Curbing Their Unease

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Clearing House

When eviction strikes, it's not just the residents who need to leave -- their belongings need to go, too.

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Another terra-cotta vase.

Which is why distancing is important. Treat other people's stuff too carefully, and the things start to seem more like belongings and less like a job. Linger too long in the bathroom and you'll start to notice that you use the same shampoo or have the same shower curtain.

It's easiest in houses like the one on Buckingham Green. Studio-apartment evictions, those are hard. Those, you feel as though you're taking something away from people who don't have much to begin with. The big houses, though . . . Kifle finds a picture of the tenant and his son, standing with Magic Johnson. Shouldn't a person who knows Magic Johnson, he wonders, have managed their money better?

Passing judgment is good for distance.

Someone discovers that the basement is furnished, and everybody groans. They are already out of trash bags. White goes off to buy more. The crew is getting silly, remembering the time that Eric got so hungry in the middle of an eviction that he ate a bag of Oreos from the cupboard, even though all the food was way past expiration. Laughter breaks tension, relieves stressful situations. Laughter is good for distance.

Assorted fake plants.

An Xbox controller.

A "natural bamboo" mattress.

A Dirt Devil.

Four bicycles.

A gas-powered Brinkman grill.

More televisions.

Two more sofas.

China cabinets.

A children's table.

At the top of the stairs, Richardson opens the door of a room that obviously belongs to a little girl. The rest of the house is in various states of disarray, but this room hasn't yet been touched. It is pretty, poufy pink.

Children's stuff is hard to distance yourself from. The evictions that really get to the crew are those with kids, like the one a few months ago where the two little boys picked their way through the mess of their front yard to retrieve their bicycles, and carefully stand them upright in the driveway.

Richardson has a baby on the way. He knows -- with no proof yet -- that it's going to be a girl.

When Kifle packs up kids' rooms, he thinks of Fiori. ("It means flower in Italian," he says. "My little flower.") He thinks about how he wouldn't want anyone touching her clothes.

Pulliam and White think of Sidney. Who wouldn't buy everything for a little girl, if they could afford it? Even if you couldn't really afford it, but thought you could, or at least wanted to try?

This little girl's bed is pink, draped in pink mosquito netting, covered in pink faux-fur pillows. There are pink paper flowers in tall vases, a closet full of dresses, a child-size desk with crayon drawings, and a ticket stub from a recent Janet Jackson concert lying on the floor. Two parakeets chirp in a cage lined with newspaper, and on the wall just inside hangs a sign reading, "Princess Sleeps Here."

Richardson looks into this room and pauses for a minute. "Let's save this one till last, how about?" he says quietly, closing the door again.

The End of the Reign

What began as a pile of stuff on the lawn is now a sea of stuff, wrapping around the side yard to the front, stretching almost all the way to the curb.

Expensive-looking bedding.

A set of cookware.

After All Seasons is finished, the tenant might come back and collect his belongings -- someone heard him on the phone, trying to negotiate a deal with a moving company and a storage facility.

Or the stuff might just sit there, until curious neighbors sidle over, quietly drag away a television or two.

Sometimes, the day after Pulliam and crew finish emptying out a house, they'll be called back and instructed to haul all the contents to a dump. It's as if once tenants see all their stuff on the lawn, they can't picture it anywhere else. Can't picture how they would start over.

On Buckingham Green, when most everything else has been removed over two hours, the crew begins to dismantle the Princess room. Richardson folds dresses into a suitcase he found in the closet. Kifle carries them downstairs. White removes photographs from the wall, dusting each with her sleeve. "Oh," she says. "So cute. She is so cute."

When the last of everything has been removed, Pulliam changes the locks on the front and side entrances, and removes the Christmas wreath from the door.

"That's it," he announces to the crew. Later they'll meet in a gas-station parking lot to grab snacks and settle up payments. Kifle wants to spend some time with Fiori; Wilson is talking about a nap and a movie.

Upstairs, in the little girl's room, the sign reading "Princess Sleeps Here" has been hidden by the open door, and so it still hangs on the wall of the empty room when everybody drives away.

It's the last stuff in the house.