prestige

The house is small, at least compared to the six-bedroom monstrosity yesterday. The yard is green in patches, but generally unkempt. The siding is stained and chipped. The windows are hazy and the gutter on the front edge of the roof hangs low on the left. The sidewalk around the back is cracked and uneven. Dave and I exit the truck.

I tuck my shirt into my shorts and roll up the sleeves to my thermal undershirt. We already had a move this morning that was as quick as it was easy. There was no tip, but those moves always leave me in a better mood. This one doesn’t feel the same.

At the door, a small boy answers. He stares up at us with a somewhat confused expression, but lets us in without hesitation. Dave, clipboard in hand, steps ahead of me in order to start the paperwork. The homeowner is out of sight, but is yelling angrily into the phone. The voice travels from the direction of the kitchen, then trails off slightly as she walks down the hall. The house has that familiar stale smell of too many piles of dishes and too few passes with a vacuum or mop.

I’m trying not to eavesdrop, but her voice booms through the walls. I awkwardly stand just inside the doorway. From her tone, things with her and her husband or boyfriend, presumably the little boy’s father, did not end well. She is on the phone for about two minutes. Before she finally enters the room, I know she is being kicked out, is taking her son with her to her sister’s, and doesn’t think highly of him.

Her son has set himself down on the far end of the sofa. He seems to be completely tuned out. She glances at him before she comes to greet us. She looks like she hasn’t slept in weeks. Her eyes are distant. She’s barely there while she leads us from room to room, explaining which items we were taking. I follow quietly through the halls and out to the garage mentally preparing myself for the annoyance to come.

Each item we’re taking surrounded by things we aren’t. We’ll have to avoid a chair and one arm of a couch to get things out the front door. A pile of boxes blocks half of the path from the basement out the side door. The furniture is mostly cheap. The boxes are over-packed. The things that aren’t packed into boxes or plastic tubs were hastily forced into plastic bags. There’s no good way to stack these into the truck.

From the items shown to us on the brief tour, it’s clear she is poor. The cheap furniture is covered in Wal-Mart sheets and packed with K-Mart clothes. Her own t-shirt and jeans seem to be older than I am. Before taking this job, I never thought I’d run so often into the lower income sect. I thought the only people that would hire out a truck an labor would obviously have money and were too lazy for menial labor. Walking through piles of five dollar toys and second-hand clothes is far more common than I expected.

I’ve become desensitized to it. The people are generally friendly, if not a bit crass. They appreciate us more than those that give us large tips. They don’t watch us intently through paranoid stares. They seem accustomed to their situation. I can sympathize. The pay is terrible, but I don’t mind the work. I see the sadness and defeat in their eyes. If I weren’t so young, they’d likely see it in mine.

This move is different. Her distance doesn’t stem from her lack of financial freedom. She seems disheartened more by the situation than the instability. She’s forceful and has the attitude of someone determined to get her moneys worth—or, more precisely, her mother’s moneys worth. And then there’s the matter of the television.

Her fifty-inch projection television is flanked by full-sized, black shelving units with a shelf laid across them. It rests a few inches above the screen. The entire set covers an entire wall. The shelves are layered in dust with clear spots where DVDs and other items used to sit. Most of the worth of the items scattered throughout the house, added together, wouldn’t total much more than just this television and entertainment center.

She is in another area of the house while we load all the boxes, bins, and bags. She briefly glances at us while we move her chairs and personal gym from the garage. We wrap the furniture while she busies herself elsewhere, but as soon as we begin to disassemble the entertainment set, she’s in the doorway of the kitchen watching. My sympathy for her faded. The paranoia in her eyes was disconcerting. Only after the shelving units and television are hauled with a shoulder dolly out to the truck and secured against its walls does she revert back to her uninterested supervision.

We move the truck to the alley behind the house to load the larger items in the garage. She periodically brings out freshly filled bags and boxes. She packs a bag for her son and meets us by the truck just as we’re shutting the doors. Dave gets in behind the wheel and climb up the other side. When I turn back to shut the door she’s standing there gesturing her son to climb up. Dave, noticing this, motions for her to stop and explains our policy against driving the customers.

I apologetically mention that there’s not much for room in the cab anyway. She points to her car and says she could meet us down there, but was just in an accident and doesn’t think her car would make it. Dave, never wanting to go out of his way, quickly convinced her to give it a try. He said he’d follow her and if he noticed anything or she didn’t feel the car would make it, we’d stop and wait for a cab or another ride.

From the cab, we watched her set her son up in the car, get in herself, and then start up the engine. The engine started, but with a small squeal of metal on metal. Dave turned toward me with an awkward laugh. The car pulled back and reversed until it was directly in front of us. We both started saying “um” simultaneously and before I reached for the handle of my door, he was half out of his.

The front tire on the driver’s side was at a forty-five degree angle. The fender was caved in about seven inches and the tire rubbed against it when the tire slowly spun backward. The car visibly quivered when she turned the wheel to pull down the alley past us just before Dave got to her window. He threw up his hands and she stopped, startled. She rolled down the window and he started talking to her. They talked a few moments, but I couldn’t hear.

He returned to the truck, shaking his head, with half a smile. “She’s going to try and get a hold of a friend for a ride. The key’s at the place in the mailbox, or something. That front end is fucked up.” I laughed, but uneasily.

Last year, as a nation, we saved less than we spent. While the majority of Americans don’t have credit card debt, almost ten percent owe more than nine thousand dollars. Debt is entirely too easy to accrue. Only thirty years ago, most financing was associated with the purchase of a car or house. Now, financing is a way of life for far too many. No matter how disrespectful her watchful eye was while we removed the television from her home, it was completely understandable.

It takes us almost twenty minutes to find the key, hidden behind the address tag in the mailbox. We start to unload the customer’s things into her sister’s small bi-level apartment. Just after the television is inside, she arrives in a black S.U.V. that immediately pulls away after her and her son are on their way to meet us at the truck.

They help us unload the unevenly loaded boxes. It’s obvious she’s concerned with the time. We’ve been at work for a few hours and it’s likely she’s budgeted the money according to our office’s estimate. She’s more conversational and funny, in a way. The rest of the work goes quickly.

While Dave finishes the paperwork, I stand near the doorway and look around. The basement, closet, dining room, and living room is littered with boxes and plastic bins. The apartment is small. The furniture is more expensive than hers, but bland and uninteresting. The walls are almost completely bare. The yard in back is tiny, with a cracked cement pad that held up a grill. The building itself was run down.

From the looks of things, her sister wasn’t any more well off than she was. She had just ended what seemed to be an intense relationship. She has a son to support and no where to live. Maybe her gigantic television was a small bit of hope that things would be better soon. I can feel for her now, but what about when I get a full-time position somewhere and don’t live check to check?

Dave nods to me and we turn to leave. The gigantic television is planted in the center of the living room, only leaving a small path between the front door and the dining room. It’s facing her sister’s slightly larger television and matching silver entertainment center.