It couldn't happen again - COULD IT?

MOVING IS HELL - at least in my world it is. i'm sorry ive been away for so long. i've missed writing a posting. but im back! heres a little sum-pin sum-pin to get me (and you?) goin again! Love your comments, please leave them! *dalyn

From the basement suite doorway she waved a chubby arm at us as we struggled up the walkway, arms loaded with moving boxes. Her name was Dawn Barton, and this was her eldest son Nathan. Her other son was playing video games inside. After the exchange of names and niceties we continued on with the dreaded weekend of moving in together. After 6 months of “dating” (not spending more than 10 nights apart) my now husband and I decided it best to just live together – saving on rent, gas and bills. Though the move was hectic, we sensed that something downstairs just wasn’t quite right every time we pulled up to unload more of our stuff. An ever-changing group of teenagers was gathered around the patio table at all times; hovering over a full ashtray and a loud game of poker. Acknowledging our presence, they’d flip the oversized hoods of their sweatshirts up and glare us down.

A week or so passed. We were settling in nicely, unpacking, painting etc… trying our best to be patient and unaffected by the noise from below, which by this time had become unbearable. The group of teens, whether inside or outside were obnoxiously loud and rude. I don’t think I’d heard that kind of swearing before – and I’m no saint! Huge potty mouth over here, but these kids took profanity to an unheard of and useless level. It was painful to listen to. Trying to focus on finishing the last few months of school while having to hear that crap all day made my class deadlines next to impossible.

Soon enough we began to figure out the family dynamics of the downstairs tenants. Dawn was a professional ‘system worker’, spending part of her day using up other peoples cell phone minutes successfully scamming this or that government agency out of some benefit she didn’t deserve. Her youngest son (9 years old) refused to attend school, spending his day loudly disagreeing with anyone and everything – often with a 7/11 ‘big one’ hotdog crammed into his mouth. The alleyways were littered with his fast food refuse. The eldest son (14 years old) was the main breadwinner; a seasoned criminal with an endless rap sheet and future court appearances to boot. There were several other young teens – co-workers of the eldest son - that also called the downstairs suite home. It seemed they often needed reminding of what it was they did for a living, and yelled it out at full volume several times a day to each other… “I’m a motherfuckin’ DRUG DEALER motherfucker! You wana mess with ME? Dat’s right foo! Dat’s right BITCH MOTHERFUCKER! I’m gonna fuck you up!!” There’s a frightening quality in the voice of a 14 year old boy high on cocaine at 10:30am on a Tuesday morning, the kind that turns your stomach upside down for the rest of the day… we couldn’t live like this and us moving again was simply out of the question.

The arguments that filtered up the staircase ranged from “Who the hell let the cat piss in my shoe?” to “Fuck you, you fucking bitch! I fucking worked that corner 3 nights in a row!!” to “Suck my dick BITCH! Come over here and suck it hard! Get off your fat ass and let’s see YOU fucking bag this crack!” (hmm… I can’t imagine the circumstances I’d have to be living in that would cause a comment like this to be said to my mother…) ‘Conversations’ like these were the norm and conflict was the spice of life for the tenants below. The police were always there, inquiring about someone or something, taxi’s refused to pick us up from that address… the list goes on.

The neighbours began to approach us with scary stories of their own, and a genuine concern about how we were coping with the close quarters. We began to document the goings on of downstairs with a written timeline of events, photos and even verbal recordings of fights over drugs and money and eventually verbal threats directed at us. After a few months and with our landlord on our side, Zol, myself and 20 or so neighbours decided to sign a petition in favor of evicting Dawn and her ‘family’ due to constant disturbance of the peace and the unsafe environment the neighbourhood had taken on since her arrival. Everyone gladly signed including the old fart up the street. While taking in his trash one morning without his glasses on he ran into someone he thought was someone else and started to discuss the petition with them. Had they signed it? Had the tenants upstairs given it to the landlord yet? How was everything proceeding and when would Dawn and Co. be evicted? Well, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, he was talking to Dawn.

My life went from horrible to ‘horribler’ – I know, it’s not a word. Every chance they got they yelled and screamed obscenities at me. If they could hear that I was home upstairs, they’d yell up the staircase how they were going to kill me. How dare I fuck with them! They weren’t going ANYWHERE. Didn’t I know who they were? motherFUCKIN’ GANGSTAS apparently…
The registered letters of their eviction arrived, and one after another they ignored them, leaving them in the mailbox. They knew the drill… this certainly wasn’t the first time. A month and a half passed. The landlord would now have to hire the Sherriff and a bailiff to physically remove them all from the house. And so he did. We didn’t know exactly when it was going to happen, but God knows I wanted to be there when it did!

The stress of the conditions and school getting harder for myself caused a pretty explosive fight one evening between Zol and I. All hell broke loose. We rarely get into actual ‘fights’ but when we do we’re both pretty dam loud. Hearing our distress from below, three of the teens had crept up into the staircase to listen to us argue. I could hear them crackling around on the many garbage bags of crap they had stored on the stairs. Two of them being overly obese caused an argument of their own, as their cellulite made sitting space limited. Angered even more by the fact that they could hear Zol yelling at me I simply lost it and began kicking the door that separated us from them – yelling at them to fuck off. They didn’t. They snickered and laughed. They snickered and laughed and then somebody playfully shoved somebody else. That somebody shoved back harder. The other somebody then sucker punched someone and sent them and the person behind them crashing down the staircase… 400 pounds of meat slammed into the wall at the bottom! Then, an incredibly disturbing sound began to develop. It started low and methodic, like a bloodthirsty demon quietly escaping from Hell. Was that Dawns little sister who had moved in a month ago? The sounds got louder as did the protest of her now victim. You could hear her high-pitched gurgling scream all over the apartment below. Our walls shook as her and her opponent slammed into and through the ones below. For two minutes the fight continued and by far this is one of the scariest things I’d ever had to listen to. It sounded like a murder was taking place. I stepped out onto our deck to listen better as the battle continued in their kitchen below. Her scream escalated and then ---- STOPPED… 5 seconds of dead silence… a wheezing gurgle, a sputter. Then the screaming stared again… but different now. Though no words came from her mouth her shriek said it all, “I can’t believe this just happened to me! I CAN’T – BELIVE – OH – MY - GOD! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!!” Looking over the ledge of our deck I saw her 200 pound frame sway aimlessly around the yard. She stumbled in the dim of the patio light attempting to dial a cell phone with her free hand. The other was held to her face, blood seeping out of her fingers and dripping down her neck, soaking the collar of her “I love kitten’s!” t-shirt.

“OK, call the cops!” I said to Zol and looking down at the girl he did. She’d managed to collapse into a lawn chair and was now leaving a blubbering message on Dawn’s voice mail to please hurry home. Strangely, every bit of hate I had for this girl and the others below left me, and grabbing a wet cloth I ran down the steps. She let me move away her hand to reveal a deep 4 inch gash on her cheek. I realized then that the horrible gurgling and breathing she continued with was that of an asthma attack. I didn’t say anything to her, but held the cloth to her face till the paramedics arrived. From the deck we quietly hid and listened to the police report being made. Her cousin (Dawn’s eldest) had slashed her face with a kitchen knife… self defense he claimed…

The next morning at 7am I was awoken to pounding on the door below. Looking out my window I saw two massive men with papers in their hands. In the alleyway a large moving truck, two young men were unloading empty boxes out of it.

“Sherrif! Open up!!” BANG BANG BANG! Of course they didn’t open the door. So the Sherriff and bailiff did it for them. They took it off its hinges! I listened as they gained entry to the house. “Get up, get your shit and get the fuck out!” he bellowed at Dawn. She protested of course but this guy wasn’t taking any shit from her. “This is the fourth time you’ve had this happen! You know the drill!”

It was amazing… in 45 minutes every single thing they had in that place was packed up by the two young men and dumped in a pile in the alleyway! The locks where changed and the windows secured. They (there were 7 of them) despondently sat a watched. They had 24 hours to have all of their belongings removed from the alleyway or a garbage truck would pull up next. I decided to go to school, and when I came back there was unheard of silence in the house… aside from the traffic on the street, peace had finally visited our new home. A shredded paperback novel or two was all that was left of them. A sad legacy really, 1 inch pieces of paper littered the yard and alleyway. I gladly spent an hour cleaning them up.

We never heard of or from them again. I thought we’d get a rock through our window or our cars keyed, but alas - nothing. It was over. Though this experience scarred me probably for life I NEVER thought it would ever happen again. How could it? Seriously! What would be the odds? Well after 3 years of living in the above mentioned house, my husband and I decided it was time to move into something bigger and off the noisy street. I was pregnant and we had decided to have a home birth and the tiny 2 bedroom wasn’t going to cut it anymore. So after looking diligently we found the perfect place… 4 bedrooms, 1500 square feet! Huge deck! Great area… it couldn’t happen again… it couldn’t, could it? To be continued…