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Edited on Fri Oct-24-03 01:20 AM by DuctapeFatwa
You should be proud of yourself. And you are. Even you don't know how you've managed to come up with the rent every month, money for the electric bill most months (although to be fair, it helps that you're not home much and you don't have an air conditioner or a computer).
It's been over two years now, and while your rent has gone up almost $300 during that time, the sum of your monthly take-home from all 3 survival jobs has gone up $48.37.
Your kilowatt rate has gone up, too, as has bus fare and the price of everything at the convenience store. You've managed to hang on to a prepaid emergency only cell phone, but it is getting hard to justify, as police aren't going to come to your neighborhood anyway, and the area around your workplaces are although on the other side of town and then some from your apartment, reasonably safe to wait for the bus in.
Even if you cut the phone, though, and swallow your pride and get your meals from the leftovers from the manager's trays at one of your jobs, you just don't see how you are going to pay rent, and electricity, and bus fare, and you have discovered that even the finest athletic shoes wear out eventually, and do so pretty fast when purchased used from the gooodwill, and while $8.00 for shoes every couple of months looks a lot different to you now than back in the day when you used to drive over to footlocker and buy 3 or 4 pairs and hand the cashier your VISA card.
Because you can take the progger out of the middle class but you can't take the middle class out of the progger, you try to talk to your landlord. Maybe you could do some maintenance for part of your rent? You've surprised yourself how handy you've gotten, fixed the conveyor belt yourself when it glitched up a couple times at the chicken plant..
And to his credit, the landlord listens to your suggestion and explains with what is to him, anyway, courtesy, that the management company does all the hiring of maintenance people, and you are welcome to apply there, although you should know that they, like that security guard job you were looking at a couple of weeks ago, do require you to have private transportation.
Although you've made a special effort at all your jobs to try to fit in and not come across as snobbish, when you begin to wonder how the people who work beside you are making it on the same money you get, you realize that you really haven't gotten to know any of them well enough to know much about how they live.
Once again, you dip into your legacy of education, this time into the rusty old social skills bucket, and start striking up conversations on your breaks - (you had not realized that your state requires two ten minute breaks for every 8 hours worked, and they really come in handy, because as you get older you discover that it isn't easy to wait 8 hours to pee, and one of the first things you learned at the plant is that while in theory, you CAN go to the bathroom any time, either you call over a supervisor to take your place while you do it, or the whole line shuts down, and with the new production bonus system having the potential to raise your take-home as much as 8 dollars a pay period, nobody had to tell you that indulging your bladder would not make you very popular)
When you find out that Eusebio lives in a one bedroom apartment with 2 brothers and 9 cousins, you almost don't believe him, but then you remember hearing something about that - that that is how people are able to work these jobs for so little and still send money for a sack of beans or two back home to Mexico every week, and you have to admit that he is doing better than you are, with the different shifts, someone is always there to cook beans, and one of his cousins has the use of his crew boss's pickup truck to bring home a sack of beans and one of rice for the US based branch of the family.
You don't know if you could live in one room with 11 other people though, and Eusebio tells you that no, you probably couldn't, but since back home there were 18 of them living in a house made of leaves and sticks until the first ones came north and sent back enough to make a cement block house..
This puts you in a thoughtful mood. All that education you had, and so many things you never knew.. but you don't have much time to be thoughtful because break is over, and the belt starts up again.
Implementing your new uptrended socializing strategy at your other jobs, you don't really know what to say when DeWayne, who is technically your supervisor, and makes at least $2 more an hour than you, tells you matter of factly that he lives with his wife and 3 kids in a 1987 Chevy Blazer that he tries to keep as close to work but out of sight as he can, and you can't help but be touched and humbled when he asks you to please keep it under your hat, because of course, if it were known that he doesn't have an address, he'd lose his job.
Waiting for the second leg bus for the ride home, which is always late, especially when it is cold and rainy like it is tonight, you notice two things.
One, you aren't sure when you began to feel a vague, unreasoning resentment as you stand there, hands aching, ears numb, feet wet, watching the people in their cars go by. Heated cars. On their way to houses in nice neighborhoods, without rats, or roaches, or people selling crack and teen-aged girls in the hallways, going home to eat nutritious, attractive meals and sleep in soft beds without springs coming through the mattress, and Two, DeWayne is in a way, better off than you are, too, because he doesn't have to pay rent, he can give his kids a little more food...
The rent is due in four days. You are short $50. What can you sell? You tried to pawn your TV once, but they told you you'd only get $18 for it, and then you'd have 30 days to buy it back for $33.86.
You try talking to the landlord again. In his own way, he is understanding. It's not like he hasn't heard this before. He tells you how it works. Rent is due on the first. You have one grace day. If the full amount isn't in by the third, the management company files a notice. Then you'll have ten days to pay the rent and a $75 late fee. At the end of ten days, you get an order to evacuate. After that, depending on how busy they are, at any time the management company can do what they call "assume occupancy of the premises." That means they come in and take your stuff out, if it's still there, and put it on the street.
You got to get ahold of a shopping cart for that stuff, advises Angela, your morning job co-worker. That's where she keeps her change of clothes, her soap and toothbrush, all in a little plastic shopping bag she changes as often as she can so the gas station people don't get suspicious when she takes it into the restroom every morning. Angela seems to feel sorry for you, she offers to help you find a cart, and even a bicycle lock for it.
Coming Soon - Part IV: This is not the best time for a pregnancy
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