HUFFINGTON
11.11.12
NO WAY OUT
“Everything that I really have
to have in my life is in this book
bag,” she says.
She pulls out one of those
items, a piece of plywood with a
phone number written across it
in pencil, the number of a man
with a vacant apartment who
will accept the so-called Section
8 voucher she has recently secured, entitling her to federally
subsidized rent. Assuming that
his apartment passes a required
inspection, she can move in three
weeks from this day.
“Three weeks,” she says repeatedly, as if chanting a phrase that
will open the gates to a better
world. “If I can make it through
these three weeks.”
The Number 4 bus makes its
way past the hulking shells of dismantled factories now shadowed
by knee-high weeds, then across
a highway overpass, and past a
cemetery for soldiers, the white
markers laid out like dominoes.
It rolls past an Applebee’s restaurant, a Krispy Kreme donut
shop, a Bi-Lo supermarket, and a
pawnshop. It goes by the Hamilton Inn, a tan fortress of a motel
shimmering in the heat, where
Smith knows a room with a minirefrigerator and stovetop can be
had for $231.72 a week, but where
vacancies are rare. It goes past
Fast Quick Loans, where a yellow
banner draped across the storefront promises: “First Loan Free.”
“Most of the time, I doze off,”
Smith says, “but sometimes I
look out the window. It’s relax-
“I’M NOT ONE TO GIVE
UP HOPE, BUT, MAN,
IT MAKES YOUR
SELF-ESTEEM DROP.
YOUR CONFIDENCE
DISAPPEARS.”
ing. You can look at things and
get a better view.”
The bus goes past a Sears department store and a furniture
outlet. Forty-five minutes after
the beginning of this journey, it
turns into the Hamilton Place
shopping mall, where Smith steps
off and transfers to the Number 6,
which — after another 30 minutes
— deposits her a half-hour’s walk
from Amazon.
Unless it is a Sunday.
On Sundays, she steps off the
Number 4 at Shallowford Road and