If these walls could talk…

Two truths and a lie.

Currently: Planning what ridiculously long set of nails I’m going to get to celebrate completing a (terrible-but-finished) draft of Book 3.

(Re)-reading: Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Watching: Greenleaf on Netflix

Listening: The Opportunist podcast (more cons and cults and questionable charismatic figures)

Thinking: If a tree falls in a forest, but no one was there to post about it, did it even really happen?! (Yeah…I’m on a social media break.)

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This month marks the anniversary of my move to Croydon. Which means that I’ve lived here, in this flat, longer than I’ve lived anywhere else, including my childhood home. Wild.

A lot has happened in the years I’ve lived in this apartment building, so to commemorate here are three stories about former neighbours, but one of them is not (completely) true. Let me know which one you think it is…

One: Your friendly neighbourhood…

There have been three police raids at this apartment building. At least, there have been three that I know of. The second one happened when my oldest son was about eight weeks old. The first pound of the battering ram against the neighbour’s door almost made me drop my newborn.

I gripped him hard in my arms, but I was trembling so viciously that my mom, who was staying with me at the time, rushed to take him from me. I kept myself upright by leaning against the counter and waited until the pounding and shouting stopped. Then I crept on treacherous legs to my front door and peered through the peephole.

I saw them in their white shirts and stab proof vests funneling through the narrow entranceway to the flat next door. Though I’m pretty sure I never saw my neighbour get arrested, I can still see the scene in my mind’s eye. Memory is tricky that way.

My neighbour – let’s call him A – was in his early twenties. He was of Afghan or Iraqi heritage, I think, and he drove a red Porsche Cayenne. When he opened any of the car doors, a Porsche logo illuminated the ground like a neon welcome mat. I learned later these are called puddle lights.

He had a girlfriend, who I’m pretty sure was like 19. She was a pretty mixed race girl with long curly brown hair, and maybe she had freckles. She also had a child from a previous relationship, and one day they threw a birthday party for them at A’s house, even though she didn’t really live there. Also, my neighbour was a drug dealer. So I wondered about the choice of venue, but the kids sounded like they were having the best time through the walls.

How did I know he was a drug dealer? He sold the neighbour three doors down weed. I can’t remember how I came about this info, probably from my ex who has a way with coaxing stories and secrets from people. That neighbour had issues, but this story isn’t about him.

I assume A was selling more than cannabis because can you even make a living off of marijuana these days? I’m no expert in these things, but I doubt it. He didn’t sell from his flat though, unless it was weed to his neighbours, and to be honest, he gave away a fair bit for free from what I can gather. He and his girlfriend used to bake thick, fudgy hash cakes. I never tried one, but was told it was potent – the ‘good’ stuff.

They would fight a lot though. Screeching arguments soundtracked by bangs and crashes that sounded like judgement day. Then a couple of hours later they’d be laughing or having loud, passionate sex. One day it sounded too much – I think it was her crying that got to me, because she never usually cried. It went on for so long I felt like I had to call the police. The officers came and stood at the door speaking to A. I could hear them asking to speak to his girlfriend, but she wouldn’t come to the door. Eventually she came and she was sullen and mumbling and didn’t want anything to do with them so the police left.

I thought any goodwill between us would evaporate after they realised that it was me who called the feds. In hindsight, calling the police on a drug dealer for a domestic disturbance was a risky use of my free will. But the next day I was returning home and bumped into A as he left his flat. He smiled at me through hooded eyes and I noticed the deep, bloody scratches around his neck. His smile was so serene though. He must have been high.

The day A’s flat got raided, the police were there all day. They knocked on my door once or twice, broad smiles, friendly voices, asking practical questions about something to do with getting into the garage downstairs. I’ve learned that officers have two faces and they are all the same. There is the face they show to suspected criminals and the one they show to the general public – the benign, “we’re your friendly neighbourhood coppers” type of smile, like they didn’t just smash down the next door neighbour’s door.

Anyways, after A was bundled into a police van and the rest of the officers left, the door to the flat was left ajar. I walked past the morning after and curiosity made me press my face to the crack, peering inside, considering entering the flat just to have a look around. I’d never been in the flat next door and was just interested in what it looked like, even though it was sure to be exactly the same as mine.

I thought I better not – ‘crime scene’ or something? I don’t know. But also out of respect, I pulled the door to, but it still wouldn’t close. It looked like the police had smashed off the lock.

Later that day, A’s girlfriend turned up. I heard her through the wall on the phone as she sifted through the apartment, cupboards opening and closing. Then she left, this time the door wide open in her wake. I never saw her or A ever again.

Image credit: Jendella Benson, 2014

Two: Delivery

I usually sleep with my phone on Do Not Disturb, but for some reason, this night I didn’t. My sons were staying over at their grandma’s, but that’s not the reason, and it’s a detail that’s important because my sleep was uninterrupted for once. Well, until I got a phone call.

It was my ex. He had got a call from the partner/baby father of a woman who lived in the building. She wasn’t my direct neighbour, as in we lived on different floors, in different parts of the apartment block, but I had seen her and her daughter fairly often, and we acknowledged each other with tight-lipped smiles. Well, she was pregnant with her second child and apparently she was about to give birth, but she was all alone in the flat with her daughter. Could I go and help her?

It took a few moments for my brain to process this information, but when it did, I got up quickly, threw on some clothes and made my way to the flat in question. The door was already open when I got there and I called out as I walked in.

The door led onto a short corridor that quickly opened out into a living/dining/kitchen space. Sat on the sofa with a tablet, silently watching a cartoon was the woman’s daughter. I said ‘hello’ to her, trying to keep my voice steady before I found her mother on the bathroom floor, cradling a bloody, newborn child, still attached to the umbilical cord – an umbilical cord I knew I would not cut because, if done incorrectly, the child could bleed to death.

I knew this because when I was pregnant with my second child, I had this exact fear of being alone when I went into labour and had researched what I should or should not do. The baby would be fine attached to its mother for now. But still, I could have fallen down right there and then.

Something you need to know about me is that I am quite squeamish. Newborns in particular, just the sight of them brings back the earthy, raw smell of childbirth. Even looking at a washed and dressed newborn baby conjures up the smell of placenta.

“Where are your clean towels?” I asked this woman whose name I didn’t know. That would be the first thing I had ever said to her in however long we’d both been living in the building. She directed me to the small bedroom and I brought a pile of fresh towels for her as I dialled 999.

As I stood nearby, completely useless apart from the smartphone pressed to my ear. I noticed that next to her blood pooling on the floor was her own smartphone. She was on a WhatsApp group call with, I presume, her relatives.

“Why has no one called the paramedics yet?!” I wondered as I tried to explain to the operator on the other end of the line that this woman had delivered her own baby on the bathroom floor while her four-year-old daughter sat in the next room watching cartoons on her tablet. When I was assured that paramedics were on the way, I heard the voice of one of the relatives pipe up from the WhatsApp call.

“What’s happening now?”

“The ambulance is on the way,” I called, loud enough to be heard over the groans of the woman and the squalling of her newborn.

“Alright, her niece is on her way as well.”

The voice sounded strained, like it was trying its hardest to speak the Queen’s English in what was clearly an absurd, life-or-death situation. I took another peek at the WhatsApp call and realised – right, all of her family still live in Jamaica.

Now, I didn’t know what to do: to stay with the woman or go and speak to her daughter who must be scared out of her tiny little brain. So I hovered awkwardly, wringing my hands and pacing back and forth between the two until I heard a voice calling from the hallway.

“We’re in here!” I replied and finally, two calm professionals in green paramedic uniforms entered the scene with their box of medical equipment and all the usefulness that I lacked. I was ready to head back to my bed, but there was still the small girl with the big brown eyes who was trying with all her might to concentrate on her tablet.

“I need the toilet,” she told me in a tiny voice and I looked in the bathroom where two strangers were kneeling in her mother’s blood about to snip the umbilical cord to her newborn sibling.

“Erm, OK. Where are your shoes?” I asked, looking at her bare feet and her thin pyjama bottoms. She stared back at me, blank.

“I’m going to carry you, OK?” and I hoisted this small stranger onto my hip and shouted through to her mother and the paramedics that I was going to take her to use the toilet in my flat.

As I waited for her to finish. I began to compare my untidy flat to her mother’s. Between telling myself not to faint or throw up, I couldn’t help notice how spotless it was. No watermarks or stubborn limescale around the draining board and the grout in her bathroom was sparkling. How had she, heavily pregnant with a four-year-old child, managed to keep her flat so tidy? Had she been cleaning when she went into labour?

As I carried her daughter back over to the flat, I thought about what this little girl might say to her mother or recollect about this night. “That woman’s house was really dirty, Mummy!” I was conjuring up imaginary scenarios and feeling shame and embarrassment.

Thankfully, soon after we arrived back, the woman’s niece turned up. I think we were all in a daze, because all we managed to do was just nod at each other as we switched places, like colleagues clocking in and out on a shift handover.

I went back to my bed and text my ex: “All good, her niece is there now.” Then I fell asleep.

It occurred to me, a week or two later, that maybe I should have bought the woman and her newborn a present. Or at least checked in on them, but that felt weird because I still didn’t even know her name. But the next time I saw her, our greeting upgraded from a tight-lipped smile to an audible “Hi”, “You alright?”

The day she moved out, I saw her niece again, helping her move boxes from the first floor through the garage and into a waiting van. The daughter was there too, with a cousin or a friend, chatty and smiling, not the sombre, large-eyed child who I’d carried through the building on a toilet run.

“Have you seen my brother?” the little girl called out to me when she saw me pass. “He’s much bigger now!”

She pointed towards a car seat where a chubby baby sat in a furry onesie, wrapped up against the cold.

“He is, isn’t he?” I replied with a smile, and that’s when I realised, Oh, so she had given birth to a son.

Image credit: Jendella Benson, 2014

Three: Cause and effect.

An apartment building like ours is an eco system, not finely tuned by any means but over time, people learn how to live next to each other. Everyone makes small compromises and little accommodations that make life easier, without inconveniencing themselves too much. What is the number one threat to that eco system? I think the official scientific name is ‘a jobsworth’.

When V moved in with her adult daughter there were red flags from the get go. First of all, her daughter went around freely offering up the information that she used to date my neighbour A – yes, A, the drug dealer in the volatile relationship.

For what it’s worth, A said he never dated her. They met at a shisha lounge nearby and had a one night stand or something, but it was implied that this info should be kept from his girlfriend. No one was looking to revisit the police episode, so we obliged and hoped V’s daughter heard about A’s girlfriend’s wolverine claws.

Then there was the fact that V tried to insert herself into everyone’s business from day two. Small talk in communal corridors soon devolved into clumsy fact finding missions trying to ascertain relationships between neighbours and people living in the same flat. She seemed very interested in my relationship, desperate for information about how we met, how long we’d been together and why we didn’t have kids yet.

Maybe my introverted social awkwardness gave off an air of mystique. Or maybe she was just a jobsworth. Either way, I never did get invited to the housewarming party she threw in her flat one evening, where I heard through the grapevine that her daughter made obvious drunk passes at my ex, knowing full well that his wife was just a couple of doors down.

Maybe this young woman just liked the thrill that came with trespassing; maybe the possibility of provoking interpersonal violence helped her feel alive. Each to their own, but I was not going to satisfy her ego by retaliating. The day you find yourself fighting over a man is the day you realise that he has less respect for you than the other woman does.

Anyway, the final red flag was the way she began to immediately complain about a car parking system that had otherwise been fine, and bar a few hiccups, and had kept an easy peace between all car-owning neighbours.

There were enough spaces for each flat to park one car. The spaces were not marked out but everyone kind of found their spot. When residents had visitors, people “borrowed” spaces and notes were left on windscreens – “Call Flat 3 to move”, etc. If it’s not broken, why try and fix it? Well, because you’re a jobsworth.

V complained to the landlord about the parking situation. Lord knows what she said but a couple of weeks after she moved in, numbers were painted, finally assigning parking spaces to different flats. The first immediate issue was that A had that Porsche Cayenne, remember? And we had a BMW X5. Two boxy 4x4s that were meant to park next to each other, but that ‘next to each other’ also happened to have a corner wall to the right and a supporting pillar to the left. Awkward enough for one boxy 4x4 to manoeuvre into, let alone two.

Fortunately, we came up with a compromise. One of the flats didn’t have a car and she agreed that we could park our cars, one perpendicular to the spots we were meant to park in (therefore blocking them off completely) and the other car next to it blocking off her empty car park spot. Whenever she had visitors, we would work around it. The ecosystem was once again responding.

The only other issue came, ironically, for V, because she was assigned another corner parking space right next to the garage entrance. It wasn’t that her car was especially big, it was a silver Hyundai, but it was just awkward to park in because it was immediately to the right as soon as the garage door opened. Reversing into the space involved driving right into the car park and reversing back into the corner. But remember, there is an X5 and a Cayenne parked creatively at the other end, so what could be a two-point move turns into a manoeuvre of infinite cycles of inching forwards and backwards to bend a car into a tight rectangle.

V, imagining that she had built some kind of rapport with us, came to speak to A – the young man who her daughter was spreading stories about – and my ex – the married man who her daughter tried to seduce – about the situation. Not without great satisfaction, they explained that there was absolutely nothing they could do about this problem that she herself had created out of thin air.

V then went on a diplomatic mission trying to swap car park spaces with other neighbours and was met with denial at every turn. There are other stories I could tell, like how she tried to get one of the neighbours fired from a weekly cash-in-hand gig he had cleaning the communal parts of the building, but just understand that in a ridiculously short space of time she had crossed swords with absolutely everyone in an apartment building where people generally kept to themselves.

Finally, in a fit of rage, V drove out of the garage, closed the shutters behind her and reversed her car into the shutters repeatedly, until the back of her car looked like a crushed tin can. Utter madness. The garage door no longer opened and everyone else’s car was stuck in there. But overshadowing the anger and frustration was complete confusion… There are cameras all over the car park including right above the entrance… How would she explain the damage to her insurers, or was she happy to pay out of pocket for this nonsense…? Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face…

Well, she got evicted pretty much immediately and gossip from another neighbour revealed that she was a friend of the landlord and had gotten her flat deposit-free but had proceeded to not pay a single penny in rent from the day she moved in until the day she left. The violent act of spite against the garage shutters was the final straw.

Knowing her personal connection to the landlord puts her actions into some sort of perspective. Maybe she thought that being a Grade-A jobsworth was doing her landlord-friend a favour, making herself useful in lieu of rent. But then to add property damage to the mix…?

This was one of the moments that changed my attitude towards people in general, especially when driving. Pray to your Maker and keep your composure, because you never know the levels of absolute lunacy that are quietly living inside that other person behind the wheel.

Image credit: Jendella Benson, 2012

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In January I’ll be doing a free writing workshop in Croydon on the 21st (let me know if you’d like the info) and then I’ll be chatting it up with the Everyday Racism Book Club on the 30th.

The Black Ballad Book Club returns on the 23rd as well, and we’re reading The Lagos Wife by Vanessa Walters.

Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year, friends x