By Newcomb
A tiny voice in English, with Spanish overtones, was on the phone, "Are you the manager?" "Can we rent your Apartmentio?"
We didn't even know that there was a vacancy! 711 Hall St. was our first real estate venture and this was to be our first involvement. I drove to Anaheim and to the end of Hall St. Parked and was surrounded by the Cardenas Family. "The manager she is gone. She has all the llaves, (keys), the rent money and the security deposits. Tambien (also) she has done the same thing at three other buildings!"
"Apartmentio C is empty and we want to live there right away, ahora!"
I felt ill prepared as I climbed the exterior stairway. An auto must have backed into the bottom step. The iron rail and banister trembled under my hand and the magnasite coating was sloughing off the stair treads. (Under this stairway was an enclosed closet secured by a locked door for which I had no key.) Upstairs, I pushed open the unlocked door to unit(C). At the first step inside my shoe stuck down to the sticky carpet! I stood right there in the open doorway, one foot in and the other foot outside on the landing and looked around the living room. It wasn't like the night before Christmas---Something WAS stirring, things were moving, lots of things.
The apartment wasn't vacant, it was fully occupied by cockroaches, Large roaches, middle sized roaches and tiny roaches. ÐI wanted to pull my shoe off the carpet, close the door and Ôforget it' but the family was waiting outside on the landing-.
Roaches can live in clean places but seem to enjoy dirty places more. This place was dirty enough for an army of roaches! There was a broad greasy ring around the room, like a bathtub high water mark. There the furniture had been placed and dirty heads had burnished the walls. The shag carpet had caught and hid away bits of chicken bone, food scraps, toy parts, bobby - pins and always a scattering of pennies. The dropped food had been pressed down into the fabric, permanently matting down the pile in troubled islands here and there. Tracks of attached roach droppings near hinges, cracks, moldings and corners exposed their hiding places. The front door had repeatedly been slammed against the wall. The doorknob had created its own matching hole in the plaster. It was an old wound that showed a series of previous repairs. The striker plate was wobbling on a loose spike in the splintered doorjamb. The windowsills
Showed that there had been heavy traffic through the windows, to the balcony outside.
The grimy glass was obscured by the total accumulation of dirt since it was last replaced.
The kitchen and bathroom usually are the chief disaster areas and (C) fit the pattern. Yellow vaporized cooking grease formed a thick deposit on the walls and ceilings. The yellow film is heaviest over the stove and ceiling vent.
The overhead light fixture is now obscure for the same reason and the bulbs glow dimly through it. The roaches are thicker here and boldly move about in the daylight.
(I have learned to do battle with them now. The stove and refrigerator have to be treated on every surface inside and out. I have found roaches in the spun glass insulation of the oven walls. The hot water heater with its enclosure is a natural incubator for these insects. Paper or food stored there makes even a happier home for them. The cabinets, drawers and the space under them, even the telephone terminal boxes must be opened and treated. The little square, covered, boxes are man-made houses for roach families. The cable hole is their front door, its dark and safe inside.)
This bathroom needed lots of work. The tub enclosure was a wreck, separated from the wall at the edges and eroded around the faucets. The lavatory was loose on the wall brackets and the pipes leaked from the movement.
This survey took several minutes and the Cardenas all waited, leaning into the open doorway. "Yes we want to move right in, No we don't want to wait for the unit to be made ready." (They would clean it themselves.) Their enthusiasm was contagious.
For my part, I cut up the carpet into three foot strips and rolled it up like cordwood to fit the dumpster. I brought paint and supplies for Jose and Louisa and sixty pounds of boric acid powder. Part of this I dusted into every crack and hiding place. Importantly the white powder was applied all along the wall behind the tack-less carpet strip. (It remains here when the carpet is put down.) I'm told that roaches breathe through the thorax, along the sides of their bodies. Being mostly a mechanical poison, they haven't become immune to it. They die, die and die. Roaches that you never thought you had. They must be brushed up for several days before an apartment is shown.
I returned to Hall St. with buckets of Navaho white paint. Rollers, brushes and drop cloths. The Cardinas augmented by relatives were nearly finished scrubbing down the kitchen and now were cleaning the stove and refrigerator. These were the only two items furnished. Cleaning the refrigerator was a mistake. I hadn't time to tell them that it was inoperative and that another was being delivered that day. They treated it as a joke and a happy one at that. The family had very little furniture to move into their new home. Day by day they were pleased to show me the progress they had made.
I worked on faucets, locks, doors and prepared walls for painting. Several windows had to be replaced as well. The neighbors were interested and extra children were in and out the open door. Tenants in other units were wishing that some of these good things could happen for them, especially the alfombra (carpet).
Month by month I came by to collect the rent payment. Each time the place is more furnished. Now there are two sofas in the living room and a table in the kitchen.
The family still stands for its meal, as there are no chairs. The walls were decorated with hangings and macramŽ. Many family pictures were posted with the older members, showing Mexican backgrounds and clothing styles.
Both Jose and Louisa worked away from home. Late one morning I called at their door and a small boy asked me in. I stepped in and immediately out again. The bedroom door was open and I could see Louisa, home from the night shift, asleep, un-covered, on the carpeted floor. There was still no bedroom furniture! Presently she was at the front door clasping her thin nightdress together with both hands. (I was sorry to have awakened her; she didn't have the rent money anyway.)
Near my son's home in Garden Grove, someone had set out a usable double mattress. Thinking about Louisa sleeping on the floor, my son Mark and I tied the mattress onto the station wagon rack and drove to Anaheim. Against the wall by the dumpster was an unbroken box spring. Mark and I hauled the springs and mattress up the stairs to the Cardenas and were rewarded with mucho gracies' all around.
There were several more children than Louisa could care for and she was pregnant again! Teary eyed, she pointed to her obvious pregnancy and up to GOD, Louisa said, "I no abort, no abort." I shook my head along with her. Better an oversized family standing to eat and overcrowded into two bedrooms, than to kill, what in 60 days proved to be a beautiful dark eyed girl.
A church met in their front room on Saturday mornings. The people were wall-to-wall on sofas and the like. Small children sat on the floor just in front of their parents. I think that it was a Jehovah's Witness Bible study group. I haven't enough Spanish to argue theology. How I wished to give them an alternative!
Jose worked at a mobile home factory. He brought his wages to Louisa and the rent was paid on time. One day Jose fell off the top of a trailer and on to the hardstand below. His right leg was broken and the repair could never make it well again. He had several operations with only one ugly, sunken, scar to show for it. Jose got better and could hop up and down the stairs and drive his car but could never go back to work again.
They asked me to read a letter from the insurance company. It said that the weeks of compensation payments were nearly over and that he was in trouble. I don't know if this was the motivation or not but Jose opened a bakery in his kitchen. He had a plywood board on the table. The board extended, by several feet, over the table at both ends. Here he floured and prepared the dough. It was of and by and for Mexicans. It smelled good. Now cockroaches would visit from other apartments. (I have seen them crossing the open places between buildings.)
For the most part, Louisa was a good housekeeper. The apartment got worse during the week but then she had weekend time to catch it up. (She was one of those ladies that mopped the stairs and swept the street.) She kept all the little pants and dresses neat and her children clean. BUT She flunked toilet bowl!
She promised to clean it. I showed her how it could be white and Louisa seemed to understand.
I even scraped a place in the yellow scale so that she could see how it might look. The seat was bad too, beyond cleaning and the hinges were rusty. I didn't expect her to change the seat so promised to bring a new one when I came again.
Several days later I brought a new Tuffy seat to Hall St. for Louisa.
I had had a viral infection and felt a bit unsteady as I climbed the stairs to unit C. Older seat bolts were plated iron. These rusted beyond turning with a wrench. It is easy to slip off and break the china bowl at the boltholes. This old seat had to be sawed off. I used my metal cutting hacksaw held flat against the bowl with the teeth against the resisting bolts.
I found it awkward to crouch there and keep my face out of the disgusting bowl. My knees seemed to crowd my stomach and the breakfast inside it. I remember holding my breath as I sawed at the stubborn bolts. I felt terrible, perhaps if I rested……….perhaps if I lay down………….perhaps if I shut my eyes… Dark curtains seemed to come from both sides; very slowly closing across my face…………………I awoke later and felt the cool air blowing under the bathroom door. I was soaking wet. In shock, even my billfold was saturated. I lay there until I could sit up. Finally I could make it to the kitchen wall phone. I had to sit down again before I could dial home. Louisa put me, work clothes, Boots and all, into her bed. She covered me with a blanket until help could come. I felt at peace here, the soft Spanish voices, concerned for me, sounded far, far away.
* * *
Louisa's old yellow blanket was still wrapped around me when we reached the emergency room.
Days later we returned to bring back Louisa's blanket, pick up my truck and finally replace the toilet seat. It was then that I remembered the day Mark and I had salvaged a bed for Louisa, not guessing that I would sleep in it myself.