The eviction notice arrived on a Tuesday, taped to my apartment door like a scarlet letter. Thirty days to pay three months of back rent or get out. I stared at the numbers—$4,200—and felt my stomach drop. I might as well have been looking at a million dollars.
My name is Marcus Webb, and three years ago I thought I had it all figured out. I’d been working as a line cook at various restaurants around the city, saving every penny I could. My dream was simple: open my own place. Something small, maybe a breakfast spot serving the comfort food my grandmother taught me to make.
When I finally signed the lease on a tiny storefront in a struggling neighborhood, I was terrified and exhilarated. “Webb’s Kitchen” opened on a rainy Monday morning with exactly twelve dollars in the register and a prayer that someone would show up.
For the first few months, it was tight but manageable. I’d work sixteen-hour days—cooking, cleaning, serving, everything. My girlfriend Lisa helped on weekends, but she had her own job to worry about. We were surviving, barely.
Then the furnace in my apartment building died in January. The repairs came out of my pocket since my landlord claimed it wasn’t his responsibility. A week later, my restaurant’s refrigerator compressor failed. The replacement cost wiped out my emergency fund. When my supplier suddenly demanded cash upfront instead of the usual thirty-day terms, I started falling behind on everything.
By March, I was two months behind on rent for both my apartment and the restaurant. I stopped sleeping. Every morning I’d open the restaurant wondering if this was the day the health inspector would shut me down for the broken ventilation hood I couldn’t afford to fix.
The eviction notice was just the confirmation of what I already knew: I was failing.
That evening, I sat on the fire escape of my apartment building, watching the sun set over the neighborhood. I’d have to close the restaurant. Move back in with my mother in another state. Start over as someone else’s line cook, with nothing to show for three years of work but debt and disappointment.
“You look like you could use one of these.”
I turned to see my neighbor from down the hall—an older Black woman I’d seen maybe twice in the two years I’d lived there. She was holding two bottles of ginger beer.
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