Ms.

Leah took the ball. “The Snickers bar would be hard to divide—I don’t have a knife.  Those M&Ms could roll all over the place.”

Jayla stopped pacing and watched them, and the bargaining went back-and-forth until they agreed on a bag of pretzels. The children sat down and Leah counted out the pretzels into their hands. When they started arguing about which TV program to watch (there was no TV in the apartment), Jayla asked for the tennis ball, and the ball went here and there until they agreed on a re-run of a 1970s sitcom. The two girls placed themselves on either side of Jayla, while Paul curled up on Ester’s lap.     

Leah said suddenly: “It’s not always fun at my dad’s.”

“Your parents are divorced?” Jayla said.

The girls nodded glumly.

Paul’s eyes kept fluttering: it was nearly nine, and that was late for him.  

“That sucks,” Jayla said, nodding her head. “My parents never got married. I was so young. I don’t even have a picture in my mind of who my dad was.”

“Do you know where he lives?” Leah said, sitting up straighter, separating herself from Jayla, so she could get a better look at her.

“No, and I don’t care.”

Leah looked at her as if she did not believe Jayla, but at the same time, would accept her answer as if she’d run across this before and now negotiated such hurdles seamlessly. “I miss having my own bedroom, and it’s not that I don’t love my sister (and here Ruth smiled, like a nine-year-old smiles, with the missing two front teeth), but we had a large house with very nice views to the woods and a creek. I didn’t have to take a bus to school. I don’t appreciate the bus ride. The other students are not well-behaved. I would have to say they are wild.”

“Once you get to know them, it might be better,” Jayla said. “They might just be showing off. You know kids—most of the time they just want attention? Kids are like that. I’ve always lived in apartments so I’ve known a lot of kids.”

“You’ve never lived in a house?” Leah said.

“Nope. That’s the way it is. With a house, you have to paint it. Put in new carpets.”

“We don’t walk on the carpets with our bare feet – we keep our socks on.”

They watched the TV. Then Jayla got up to the use the restroom and when she came back, she looked closer at Leah, and said: “Looks like you got a spider bite on your cheek. Or did you get in a fight?”

Leah shook her head.

“Just kidding. But you do have blood on your cheek. Hold on.” Jayla started digging through her beige purse. It had a plastic handle and lengthwise cracks that looked as if they could rip at any second. “Here,” she said, and she handed Leah a rumpled pack of tissues.

Leah took one tissue and thanked her, then gently patted her cheek. She looked at the blood as if surprised.

“It could be a bug bite,” Jayla said. “Bugs in apartments are especially hard to get rid of.  A friend of mine has bed bugs. The manager already fumigated twice. It’s a big deal: you have to clean the kitchen and don’t leave any pots out. You have to put your shoes and coats in the closet. Anything that you leave out can get bug spray on it. Especially in the bedroom where the bed bugs live inside the mattress.” She went on about the bugs, what they looked like, the splotches of blood they left on everything.

“It’s not a bug bite,” Leah said suddenly. She added nothing more.

Re-runs of Charlie’s Angels appeared on TV, then The Partridge Family. Paul was snoring, Ruth too, her head having fallen against Jayla’s shoulder.  

“Are you in college?” Leah said.

“I was. I dropped out after my first year. It was too much for me, you know, to work and take classes at the same time.”

“What were you going to be?”

“A nurse. I always wanted to be a nurse.”

“I can see that,” Leah said, as if she was a grownup, appraising Jayla’s net worth for the next 30 years.

Jayla smiled. In the three months that they’d been neighbors, Ester had never seen Jayla smile. It changed her whole face, and she looked like a 20-something on her way to wow the world other than someone perched on the slick slope of poverty.

“I was just getting started, then I ran out of money. I didn’t know anything about loans or grants.”

“I’m going to college.”

“You are?”

“I’m going to be a scientist. I’m already doing scientific studies. When I was in fourth grade, I started a Save the Rainforest Group. Sadly, we did not save the rainforest.” Leah sighed.

“That would be a big project,” Jayla said. “Let’s see: four stories right? Emergent, canopy, understory and forest floor. That was one of my college courses. Lots of cool birds.”

Leah nodded, clearly impressed. “Since fourth grade, I’ve been paying attention to birds.” Leah’s forehead wrinkled. “Wherever I go, I watch birds. My Mom gave me a bird identification book so I can identify the more common ones. I’ve seen an Eastern Screech owl. They go hoo-hoooo. Like a person saying, Who is there? And woodpeckers. Rat-a-tat-tat. I was surprised that there are so many different kinds of woodpeckers. And those tall black birds with the yellow beaks that perch on treetops? The birds near the lake? Cormorants. I used to go to the lake with my grandmother and dad. No more.”

“I’m sorry,” Jayla said.

“I think what surprised me is that even though the birds are so different, they all get along. Like at bird feeders: they take turns. They have to cooperate, otherwise they might die. I wish I’d brought my book with me. I would say it’s my favorite book, but I don’t have it on me now. We left in a bit of a hurry tonight.” Leah looked serious.

“Thank you for taking me and Josh,” Jayla said to Leah, and she glanced at Ester.

“It’s my Mom.” Then Leah said, “What’s that tattoo on your arm? What does it mean?”

Jayla rolled her sleeve up to her shoulder. “This is a cat here.” She pointed with a blood-red fingernail that made her skin look darker. “My cat, Sylvester.”

“I know Sylvester.” Leah squinted: it was hard to see the contrast of the colors against her skin. 

“And this swirl of blue and gold and green? It represents a dream.”

“A dream of what?”

“I don’t know. Just a dream.”

“Why’d you get a tattoo?”

“The tattoo says what is important to me about life. It says who I am.”

“Do they last forever?” Leah said.

“I think so.”

“But what happens if you change?”

Jayla looked dumbfounded.

From the TV came gunshots, screams, and calls of Police!

“Why would that happen?” Jayla finally said.

“Because . . . everything changes. My Mom said so. And I think my whole life changed in the past few months.”

“I don’t know. There’s so much on my mind. That never occurred to me. I don’t have time to think about stuff like that; most of the time, I’m just trying to get by.”

Then everyone was quiet. Even Ester had closed her eyes.

“You know what I think?” Leah suddenly said.

“What?”

“You have a nice singing voice.”

“You hear me singing?”

“We hear a lot.”

“I love to sing, and I would like to sing in a band, and make some money. Be a star! I could see me doing that someday.”

Leah nodded, and patted her cheek with the crumpled tissue.

“Right now I sing in church,” Jayla said. “The church on Cherry Street.”

“I don’t go to church. I might when I’m older though.”

“Do you hear anything else?” Jayla said quietly.

“Sometimes we hear people fighting.” Leah saw Jayla’s mouth fall and sadness in her eyes, and she added quickly: “But fighting is just a habit, right? Like biting your nails. It’s something you can unlearn.” She shrugged as if it was a minor and rectifiable inconvenience.

Everyone was quiet again. Paul and Ruth were snoring. There was melodramatic music from the TV, and the screen was taken up by a protagonist, sweating and panting with relief.

It had been almost two hours when the large double doors leading to the emergency rooms slowly and magically opened. There was Josh, in a wheel chair, his thin hands clasped on his lap, his face washed-out and looking tired.

“Now you can be a nurse,” Leah said, her eyes bright despite the hour.

Jayla laughed.    

⁂

 The next night after the kids had gone to bed, Ester was taking out the garbage when she saw Jayla at the dumpsters. There were two large dumpsters partially hidden by a grove of tall pines and spruces. 

“Thank you, Ester,” Jayla said, “for taking us to the hospital.”

“It’s what neighbors do.”

“Not all neighbors.”

Ester smiled. “How’s Josh?”

“He’s better. I’m going to try that trick of yours, with the tennis ball.”

“You never know what will work.”

“And that Leah– she is something,” Jayla said, nodding her head. “She knows what she wants to do in life. And she’s so young!”

“They’ve had advantages. Opportunities that a lot of people will never have.” Ester remembered the trip to Florence. She would rise before everyone and get a strong coffee and sit in the empty dining room that looked over the city’s clay roofs, roofs stacked like orange cards. They’d leisurely walk around the city, wide-eyed, eating whenever and whatever they wanted. The year before it was Hawaii, and that’s where Leah had fallen in love with birds.

“I was thinking, Ester. You said you write grants?”

“I do.”

“Maybe we could do a trade: you could help me with loans, or grants, and I could watch your kids? Take them to the park?”

“Sure.”

“I’m good at taking care of people, and I always wanted to be a nurse. It’s not too late. Is it? It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“It’s always possible,” Ester said, “whatever you want to do, if you want to do it badly enough.”  

Walking back to their apartments, the who-whoooo from an owl stopped them, and they both looked above and into the tall spruces, wondering what else lived there.