My stay here in Baltimore is more than half over. I spend every second weekend here with her while in town. Megan is pretending that she’s not just going to have me here twice more. All day and half the night the train whistles in the back ground by day and haunts the fore ground by night. Rats are the big issue.
The dirty Mexicans to the left with seven kids and a cat, have a garden, which feeds the rats, who do not want to live with the cat.
The clean Mexican to the right is cementing his yard to keep the rats away. Georgia and Megan are caught in the middle, four rat holes burrowed just under the concrete pad of her porch. Three holes are within ten feet of the cherry tomatoes clinging to the fence, facing towards the feed.
The good Mexican comes over with a bowl of concrete and fills in the whole he can see, talking to me. He is the older, shorter brother of the other two that lived here, who called me Poppy. The middle brother had talked to me and ran off a buck gro I was concerned with a couple years back.
Clean Mex gets down low and looks at the wholes and says, “The concrete is only four inches thick, those wholes go up.”
“Then I’ll gas them, I say,” looking at Georgia up over the railing, “You have extra bleach and ammonia, that makes deadly gas. I’ll pour in the mix then plug the holes with beer bottles broken on the inside.”
“Okay,” she says, “on a mission I see. I called the County and the man said that I was fighting a losing battle and was on my own. He said if they are in your yard they are your pets! I’m calling the congressman!”
Once I did this and went inside, a half hour later, between the center and left hole, the rats within had dug two air holes. Another beer bottle was broken into the holes and 8 ounces each of bleach and ammonia poured in. I went out back in the alley and got chunks of concrete the right size to back up the bottles and jammed the tombs shut, hoping the little rodents die from the gas.
Here I sit, between checks, about ready to get the hammer and return to my post…
…More broken bricks and concrete chunks and a cinder block corner from the alley are hammered into the gap between soil and concrete. Well, the little bastards will have to work.
Last night, Missy, the wife next door of four children had walked the girls and the boy home from school. The youngest girl is so cute as she stands on the other side of the lattice railing, hanging onto the stays, asking me urgently, “Jjojjo? Jjojjo!”
Megan, Jojo being her local nickname, comes outside and says, “Hey, Baby!” and the little girl hops up and down triumphantly, “Jjojjjo!”
Megan, lights a cigarette and smiles and says, “Your mommy does your hair so nice, you are so well dressed—you are beautiful!”
The mother thanks her, telling Megan that she gave Georgia some chicken and rice dinners from her food bank box. The husband has made himself scarce. We hear him out back shopvaccing his car.
I ask Megan, “He finally talked to me today, was very nice and filled in that rat hole. What happened to his brother. I got on well with the big one.”
Megan takes a long drag from her cig as the BPD police chopper drones off overhead into the city, “That motherfucker hates me. They had this domestic thing, he hit her. I can’t kick his ass, so I told her to call the cops. The stupid cop has got them both on the porch and is asking her stupid fucking questions. So the Polish bitch in me comes to the roof and I say, “Hey, officer, what is a matter with you asking her questions in front of him? She will never answer you under his nose. Take her out in the street and question her.”
“The dumb fucking cop, a light goes off in his eyes, he was like twenty-five and he does as I say. The hitting stopped. Then she comes to me and tells me that the baby sitter told her that the oldest daughter told her that one of the brothers touched her, probably the skinny spic that got bossed around by the big one and fat daddy here. He says it couldn’t be, and she has me standing right here and tells him it is her and the girls or his brother. Well, I guess that pussy is still good, because he put his brothers out. Now we can park and don’t have to put up with spic polka every Friday night. If I had heard someone touched my granddaughter, I’d a been waiting in the bushes with a hammer and knife, that scalping knife you gave me.”
I look at her and say, “Now it makes sense that he has warmed up to me. He probably figures I disappear for long stretches after you have the cops work me over!”
“Shit, you’d never hit a woman,” she says, “look at me, cussing like all of my thirty year old coworkers. I have to stop that. This was my brother Bruce’s house. Once, a pig was up the street on the corner there yelling at Heather, his daughter, calling her a ‘punk.’ A man in uniform calling a twelve year old girl punk for playing hopscotch on the corner.
“Bruce went up there, six four, broad, back in his negro whooping days. I remember once when I was 8 and Bruce was the man of the house after Dad passed, some man in a big car and mustache pulled up to the stoop and said, “Tell your brother so and so is looking for him.” I just looked down. Well, Bruce found his ass and told me, ‘That motherfucker will never bother you again!’ and he was good for it.
That was how Bruce lit out after that cop, walked up there, thumped his finger in that pig’s chest and said, ‘Who are you calling a punk?!’
The pig was alone and about shit himself, couldn’t answer. Bruce answered for him, ‘She has a name, and it’s Heather. She has a mother and a father, so is not a punk. You have a problem with her, you come knock on my door—got it!”
The itty bitty little prick pig just stammered, ‘Yayayeyes sir,’ and that piece of shit is supposed to protect me? Sorry, Pumpkin, I just get carried away sometime. It so nice to have you around. A broke bitch likes her company. You’re getting skinny—I’m feeding you again, and if you know what’s good for you you’ll eat.”
