CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Mowing Mix-Ups

This time the phone call came in the early afternoon.  It was Greg again: the apparent spokesman for the downstairs threesome.  God knows what the others were like on the phone, if he was the best.

He didn’t bother with preliminaries and must have been rehearsing all day because without a stammer or stutter he launched forth. 

"When you gonna cut the grass?"

"Huh?  When am I going to cut the grass?" I exclaimed, taken by surprise.  This was a new development, sprung on me out of the blue.  It had never entered my head that I would have to mow the lawn at 51 Manson Street.  Having lived in apartment complexes for so many years, I’d never had to do it, myself.  The only people I knew, who rented an actual house, were my parents.  They always mowed their own lawn and wouldn’t dream of asking the landlord to come and mow it for them.

Heavy breathing reminded me that Greg was still on the other end of the telephone, waiting for an answer.

"It's gett'n pretty long," he ventured.  "The old #landlord used to come twice a month to cut it."

I floundered back to life.  "Well, I don't recall it saying anywhere in the lease that I have to cut the grass," I tried.

"It's the landlord's job," Greg insisted.

"But I don't even own a lawnmower.  How am I supposed to cut it?" I asked, indignantly.  "I've never heard of anyone #renting a house and not mowing their own lawn.  My parents rent a house, and they don't expect the landlord to come every month to cut their grass for them.”

Silence at the other end.

"Okay," Greg said at last in a just-you-wait tone of voice, then he hung up.

A bit taken aback at the abrupt "Okay," but seething with indignation, I told Mummy about the phone call.

"Whatever next?" she agreed, reinforcing my conviction that tenants of houses should be responsible for cutting their own lawns.

However, a small doubt was niggling in a far corner of my mind, telling me I probably wouldn’t win this battle because my #tenants might very well decide not to pay any more rent until I mowed the grass. 

I also felt a little bit guilty because the Fourth of July was rapidly approaching.  I imagined Greg and company attempting to enjoy a holiday barbecue with  guests while wading through knee-high grass, slapping at bugs. 

I should just burn the damn grass, I thought.  Burning grass, either on purpose or inadvertently, was a common occurrence in South Africa where I grew up.  Hardly a day went by in the summer when a veldt (pronounced felt) fire wasn’t burning somewhere.  I’d often driven through rural areas and spotted a line of fire advancing down a slope towards the road, which acted as a natural fire break.  We had to be careful not to set our own back yards on fire.  A dropped cigarette or a spark from a barbecue – braai (pronounced br-eye) – was enough to start blackening the grass as the flames rapidly spread, invisible in the bright sunlight. 

One day when I was about twelve years old, my sister Frederica was being particularly irritating, constantly nagging me to play with her.  All I wanted to do was to keep reading an exciting book I’d recently borrowed from the public library. 

“Oh, go build a camp fire,” I told her to get rid of her. “Pretend you’re marooned on a desert island.” 

“Ooh, really?” Frederica thought this was a great idea.  She went running off, and I buried my nose in my book again. 

Fifteen minutes later Frederica came dashing back inside.  “Stacy! Stacy!” she cried. 

“What now?”

“The grass is burning!” 

“What?  Where?”

“Come, quick!”  Frederica tugged on my arm.

I followed her out into the front yard and saw smoke seeping up from the grass dump at the bottom of the yard by the road.

“Oh, gosh!” I said.  “Frederica, what have you done?”

“I built a camp fire, like you told me to.”

“I meant build a little fire with a few twigs on the patio, not light the grass dump on fire!” I yelled.  “Are you crazy?  Look at it!  It looks like it’s getting out of control!” 

I ran down the slope towards the smoke.  The grass dump was a big compost heap, full of dried grass cuttings and bamboo.  It was smoking in several places, though we couldn’t see any flames because of the bright sunshine. 

Luckily a long garden hose lay nearby, attached to a faucet on the patio. 

“Go turn that tap on, quick,” I told Frederica. 

She ran to turn on the tap, and I picked up the end of the hose and aimed it at the smoldering grass, which was steadily blackening in the direction of the fence.

I sprayed and sprayed, drenching the grass dump in all directions.  It took me a long time.  As soon as I had thoroughly drenched one area, another patch would begin smoldering.  I thought I was never going to get it under control.  If our parents came home and saw us fighting a grass fire in the front yard, we’d be in big trouble.  They’d probably ground me for a week for endangering the life of my little sister. 

Half an hour later, the fire seemed to be out at last.  There was no smoke to be seen, but the grass was obviously charred in places and smelt smoky and damp.  Frederica and I hurriedly scuffed some unburnt grass over the burnt patches and managed to make the dump look almost normal by the time our parents came home.  For hours afterwards, I worried that the fire would rekindle.  Fortunately, it didn’t, and I don’t believe my parents ever found out until years later what we had done.

 In the end, I needn’t have worried about my tenants’ Fourth of July activities, because it rained most of the day.  I had the Andrea and Bronwyn that weekend, and Allen and I had made plans with my parents to go to a local lake, a picturesque spot with a sizeable sandy beach and picnic areas dotted around beneath the trees.  Determinedly undaunted by the rain, Allen and Wim erected a tarpaulin between some trees so that we could barbecue in relative dryness.  Mummy and I sat huddled at the picnic table overlooking the beach, enduring occasional drips down the backs of our necks, while Allen and the girls played an energetic game of Frisbee on the damp sand below.

“You’ve got a good one, there,” Mummy observed, watching Allen running after a wildly-thrown Frisbee with an ungainly Frankenstein-ish lope, pretending to be spastic to make the girls laugh.

“I know,” I said.  “He’s the nicest man I ever met, and he’s great with the girls.”

“I think you got it right, at last,” Mummy said.  “I was starting to doubt your taste in men.  Of course, anyone who can put up with you has to be some kind of hero . . . ”

“Gee, thanks a lot, Mom!”                                                                       

            The niggling doubts as to my obligation for lawn mowing didn’t stay suppressed for long, especially when a couple or days later Tom called to say that he, Greg and Melissa weren’t going to pay the rent until I cut the grass.  I knew by now in my gut that, yes, in a ghetto neighborhood like Schemmerhorn, some landlords probably did mow what little grass was allowed to grow in the motley assortment of back yards I had glimpsed from the road, if only to have an excuse to visit their properties once or twice a month to keep an eye on their tenants.

The thing was, who could I get to cut the grass?  I guess I could ask trusty old Wim to do it.  He conveniently worked in Schemmerhorn at a group home for mentally disabled adults.  I didn’t feel comfortable asking him, though.  He had more than enough on his plate already.

At that moment, the local Pennysaver caught my eye.  It was a free, weekly newspaper comprised of a few articles and lots of advertisements for anything and everything, including handymen and contractors of all kinds.  I’d often seen ads for lawn care services.  Of course, now that I needed one of these people, I expected all the ads to have disappeared; a fateful attitude stemming from past experience.

I found the Pennysaver.  Incredibly, it hadn’t been thrown out with the trash the night before.  I gingerly opened the paper and peered shortsightedly at the newsprint.  If I sneaked a peek, maybe the paper wouldn’t realize, and the ads would still be there. My strategy proved successful because I soon found several advertisements, all grouped in their own little section entitled Lawn Care.

I called a couple of the contractors.  Both charged $25.00 a visit.  I really didn’t have any idea what the cost should be, so I figured I’d call all of them and compare prices.  The third lawn care contractor, whose name was Pete, said he thought he could probably mow the lawn for $25.00.  As this was $5.00 cheaper than the previous quotes I’d gotten, I asked him to visit the house and give me an estimate.

“All you have to do is go down the side alley and take a look over the fence,” I told him.

"Righteo, will do," he sang over the phone line – one of those irritatingly ever-cheerful people.

The fourth and last contractor I called – his name was Bill – was a definite contrast to the friendly Pete.  With a grumpy, gravelly voice, he sounded like the Grouch on Sesame Street, but said he would probably charge $15.00.  This was even better.  I asked him to go to the house and give me a quote.

"I'll get back to you," he grumped, and hung up in the middle of my thank yous.

The next afternoon, Mummy called me at work.

"Someone called Bill just phoned," she reported.  "He said he went to your house to look at the lawn, but someone was already there mowing it and told him he's got the contract to do it."

"Like hell he has!" I exclaimed, suspecting the over-friendly Pete.  "Blimmin' cheek!  He just wants to make a quick twenty bucks!"

I slammed down the phone.  This was the last straw – just one more unpleasant thing to add to the tough day I’d been having at work so far.

Writing has always helped me get things out of my system, so I jotted some notes down for my journal during my coffee break and titled it Job Jitters.

Job Jitters

Work’s been hell, especially today.  Supervising secretary has the week off.  Assistant supervising secretary can’t handle pressure.  Tantrums galore.  Huffing and puffing.  Sighing.  Holding back of hand against anguished brow.  Sitting down.  Standing up.  Need coffee.  Need cigarette break.  Hard done by.  Procrastinating.  Too much work.  Panic.  Screaming at the attorneys.  Embarrassing.  Tiresome.  Unending.

We secretaries try to keep going but are unwillingly drawn into the theatrics.  Productivity’s down.  Air rife with tension.  Hostility.  Frustration.  E-mail secret comments to one another.  Swop Advils and Tylenol.  Can’t take any more.

Go home for lunch.  Try to give Pusskin the cat his tapeworm pills, wrapped in tissue, smeared with meat paste.  Uncooperative.  Squirming.  Clawing.  Scratched hands.  Try gloves.  Only ones found are bulky suede: too big and clumsy for ramming pills down Pusskin’s throat.  Little bits of soggy tissue and pill fragments everywhere.  Give up.  Growl at Pusskin.  Pusskin shoots downstairs like a rocket.

Back to work.  Darn!  Missed it!  Another tantrum just over, but this time witnessed by personnel manager.

Talk of weekend overtime.  Why should certain procrastinators get paid time-and-a-half for work they should have done during the week?  More coffee.  More cigarette breaks.  More e-mails.  More Tylenol.

 

After a day like today, did I really want to remain a secretary my whole life? Another secretary had recently quit her job to go back to school full time to study psychology.  Hm, I thought to myself.  That psychology class I’d taken back in the day, when I was thinking of becoming a nurse, had been interesting.  Psychologists were respected professionals.  I’d even seen one a few times when I was having a hard time getting over my divorce.  All the psychologist did was to sit in his chair across from me and nod empathically from time to time as I described my woes.  I could do that.  I wasn’t prepared to go so far as to quit my job, but I wrote in my diary, Visit college to find out about night classes.

“I’m going back to school to become a psychologist,” I announced to my surprised mother when I got home that night.  I put on my best Kramer from Seinfeld accent. 

“I’m changing careers, baby!”

Meanwhile, pronouncements over, I needed to call the offended Bill.  After reluctantly allowing his ruffled feathers to be smoothed by my apologies, he told me he’d mow the lawn for $15.00 per visit and would send me a contract in the mail.  I hung up and wrote a quick letter to the cheerful Pete, advising him I would not be needing his services and enclosing a $20.00 check.

Bill's contract arrived a couple of days later.  It was a simple agreement, and I signed it and sent it back.  Crisis over.  My downstairs tenants would be happy. 

Apparently, however, the tenants were not happy.  Apart from the one overdue rent check, which arrived promptly after the lawn was mowed, I would never see another cent from them.