This country is supposed to be "land of the free, home of the brave." This country operates under a justice system where one is "innocent until proven guilty."
I wonder if President Obama was ever served with an eviction notice. I wonder if he ever felt the fear of losing his home and perhaps having to live in his car.
Right now, for my son and I, freedom has contingencies attached to it. And bravery? How does one be brave in the face of execution by eviction? How does a single mother explain to her child that the words on this piece of paper are enough to take away our home? How does a single mother struggling to survive explain to her son about injustice, and abuse of power, about retaliation and about the bad people in this world who have nothing and will never have nothing because they are just bad, bad people?
Freedom means sleeping in peace. Freedom means waking up knowing my child is safe. Freedom is having a chance to make my son's dreams come true.
Those contingencies? They are landlord references, credit reports, criminal records (or not in my case), they are exceptions to the rules and regulations like if my son can finish fifth grade at his school so I don't have to traumatize him any more than he has been in the past six months, having enough money to move and having enough money to feed my son and clothe him.
Bravery. My son has been brave. He has weathered the possibility that we could have been homeless - all based upon lies. I don't know how he did that. I fell apart because I lacked bravery and courage to withstand the "weapons in the form of words" that were rocket-launched at my son and I; we were ambushed by the management company all because of the lies fed to them by an unstable and unbalanced woman, then sealed neatly in an envelope and delivered to me in my mailbox without explanation.
It was an execution on paper. That's what Notice of Termination of Tenancy is - an execution on paper. And where I live - you don't get a chance to defend yourself.
At all.
This management company took away my freedom to defend myself. They took away my right to prove my innocence. They took away my courage. They nearly destroyed me - and my child.
I am thinking right at this moment that I desperately need a break - a miracle if you will. I am consumed by the tremendous debt I carry - not unlike thousands of other people. I am sure the prayers to God are the same - help us, help our children. I know I am not alone.
But I am alone. It is just my son and I. I do not have family around me. I do not have the wealthy relative who will willingly give us money and wave a hand and say "don't worry about paying it back. I know you'll do the right thing."
I do not have wealthy friends who will reiterate the same.
I am alone. The debt has not been incurred by frivolous means. Statements show charges for groceries, for clothes, for those godforsaken car repairs, for school pictures and Christmas presents. There are no extravagant purchases. My ex-husband owes me close to $3,000 for non-child support stipulations spelled out very clearly in our divorce agreement. He has been chipping away at it. But had he been paying his half of what he agreed to do all along, I would not be in this financial black hole.
So now, that awful creatures that lurks in this financial black hole is reaching out its tentacles and wrapping themselves around me and threatening to choke the life out of me because on Friday, I received a call that my name came up on a list for a two-bedroom duplex here in town. I have been waiting for that call for nearly five years. But my elation was not there. I was gasping for breath as I was being choked by the financial octopus of debt -and fear.
I was, to say the least, blindsided by this good news. But I immediately felt despair because part of the paperwork to be filled out is a "landlord reference" which I know is standard, but I am terrified that the property manager will blackball me and I will not get the home I want so desperately. And get my son safe.
And there are variables. My 16 year old vehicle is beginning to break down little by little except that "little by little" has meant $500.00 out of my pocket within 3 weeks, 2 different times and now that pesky "check engine" light suddenly appeared like a supernova flash on my dashboard. My Honda Civic manual states it is a "malfunction control lamp" and further reading led me to a problem with one of the engine's emissions control. This is not surprising. The car is old (like me) and for all I know it's emitting some lethal gas into the atmosphere that will have the Save The Earth Police coming after me soon. Maybe that's not a bad thing?
But it is just another repair, another bill, and I am at the end of my rope. With no car, I cannot work. If I cannot work, I cannot move. And I cannot move, I can't get my son safe and try to piece back together everything that fell apart since July.
I prayed to God that we wouldn't get evicted. He answered my prayer but truly, the law prevailed because the property manager didn't have a case, it didn't have credible witnesses - or any witnesses at all - and it didn't have any hardcore evidence to support it's reasons for issuing me the Notice of Termination of Tenancy.
And now once again I feel shame and humiliation for thinking ahead that I now have to fight for this home that perhaps could be a new beginning for my son and I all because one person - one evil, vicious, soulless woman decided it would okay to steal what didn't belong to her and when I called the police to report the crime, she retaliated in the worst possible way with her lies - and the property manager believed her without ever hearing my defense. And since it never went to trial, I still never got a chance to defend myself.
I want this home. I want to get out of this awful place and away from the daily visits by the local police, away from the domestic violence and screaming and yelling and the trash left around the common areas because many of the people who reside in this place simply don't care about anyone - or themselves. I can't count how many times the police have taken people away from here - in the parking lots and out of apartments - in handcuffs. A woman left her two-year-son alone in the apartment because she wanted to go out. The fire department had to break down the door to get to the child. The child was clad only in a diaper and covered in its own feces. There are women getting beaten by their "baby's daddy" or by the "baby daddies" and won't report the violence out of fear, out of losing financial support, out of love. The SWAT team has been here a few times. One tenant was involved in a home invasion and the owner badly beaten and he was arrested here a few years ago. A rape occurred last year here - in a laundry room. I walked around with a baseball bats for months out of fear. I went to management and asked if perhaps security cameras could be installed in the laundry rooms for the future safety of tenants.
I was met with disdain and was told "you people don't get stuff like that."
I wonder if I had written to President Obama and asked HIM if he could arrange to have security cameras installed here. Would he have told me "you people don't get stuff like that?"
You people. I am a human being. So is my son. But somehow, the property manager who made that statement to me displayed a lack of concern as if I was nothing more than the bottom trash in a landfill.
You people.
Is this how they view us?
Frankly, if the police are called, I'm not sure exactly how management finds out unless they peruse the Cops and Courts section every day looking for transgressions by a tenant. I seriously doubt it. That would mean doing their job.
The tenant across the hall from me who started the nightmare from which I am still reeling - her own boyfriend was led out of here in handcuffs twice - arrested for assault and battery and defacing property and the second time he said he was going to kill himself in front of her. But he's still living here. And she has two kids who have been exposed to the countless domestics that have occurred within their apartment. And one of her sons is the one who stole my mail - and the tenant KNEW her son had stolen my mail because she admitted to it but she didn't give a shit. Her response was that she was going to beat her son and she told me to press charges so she could "lock her son up in a mental institution."
Nice mother. She ought to be locked up - not her son. Her son is a product of her and her actions and reactions and god only knows what she has exposed her children to in their young lives.
The walls are thin. You can hear everything. I hear my neighbor peeing every morning in the bathroom at the same time. I hear the same neighbor above me and next to me having sex. That's how thin the walls are. I don't explain to my son what the "noises" are. He doesn't need to know.
I understand this is common in many, many places.
But I have to get out so I can save my son. I want him to be safe above all else. I've told him there are more good people in the world than bad but all he has seen here is the bad.
And what does that say about the management company? It turns a deaf ear and blind eyes to the most serious situations as long as you pay your rent. Its philosophy is "if it doesn't affect you, shut up and don't complain." But yet there is a specific paragraph in the Occupancy Agreement about tenants' rights to "quiet enjoyment." Apparently, management's interpretation of that is far different than the tenants' interpretation. So instead, management distributes memos about "inappropriate disposal of chicken bones and diapers and trash," and makes statements like "this is your HOME. Take care of your HOME."
It is a double-edged sword. And management lies in wait to use it for any tenant who breaks the rules. But yet we are not allowed to defend ourselves.
I feel the fight going out of me but I think I have one last fight left. The one person who is most important person to me, the one person whom I love to infinity and beyond, the one person whom I desperately want to have a chance to find his niche in this world and be somebody and perhaps change the world and make his dreams come true:
My son.
It's always been about him because he is all I have in this world. There is no one to "take care of us," there is no one person in my life - or in my heart - that will rescue us and give us the life we want so desperately.
So I'm it. And my son is worth fighting for more than anything or anyone in this world.
And that's not being selfish - that's being a mother.
We need help in a big way. I just don't know how to reach out to strangers and ask. I know people have done it. But I don't know what to say: Help me save my son? His dad has colon cancer. His dad is only 46 years old. I don't know how much longer he will be on this earth. My health is teeter-tottery because of the severe emotional distress I've suffered for the past six months. I don't know what kind of damage lurks inside of me. I am afraid I will go to sleep at night and never wake up and that's how my son will find me.
I can't heal unless I can get out of here, relieve the awful financial burden I carry and get my son safe. The only saving grace is that he is doing very well in school. He is happy there, he has many friends. Kids are drawn to him like magnets. He has a heart of gold, he is compassionate and caring and kind. He reaches out to other kids when they need a friend. He is smart and wickedly funny. He has a thirst for knowledge and a million questions every day. He stares up at the sky and wonders if perhaps someday he will discover something new and amazing. He wants to work at NASA. When he tells me that, my heart does something extraordinary - it beats with the knowledge that perhaps I have instilled in him the ability to dream - and dream big.
And I want to make those dreams come true for my son.
But I need a fighting chance to do so and we need help.
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