by
Sugar
Suburban Bliss
I honestly never thought about owning a home until about 5 and a half years ago. Out of the blue, one night, my husband says to me, “My brother called today. He wants us to buy his house.” What? Why? How? The story behind this was that my brother in law owned a house, which he had previously rented out over the years. He and his wife were looking into buying a house on the water, and as they both owned houses, they wanted them both sold to free up their capital to buy this oh-so-expensive status symbol. Being that my husband and I were the only ones in the ‘family’ who didn’t own our own home, we were top of the list. No sense in listing the house and putting up with that whole ordeal. He would simply sell it to us.
The idea was not discussed so much as shoved down my throat. As soon as my brother in law had done some work to the house, I was brought to see it by my husband. I liked the house well enough. It was a nice little row-home. It had been recently painted and new carpet had been installed. It even had gorgeous new windows. It was small, admittedly, 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom. But since we were only a family of 4 then, it seemed perfect. The deciding factor to all this was that we could actually be approved for a mortgage!
So on a cold day in January, 5 years ago, I became a homeowner and moved into my new home. Very soon, though, it would become apparent, than owning a home, is not just about owning a home.
On the two occasions when my husband and I did go to the house, he always took me what shall be known as, The Back Way. We came through a small neighborhood off of one of the main roads in town. I would learn the morning after I moved in why. The morning after I moved in, I woke up and realized I was out of cigarettes and being the brave soul that I am, sallied forth in search of a 7-11.
I pulled out of the alley behind my house and made a left directly into the set of New Jack City. Sitting in that spot, on my right, was my strip of rowhouses with small, well tended lawns. Most of these lawns had various childrens’ toys of predominantly primary colors dotted about. On my left, was, well…. The ‘hood. It was 3 blocks of small apartment buildings, and I would soon find out, all Section 8.
See, when the big thinkers down at City Hall decided to blow up the projects in the city in favor of high priced high-rises, they had to move the project-dwellers out. The town I live in is one of several suburbs immediately outside of the city. I tried not to stare as I drove past. It’s not like I’ve never seen poor people before. Of course I have, I grew up poor. But it was so strange being on the other side of it, looking in.
When I asked anyone about those buildings, whose run down facades screamed crime and poverty, I was told that when they, the ubiquitous THEY, tore them down, and they were going to, the value of my home would skyrocket. I would soon find out that THEY had been talking about tearing them down for years, and yet, still there they stood.
My neighbor would be the one to tell me not to ever walk down the street after dark, as if I needed to be told that. She would tell me horror stories of gunfights in the street, drug dealers, rapes and murders that she knew had taken place just 100 feet from our front doors. I know it is these buildings that are the reason that I see police helicopters over our neighborhood, and occasionally have spotlights shining along my house, by cops looking for some ne’er do well.
Strike One for the brand new house. Now I knew why I was always brought in the back way, down the alley…
I knew there would be a down payment, home owners’ insurance, a lawn to tend to, and property taxes. What I didn’t know about, and I mean I knew nothing about, was neighborhood relations.
I like to think I’m a good neighbor. I don’t let me kids run riot over your lawn. I don’t blast music at all hours. And when I do blast music, it’s good stuff. If I’m blasting anything, it’s Ray Charles, or Elvis, or the Kelly Bell Band. Good cleaning music. My husband and I keep our screaming matches to a minimum. I don’t allow my kids to hang at others’ houses for an irrational amount of time. I’m great for borrowing a stick of margarine or a cup of milk from. So, all in all, I’m a pretty good neighbor, right? Maybe not, because I have this dark side about the children of the neighborhood. I want many of them to wind up in boarding school in Switzerland, and soon.
Case #1 – my daughter’s so called best friend, Chelsea (all names are being changed to protect the guilty.) Chelsea is a mess. She’s a teenaged pregnancy or drug addiction waiting to happen. Chelsea and my daughter met soon after we moved in, when they were just 5 years old. Both girls are now 10. She is the granddaughter of my immediate neighbor. At the time we moved in, she simply came to visit once in a while, and when she did, Chelsea would hang out with my daughter, and all seemed fine. Then Chelsea’s parents split up and her father moved himself, her, and her little sister in with my aforementioned neighbor. Now Chelsea was here all the time.
Chelsea is a victim of divorce and like many kids, I’m assuming, has issues. On the surface, and for the most part, she seems like a good kid. She can be sweet and well-behaved. But I’ve seen her dark side, too, and I’ve heard boatloads about it from my daughter. She’s manipulative, sneaky, a liar, and loves to reign dominion over my kid. My kid, like me, is a people pleaser. She will do nearly anything to make people happy, and Chelsea is at the top of that list. I cannot name the number of times my daughter has come flying in the house, bawling because of something Chelsea said. Chelsea has a streak in her that makes her like to hurt my daughters’ feelings. I, like most mothers, do not like to see my daughter hurt and I have tried, LORD HAVE I TRIED, to encourage her to make other friends.
Chelsea is very rarely disciplined, and I have a theory that that’s why she continues to behave as she does. No one ever whips her ass and tells her “You can’t do that!” What Chelsea’s father fails to understand is that his lack of discipline, and tendency to spoil his daughter rotten in order to make up for her broken home status, is what is making Chelsea the terror she tends to be.
This wasn’t much of an issue when I was working. By the time we got home in the evening, there wasn’t any time for Chelsea and my daughter to be around each other, and we only had to suffer through every other weekend, when she was home, as opposed to visiting her mother in the next state. Now that I’m home, this is an issue more than once a week. AND IT’S MAKING ME FUCKING CRAZY.
I have tried cutting the girls off from one another. Flat out telling them they wouldn’t be allowed to play together. Chelsea dissolves into a fit of tears whenever threatened with this. She tells me “But --- is my best friend! I love her!” And I’ve told her, “Then treat her right. Stop being mean to her. She’s not mean to you.” But we go ‘round and ‘round this Mulberry bush, over and over and over…
I thought I was buying a house. Not signing up for my own series of Dr. Phil type issues that are my dysfunctional neighbors. After living here for 5 years, I understand, if nothing else, why some animals eat their young.
The child who would simply confirm this idea in the modern world would be Chelsea’s younger sister, Emma. Emma has always been a sweet child, and pretty well-behaved. Recently, however, Emma has developed a nasty disposition. The list of things she has said and done is a mile long. The top of the list was kicking her own father in the leg when he told her to come inside and she didn’t want to. That kind of action would have garnered an asswhipping to end all asswhippings in my home. The infraction actually occurred right after an incident with my older son. Apparently all the kids were playing together, and my older son and Emma got into a bit of a tiff that ended with her punching my son.
“She did WHAT?!” I screamed, and flew out of the house, calling over my shoulder, “Watch your brothers!” I flew next door and nazi-knocked on the door. Chelsea answered and I said “Where’s your father?” As I walked into the living room I found Emma sitting in a chair, her father glaring at her. I launched immediately into a tirade. “Who do you think you are, putting your hands on my kid?? How dare you?” at a pretty high octave and. The child began to quake in her seat, and rightly so. I’m pretty intimidating when I get mad, and she had pissed me off beyond all reason. I explained to her, still pretty loudly, too, that I would not allow my children to hit her and her hitting mine was unacceptable. She claimed that my son had, in fact, hit her, but it came to light quickly that he hit her as a reaction to being hit to start with. I launched in a rather lengthy speech at this point about how they are supposed to treat one another and that physical altercations simply were not acceptable to me. I said again, that maybe the answer was for them not to play together anymore. At that point, Chelsea the drama queen dissolved into tears, wailing “I can’t play with ---? But she’s my best friend!” Wah, wah, wah. Drama, drama, drama.
The important thing to note about this incident is, that Chelsea and Emma’s father sat there, agreeing with me wholeheartedly about everything I was saying, but he also allowed me to yell at his child. In front of him. I’d have kicked a motherfucker out of my house for that. I’d have told them to tell me what happened, and that I’d deal with my kid myself. So now, not only am I policing my own kids, I’m policing his, too. Great. I’d never had to deal with this kind of shit before I owned a home.
Then you have Jackie. Jackie lives down the street, and is about a year younger than Chelsea and my daughter. The first time I encountered her was a couple of years ago, on an evening when my kids were next door playing, and I invited Chelsea and Emma over to watch a movie. I was informed that Jackie was there, and asked if Jackie could come watch it, too. Sure, why not, I thought to myself. All children were warned that the babies were asleep in their cribs and we would have to be very very quiet. They all agreed and we settled down with popcorn and drinks to watch the movie. The first thing that concerned me was that, while my 2 kids, and Chelsea and Emma as well, had to be reminded to be quiet, Jackie was absolutely stone still and silent as a tomb throughout the movie. What kid, at the ripe age of 6, can sit totally still and silent for almost 2 hours? That, in and of itself, was an oddity.
When the movie was over, I offered to walk Jackie home because it was dark. We walked down the street together, and again, she said not one word. Now, you have to remember that I had never laid eyes on this child before. I did not know her at all. When we got to her door, her grandmother came to it and I told her I had wanted to walk Jackie home because it was dark. She said “Oh. I was under the impression she was spending the night.” I was totally taken aback. Spending the night? With someone you don’t know and have never seen before? I said none of this out loud, making an excuse about my husband not being home for me to consult with first, and walked back to my house, pondering what had just happened.
Over the next couple of months, Jackie would simply become more of an oddity to me. She always seemed to be next door, effectively cutting off my daughters’ playtime (read – my break time from the Drama Princess known as my daughter) with Chelsea. Every time I looked outside, she was in my neighbors’ yard. Every time I saw my neighbor leaving to go somewhere, she’d have 3 little ducklings behind her, Chelsea, Emma, and Jackie. My daughter would complain that she never got to spend the night because Jackie was there. I finally asked her “Doesn’t Jackie ever go home?” My daughter said “No.” I said “Is Gramma (what everyone calls my next door neighbor) babysitting Jackie? Is she getting paid to do it?” My daughter said “No. Jackie just likes it better there than at her house.” It would become clear that Jackie was supposed to be watched during the summer months by her older sister, who naturally did not care if Jackie spent all her time down the street, and effectively, out of her hair. The only time I ever saw Jackie personally was when Chelsea and Emma would go to see their mother. Then Jackie would attempt to attach herself like a leech to my daughter. I saw that for what it was, and if Jackie knocked on the door, she was not allowed in for one reason or another. They could play outside, but I would cut play time after a couple of hours. Jackie did not seem to understand social etiquette, or boundaries for that matter.
This all came to a head a month ago when I finally gave in and allowed Jackie to spend the night here with my daughter. Now, as a child, hell, even as a teenager, my mother insisted that all overnight guests leave by 10 o’clock the next morning, or that I be home by that time if I had spent the night out. I never got that rule. Never. Now I do. By 10 o’clock the next morning, I had cleaned up a dozen messes that Jackie continually made. She left stuff all over my house: her clothes, her shoes, her toys. She knocked over glasses everywhere she went.
I pulled my daughter to one side and told her that Jackie needed to go home. My daughter said “She can’t.”
I said “She can’t? Why not?”
“There’s no one home at her house.”
Now, if I was not going to be home the morning after a sleepover, I would certainly inform the parents. I had heard nothing about this. I said “Well, when will someone be home?”
My daughter said “Sometime tonite.”
I blew my stack “She’s supposed to spend all day here?”
“No, her dad’s coming to get her around 11.” Oh. Okay. 11 o’clock comes and goes. No sign of Jackie’s father.
11:30 rolls by, same thing.
Noon. Great. Now I have to feed her again. I keep asking where her father is, and she keeps calling him, and keeps telling me, “He’ll be here soon.”
At 2 o’clock in the afternoon, I finally tell my daughter, “Jackie needs to call home and see if anyone is there. She needs to go home.”
Apparently, Jackie didn’t want to call home. When I said “Jackie, it’s time to go home.” She very insolently said “I don’t want to go home.”
That’s when I blew my stack at Jackie. “IT IS TIME to go home!” I handed her her things and showed her the door. I couldn’t believe her nerve! But I did suddenly understand my mothers’ rule and even called her to tell her.
Erma Bombeck wrote a story in a book once that I read a long time ago. In the book she describes the difference between having a daughter and having a son. If you call up the stairs to a pair of 8 year old girls, “What are you guys doing?” they are bound to answer, “Nothing.” And you have to go upstairs to find out for yourself that they’ve just made mud pies with your $100 a pot scented powder and lotion. If you call upstairs to a pair of 8 year old boys, “What are you doing?” they will promptly answer “Joey threw the cat down the laundry chute! It was cool!” All due respect to Erma, I’m repeating this from memory, and on a side note, I did in fact, once throw a cat down a laundry chute. And it was pretty fucking cool.
So, my point is this. Whereas I have all of these drink-inducing dramas to deal with where my daughter is concerned, I have outright weirdness to deal with where my son is concerned. I guess my son is a nerd or a geek, because God knows all of his friends have been nerds, or geeks.
His first running buddy in the neighborhood was Austin. Austin was most definitely a white trash child. He had 2 brothers, and not one of these children has the same father. It would become rapidly apparent that Austin would be one of those children who had been raised without being taught to wear shoes outside in the winter, let alone any manners. Once he had been invited in the house the first time, he felt it was acceptable to simply walk in the door uninvited any time he liked. I had to explain to him that he needed to knock on the door and wait for someone to answer it.
Among our run-ins with Austin’s parents, the first one was with his father. He had all of 5 front teeth out of the possible 12. He came pounding on my door one afternoon to inform me that my daughter had just run into his truck on her skates. Apparently she’d been skating along, lost control, and crash-landed into his brand new truck. I asked if any damage had been done, to either the car or my child, even though I didn’t see how an 80 pound child could damage an SUV. He said “No, but keep your damn kids away from my truck.” My eyes bugged right out of my skull. I couldn’t believe that I didn’t know this man and he would dare to speak to me so rudely.
My next run in would be with Austin’s mother. She came a-knocking on my door one afternoon to ask if I’d be willing to babysit for the evening, as she and Austin’s Daddy wanted to go to “the bar”. I said “Sure. What time would you want to send Austin over?”
She said “Around 7, and I’ll leave you a bottle for the baby in case he wakes up.”
“Baby? You want me to watch the baby too?” Now, mind you, by this point, I had 4 children of my own, 2 8 year olds, and 2 babies under a year old.
She said, “Well, yes, I was thinking you would watch Austin, Ash, and the baby.”
My jaw dropped. “I said, you want me to watch ALL 3?”
“Yeah, we’ll come over and get ‘em when we wake up tomorrow.”
I flat out refused. I couldn’t believe her audacity. I said “I’m sorry, but no way. I have 4 kids. Another 3 is too many for me.” And she had the nerve to look at me like I was crazy. Like what woman couldn’t care for 7 children at once, 3 of whom would be requiring bottles and changing… not to mention it was going to be an overnight? The fucking nerve!
On a side note, one morning not too long ago, I woke up to see a couple of cop cars pull up outside my house and run, I am not kidding when I say RUN up to the front door of Austin’s house. Being the no-life, nosy kind of bitch that I am, I kept an eye on the proceedings. They eventually re-appeared, escorting this same woman. They were respectful enough not to cuff her in the house, and she walked very calmly to the car. I watched as she turned her back and put her hands behind it. Once the cuffs were on though, for some reason, she seemed to lose it and a fit of kicking and struggling ensued and she had to be shoved into the car. I never did find out what that was about.
Dave’s next buddy was Kenny. Kenny is a nice enough child, well behaved, well mannered, goes to church every Sunday morning and is a Boy Scout. The problem with Kenny would turn out to be that he cannot go anywhere without dragging along his 2 younger brothers. Again, 7 children in my house is, honestly, 7 too many. But seeing as how 4 of them are my own and I can’t exactly tell them to go anywhere, Kenny and his little entourage are restricted to the backyard. Still, Kenny is a sight far better than Nick. Nick, who likes to knock on my door at the early hour of 7:45 to see if my son can come out to play. Who lets their child leave the house at 7:45 in the morning to go knock on people’s doors? I had to set Nick straight on that score. I also had to inform him that it’s not polite to stare in people’s windows while standing on their front porch. I’m not all that fond of feeling like I’m being stalked by a 10 year old kid. This action prompted a discussion between me and my kids called “You know it’s not right to look in people’s windows, right?”
The bottom line is, I hate this house. I hate this neighborhood. I hate this town. But, seeing as how I have a 30 year mortgage, I have to hate it for another 25 years. Unless of course one night those spotlights out there are searching for me.
