CHAPTER FORTY: Africa ASAP

I received the good news about Charmayne moving out when I returned home from a weekend with Allen.  Apparently, she was still afraid of the dog downstairs but, primarily, she couldn’t afford to pay the rent after all.  She was going to move back in with her mother.

I heaved a sigh.  This was just great!  I hadn’t received any rent for January and February, and now this?  Just what I had tried to avoid: searching for a new tenant in the winter.

My fears were borne out by the lack of response to the advertisement I immediately placed in the Schemmerhorn Gazette.  This might have been due to the fact that I was raising the rent from $450 to $475, hoping to recoup some of my losses. Or maybe because I began the ad by naming the street in an attempt to avoid hang-ups and loss of interest when callers heard the dreaded words, "Manson Street."

Anyhow, whether the season or the naming of the street was to blame, I only received a couple of responses, and no one was interested enough to look the place over.  For once, I didn’t really care; I had more important things to worry about after receiving a call at the office one morning from a frantic Wim. 

"You've got to come home!" he said, abruptly.  "Your father just called from South Africa.  Frederica's in the hospital.  She's dying!"

It took a moment for the words to sink in.  I could hear Mummy crying loudly in the background.

"Wh . . . what . . .?" I stammered.

"Your mother's flying to South Africa.  You'd better come home."  

I leapt up from my desk.  “I have to leave,” I told another secretary.  “I’m going to South Africa.  My sister’s dying.  Please tell the partners.” 

I had to run about ten blocks to my car, frantically puffing on the inhaler I carried with me for exercise-induced asthma.  Then I drove home along the Interstate at eighty miles an hour, flashing my high beams on and off.  Vehicles obligingly moved out of my way, probably thinking I was police or emergency personnel.  Luckily, I didn’t encounter any real cops. 

By the time I got home, Mummy’s sobbing had subsided a little. 

“I’m going to South Africa with you,” I announced as I burst through the door. 

“Really? Can you?” Mummy said.  “Oh, Stace, that would be lovely!  I really don’t want to go on my own.  We’re waiting for the travel agent to call back.”

“Well we’d better call and tell them there’s two of us now.”

In-between calls from Daddy and various travel agents trying to get us on the quickest flight possible, Mummy and I packed for the journey.  I chucked some jeans and tee-shirts haphazardly into a suitcase.  Aware that we might need to dress for a funeral, in unspoken agreement Mummy and I both added respectable, but brightly-colored, outfits.  There was no way we were going to wear black or some other dingy color to Frederica’s funeral.  She wouldn’t approve.  She was bright and vivacious, and if she had her say, would probably request reds and yellows, or bright purple: her favorite color.

We flew out of New York that night.  Mummy had a legal British passport; I still had my old British one, which was illegal but hadn’t expired yet.  I’d been an American citizen for five years now but somehow had never gotten around to applying for an American passport.  I didn’t know how the heck I was going to get back into the States, but I didn’t care.  The one question on my mind right now was whether Frederica could hold on until we reached South Africa.

Unfortunately, there were no direct flights.  We had to fly to London, spent the next day at my aunt and uncle’s house, and then catch another overnight flight to South Africa. 

When we finally arrived at Jan Smuts Airport two days later, the line of people waiting to go through Immigration was incredibly long. 

“It’s going to take us ages to get through that!” Mummy groaned.

“I’ll see if I can persuade someone up front to let us cut in,” I said. 

“You can’t do that!” my mother exclaimed in a mortified, but slightly hopeful, gasp.

I walked to the front of the line and addressed a huge Afrikaner standing there.  “Excuse me, sir.  I know this might sound rather unbelievable, but would you let my mother and I go in front of you?  My sister’s dying in the hospital, and we need to get there as soon as we can.”

“You’re kidding, raht?” the man said in a strong South African accent.

“No, really, I swear I’m not,” I told him.  “We’ve been traveling for two days from America.  We don’t even know if she’s still alive, but we need to get there quickly.  Please let us go ahead of you?”

I must have looked desperate, because the Afrikaner decided to believe me.  “Agh!  Go on then,” he said, “And if you’re telling the truth, I hope your sister’s aw-raht.”

“Thanks so much,” I said fervently and beckoned to Mummy, who was anxiously watching.  She hurriedly left her place in line and came to the front to join me, thanking the man with equal fervor.

The immigration official had overheard my conversation with the Afrikaner.  He looked at us with a look of suspicion on his face, but we were obviously distressed, so he decided we probably weren’t pulling a fast one.   He let us through the barrier and didn’t even ask us the standard question: “Did you got any dirty magazines?”

Daddy picked us up at the airport and drove us straight to the hospital.  The first question out of our mouths was: “Is Frederica still alive?”

“Yes,” Daddy said.  “It’s a miracle!  The priest came and give her the Last Rites, and the doctors were basically just waiting for her to die.  She was unconscious.  Then, yesterday, she suddenly woke up, looked around at us all and said hello! We haven’t told her you’re coming.  We thought it might worry her and set her back.  She’s been improving so much, though, that they’re even starting to talk about sending her down to Cape Town in a couple of weeks to go on the transplant list.”

Thank God! 

After this good start, the drive to the hospital rapidly descended into raging unpleasantness.  I started firing all sorts of questions at Daddy, and he got mad and yelled at me.  Then I yelled at him.  The next thing I knew, we were having a rip-roaring row at the tops of our voices.  I guess we were all upset. 

Mummy sat aghast in the back seat, faintly interjecting every now and then, “I don’t believe this!  I don’t believe it!”

The first thing we encountered in the cavernous first floor parking lot of the Johannesburg General Hospital was the elevator.  With filthy metal floors and walls, tattered refuse lying in the corners, it ground its way upwards.  As it finally shuddered to a halt, we felt as if we were about to step out into a decrepit tenement building, rather than a hospital.

Once a spanking new edifice perched high atop the crest of a hill, the “Jo’burg Gen” had obviously declined steadily over the years since I’d seen it last.  We walked into Frederica’s room, and I instantly burst into tears at the sight of her.  My vivacious, fun-loving, twenty-seven-year-old sister looked like a shrunken, bony old woman, bright yellow from jaundice and fighting for her life. 

A good-looking Afrikaner with blond hair, a tanned, weathered face and bright blue eyes stood up from where he was sitting at her bedside.  He introduced himself in a strong South African accent.  “Hi, I’m Janie (Pronounced Yah-nee), Frederica’s husband.”

We knew Frederica had recently married Janie, a close friend whom she'd grown closer to after Dan dumped her.  He'd offered to marry her when the adoption agency began threatening to take Shane away from her, due to her illness.  We could see by the way they looked at each other that their love was very real.

“Stace!” Frederica murmured weakly.  “What are you doing here!  And Mummy!  What a surprise!” 

A lot of tears were shed by my emotionally-soppy father and I at that bedside reunion.  We made up our fight a little while later in the hallway outside Frederica’s room.  Janie also proved to be a big softy.  He surreptitiously wiped his eyes, while iron-willed Mummy, veteran of  many years of keeping it all inside, held her tears in check once more to be strong for Frederica.

With few exceptions, the demeanor of the nurses was sullen and resentful.  They probably appreciated our continued presence at my sister’s bedside, however – I stayed all night, Mummy stayed all day – because it gave them less to do.  Indeed, I soon found myself running errands for most of the patients in the eight-bed ward.  I would take a bedpan here, a kidney bowl there . . . and soon learned to fake a false joviality to bow and scrape a smidgen of help out of the nurses.

Some of them didn’t seem so bad, their speech peppered with endearments, but their actions didn’t live up to their words.  The first day I was there, a couple of hefty nurses advanced on Frederica to give her a bed bath.  With much “Sorry, my babee” and “Apologiz, my dahling,” they proceeded to manhandle her so roughly that she screamed aloud in pain.  It was as much as I could do to stay seated behind the curtain drawn around the bed.  From that day on, Mummy and I took over the bed bathing.  The nurses soon grew familiar with the phrase from Frederica:  “My sister will do it.”

Bell pushes sprouted from the walls, out of reach behind each bed.  For many patients, the bells might as well have been on the moon.  Few of them worked anyway.  Feeble cries for help went ignored for such an inordinate amount of time that I found myself running out to the nurses’ station every now and then to report that a patient really was vomiting, or someone really did need her IV changed.

A poor woman lay dying of cancer in the corner of the ward, her body riddled with disease.  If she didn't receive morphine every two hours, she suffered excruciating pain.  On my first chair-bound sleep-over in the ward, the nurses forgot to give her morphine all night!  I wish I’d realized what her weak moans meant.  Her husband was distraught when he discovered the neglect, and from that point on a family member or friend (or myself, on occasion), stayed by her bedside to make sure the nurses dished out the morphine every two hours.

And woe betide if there was a particularly-stinky bed pan to be removed, rather than have it lie for hours at the foot of Frederica’s bed.  The nurses would sit rooted to their chairs at the nurses’ station, surreptitiously glancing at one another to see who was going to volunteer first, while I stood before them with the silver bowl.  Eventually, I just said, “Please take this bedpan” and plonked it down on the counter.  This proved a successful move in persuading the nurses to jump up and get rid of the malodorous thing.

One day, having had the gall to request two bedpans in as many hours, the nurses decided it was high time I was shown the sluice room.  I held my nose as I hunted around for a fresh bedpan that had the least amount of dried feces stuck to it.  Weren’t these things supposed to be sterilized?

The toilets for ordinary mortals were little better.  They smelt like a men’s room for hobos.  Judging from the burn marks all over the tiles, the “No Smoking” notice was a license for stubbing out one’s cigarette on the walls of the stalls.  Indeed an accumulation of elderly cigarette butts – stompies – moldered in the corners.  Some long-term patients informed us that the toilets were only cleaned about once a month.  Apparently, they were also B.Y.O. facilities because there was hardly ever any toilet paper or paper towels in evidence.  We grew used to the sight of people walking the halls carrying a toilet roll.  After complaining to a more-than-usually-conscientious matron, we managed to get the dispensers filled for a few days.  The ward was almost as filthy.  A cleaning crew came in once a day but seemed more interested in chatting than cleaning.  

On my first evening in Frederica’s ward, I noticed the first cockroach and speedily killed it.  As dusk approached, more and more of the loathsome things appeared.  They especially seemed to like the open medical waste container next to the sink, crawling in and out of it with gay abandon.  The container was aptly labeled “BUGBIN!”  No one seemed to use it, though, because used syringes were more often than not left lying around on bedside tables or on the floor.  I deposited quite a few in the Bugbin myself.

The next morning when the matron stopped by on her rounds, I commented on the cockroaches.

“I know,” she sighed.  “This place is infested with them.” 

To think that I’d been scared of cockroaches back in Schemmerhorn!  Now, hoping to catch a few winks on my overnight vigils, I was forced to resign myself to the hoards of bugs scuttling continuously across the floors and wall.  Trying to suppress images of cockroaches running over my face and getting stuck in my hair, I propped a pillow against said wall and closed my eyes to the gloom of the ICU.

A week later Frederica was moved to another ward, and there were at first no cockroaches to be seen.  My rejoicing in this fact lasted only until I needed to use the ward refrigerator.  I opened the door, and dozens of the little blighters scattered in the light.  Funny, I never saw any adult roaches in the fridge, which, among other things, held a stash of what looked like baby formula.  The room in which the refrigerator stood also happened to be the store room for drugs, syringes, and such, all being happily investigated by the baby roaches’ parents, come evening.

One day, there occasioned a pool of blood by Frederica’s bed.  The nurses looked at it and then proceeded to blithely walk in it, smearing it across the floor.  I was blowed if I was going to wipe it up.  It was fast becoming a game to see what tasks the nurses would and would not do.  Sure enough, the blood lay there until it dried.  The next morning, a cleaning lady was forced to scrub away most industriously at the damned spot, shooting venomous glances at me from under her brows all the while.

Later, Frederica had a mishap with her bedpan, resulting in a wet sheet.  To our dismay, there were no clean sheets to be had.  The nurses shrugged.  We would just have to wait.  We improvised, using a small sheet that had been wrapped around one of the pillows when the hospital ran out of pillow cases.

Frederica had been complaining for a few days about the sticky tape that held the central line in her neck in place.  Upon close examination, we discovered that the impossible-to-remove tape had been slapped on over a large lock of hair and across her earlobe, covering an earring.  This struck us as particularly amusing.  I struggled to hold the scissors still between giggles as I cut the hair away from her neck.

Shortly thereafter the nurses decided to change the death-grip tape.  After stripping it off, to a loud chorus of  Ouch-es from Frederica, they ineffectually dabbed at the sticky residue with some lotion.  When the lotion didn’t work, the nurses decided to try using ether, instead.  Now, as it happens, anesthetics are very dangerous for a person with liver disease because most of them are metabolized in the liver.  So, there lay Frederica, having almost died from liver failure a few days before, the nurses enthusiastically swabbing away beneath her chin with a large piece of ether-sodden gauze, telling her to, “Just turn your head, Honey,” and “Cover your nose with this, Sweetheart.” 

"This" was a mere Kleenex tissue: not an effective barrier against ether fumes.

Being ignorant of the dangerous effects of ether upon liver-disease patients, I was actually enjoying the pungent fumes that filled the ward.  Until Mummy walked in, that is.  She took one whiff and hastily shooed the nurses from the room, yelling in fright.  Then she wiped Frederica’s neck with a washcloth, and we all heaved a sigh of relief, none more so than Frederica, who was blue in the face from trying not to breathe in the fumes.

The dietitians also seemed to be trying their best to kill my sister.  She was supposed to be on a low protein/low sodium diet, but the kitchen was apparently never advised of this fact because they continually brought her foods containing tons of protein and salt.  Also, from having bleeding blood vessels in her esophagus cauterized every few days as her struggling liver caused back-ups and pressure, Frederica could only manage soft, mushy food.  The sight of a huge, tough, protein-filled steak moved us to another spate of giggles.  We kept sending the trays back to the kitchen, untouched, but they just kept right on coming.  We were forced to bring in food from home if Frederica was to eat at all.

In search of a microwave, Mummy attempted to brave the kitchenette.  It was guarded by bright-yellow louver doors and signs stating categorically AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY!  The kitchen staff told her just as categorically to, “Get out of da keetchin!”  We had to resort to sneaking in when no one was there. 

Eventually, Mummy got the hell in and called the dietitian on the phone.

“The problem is,” the dietitian explained in a sugary-sweet voice, “we have low protein or low sodium trays, but not low protein and low sodium.”

“Can’t the kitchen combine some items from each onto one tray?” Mummy asked – a reasonable request, I would have thought.

“Oh, no,” came the reply.  “The food comes from our main kitchen, an hour’s drive away.  The kitchens here are only for warming things up.”

“So, what you’re telling me,” our seething mother snapped, “is that this hospital has no way to feed my daughter?!”

“That’s right,” admitted the dietitian in a shoulder-shrugging voice.

There followed some incoherent utterances from my usually-ladylike mother, during which time she accused the dietitian of killing patients.  She finally cut off the resultant indignant spluttering of the dietitian by slamming down the receiver.

The phone rang a few seconds later.  “Does this mean you’d like to file a complaint?” the dietitian asked.

“What do you think I’ve just been doing!” screamed Mummy in disbelief.  CLUNK went the receiver again.

When told of the affair the next morning, our conscientious matron readily agreed that the dietary department considered themselves a superior breed.  “We often have run-ins with them,” she sympathized.

That night, when I had to notify the nurses about a patient’s leaking IV, I found them in their chairs at the nurses’ station, heads on chests, snoozing away.  They started awake at my loud “Excuse me?” and fixed me with such baleful glares that I felt obliged to apologize for waking them.  Later on, unable to sleep, Frederica and the remaining two patients in the ward were chatting at 4:00 a.m. when a nurse came in and asked us to keep the noise down.  We were joking afterwards that we must have been keeping the poor things awake when one of the “poor things” stalked back in and told us very indignantly that the nurses did not sleep at night, regardless of what I thought I’d seen.  Rather, we had to be quiet because we were keeping the other wards awake.

The following night, however, the nurses were in very high spirits and kept up a constant, loud chattering, all night long.  When African women hold a conversation, they tend to shout at each other at point blank range: a very noisy business.  Being situated right next to the nurses’ station, we bore the brunt of it, but the noise could still be heard loud and clear at the far end of the hall.  None of the surrounding wards had a hope in hell of sleeping that night, but we didn’t dare ask the nurses to keep it down.

And so it went: two exhausting weeks of guarding Frederica, day and night, against the evils of the Jo’burg Gen.  An endless round of trying to get medication reordered that had been promised but omitted from the notes.  Trying to persuade doctors that the pain Frederica had been suffering in her back for a whole week must surely be something more than mere cramp from lying in bed so long.  Only after she eventually became delirious and was screaming in pain did they deduce that maybe she had a kidney infection.  She did, and by then it was so far advanced that we almost had to postpone her flight to Cape Town.

Luckily, due to fast-acting antibiotics, Frederica did make it to Cape Town with Mummy, Janie, and Shane in tow.  My last sight of her was when we hugged goodbye on the helicopter pad behind the hospital.  It was March 6th, the day before her twenty-eighth birthday. 

I headed back to the States the next day, armed with my certificate of citizenship and a letter from the hospital in the hopes of appeasing the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Department.  I endured a few scary moments of being eyed suspiciously by an I.N.S. official and was sent to sit in an empty office to await my fate.  Fortunately, the officer who eventually showed up turned out to be a kindly old soul who sympathized with my plight. 

“It might be a good idea to come into the States on an American passport in future,” he jokingly advised me with a kindly twinkle in his eye and waved me through into the United States of America (obviously pre 9/11).

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: Charmin' Charmayne

That evening, Charmayne was supposed to sign a #lease for the upstairs #apartment, moving in on September 1st.  I was still concerned that Kristina wouldn’t be out by then, but hoped that having a signed lease in her hot, sticky hand would stop Charmayne calling me every day.

Speaking of hot and sticky, that’s what her apartment was when my sister Frederica and I arrived after taking a couple of wrong turns.  It was a tiny place, and the air-conditioner was on the fritz.  Observing the cramped quarters in which she lived, I could understand why the girl was so keen to move to 51 Manson Street.  Frederica inspected the place with an eagle eye, but we were both reassured by the fact that the apartment appeared neat and clean.

While I filled out the lease, Charmayne's son Darrell came up to see what was going on.  He engaged Frederica in conversation and was so polite and well mannered that we were amazed to discover he was only two years old.  At one point, he stepped on Frederica's foot and was most apologetic, then he sadly showed us an empty pencil box and told us his mom had thrown his crayons away because he’d been bad.  We felt quite sorry for him.

Charmayne signed the lease, and Frederica and I said our goodbyes.  I was satisfied that, on the whole, Charmayne would be a good tenant.       

Before I’d known Frederica was coming to stay, I’d booked a week at the dude ranch for the kids and I at the end of August/beginning of September. I was sad to be away from Frederica towards the end of her visit, but I really needed the break.

I set off on my vacation, hoping that Kristina would move out by September 1st.  Allen assured me that he and Wim would take care of getting the apartment ready for Charmayne to move in.  

For once, everything went smoothly.  When I called Allen from the dude ranch, he was able to report that Kristina had indeed moved out, and that he and Wim had done a spot of cleaning. 

“And, of course, I performed my usual spectacular job on the oven,” he added.  “Don’t worry, it’s all under control.  Charmayne’s busy moving in.  Oh, and I called the #Building Inspector and Mr. Catcher about the rental certificate and #security agreement.”

‘You’re wonderful!”  I blew kisses down the phone line. What a relief!

Our stay at the dude ranch  was a lot more relaxing than the previous time, which had begun with  hearing the bombshell on the radio about Mamie’s arrest.  Andrea won a ribbon in the kids’ rodeo competition, and I had my first exposure to the distasteful habit of tobacco-spitting.  I was standing on the top row of the bleachers next to the enthusiastic father of a young rodeo competitor.  His left cheek bulged as he chomped away, pausing regularly to spit a stream of juicy, brown liquid over the back of the bleachers. Ugh. I couldn't imagine what it would taste like to kiss him!

The week passed without incident, except that Andrea managed to break one of her fingers on Bronwyn’s upper arm when they collided in the swimming pool.  We returned to St. Albans, suitably refreshed and finger-splinted.  Andrea was bummed out that she’d have to take it easy for a few weeks at gymnastics, but Bronwyn was priding herself on the rock-hard form of her left bicep: the result of diver-training.

I returned home to find that Giselle hadn’t paid her #rent for August. However, she had sent a money order for September’s rent with a promise to pay more when she could.  Come to find out, it would be a whole year later before I received any extra money from her.

Meanwhile, Frederica had just learned that her boyfriend Dan had dumped her, in her absence, for one of her best friends.  We spent hours sitting on her bed, working through her anger and hurt.  After a while, she reached the stage where she was able to declare that Dan was a scumbag, so she didn’t want him anyway. 

Snagging Shane as he hurtled past, she hugged him to her, fiercely.   “It’s just you and me, kid,” she whispered into a grubby, protruding ear.

Shane hugged her back, not knowing why she was sad, but always willing to exchange hugs.

“Love you, Mummy,” he announced with affection.  After a big, smacking kiss on her cheek, he raced away, ever active, ever vibrant.

We sadly bid farewell to Frederica a few weeks later. She was returning to South Africa, still saddened about Dan but more relaxed, and healthier, than when she had arrived in the States.  Knowing the disease still lurked inside her immune system, it was hard to say goodbye.  Mummy and I wanted so badly for her to stay. We wanted to wrap her up in cotton wool and take care of her.  As we hugged goodbye, I was overcome by a feeling of intense hatred toward the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

* * * * * * * * * *

Each month, for the next three months, I received a notice from the Department of Social Services stating that they were reducing the amount of Charmayne’s shelter assistance by various amounts.  Although I sent her several letters, Charmayne never increased her own monthly payments to cover the balance.  Meanwhile, in October the cockroaches returned to the upstairs apartment with a vengeance.  Charmayne claimed innocence and Greatest Pest Control charged me an additional $78.11 for an extra “clean-out.” 

December arrived and Wim was summoned to Schemmerhorn on two occasions, six days apart, because the upstairs toilet was running too slowly.  The first time, he found it blocked with cotton swabs; the second time, a pen was wedged in the pipe.  Charmayne again pleaded innocence.  I paid Wim $125.13.

January arrived but Charmayne’s rental payment did not.  Instead, I received a final notice from Social Services that, as of December 31st, they had closed her case.  When I went over to Schemmerhorn to find out what was going on, Charmayne greeted me pleasantly enough and introduced me to a new roommate.  Apparently, Maureen hadn’t lasted long. 

The place was nicely furnished, but the sticky floor paint had finally given up the ghost, revealing uneven patches of bare floorboard.  We squatted on a low couch by a coffee table while Charmayne informed me that she’d had a car accident in November.  Apparently she’d gone through the windshield, and a lawsuit was now pending. 

Although she described her facial injuries in gory detail, Charmayne must have had one fantastic plastic surgeon, because a month later there was no sign of any stitches. She told me she'd also injured her back, but from the way she bent over at that moment to scoop up her exuberant son Darrell, I saw no evidence of it, being a veteran of slipped disks myself.  Still, I said I was sorry about her accident and hoped things would turn out okay.

"Now, what's up?" I asked her.  "You still owe me for October, November and December, and I just got a notice from Social Services that they've closed your case."

"Yeah, I know.  They're not paying my rent anymore because I got a job," Charmayne told me. "Don't worry, though.  I can pay you when I get my paycheck.  Can you wait a while?"

"I guess so.  But what about the security agreement?"

"It's okay. I'm still covered ‘cause Social Services are still paying the utilities."

"Well, that's a relief.”

"One thing, though.  Giselle downstairs . . . she keeps playing her music real loud.  It's irritating.  I even called the cops on her once, late at night.  And that dog of hers . . . it was on the porch the other day, and I was too scared to come in."

"I'll talk to her," I promised, getting up to leave.  "I’ll expect the rent in a few days, okay?"

"No problem," Charmayne called after me as I went down the stairs.

I knocked on Giselle's door.  She let me inside quickly because it was really cold standing out there on the doorstep in the middle of winter.

"I've just been to Charmayne's and she complained that you play your music too loud," I told Giselle, once we were inside her superheated apartment.

"Yeah, I know," she admitted.  "I do like my music loud, but since she called the cops on me, I've been trying to keep it down."

"Okay, good.  Well, she also said you let your dog loose sometimes. She's scared to come in when he's on the porch."

"I usually keep him in back, but I'll be more careful about letting him loose out front," Giselle promised, agreeably, "I have a problem with Charmayne too, you know."

"Oh?  What about?"

"Well, she has friends over often, and they make a lot of noise as well.  Those relatives of hers from next door . . .  I told you, remember?"

I nodded. "Okay, I'll warn her, but, tell me . . . do I have anything to worry about you two?  These things aren't serious, are they?"

"Uhn, uhn," Giselle assured me.  "No big deal."

We said goodbye and I knocked on Charmayne's door again, glad to be out of Giselle's hot apartment.  Goodness knows what her heating bills were like!  When Charmayne came to the door, I told her I’d spoken to Giselle and then repeated Giselle's return complaints about her and the next-door neighbors making noise too.

"She told me there's nothing major between you, though," I said.  "I hope that's true."

Charmayne agreed.

By the end of January, I still hadn't received any rent from upstairs, so I paid Charmayne another visit.

"Sorry you've had to wait,” she told me. “It's just been taking me a while to get sorted. You know, my new job, Social Services and stuff? I should be able to pay you something soon, though, and I can give you more when I get my tax refund."  Where had I heard that one before? 

Well, at least my tenants' tentative truce seemed to be holding.

Charmayne telephoned a week later and told Wim she was moving out.  

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: Typing Hell

I borrowed Rita's #typewriter, a heavy, old clunker of a machine. I had to type out the #eviction #petition I’d bought earlier at the legal supply store, and my own typewriter was broken. (Gives you an idea of when this whole #landlord saga took place!!)

Normally I’d type the petition at the office during my free time, but seeing as I was currently the sole secretary/paralegal/Girl Friday for five attorneys – the other secretaries being either out sick or at the track gambling on the horses – I was slightly short of a spare moment.

Anyway, I needed to work out what I wanted to say, and from past experience it might take a few attempts for me to get it right. I made ten copies of the blank petition just in case.

I was so glad I did! 

I sat down at the dining room table, unloaded the clunker, and turned it on. It came to life with an asthmatic wheeze and chuntered to itself for a while before settling down to a steady chug-chug.

I inserted the first petition, began to type, and instantly made my first mistake.

"Damn it! No corrector ribbon!" I ripped the sheet of paper out of the machine.

Faced with the lack of correction tape and visions of looming typos as a result, I instantly became a gibbering wreck. My fingers hovered tremblingly over the keys for several seconds before plucking up the courage to press one. My typing speed plummeted from eighty to twenty as my eyes darted nervously back and forth, keeping an eagle eye out for a fingertip about to inadvertently hit the wrong key.

I rolled the second petition into the clunker and began again to type, oh so carefully.  The ribbon was old because no one had used the typewriter for ages. Thus the inked letters it produced came out so faint as to be almost invisible. I had to type everything twice to make the words bold enough to read, thus doubling the risk of making a mistake.

Despite my double-striking each character with a vengeance, everything went well until the carriage approached the far right-hand side of the form. Readers of this blog, who were alive in the typewriter age, will know that a warning bell is supposed to sound when the typewriter carriage approaches the right margin. This reminds the typist that it's time to move down to the next line.  Well, Rita’s old clunker did not sound the warning bell. Instead, it suddenly decided it had reached its self-determined right margin and would go no farther. It then proceeded to type the next few characters on top of one another, creating an inky, black mess.

"Dammit!" I groaned again and yanked that page out too.

This time I inserted the petition at the far left side of the carriage roller in order to extend my typing area. I’d learned one thing, though: don’t fill in the Court and party information at the beginning. Go straight to the meaty "Description of Facts" and fill in the rest later.

I stewed over the wording for the description and actually managed to type out the whole thing without a mistake. However, on reading it over, I decided I didn’t like it and yanked the page out.

I began again for the fourth time. This time I liked the new wording but made a mistake somewhere near the bottom.

"Dammit," came the ubiquitous explosion. "I need Whiteout!" (i.e. Typex, Liquid Paper, correction fluid ...)

I ransacked Wim's desk, but to no avail: no Whiteout to be found. Where else could I look? Ah, hah! I distinctly remembered buying some for the kids’ school supplies.

Andrea and Bronwyn were peacefully engaged in watching television in their basement playroom when the door at the top of the stairs burst open, and their mother erupted onto the scene.

Bronwyn looked up as I fixed her with my feverish gaze.

"Whiteout?" I gargled incoherently.

She shrugged a shoulder, not the least bit perturbed at the sight of her mom having one of her manic fits.

"All dried up," she replied nonchalantly before turning her attention back to the TV.

"Andrea?" I pleaded. My other daughter didn’t even bother looking my way as she shrugged both her shoulders.

"Dunno," she drawled around a mouthful of braces and forbidden chewing gum.

I knew it was no use. From past experience, the likelihood of finding decent Whiteout in the various old pencil cases scattered about the place was next to none. I pawed halfheartedly through the remnants of at least three-years’ worth of blunt pencils, half-melted Crayolas -- both in and out of their wrappers -- dried up felt-tip pens without their tops on, and sharpener-shavings, before giving up the search.

"Thanks so much for your help. Like I'm doing something important here!" I pouted and stomped up the stairs in frustration.

I gloomily surveyed my dining room table. It was littered with six or seven crumpled balls of petition. "This is ridiculous," I told myself sternly.  "You’ve been slaving over this thing for a whole hour. Just do it!"

Right. I sat down and typed on a scrap piece of paper exactly what I wanted to say in the Description of Facts. And what do you know? Not one typo, apart from some crossings-out where I changed my mind.

I started on a new petition, made a couple of mistakes, but to hell with it. 

I finally finished typing and rolled the form out of the clunker. Now for the signature. Oh, no! It had to be notarized. Although I myself was a notary public, #notaries aren’t permitted to #notarize their own signatures, and Wim was to file the petition the next morning in City Court. 

What to do?

Wild thoughts of driving across town to Rita’s house raced through my head. It was late though, and her notary stamp was probably at the office.

I considered going to work early in the morning in the hope that an attorney would be present to notarize my signature. Early enough that I could deliver the petition back home to Wim and return to work by nine o’clock. No. With travel time, I’d have to get to the office really early, and there was no guarantee of an attorney being there.

I could get it notarized at a bank, but banks only open at nine o'clock. I’d  be late for work and, as I mentioned before, we were short-staffed that week.

I searched the form for a way out of my predicament and, voila, there was a check box for permitting "Agent of Petitioner" to file the petition. I checked it. Now my "agent" Wim could sign it before a notary public at City Hall and file it with the Clerk.

I set off for the office the next morning in a hopeful mood. Not too hopeful, mind you.

The plan was for Wim to first stop by the Schemmerhorn #building inspector's office to pick up the report of code violations and try to talk him into declaring the upstairs apartment unfit for human habitation due to the water leak. If that failed, he would go ahead and sign and file the petition to evict Kristina.

Twelve o'clock struck. Wim strode into my office like a stick insect atop bony legs four feet long.

"Did you get the report?" I asked.

"Yah, but the inspector wasn't in so I couldn't talk to him."  My heart sank as Wim waved a piece of paper at me. It looked suspiciously like my original petition.

"They wouldn't accept my signature," he said.

I groaned. Naturally I’d left my folder of blank petitions at home.

"Can you white out my signature and put yours there instead?” Wim suggested. “Get it notarized and I'll take it back to Schemmerhorn right now."

While he stepped outside for a smoke, I whited out his signature, photocopied the petition, and signed my name. Rita notarized it. Wim returned soon after amidst a haze of just-exhaled cigarette smoke. He collected the petition and left. 

I crossed my thumbs and returned to work.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: Cops, Caseworkers, Code-Violators

The police listened to my complaints, interviewed Kristina, and told me there was nothing they could do. 

I told them she still had a #lease for the Stanley Street #apartment. “I don’t suppose you can just make her move back there?” I tried.

“Not our responsibility, Ma’am. Call Social Services and take her to Court.”

The next day, Sunday, Giselle phoned again: this time to report that there was water dripping in the basement. Wim duly went to Schemmerhorn, tightened a few pipe couplings, and returned home with the news that he had turned Kristina’s water off.

"I'm not sure we’re allowed to do that," I ventured, envisaging angry phone calls from Kristina and #code-violation officials.

"Why not?” Wim proclaimed in his usual, brash, Dutch fashion. “There was a leak … I turned the water off … simple as dat!"

Next morning, bright and early, I called Kristina's #caseworker to tell her about the police visit and broken window. “I just want Kristina to move back to Stanley Street,” I finished.

“Not much I can do since she signed the lease and you gave her the key,” Ms. Siman said. “Evict her through the courts if you have to.”

"I will, but that could take a while and I've got another #tenant ready to move in in September."

"Sorry. Call the #Fraud Department. Maybe they can suggest something." Ms. Siman recited the number.

I dialed it and, lo and behold, who should answer but my dear friend, Mr. Catcher.

I greeted him like an old pal and told him about my Kristina situation.  Although he couldn’t help me either, he was sympathetic and we swapped landlord horror stories for a while. His were much worse than mine.

“We should quit our jobs, go on welfare, and take the System for all it’s worth,” he joked, once we’d thoroughly succeeded in depressing each other. “But then we'd have to face ourselves in the mirror each day."

I glumly agreed but felt I had found a kindred spirit in Mr. Catcher. Before we parted our telephonic ways, he told me he could find no record of any damage claims involving my prospective tenant, Charmayne. At least that was something.

A few days later, I received a call at work.

"This is the Building Inspector for Schemmerhorn Code Enforcement," a male voice announced.  "Am I speaking to Anastasia Scuttlebutt?"

"You are."

"Ms. Scuttlebutt, we've received a complaint from your tenant, Kristina Carter, that the water's been turned off in her apartment since Sunday.  That's a violation, Ma'am."

"But . . ."

"We're going to have to take a look and see what's going on," the voice continued.

"There was a leak in the basement," I quickly put in, "so my stepfather turned the water off. I’m in the process of evicting Kristina. She ignored my initial three-day notice and has since caused damage to my property.”

"Oh," said the building inspector. "Well, it’s still a code violation, you still gotta turn the water back on, and we still gotta come out and check."

"My stepdad will call you as soon as possible," I promised.

Thanks, Wim. Now I’m in trouble with Code Enforcement!

I drove home that night in what was rapidly becoming my usual foul mood. 

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: Downtown Druglords

-- BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND -- 

I'LL TRY TO MAKE WEEKLY POSTS FROM NOW ON !!

"I just had a frantic call from your #tenant, Giselle," Mom told me when I answered my phone at work.  "That Kristina's been moving all her stuff into your house with an assortment of uncles and people, and Giselle's very upset. She says they're big drug dealers, and now the whole street's in an uproar. She said to tell you she's giving her month's notice, right now!”

I hung up with a groan and dialed Giselle's number.

"What's up," I asked when she picked up.

"That Kristina Carter ... she belong to the biggest drug family in Schemmerhorn." Giselle's voice hinted at a brewing hysteria as she literally panted into the phone.  "My boyfrien' Marvin told you 'bout her but you didn't listen. I'm tellin' you, Stace, I ain't gonna live with that fam'ly in the same buildin'.  She trouble and so's all her uncles an' brothers an' stuff.  Everyone round here's upset that you've rented the place to her.  You gotta git her the hell out heah, or . . . or . . . I'm givin’ you one month's notice as of today.  "

"Okay," I broke in as she paused for breath.  "Shit!  I didn't realize it was Kristina Marvin was talking about, though I should have clicked when you mentioned the braids.  I certainly don't want drug dealers in my house, and I don't want you moving either, Giselle.  Kristina's #lease on Stanford Street doesn't run out til the end of next month. I'll just tell her I've decided not to #rent to her after all."

"Hmph."  Giselle grunted somewhat dubiously. "I bet it'll be hard gettin' her out, now she gone moved all her stuff in."

I called Kristina's caseworker to apprise her of the situation. Ms. Siman was surprised to hear it since Kristina hadn’t told her she was #moving.

            That night I drafted a three-day #eviction notice in the hope that Kristina would just pack up her stuff and move back to Stanford Street.  Wim offered to serve it on her, since he'd be working in Schemmerhorn the next day.  I also gave him a check for $250.00 to refund Kristina the rent money she'd paid me.

Next I called Charmayne to ask if she was still interested in #renting the #apartment. She said she was but hoped it would be available sooner than the first of September. She wanted to get in there and start cleaning.  I said I'd keep her posted.

Friday night, three days later, Wim and I were back in good old Schemmerhorn, parked down the street from number 51 because I was too chicken to park outside my own house.

Wim got out and walked up the street alone.  I stayed where I was, content for once to be gawked at by the tenants of the house we were parked next to.  A few minutes later, Wim returned with Giselle in tow.

"No one home," he announced.  "Doesn't look like she's been doing any moving, either, according to Giselle."

Giselle nodded.  "I told you.  Kristina don' wanna leave, now she all moved in."

I heaved a hefty sigh. “I'll have to #evict her then. The judge has been on my side so far, but it still could take a while. Rrrgh, I want her out of there now!"

"Better move quick, or I don' see her bein' out by the end of the month,” Giselle opined.

I held up my crossed thumbs. "Hopefully the Court will set a date in a couple of weeks, and Kristina'll be out by the first of September.  Oh, by the way, Giselle? Do you have August's rent for me?  It's, like, a week late now."

Giselle shuffled her feet. "Yeah. Soon. My check's late this month, so I'm a bit behind."

"Okay," I said, "but I do need it, since I gave Kristina her rent back."

Giselle called the next evening.  "Somethin's goin' on.  Kristina's uncles and people had an argument. Next thing I hear, they're busting in a window upstairs."

With my by-now-customary, post-telephonic groan, I called the Schemmerhorn cops and arranged to meet them at 51 Manson Street.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: Geriatric Ballerinas

Last year I and two of my co-workers, Dee Dee and Kathy, made a momentous decision: we were going to take ballet lessons.  I’d been learning tap for two years with a very elderly, yet very spry lady who was the oldest ballet teacher in the State and had been honored as such by several national dance societies.  When she wasn’t teaching ballet, tap, or jazz, she was flying to Florida or Texas for a convention or to New York City for some other dance-related function.  Her husband Lonnie, front office man, unflagging conversationalist and entertainer of waiting parents and students, faithfully tagged along behind his energetic wife.

It all started when Kathy asked me to pick up a brochure on the ballet class.  She had learned ballet when she was younger and had a yen to take it up again.  Because I’d also taken ballet into my teens--pointe shoes and all that--my interest was piqued.  Tap was starting to get a bit boring; it might be fun switching to ballet.  So what if I was over thirty?  Kathy was over forty!

Once Kathy and I announced our decision, Dee Dee--who was also over forty but had never taken ballet in her life--decided she would like to give it a try too, especially since she lived just around the corner from the studio.  Of course, we all had to be in the same class, which meant that Dee Dee would need some quick coaching on basic ballet terms and technique.  For starters, and to a passing lawyer’s surprise, I executed an uncoordinated, very wobbly and stiff plié by Dee Dee's desk. 

“Your knees are actually supposed to point out to the sides,” I explained,  though my knees stubbornly pointed forwards.  I’d never able to do pliés, even when I was a little kid.

“You mean like this?” Dee Dee stood up and sank into a graceful plié, knees perfectly turned out.

“I hate you, you wretch!” I exclaimed and threw an eraser at her.  An equally-stiff Kathy agreed. Rude comments began flying from the other secretaries in our unit. 

Undaunted, Kathy attempted a plié of her own.  “Ouch!” she yelled.  “I think I just dislocated something.”  She hobbled around seeking sympathy while the rest of us dissolved into giggles.

“There's no way I'm going to be able to stand it,” I gasped.  “It's going to be so funny, I know I’m going to laugh all the time, and the teacher will get cross.  We just can't make eye contact, Kathy, otherwise I’ll start giggling, and I won't be able to stop.  You know what happens when I laugh a lot?  I pee my pants.  I can see it now: me in my leotard and pink tights, pee running down my leg.”

Our little secretarial unit was getting into the spirit of the thing now. A discussion began on when we should go leotard-shopping. “Do you think they make reinforced leotards to hold middle-aged stomachs in?” Kathy wondered. The three of us didn’t get much work done for a while.  We kept thinking of funny things to say about geriatric ballerinas and executing elaborate twirls whenever we had to traverse the office to retrieve a document from the printer.  At one point, the rather substantial Kathy daringly attempted a grand jeté, landing with the force of a dozen elephants.  We held onto our desks to keep from being spilled to the floor as the building shook. One of the senior partners leaped out of his office with a “What was that!”

“Okay,” I conceded to Frederica, as I turned the car into our driveway, “it didn’t happen quite that way, but it was a really fun afternoon at the office.”

“And I thought working in a law office would be stuffy and boring,” Frederica mused, shaking her head.

                                                             * * * * * * * *

A day or two later, I called Charmayne.  "I'm sorry," I told her, "but as I already signed the #lease with Kristina, it seems I'll have to stick to it."

Charmayne was disappointed.  "If it doesn't work out for some reason," she said, "let me know, okay?"

"I will," I promised then called Kristina, who was supposed to be paying me $250.00 in #rent for August.

"Come to muh #house Friday evening," she told me.  "Seven o'clock.  I'll have the money for y’all then."

On Friday at the appointed time, Frederica and I drove to Kristina's #home on Stanford Street.  I could see why she wanted to move.  What a run-down street it was.  All the houses were in various stages of disrepair: paint peeling everywhere, junk piled high on balconies that leaned crookedly toward their neighbors, the odd ramshackle car parked here and there.  A cloud of bluebottles buzzed angrily over a pool of something on the step leading up to Kristina's door.  I suspected it was urine, since my nostrils were assailed by the strong stench of pee as I gingerly mounted the splintered, sagging steps.

"No one home," I reported to Frederica a few knocks later.

"Let's sit and wait a bit," she suggested.

We sat in the car playing cassette tapes.  A young black dude had been circling around for a while on his bicycle like a shark and now approached our car.

"You sellin' tapes?" he asked through my open driver’s side window, pointing at the tape case on Frederica's lap.

"No, just playing music," I told him.

"Oh."  He wheeled away in another circle and came back round again.  "What you girls waitin' for?"

"Kristina Carter.  Do you know her?"

"Nope," the dude said.  "Thought you was mebbe sellin' somethin', you know?"  He paused for a second.  "Wanna buy some dope?  Got some good stuff."

"No thank you!" Frederica exclaimed in a mortified tone of voice. She sounded very British.

"Okay, okay," the dude said.  "Jes askin'."  He retreated to tool around on his bike some more, keeping a watchful eye on us.

A moment later, another bike came wheeling up the street. Kristina had arrived.

"Yo," she called when she neared my car.  "I bin lookin' for muh brother.  He's supposed to gimme the money, but I dunno . . ."

"Why don't you take another look around," I suggested.  "We can wait another twenty minutes or so."

"Okay,"  Kristina agreed and wheeled away, stocky legs pumping, braids flying out behind her.

Frederica and I sat playing our tapes and waiting for Kristina to return.  The shark still cruised steadily around, but we steadfastly ignored him.  I felt like fish out of water, and I know Frederica felt the same way: two young, naive, ex-convent girls, parked in the middle of a seedy, drug-infested ghetto #neighborhood.

Twenty minutes passed and Kristina didn't show, so we left.  When I called her later she apologized, but she had found her brother, and he had given her the money.

"Yo can come git it any time," she said. We arranged to meet at 51 Manson Street the next day.  Kristina's cousin apparently had a truck that she could use to move into the #apartment that weekend.  I met her on Saturday as planned, and we did a swop: cash for keys.

Wim had an errand in Schemmerhorn on the Sunday and came home to report that Kristina hadn’t yet moved in.  Maybe the truck arrangement had fallen through?  Kristina didn't have to move out of Stanford Street for another month if she didn't want to.  Maybe she'd decided to move into Manson Street gradually.

On Monday my mom received a frantic phone call from my existing #tenant.