The Renters ~ a childhood memoir
Maybe we all have those moments from our past that need pinning down, outside of oneself, safely…. Over There.
The stream of consciousness beginnings :
It was not that I was dreaming of them last night… more that with the first waking thought, once again, they were there. The Renters.
The unruly leftovers of the renters had stayed dormant, shoved to the back for so many years, and I was fine with keeping it that way — until recently. A photo showed up in the mail, sent from an old family friend. Me, age eleven.
“I thought you might like,” she had written. It is the only photo I have of myself from that year my father died, or the couple years after that. I found myself staring at that child, my mind awash with the flotsam of those years.
…Atlanta, Georgia, 1971…
The year before my father died, my family consisted of a father and mother, one older sister, and two older brothers: one who lived far away and always had, and one brother who lived at home with the rest of us.
Then my father died, and simultaneously it seemed, my sister left for college, my brother for Vietnam, the other brother I hadn’t seen since I was three, and my mother went off to work.
I stayed home alone.
On special occasions, I went to work with my mother who had taken a job at the Swan Coach House, then the main headquarters ‘to do lunch’ for Buckhead Atlanta and the Junior League.
My 4' 8" part-Czech mother stood out at the Coach House, but she didn’t care - or if she did, she hid it well.
The days I went to work with Mom, all I wanted to do was take the path through the woods over to the neglected old mansion that was part of the original private estate.
Today, the mansion is remodeled and feted as a grand home: Atlanta’s Swan House,
but then,
in early 1970s,
it was in need of the funds to restore. The Atlanta History Center had already purchased the estate, but it was rarely visited that year —
except by an elven eleven year-old who lived in her mind, where fathers and siblings didn’t suddenly disappear, just like that.
For that brief year, Swan House was mine — no one could convince me otherwise.
I rarely saw anyone else there on the days I climbed the curving staircase, or rolled down the sloping lawn, or imagined pretty much any and everything other than the facts of my real life.
Once, I fell asleep in one of the molded shells that terraced down between the grand outdoor steps. No one disturbed me.
The fountain shells were dry then and I thought of them as flower petals a flower fairy might arise from, just like in Thumbelina. I fit perfectly, curled up inside, the warmth of the cement against my back.
Mom didn’t pay much attention to what I did.
I was happy there, as princess/orphan of Swan House.
………….
I see that I am avoiding the renters.
Who wouldn’t prefer to remain at Swan House?
…………
The Swan Coach House job soon bored my mother and she went on to a career as realtor, then a successful broker.
She volunteered all over, worked with Andrew Young in getting Maynard Jackson elected first black mayor of Atlanta, she sailed, she joined committees, she lunched, she had social circles, she worked, and worked, and worked. I admire her way, as far as that goes.
Still.
There was the decision I cannot understand.
From the time I was eleven until sixteen, while it was just Mom and I at home — well, just me, mostly, at home —my mother rented out our downstairs bedroom and bath, my brother’s old room, to a series of strangers, men, who had answered Mom’s ad in the paper.
There were some good men, some odd men, one funny man, and a couple really weird men.
Weird, that they were men.
Strangers — from all over the world…
….plus that one American. He worked the night shift, came home, got drunk, and sometimes passed out on our back porch — many mornings by 7:30am. Sometimes school mornings. Sometimes leaving the TV dinner in the toaster oven to burn.
It was the prettiest spot in our house, that back porch, it faced the woods. You could hear the creek from there, too. I used to love the back porch, well, before this renter came along.
He hid his after-shift drinking pretty well, sometimes until Mom went to work anyway, sometimes not, but you’d think Mom would have at least said something to him on her way out the door.
Years later she told me she never smelled the drink on him. My lip curls on one side as I write that sentence.
I sure smelled it. Still do.
The American, by the way, was Ralph. He was the very first renter. He arrived after that sent photo was taken, a couple months after my father died. I was not quite eleven and a half.
It took Mom a year to get rid of Ralph.
It also took me freaking out entirely when I got home from camp and saw Ralph’s car still parked in front of the house.
I opened the car and hopped out while Mom was still driving up the street; me, not quite realizing I wouldn’t be able to just jump out and start running the other way.
……….
After Ralph was Jose, from Columbia. He looked like Freddie Prinze to me.
He didn’t speak much English and I didn’t see him a whole lot as I’d already gotten in the habit of spending my home time in my bedroom closet by then.
My closet was my sanctuary.
My waking dreams arena.
Once, when I was sick (whether by design or actually), Jose bought me a paint-by-number black velvet painting kit with five painting outlines filled with numbers, ready to paint in bright colors. I grew to love the feel of velvet, even though I knew my classmates would find black velvet paint-by-number paintings tacky.
Well, Jose from Columbia didn’t find them tacky, God bless him.
With those paintings, I grew to love the clear-cut delineation of black and white, of rules, of lines, of numbers and a sense of order.
I also began to crave the flow of color as it smoothly left my brush, leaving liquid beauty behind.
Images emerging were almost beside the point.
Comfort in, fascination of, the merging of solid with fluid was the longer-lasting imprint.
I still find peace there…
Water and shore.
Instrument and music.
Wax and fabric.
Muscle and mind.
…………
One of the renters didn’t rent — he was an exchange student from France, Gilles was his name, although when and where he fits in I’m not sure. Same with the guy from Thailand, or the guy from Rice University.
Or maybe the guy from Thailand was the guy from Rice University.
Then there was John, the only other American who rented a room in our house. John later went on to run one of the most successful hair salons in Atlanta. He was an assistant to Hal at the time. Hal cut Mom’s hair.
I loved John and was crushed one day when he told me he couldn’t marry me because he liked boys.
I still remember floating for days after that when he went on with: “It is better this way, for I adore women and love to make them beautiful.
“You, I will always adore.”
When he moved out, simultaneously coming out, I, ironically, moved into the closet entirely.
Skipping along….although, no, I am not skipping anything specific…..
Well, maybe I am. But it is true that I just don’t remember everyone.
………..
The era of men as renters ended with the perfect storm of Sali from Pakistan. I was almost sixteen years old by then.
Sali gathered us neighborhood kids downstairs in his room to tell us stories of his homeland — then he would line us up and put black kohl on the inner rims of all our eyelids, “like we do in my homeland.”
We would all play until dinner time — boys and girls showing up at various neighborhood tables, eyes and backs of hands smeared with black. This did not go well with parents in 1970s Atlanta.
The particulars of Sali’s leaving are still murky to me. What I do know is, while I was away that final summer of male renters, Sali decided he wanted to invite the thirteen year-old neighbor boy in, to put kohl on the neighbor boy’s eyelids, with no one else around.
By the time I got home from camp, Sali was gone.
I later found out the neighbors had been up in arms about the renters for awhile, although Mom poo-pooed the idea there had ever been any trouble.
Something, though, must have finally gotten through to her.
Our next renter was from Colombia — her name was Alejandra.
