The Ownership Society-Part 1-New Fictional Series

Part 1

It was supposed to be their dream home.

Lost between ominous red-striped envelopes bearing overdue notices mass-printed on cheap paper, buried under stacks of cynically bright colored pre-approved credit card letters, humming under the buzz of brash female voices yelling at the home’s occupants through a small, grey answering machine, hid the dream of the people living inside the house. The dream manifested itself in different physical forms: a nursery, lovingly painted in the tones of the sun and the sky on a clear, summer day; a rosebush, clipped and freshly watered, the musty smell of fresh cedar mulch mixing with the scent from the pink flowers as they opened to the visitors approaching the front door; family photos hung in carefully playful groupings inside the foyer, each face smiling lovingly on the guest as they climbed the stairs to the fireplace-adorned living room with the vaulted ceiling.

Deborah and Charles bought this home right after getting married. They were newlyweds moving into a newly built subdivision holding each other tightly together as they looked forward to seeing the trees in the backyard grow up with their yet-to-be-born children. They talked of where to put the yet-to-be-bought swing set, and purchased books from Home Depot on how to build a yet-to-be-constructed sandbox. Deborah had her first attempts at interior decorating in this home, painting the walls in the upstairs bathroom an icy-cold blue in the thought that this might refresh her and Charles after a long day under the hot, Georgia sun.

They didn’t have a buyers’ agent when they purchased this house. They simply walked into the newly built model, over plastic-covered carpet and through crisp, white walls into the living room where the builder’s agent fed them chocolate cookies and sweet tea and started showing them floor plans. Before they knew it, they were sitting at their closing signing page after page of legal documents. The lawyer, who was playing beat-the-clock, looked slightly annoyed when Deborah started reading some of the pages for herself. Fatigue won in the end, and by seven o’clock Charles was walking toward their car, his left arm holding onto Deborah’s waist, clutching a freshly-pressed set of house keys in his right hand. He kissed Deborah, squeezing her close to his chest before opening the passenger side door for her.

That was just a few years ago, before Charles got laid off from his entry-level job at a local computer company. This was before Deborah, four months pregnant, seated across the table from the manger of the small non-profit organization she worked at, was told that they just couldn’t afford to keep her around any longer. But they had been in the house a few years, and had paid off enough principal to qualify for a small home equity loan, to help pay for the pregnancy and the rest of the things they would need for the baby. Charles was working three jobs now: stocking vending machines by day; working the cash register at a local gas station at night and during the weekends; and he was trying to start his own home pressure-washing business, inspired by the pressure-washer they had received as a wedding gift.

And Deborah? She was home, full-time, with the baby. With both of their families living out of state, and with the cost of daycare at two-hundred and fifty dollars a week, even trying to look for a job was out of the question as whatever she would take home would just be eaten up by the daycare bills and commuting expenses. She was trying to do what she could to budget. Deborah was the one who found out that they qualified for the WIC program. Deborah planned all the meals, clipped coupons, and used the food processor (another wedding gift) to make her own baby food. She was a careful garage sale shopper, traveling to wealthier neighborhoods early Saturday mornings after dropping Charles off at the gas station, and talking rich, white women down from $1.00 to $0.50 for a pair of BabyGap shorts.

They had stretched, and stretched, and stretched the household budget. Charles barely got eight hours to sleep a night. And still…it wasn’t enough.

It started with the credit card bill. They had expensed a lot of the baby’s items on it – and their honeymoon – and when money was good they had always tried to pay more than the minimum. They had still been able to make the minimum payment, barely, when Deborah received a call from the credit card company stating that they could either close the account or pay thirty percent interest. When Deborah protested, explaining to them that they hadn’t been late in over a year, the aggressive, booming male voice on the other end of the line stated simply that because they had gone down to one salary as a household they expected them to be bankrupt within the year, and they wanted their money first before they defaulted on their other creditors.

Deborah closed the account. The interest rate was frozen at nineteen percent. They were now down to one credit card with three hundred dollars left in available funds.

Then the baby got sick. Deborah tried everything she could – over-the-counter children’s medication, cool baths, watered-down apple juice – but nothing helped. Finally, desperate, she took the baby to the emergency room. After more medication and more visits to the doctor the baby’s health improved. The rest of the home equity money was used paying the medical bills.

Soon, the interest rates on the credit card and the home equity loan were eating up any disposable cash their struggling, young family had for daily necessities. They weren’t the only ones in their neighborhood going through this – driving down the entrance of the subdivision, instead of seeing playing children and folks out mowing their lawns, she started to see foreclosure sign after foreclosure sign. “CASH FOR YOUR HOUSE” signs started appearing at the front of the subdivision. Charles, swearing under his breath, would try to remove the signs as fast as they sprouted up, but they were like a many-headed hydra: remove one sign and two sprung back in its place. Eventually, he gave up.

It was right in the dead heat of August that the utility bill came. After the baby’s illness, Deborah didn’t take any chances with the air conditioning: it was left on, all day, at seventy-nine degrees. Telling herself it would be cheaper to pay for the utility bills than go through another round of doctors bills for the baby, Deborah cocooned into a self-made psychosis of safety. When the bill came, that cocoon shattered, leaving her in a distraught, rumpled panic.

It was three hundred seventy-five dollars. And, with two hundred ten dollars already overdue, and no extra sources of income to draw from, she felt naked and vulnerable to the indifferent world outside. Hearing the baby cry, Deborah tried to make a bottle of formula, only to have her unsteady hands drop it on the vinyl kitchen floor, the pale, milky liquid pouring over the black-and-white faux tile motif.

And then the doorbell rang.

Wiping her eyes, gently lifting up the crying child, Deborah walked to the door and peered out the keyhole. A pudgy, hardened looking face looked back at her through the tiny, distorted glass. But, she knew who this was: Malcolm, her next-door neighbor’s nephew.

Cautiously, Deborah opened the door.

“’Sup?” Malcolm smiled broadly, a wild, insincere effort.

“Hey, Malcolm. How’s your aunt?” Deborah replied, her arms unconsciously wrapping the baby closer to her.

“She’s alright. Hey, I gotta favor to ask you.” Malcolm leaned slightly against the house. “I gotta – you know – take care of some business in Forsythe. I was wonderin’ – my aunt said you all are looking to make a few bucks – and I’d be real appreciative…” Deborah nodded, filling the empty pause with an approval for Malcolm to continue.

“So. Like I said, I got this thing I gotta do and the rental car company don’t rent to folks without a credit card or somethin’ ridiculous, like five hundred dollars in cash or somethin’. And, so I was wonderin’ if possibly you might be able to rent a car for me.” Malcolm pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket, rolled tightly and held together by a dirty, red rubber band. “I mean, I got money but I don’t got rental car company money, you know what I’m sayin’? And I only need the car for three days. So, if you could rent the car for me I could give ya three hundred bucks right now.” Malcolm snapped the rubber band off the bills, absently counting the twenties as Deborah’s mind looked for an excuse to over-ride the nagging doubts in the back of her mind. Three hundred dollars. Air conditioning.

Baby.

Her eyes drifted toward the innocent face of the child she held in her arms, and for a moment it was as if time stood still. She could feel his warm breath on her cheek, smell that wonderful smell of detergent and milk and joy that all babies exude.

“Let me get my keys.” She told Malcolm, her mind made up.

Keys in hand, she closed the door.

To be continued...