‘I had $20,000 in the bank and a house. I woke up one day and it was gone.’ : Queen of the Streets

She’s a sprightly old lady, barely 5 feet tall, and probably weighs less than 100 pounds, but she’s found a home on the streets. Neighbors call her the queen.

“I get by OK,” she’ll tell you, eyes bright, as she dines on coffee and a Mexican sweet roll laid out on the hood of her ’67 Pontiac Bonneville.

Inside the car, her mutt, Tweetie, sticks his nose from a window and barks at everything that passes, sometimes turning his eyes upward to yap at the large pepper tree that spreads out above them.

“I go down and buy me a dozen of these sweet rolls once a week for 89 cents,” she says, holding one up so I can see the jelly inside.

“I break each roll in half. I have half for breakfast one morning with coffee and half the next morning. That way,” she adds wisely, “they last longer.”

Her name, she says, is Princess Red Fawn, which is why they call her queen. Her mother was Cherokee, her father Delaware.

For the past three years, due to circumstances she cannot fully understand, she has lived in the old tan Pontiac.

I found her parked under the pepper tree in Canoga Park, the rear seating area of her sedan jammed to the ceiling with boxes and plastic bags.

There are even boxes and bags tied to the exterior of the car, on top and over the trunk, packed with things, she says, collected over a lifetime.

Princess and Tweetie live in the front seat. She sleeps across the seats and the dog, a brown and white collie mutt, either snuggles in beside her or curls up on the passenger-side floor.

“How old are you?” I ask the queen, and she replies quick as a wink, “How old do you think?”

Her face is tanned and wrinkled and her mouth puckers inward to fill the places her teeth once occupied, but even so there is a look of vitality to the old lady.

“Sixty-two?” I ask, giving her room.

“Eighty-four!” she says proudly. “I’ll be 84 next month.” She pauses, thinking. “No, this is, what, August? I’ll be 84 October Third.

“I’m in good health except that both legs went out after that last rain. On a Saturday, was it? I woke up and couldn’t walk. But now I’m fine.”

She leads the way up the street to show me. Her gait is slow and painful but steady.

“Sometimes I sweep up,” she says, gesturing down the sidewalk. “I sweep the whole block.”

She owned a used-clothing store once, Princess says, but it was robbed so many times she went broke. She was beaten on the head with a brick in one of the robberies but recovered all right. No one bothers her anymore. She’s part of the street now.

“Years ago, I had $20,000 in the bank and a house in Las Vegas,” she says. “I don’t know what happened. I woke up one day and it was gone.”

She brushes dog hair from her black wool sweater. It’s a futile gesture. “So here I am.”

The queen lives on a $623 a month Social Security check, most of which she pays to a storage company to keep her furniture.

“You need a thousand dollars now to get into an apartment,” she says. “I can’t get that kind of money. My husband was killed in the war. I don’t know where my son is. He must be in his 50s now.”

She chose this street to park because of the shade tree. Also, there are public places nearby where she can wash up and use the toilet.

“I keep myself real clean,” Princess says with mixed pride and defiance. She is wearing a spotless red and yellow housedress. “I buy my own soap and take it with me. I wash my dress and then my whole body.”

A cop told her recently that she was going to have to move. The queen shrugs.

“I’ll just go someplace else. Someplace nice, with a tree.”

For lunch lately, Princess has been eating at a nearby church facility.

“The food is real good,” she says with enthusiasm. “They put five things on the plate. It’s one of those trays with different little compartments. Look at this.”

She digs into a Styrofoam ice chest on the hood of her Bonneville and pulls out two small cottage cheese containers. One holds a few cold slices of zucchini squash, the other a spoonful of spinach.

“Sometimes,” Princess says, “I can’t eat it all. So I bring it home.”

She puts the food away, thinking. “I have dinner at Biff’s. The girls are real nice to me at Biff’s.”

Only one neighbor bothers her. A woman who runs a nearby shop wants her to move. The others often stop and talk and occasionally give her a dollar or two. Princess uses it to buy food.

“I think it was the shop lady who called the police,” she says. “But I don’t need trouble. If someone doesn’t want me, I’ll go. I won’t bother anyone.”

She hesitates for a moment, nibbling at the Mexican sweet roll. It is on paper towels spread neatly across the car hood.

“I’m no bum,” the queen finally says. “I don’t like this life, but what am I going to do?”

And, as though by repeating she validates her dignity, adds quietly, “I wash good every night. I’m very clean.”