Probably

Our first 13 years of marriage were spent in a third floor condo. Brown and white with triangular peaks outlining the common stairwells, it looked like a Swiss chalet apartment building. They tried everything in the 70s.

The development had 34 identical-looking buildings, bordered by a railroad, a large park, and two sides of townhomes. Each building had 12 to 18 units, with 6 units sharing a common stairwell. At three stories, it towered over the slightly more affluent townhomes and it enabled us to view the rooves of the middle class house owners in the distance.

After years of neglect, the development was showing its age. Copies of copies of copies of keys barely unlocked the doors. Windows would open halfway, get stuck, and then would open the rest of the way with a little jimmying. Heating was included in association fees so people on the ground floor would crank it up, making winters on the third floor like the Sahara.

The development was a financial trap. There were no restrictions on how many units could be rented out. As a result, many mortgage companies wouldn’t give loans to prospective buyers because the rental ratio was too high. Therefore, the available units were usually bought by investors who, in turn, rented them out. The only way to get out, as an owner, was to sell to someone paying cash: an investor. It was a downward spiral.

A large poor development in an affluent suburb, we were oftentimes the town’s dumping ground. Our building’s Dumpster greeted residents at the parking lot entrance. People in nearby townhouses, unable to get the garbage collectors to haul their large waste without a fee, would dump their old couches, TVs, and tires in our Dumpster. Our homeowners association would, in turn, attempt to bill us for their garbage. An occasional abandoned car would make its home in our lot. You could always tell them: expired tags, flat tires, and eight inches of virgin snow throughout the winter.

The town’s Fourth of July celebration was held in the nearby park. The sign at the lot entrance reminding people that it was private property was ignored. We had to compete to get a spot in our own lot. It’s just poor people who live there, right?

Designed to attract young professionals, the development strayed from its original intent. It housed a motley crew of inhabitants: recent immigrants who packed extended families into two-bedroom units, pads for aging bachelors, divorced people needing a place to sleep with a spare bedroom for their kids on the weekends, older people forced to downsize, and the occasional Section 8 denizen. Few people used the pool and nobody used the sand volleyball court, except the occasional cat. The gazebo, purportedly for picnics, collected empty Tecate bottles at night.

Each of the buildings’ bedrooms faced the common parking lot. While not a pretty sight, it allowed us to see the action in the ‘hood. We saw families in their best, piling in the car for a wedding or first communion, kids trying to master skateboarding tricks, or the local gearhead trying to resurrect a dead muscle car. When our daughter was a toddler, she recognized the garbage truck’s noise (and could differentiate it from the recycling truck) and would run to her room yelling, “Garbagetruckgarbagetruckgarbagetruck!!!”

Night brought out the horn honkers, too lazy to ring the doorbell or even use their cell, and parking lot urchins. Ambulances came regularly, flashing their lights into our rooms, and carted away who-knows with God-knows-what. As new parents, we fretted that our finally-asleep baby wouldn’t wake up, and as someone who at one time worked two full time jobs in addition to grad school, I detested losing my precious minutes of sleep. If someone carried on too long too late I’d call the police, then hide and observe from the shadows until they came to break up the party.

But aside from the drug addict who nearly burned down the building and the hoarder who collected 62 cats, our building’s residents were generally responsible.

I can’t say as much about the people in the neighboring building.

Moving trucks appeared regularly. It was a constant cycle of transients moving in and out. When they came, I peeked down to get an idea of who was moving in. I tried to see what they unloaded from the truck? I hoped to see boxes of books but I usually saw large screen TVs and PlayStations.

One particular family moved into the adjacent building. It was headed by a small, thin black woman, probably in her early to mid-30s. She moved quickly and her head darted around, like a city pigeon, always aware of her surroundings. On warm days, she smoked outside and left her evidence, lipstick-stained Kools.

She had four kids. The oldest was a lanky boy, about 16 or 17, but who could pass for several years older. The second was a chubby, bespectacled adolescent, about 12, who walked laboredly and spoke as if he had to pre-think every word he said. From my experience working with people with special needs, he fit the profile of someone with a mild intellectual disability. The other two, a boy and a girl, were several years younger, about 4 and 5.

It was a zoo over there. The two youngest ran around the parking lot regularly, screaming, and playing with the trash next to the Dumpsters. Occasionally I’d hear the mom slide open a window and yell at them to “Git back over heah!” The boy with a disability liked to play in the playground with much younger kids, likely his intellectual equals. To me, he seemed harmless. He pushed kids in swings, but it made the other parents nervous, like he was Lennie from Of Mice and Men. Eventually, parents stopped taking their kids to the playground.

Watching from my window, I created stories about the family.

She probably had the first one when she was about 15.

She’s probably uneducated.

The kids probably have different dads.

She’s probably on public aid.

And I was probably right.

She had a junky old car. Every time she backed out and turned, it screeched. For five bucks she could have fixed it with some power steering fluid. But she probably didn’t know that.

I hoped they would be gone after a one-year lease.

On a hot summer day I was in my unit with my wall A/C on full blast. As I went to close my blinds to block out the sun, I noticed a police car parked in the lot. The two officers casually walked up to the lady, who was standing on the lawn. She wore a too-large neon yellow Key West T-shirt, tied in front, a knotted kente head wrap, white short shorts, and generic tennis shoes without socks. As they approached her, their dialogue was inaudible to me, but I saw them pointing to the back of the squad car, where the window was halfway down.

The woman stretched her neck, like a prairie dog trying to look above the horizon, and then nodded at the policemen. She put her left hand on her hip and her right hand shook, alternating positions on her head — brow, cheek, chin, over her mouth, unable to find a place that was reassuring.

One police officer opened the back of the squad car. The older boy’s long legs emerged and touched the ground. He contorted his body to get up and out. The officer gave him a gentle nudge in the direction of his mother.

They had probably picked him up for something minor and felt Mama’s punishment would be more effective than the court system.

I had heard the statistics. Black boy, single mom, public assistance, at least one run-in with the law. You’re probably more likely to graduate to prison than from college. What a shame. Tsk-tsk-tsk.

The boy’s head slumped. He folded his arms and looked annoyed, dreading the inevitable shouting from Mama, but he didn’t look scared. He didn’t have the bulging white eyes or wet pants I would have had if a police officer escorted me home at that age.

I concentrated on her. At this moment, she didn’t look her age. Her shaking hands and tearing eyes had the look of a scared young girl who was in way over her head with far more responsibility than she could handle, yet her slumped posture told the tale of an old, weary woman who was already tired of a hard life.

If I could hear her inner thoughts they’d probably say, “I don’t know what I’m doing and I can’t do it anymore.”

He walked toward the apartment as she pursued him. She whipped off her head wrap and swatted him over and over, barking words at him that I couldn’t discern over my A/C. They both entered the building, out of sight but not out of my mind.

The boy with the disability remained on the grass, having watched the scene with no visible reaction while the younger ones banged on the Dumpster with an abandoned bicycle wheel.

There was no ‘probably’ about her now. In my thoughts I saw a woman who moved to this town so her kids could get a better education and maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t have a life like she had.

Was she much different from me? I lived in the poorest place in the finest school district I could afford because I wanted the best for my daughter. A teacher once told me that the real meaning of the American Dream was that your kids would do better in life than you did. Even if you’re not doing so well yourself, the hope that you can pave a better path for the next generation somehow keeps you going.

But now her hope was disappearing. Her oldest boy started on the slippery slope toward the life of statistics and stereotypes.

She brought this on herself. She’s the one who brought these kids into the world. She’s the one who probably dropped out of high school. She’s the one who’s not setting a good example.

But then again, she’s not the one who abandoned those kids.

About a year from the time they moved in, they were gone. I didn’t notice the moving truck, but I noticed their absence. Parents started to let their kids play in the playground, the parking lot was quieter, and Kool butts stopped showing up in the common areas.

Although I can’t help but think we would all be a little better off if they had stayed.