In the morning, Edna Mae Yates paced the sidewalk. A straw hat, the kind women wear to church, sat on her head. She looked serious. On a corner lot, about thirty people worked like ants, lifting and carrying material in teams. By 9 a.m., walls stood.
Yates nodded. "That’s my house right there."
She is 75 years old and she is getting a new house in western Anniston. She will pay it off when she is 92. This is the first vacation she has taken in 12 years.
"You sit down that’s it," she said. She meant: you retire, you die.
She has a job at Regional Medical Center, five nights a week. She also has round bifocals with plastic rims.
People walked by, curious. Some shook their heads. Some shook Yates’ hand.
"You got so much drugs and prostitutes it’s dangerous," said Frances Martin, a neighbor.
Yates said she feels safe. When she lived here before, on 16th Street, it was different.
"I had a house. It wasn’t too much of a house," she said. "They beat out my windows."
People stole her furniture to trade for crack, so she moved away. She has come back to live in a Habitat for Humanity house. Of the 36 people who will become new homeowners this week, she was the only one to agree to move to western Anniston. Everybody else will live on a pretty hill in Wellborn Manor.
After lunch the workers were tired. Yates gave them water. Then she walked around, picking rocks out of the dirt.
"I ain’t even got headaches," she said.
At 4 p.m., the workday was done. Workers were drenched. Yates stood on the sidewalk with her hand on the hip of her blue cotton skirt. The sun in her eyes couldn’t make her look down. She nodded.
"I like it," she said.
And roof beams stood straight against the sky — the first day.
