The old woman with the old house on University. (Last Part.)

There was a door in my room that lead to the rest of the house. For the first month, Mrs. G. kept that door locked at all times, and being a stranger to her, I totally understood. However, as she got to know me better, she didn't bother to lock it. I appreciated her trust, and went out of my way to respect her privacy by never going through that door uninvited.

Early one morning right before going to work, Mrs. G. knocked at the door and asked me if I had any plans for dinner that evening. I told her I didn't.

She said, "Well, come on into the house after you get home and I'll make you a nice dinner."

I told her I really, really appreciated it. Being one of the working poor, a good dinner was hard for me to come by. While living there, I existed on a diet of hamburgers, french fries, and Cup-O-Soups. Having no kitchen, I had to make do with one of those electric coil things that you place in a coffee cup to heat up water. To this day I don't think I've ever had another Cup-O-Soup. I have had enough for one lifetime.

That evening I got home and changed, and knocked on the door that lead to the rest of the house. I opened it up a crack and yelled, "Mrs. G! Mrs. G! Are you there?"

I didn't hear anything.

I opened the door and cautiously entered the hallway.

"Mrs. G! Hello! Are you there? It's Steve!"

I continued to yell out in this way, and walked down the hall to her living room. As I walked, I passed her hall bathroom. The door was open. As I walked by, calling out, I saw something out of the corner of my eye.

Mrs. G. was in the bathroom, totally naked, sitting on the toilet, seemingly asleep.

I rushed past and stood in her living room, ready to panic.

My mind was racing, "Oh my God! Oh my God! What am I going to do? What am I going to do?" I had to get out of there, and there was only one way. I went to the front door, which was securely double-bolted, and unlocked it. Then I unlocked the screen door, and carefully closed both doors behind me. But, I was unable to lock the main door's deadbolt or the screen door. I stood on her porch and didn't know what to do. She would definitely notice that her deadbolt and the screen door weren't locked.

What on Earth was I going to do?

I quickly went around to the side of the house and unlocked the door that lead to my room. I closed it behind me quietly, and sat in silence on the corner of my bed for at least a half hour. To this day, that fleeting image of her is burned into my memory. 

Finally, I heard a quiet knock on the door. Mrs. G. called through the door and asked me if I was home.

"Yes, Mrs. G! I'm here!"

"Are you ready for dinner, hon?"

"Yes, Mrs. G! Thank you!"

"OK, well come in whenever you're ready, hon."

She made me a nice dinner and we ate it together at her kitchen table. After we finished, she and I walked into the living room. I had to get her doors locked up again. I couldn't think of anything better, so I asked her if I could look out her front door for a moment. She was puzzled, but said I could. Thank goodness. I pretended to unlock the deadbolt and pretended to unlock the patio door, looked out on the porch for second or two as if I was getting a good look, and then locked both doors up again. She looked at me with a little curiosity, but it quickly passed and I thanked her for the dinner and excused myself. I quietly closed my door and went and laid down on the bed, thinking of my narrow escape from a complete and utter mess.

I stayed with Mrs. G. through the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's holidays. Sometime in January I started looking for an apartment for Jane and me to live in after we got married in March. Mrs. G.'s daughter was a manager of an apartment complex in east Fort Worth, so I met with her and finally signed a lease for my first-ever apartment that February, and told Mrs. G. that I was going to move out.

She and I had really come to like each other during the time I lived there, and she said she was sorry to see me go. During the last week I stayed with her, she invited me to have breakfast with her, and I gratefully said yes. She told me to come in anytime after 7:30 and she would make our breakfast.

Not wishing for a repeat of what had happened before, when the next morning came I waited until 8:00 to open the door and enter her house. I called out, "Mrs. G! Mrs. G! It's Steve! Are you there? Hello!!" I walked down the hallway, cautiously. "Hello! Mrs. G? Mrs. G! Are you there?"

I walked quickly past the hall bathroom. Once again the door was open.

And once again, as I walked by, Mrs. G. was totally naked, sitting on the toilet, seemingly asleep.

How could this happen twice? How could this happen ONCE?? What was I going to do? I couldn't go through the front door again and then pretend later on that I wanted to look out door!

So, I just went to her kitchen and opened her back door and stood there looking out at the back yard. Finally, after a lifetime or two, Mrs. G. came into the kitchen (fully clothed, whew!) and was initially startled to see me standing there looking out her back door. She looked at me with mild suspicion.

"I hope you don't mind," I said. "I've always wanted to get a good look at your back yard. It's so nice out there. Your flowers are really pretty."

She looked up at me, scrunched up her face, and smiled her really beautiful smile.

"Well, sit down and have some breakfast now." she said.

The second crisis had passed, but I was convinced that someone in the universe was sitting back and laughing at me.

Soon after, I finally moved out of Mrs. G.'s place and into my own apartment. After so many fast-food meals and Cup-O-Soups, I was so grateful just to be able to boil a pot of water and make a couple of hot dogs for my first dinner there. It was one of life's simple pleasures that I was to never take for granted again.

That March, Jane and I got married, and our honeymoon was driving from Ohio to Texas with two cats in the car. We had settled into our little apartment, when I heard from Mrs. G.'s daughter that she had been put into a nursing home and her house on University was to be sold.

Jane and I made a trip to the nursing home. We found her, alone, in a little room she shared with another woman. I introduced her to Jane, and Mrs. G. smiled her big smile at her. But then her expression turned to sadness.

"They took my house away, Steve."

Her family had come to the conclusion that Mrs. G. was incapable of taking care of herself or her home anymore. I'm sure they had nothing in mind but her well being, but by taking away her home, they had taken away her reason to live.

Soon after Jane and I visited with her, she passed away.

Earlier, when I still lived with her, she told me some of the details of her life. She had had it rough. Without giving me any of the details, she had hinted at extreme poverty and possibly physical abuse by a long-dead husband. I never pressed her for information. All I could offer was my understanding.

She was a product of her time and her upbringing. She was frugal to the point she reused paper towels and dried them in her kitchen. She was a gardener who loved to put her gardening gloves on and tend to her flowers around the house. She was a mother and a grandmother and a great-grandmother. 

She was afraid of black people.

She was also a nice and loving person, who took me into her home and treated a stranger with kindness.

And I know fully well that being white was the ticket necessary for me to be taken into her home and to be treated with kindness. 

That I took advantage of that ticket is my burden to bear.

The old woman with the old house on University. (Part three.)

The room ended up being perfect for my needs at the time. I had a private side entrance, a bed, a dresser and a separate bathroom of my own. Mrs. G. provided me with towels and bed linens, and vacuumed the room and cleaned the bathroom while I was at work. For a guy starting out in his career, with no money, and about to get married, it was pretty sweet.

However, a few things happened that I attribute either to God punishing me for taking the room, or to God laughing at me for taking the room.

As I've mentioned, Mrs. G. was very hard of hearing. You often had to repeat yourself a few times, or practically shout, in order to make yourself understood. When she finally made out what I was saying, she would always smile up at me with her eyes all scrunched shut behind her glasses and say, "OK hon. I hear you."

My first night there was uneventful. It was a Saturday, and I was pretty exhausted from my trip and from the stress of moving to another state and another town, so when I went to sleep I was dead to the world. Sunday night, the night before I was to start my new job, was a different story.

I had had a hard time getting to sleep that night, nervous and excited to be starting my first "real" job. I finally drifted off around 1:00 in the morning, and was likely snoring loudly when I was jarred awake by incredibly loud hard-core country music coming from Mrs. G.'s clock radio.

Normally, I like Jimmy Rogers. I really do! But at 3:30 in the morning, cranked up so incredibly loud as to wake me up from a loud sleep, I sat up in bed suddenly and wondered what the heck was going on. When I realized it was her clock radio, I got up and walked over to the wall we shared, and heard Jimmy Rogers even more clearly. "T FOR TEXAS!! T FOR TENNESSEE--EEEEEEE! T FOR TEXAS!! T FOR TENNESSEE-EEEEEEE! T FOR THELMA. THAT GAL MADE A BIG FOOL OUT OF ME-EEEEEE!"

I climbed back in bed and pulled the covers over my head. It didn't help. The music didn't stop. It just didn't stop! It kept going and going and going. Finally, after about an hour, the country serenade was over. I thanked God for the sudden silence and was about to drift off to sleep again, when it started all over again.

I wrapped my pillow around my head in a pointless effort to deaden the sound. I thrashed around in the bed, turning this way and that way, trying to get back to sleep. It was just no use. So I got out of bed and did what the music said to do.

"I'M WALKING THE FLOOR OVER YOU. I CAN'T SLEEP A WINK THAT IS TRUE! I'M HOPING AND I'M PRAYING AS MY HEART BREAKS RIGHT IN TWO. I'M WALKING THE FLOOR OVER YOU!"

Finally, around 6:00 in the morning, the concert finally came to an end. I lay in bed and stared bleary-eyed at the ceiling, realizing that I had to be at work in just two hours. I thought about going back to sleep, but I didn't dare it. It couldn't be this bad every night, could it? Could it?

Sigh.

Welcome to Texas.

The old woman with the old house on University. (Part two.)

The house was located on University Drive in Fort Worth, near Texas Christian University and close to Berry Street. It took me a long time to find the place, due to my own confusion while driving around in an unfamiliar town, but I finally did and pulled into the narrow driveway next to the house.

I knocked on the door. Nothing happened. I waited patiently, and then knocked again. No one came to the door. I could hear people talking inside the house, so I knew that someone was there. After waiting about 10 minutes on the front porch, I knocked really loudly and yelled, "HELLO-OOO!" Finally, I heard someone come to the door and unlatch the lock.

A very old woman with gray hair and glasses hovering on the center of her nose opened the door. She was bent over from age, and five feet tall if she was lucky. She looked up at me through the screen door and smiled one of the sweetest, most gentle smiles I had ever seen. It lit up her entire face and made her look younger than her years.

"Are you Steve?" she asked.

"Yes," I replied, just a little agitated from having to wait for so long on the porch. "I talked to you about your room for rent."

"What? You'll have to talk louder, honey. I'm a little hard of hearing."

"I said I'm here to rent a room!" I said, not quite shouting.

She nodded. "OK. I'm Mrs. G. Come on in!"  (I'm not going to use her full name in this blog.)

Mrs. G. lead me into her living room. It felt as if I had suddenly been transported back to the 1940s. The furnishings were old. The sofa was overstuffed and flowery. My eyes started to water because there was a musty odor that intermingled with the strong artificial sweetness of scented bleach. Despite the brightness of the day, the room was very dark. A small color TV stood on a metal stand over in one corner, blaring away, unwatched. Another old woman sat on the sofa, nodded and smiled up at me, almost swallowed up by the deep sofa cushions.

"You'll have to excuse me," said Mrs. G. "This is my neighbor."

After brief, awkward introductions, Mrs. G. said, "I'm sorry for asking if you were white on the phone."

I smiled a sickly looking smile and said, "Oh, that's OK."

"Well," Mrs. G. continued, "Just the other day, someone called about the room. He sounded just as white as you or me, but then he came to the door and he was a negro. I said, 'No, no, no! This won't do!' and I shut the door on him. He pounded on the door, and when he wouldn't stop I threatened to call the police! He finally yelled something and went away. I didn't dare leave my home for hours afterward, because I was afraid that he was still out there, waiting!"

"So when you called today, I just had to be sure!" she said.

I didn't know what to say. I just nodded. It felt like I was in some kind of play. I couldn't believe that in this day and age, blatant racism like this was possible. I was having a hard time reconciling myself to it, and was thinking about making my own excuses and leaving, when Mrs. G. said "The room is on the side of the house. There's a private entrance, and a private bath. It has a bed and a dresser. It's one hundred dollars a month, first month paid in advance."

All I heard was "It's one hundred dollars a month."

I had no money, other than what I had saved and brought with me to Texas. My new job as a copywriter for Radio Shack advertising paid less than 10 thousand dollars a year, before taxes and deductions. I was engaged and due to be married the following March.

I had a hundred dollars, though.

And I was white.

I took the room.