Providence

I have made some pretty dumb decisions. One of them was to move to Providence after college. The real plan was to move back to Boston, where I had lived for several years after high school. But I took the train to Providence, because my mother and her husband lived relatively nearby, and I was going to stay with them while I looked for a place in Boston. I walked out of the train station, looked at the city spread out before me and said, "This looks nice. I'll stay here."

Big mistake. It was like living in a foreign country and it turned out to be one of the worst years of my life, no small thing in a life of many bad years. I think it seemed all the worse because I had just come from a few very good years at a small college in a beautiful rural area. I had just come from a few years of thriving and feeling nurtured. But, all things must pass, as they say, and it was time to move on. I mean, me, stay in a place where things were going well? Too scary! Things going well is just the precursor to things going to shit! And even though I had such high hopes for myself by then, I was just as lost as ever.

I found an apartment (they called them 'tenements' there) on the third floor above a fish restaurant in an Italian neighborhood. There is another Italian neighborhood in that city that is semi-famous and kind of a tourist attraction. This was not that one. This was the shabbier version. The apartment was permeated with the oily smell of fried fish. The building swayed when big trucks rumbled by. The previous tenants had not cleaned out the refrigerator, and it was full of rotted food. But it was the only place I could get with 6 cats in tow. I also think I got the place because one of the guys in the rental office liked me, but I was in no way ready to get all friendly with an unknown, quiet man who had a loyal German shepherd following him everywhere. My neighbor below me was a very elderly woman who told me all she could eat was bread soaked in coffee or milk, "like a baby", as she said. I think she was related to the people who owned the building. The woman across the way from me was originally from Pittsburgh and had 2 young sons, and a husband who was there sometimes, but mostly not. He was Hispanic. She was Irish American, and she spoke as if she was raised by people with heavy brogues. The older boy was bright and sweet, and the younger one was sweet and had autism and was mostly locked away in his own mind.

She was pretty much locked away there too. She could not drive, she had no car, she waited around for him to come home and give her money. He did not give her much. He kept a lot of it for himself and used it at the dog track. I would talk to her on the steps by the door we used to enter the place--it led out into the parking lot, right beside the dumpster. She'd stay out there smoking cigarettes, watching the boys play on the black top. I was having a really hard time finding a job, so I spent a bit of time talking to her. I played with the boys too, and got the younger one to say the word balloon--he said it "ba-doon". We had a game where we would stomp on balloons. He really liked it.

That July was hot. The black top parking lot radiated up the heat in shimmery waves. She began to talk more and more about how badly he treated her. She became feverish in her speech, and somewhat irrational. She told me she was keeping a knife by her bed. She told me she saw the devil out on the fire escape looking in at her with fiery red eyes. She locked the boys in their room at night with a hook and eye lock. It finally got so bad she had told the husband to get out and to stay away.

That July the full moon came up mean and red. Reminded me of the old Creedence Clearwater song, "I see a bad moon a'risin....' It was hot, it was humid, it was nasty. I was soaked in sweat in my bed as I tried to sleep. At some point I heard sirens and feet stomping up and down the stairs. On my bedroom walls, I saw the flashing blue lights from police cars and could hear their radios. I stayed in my bed. I did not get up and look. I did not move. I stayed very still and quiet, like a child when the adults are fighting and I want them to not be reminded of my presence.

But sometime the next day there was a knock at my door. There was my neighbor. She had on a really pretty sun dress. It was cream colored with spaghetti straps and was patterned with flowers, blue and lavender and green, a little yellow, a little red. She was bruised all over--huge dark purple bruises on her face and shoulders and chest. She had a black eye. Quite unselfconsciously, she told me all about her husband sneaking in the night before. He wore sneakers, she said, and crept in. He crept in and he began to beat her. He didn't know she had the knife beside her bed, and she used it. She stabbed him. She killed him. She finished her story by saying, "I don't know how I will get that stain out of my rug."

Her public defender was a sad looking man with a bad toupee and a skin ailment that gave him white spots. He came to talk to me. He sat at my kitchen table and tape recorded what I said. When he asked me if I thought she had acted in self-defense, I had said, "Oh, absolutely, yes."

I'll bet you think I am making this up.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai