Renting apartments for my boss makes me feel like a pastor doing marriage counseling, without the authority to recommend caution. Couples come to me, full of hopes for their relationship, only to be evicted a few months later because dreams aren’t enough.
Our most recent pair was an aunt and her niece who had returned from California with a young baby to start over together. The older woman had been laid off as a therapist for the elderly when the recession meant fewer people could afford to have an outsider help them with their parents, and the charitable organization that employed her had laid off five of its six caregivers. The women thought her unemployment and the girl’s earnings as a pharmacy tech would be enough.
Before they made the last installment on their move in rent, I got a call from one of the neighbors in the building explaining why he’d called 911. He’d seen the young baby and when he heard someone screaming “my baby’s dead” over and over, he acted.
The older woman came in the next day with the rest of the rent money. She was dressed badly and couldn’t stop crying. The baby in question was her son, the same age as the niece, who had died in a treatment facility. Apparently, they notified her when she was alone, and she went mad, banging the walls and screaming. The police got someone to sedate her.
I’ve learned nothing about the mother-son relationship, if he was a young man led astray by bad friends, or if the family was dysfunctional and the woman or the boy’s father had been an alcoholic or drug user.
All I know is the woman had no intention of getting over his death. If I even hinted she looked a little better, she took umbrage. She attacked her daughter when she wasn’t grief stricken enough, then kept the boy’s ashes in her bedroom to console at night.
The woman had no medical insurance, and broke an arm and several teeth when she fell down the back step, if that’s what she did. One of her comments made it sound like she had run out the back door and smashed into the concrete block yard wall some 25' away. Soon after she was taking oxycontin and drinking.
The niece finally called her cousin and told her her mother needed serious care and put the woman and the ashes on a bus headed for Denver.
Meantime, her life had also fallen apart. When they missed paying the second month’s rent, the two women came in to say the girl’s boyfriend had come out for the funeral and not left. They’d called the police the day before and filed a restraining order when he beat her and stole the rent money.
When I talked to them, I discovered the young woman had three more children she’d left in California with their father’s family, a different man than the baby’s father.
When the older woman came in a few days later with some of the rent money, she said how funny it was people were willing to help them now, but weren’t when the boyfriend was around.
A few days after the young woman came in with some more rent money and told me she had sent the aunt to her daughter’s, I took the exterminator to the apartment and found the man was back. I knew then we’d never get our rent when it was due, and it was a matter of time before the problems got worse.
Next, another of her neighbors called to say he had heard her screaming “don’t hit me” over the weekend, and the next time he heard any violent sound he was calling child support services. I told him to definitely make the call if he thought anyone was going to be hurt.
We put an eviction notice on the door the next day, citing the failure to never pay rent on time. It was now the third month and we still had only half the month’s rent.
The second neighbor called again to report the police had been there the night before, stopping first at the apartment, then searching the yard. He admitted that during the raid he’d kept an eye on his car to make sure his property stayed safe.
When I talked to him Friday, when he came in to pay the rent, he said she had moved out with the help of people who might have been her parents. Since she made it sound like she had been raised by her grandmother, they may have been another of her aunt’s siblings.
The first neighbor said he was glad they, not she, had gone. She’d called him to walk her to her car, and he’d had no desire to get caught in a domestic violence situation. He’d already chased some strangers away from his apartment and had begun to worry about the safety of his grade-school-aged daughter.
If she’s living with people who can keep her boyfriend away from their home, she and the baby may have a chance. When she talked about trying to help her aunt with her oxycontin prescription, she sounded like a capable pharmacy tech who could make a tolerable living as a single mom.
If the people who helped her move don’t help her deal with the psychological problems of domestic violence, then she may actually have been better off in a shelter for homeless woman if it were run by people who could help her and the child.
The two times I saw the infant it was being held, either by the sobbing aunt or the boyfriend, and expected to watch television and keep quiet. I hope the experience of the last three months isn’t part of a permanent pattern. Otherwise, I know family problems have just been passed on to at least the third generation.
I also know her aunt was right. Everyone is willing to help a deserving young woman, but no one, not even the police, are willing to risk their personal safety to intervene when an exploitive, violent man is present.
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