The cockroaches had spilled out of the walls into the open, and now they were crawling on the stove, and along the edges of the window blinds, and all around Janice Shapiro’s hand as it rested on the kitchen table where she always sits, indifferent to their presence.

7 short stories about Corktown

“It’s been bad for a long time,” she said, smoking another cigarette. “Now, all of a sudden they’re coming out of the woodwork. I know they’re in the walls, oh I already know this. This house is over a hundred years old.” The poison sprays she bought over the years never got rid of them. Didn’t kill the bedbugs in the house, either. Now the insects are just more roommates she's become resigned to.

Cockroaches and other bugs congregate next to a grease-filled pan atop the stove at Janice Shapiro's home in Detroit's North Corktown neighborhood on Thursday, Aug. 23, 2018. Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press

All day, every day, Jan sits inside this North Corktown house; in this seat, at this table, next to a landline phone she keeps close in case someone cares enough to call and talk to her. Her 72-year-old knees are so weak she can hardly walk. Her cataracts are so thick that she can’t really see. And she hasn’t left this crumbling house in years, not even to go into the yard and get some air. Out of loneliness she opened her door to anyone who said they needed help. And in this old, poor neighborhood she found plenty of takers.

“I’ve helped so many people in Corktown, it ain’t funny,” she said. “If somebody is hungry and I cook enough food I will feed you. And I’ve given clothes, I let people stay here, even to stay over one night. That’s me. I was raised to be friendly with people.”

This small Victorian house, built in 1890, had become almost uninhabitable. Thick cracks ran through the ceiling and the walls. Boards covered some of the windows. Plates of half-eaten food from days ago lay on the couch, the radiator, the end table and in the bedrooms. Everything was yellowed by cigarette smoke — yellow wallpaper, yellow lampshades, yellow curtains. Human feces smeared by someone’s bare feet were scattered on the floor of the moldy shower stall in the bathroom. And thousands of bugs crawled on every surface, oblivious to their own instinct to hide in the daytime.

A rusty basketball rim on a tree behind the home of Janice Shapiro in Detroit's North Corktown neighborhood as seen on Thursday, Aug. 23, 2018. Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press

She’s never alone in this house, but she might as well be. Several people live here or flop here on any given day, but they usually do their own thing while Jan stays at the table where she always sits, rarely getting up, ignored by people few others will take in living in a house few people would even set foot in.

“I never thought this would happen to me,” she said.

* * *

Her roommate Kevin was sprawled on a dingy couch in the living room, nestled in dirty blankets, breathing through an oxygen tube, watching trashy daytime talk shows where people scream at each other.

The volume on the television was cranked loud so Jan could hear it around the corner in the kitchen, since she can’t see it from her seat at the table, where she stays because Kevin doesn’t like her bringing her chair into the living room.

“I can’t take it in there,” she whispered. “The one — I can’t even say the name — Kevin, him and I don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things.”

Years ago, she made friends with a woman named Virginia who owned this place. Jan became her caretaker as Virginia fell ill. After Virginia died five years ago, Jan never left. She says the house’s new owner told her she could stay, mostly as a hedge against scrappers, a placeholder as the property’s value skyrockets in tandem with the area’s development. But she didn’t want to be alone, so she took in whoever was willing to keep company with her in a rotten house full of bugs.

Ford’s arrival promises change in Corktown Long ago, Corktown was split in two by a freeway. Now that Ford is moving in, both halves are about to see big changes. Ryan Garza and Brian Kaufman, Detroit Free Press

There’s Darryl Walker, 54, a part-time worker at the nearby soup kitchen and a full-time drinker at the house.

There’s Darryl’s wife, Susan, 53, usually by his side.

There’s Murray Braithwaite, 52, a longtime friend of everyone in the house, who says he has an apartment but spends most of his time here, drinking cheap beer and smoking off-brand cigarillos.

And there’s Kevin, age unknown. Murray met him a few years back at the soup kitchen and invited him over. Before long, he moved himself in. He’s a mysterious character, somewhere in middle age. He won’t say much about his life, other than he used to be homeless and he’s got HIV. He doesn’t like questions.

“He’s kind of secretive about his past,” Braithwaite said.

Kevin isn’t even his real name.

The idea was that “Kevin” could help do things around the house for Jan, who can hardly stand up. But after a few weeks of making her meals and bringing her water, he grew tired of that and planted himself on the couch in front of the TV, with jugs of pop and bottles of pills clustered at his feet.

“I guess I’m just too friendly,” Jan explained. “I hate to say it. I guess I feel sorry for a lot of people. They take advantage of me. But see, that’s what I get for being nice.”

The utility bills are paid for with her fixed income, though Darryl and Susan sometimes kick in a little. “Not enough to tell you the truth. But it’s all right. I understand their situation,” she said. "And well, Kevin don’t have an income right now. He’s real sick. He’s on oxygen and he says he can get us money, but I don’t know. I don’t press him too much.”

* * *

In came Murray, fresh from his job rubber-banding flyers to the front doors of homes in the suburbs, work usually offered to homeless people in the area. “Oh boy, what a long day,” he sighed. It was noon. He sat down in the living room, cracked open a can of Milwaukee’s Best and lit a filtered cigarillo. His legs were dotted with round scabs and scars from scratching his bites and rashes too hard.

Murray’s family is American royalty of sorts. His father was a decorated Army veteran who founded a thriving dairy business. His brother is a rear admiral in the Navy and the current ambassador to Norway.

Show caption Hide caption Murray Braithwaite (right), 52, watches a Detroit Tigers game on TV as Darryl Walker, 54, rests on a bed in his room he rents at... Murray Braithwaite (right), 52, watches a Detroit Tigers game on TV as Darryl Walker, 54, rests on a bed in his room he rents at the home of Janice Shapiro, on Thursday, Aug, 23, 2018 in Detroit's North Corktown neighborhood. "First day I met Jan, she knew I was living in a mission and all that. I was in a bad way," Braithwaite said. "That first night I met her she said, 'I got a plate for you if you're hungry.' And it's been like that ever since." Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press

Murray is the runt of the litter. He fell on hard times after he lost the family dairy business and his wife left him after getting too friendly with the landscaper they’d hired. “It’s life, man. I was kind of bummed, but it’s whatever.”

For a time, he was just another homeless person wandering North Corktown.

“First day I met Jan, she knew I was living in a mission and all that. I was in a bad way. I got divorced, lost my business, my house, so it was a nightmare. I didn’t have nowhere to go. So anyways that first night I met her she said, ‘I got a plate for you if you’re hungry.’ And it’s been like that ever since.”

“Kevin, can I get some ice water?” Jan shouted from the kitchen. Kevin got off the couch, mumbled a complaint, grabbed Jan’s cup from the cockroach-cluttered table, filled it at the sink and set it back down hard before her in hostile silence. Then, he took a butter knife from the silverware tray that sat next to the sink, went back to the couch, unhooked his long oxygen tube and began scraping out the inside of his nose with the knife.

Janice Shapiro, 72, opens a pack of cigarettes while sitting at a table in the kitchen of her home in Detroit's North Corktown neighborhood on Thursday, Aug. 23, 2018. Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press

Murray was incredulous. “What the hell are you doing?” he burst out. Jan heard this and asked what has happening.

“I don’t know,” Murray shouted. “He’s in here with knives, digging in his nose.”

“To let you know,” Kevin barked back defiantly, “when I have this in my nose at night I wake up clogged at and itched at. What would you do?”

After he finished scraping, Kevin walked back to the kitchen, ran some water over the knife that had been in his nose, and placed it in the silverware tray on top of all the clean butter knives.

* * *

Jan didn’t notice. She lit another cigarette, waiting for the phone to ring, maybe a call saying she was accepted for the senior housing she applied for: The kind of place she often dreams aloud about, with clean-swept floors, the smell of disinfectant in the air and a community room to watch television where nobody will yell at her to stay out.

“I gotta get out of here,” she declared. ‘That’s all there is to it. I’ve been here too long.”

She might be out soon anyway. She's heard about the train station and the jobs to come, along with the expected new residents likely to flood the area and transform this long-neglected neighborhood. And she knows the owner of this house will probably want to cash in on his patient investment sometime soon.

Janice Shapiro I hope everybody don’t move out, and if they own their homes, stay where they’re at, and I just hope everything will be all right in five, 10 years. Quote icon

“Oh, it’s going to change a whole lot,” Jan said. “They ain’t gonna let the riffraff over here, I already know this. Oh no, they ain’t gonna allow it.”

And she knows that many people think of "riffraff" as the people here in her house, and the few neighbors left nearby, like the homeless guy squatting in the gutted house down the street; and a deranged hoarder around the corner in an equally filthy house. “That place is deplorable,” Murray noted without irony.

“I hope everybody don’t move out, and if they own their homes, stay where they’re at, and I just hope everything will be all right in five, 10 years,” Jan said.

The light came in dim and hazy through the smoky air and the dirty curtains, which still faintly showed faded, dreamy prints of country homes with flowers all around them.

Murray stepped outside, where shredded bread was scattered in the yard and several stray cats had gathered to eat it. “Jan did that,” Murray explained. “She feeds all the strays. Like she does with people.”

Darryl lay back on his bed, glassy-eyed, staring at the ceiling. His wife, Susan, sat on the bed by his side.

Kevin sat on the couch, complaining about the volume of the television.

And Jan sat at the table where she always sits, staring at the phone, waiting for someone to talk to.

“Like I say, it’s hard on me, it really is,” she said as she lit another cigarette. “I got myself in a good predicament. I never thought this would happen to me. Never, never.”