Amá, Your Story Is Mine: Walking Out of the Shadows of Abuse

A Neighbor’s Scheme

~ 99 ~ A Neighbor’s Scheme ~ There was a mysterious house in our neighborhood. It belonged to a woman who lived across the alley. It looked haunted; the drapes were always drawn. All we saw through the windows was an absurdly formed shadow lumbering slowly behind the curtains.We were curious about what lay behind those poorly hung, sun-bleached, and rust-stained curtains, which always seemed to move by themselves. The mystery was solved one day, when we saw her standing in the half-opened door beckoning to us.We hesitated at first, and when we finally approached the door, we saw a grotesquely fat, sweating old woman wobbling on a cane. Her neck, with all its many folds of fat hanging down in front, resembled that of a turkey. We could see right away that she was half-blind too. She asked Mary if she would like to help her clean her house. As the door opened wider, our senses were assaulted by the screech of her six cats and the smell of cat urine and feces that had soaked into the wooden floor from the newspapers. The house was overflowing with empty milk bottles, old crates, newspapers, trinkets, garbage, and piles of brittle books with pages as fragile as dried leaves. It was very difficult to know where to begin. I tried to breathe through my mouth because the odor in that house turned my stomach. Every piece of furniture was completely covered with her collection of junk, except for one squeaky old wooden rocking chair, which sat in the middle of her living room. Her dog lay stretched out on the floor, looking more dead than alive, and as old and feeble as its owner. It smelled no different than the rest of the house. The woman ~ 100 ~ told us to pick up the litter from the floor, sweep and mop it, and to wash the stacks of dirty dishes. She disappeared into her bedroom, and we began working, excited as we thought about how happy we would make Amá when we gave her this money we had earned ourselves. We worked until late in the afternoon. Joe would be coming home from work any time, and we knew it would make him angry if we were not home when he arrived. When we finally knocked on the old woman’s door to tell her we were finished, she came out and asked if we were hungry. We answered yes, and she opened a can of something, dividing it into four mismatched—but thanks to our efforts clean— bowls. The snack looked much like a treat Amá made for us when she had a little leftover money, a can of corned beef mixed with plenty of potatoes, eggs, and bacon. In the blink of an eye we ate what was on our plates and waited for the woman to pay us. Instead, she told us we should go home. We made it back to the house before Joe arrived, with Amá coming soon after. As always, Joe asked us how we had spent our day. We told him about cleaning the old woman’s house and about the snack she had given us instead of pay. I have no idea how Joe figured it out so quickly, but he was outraged that she had fed us dog food. Amá just took a deep breath and said, “Déjenselo a Dios.” (“Leave it to God.”) She told us not to go near that woman again. ...