Susan, Who Is My Neighbor, A Tragicomedy Part 1
Susan, who is my neighbor, walks me through her house and out into her lush back garden. For my benefit, her dogs are in the garage. I appreciate this. Slanting and bright, the afternoon sun warms us and I welcome the shade of a patio umbrella as I settle in among her congregation of potted succulents.In the first ten minutes Susan, a consummate raconteur, has me laughing. She regales me with a brief and dramatic history of the various canine companions she “accumulated” or “was just given” over the years. I chuckle, I guffaw, I nearly snort.Humor and heartbreak spin out in combination as Susan—using her voice, face, and body to full effect—relates the adventures and misadventures of Handsome the ugly pit; Anna the puppy that walked like a raccoon; and finally the gimpy Sky, who Susan treated with turmeric for arthritis, but who really had cancer and chewed off her own paw because she couldn't feel it.
I'd never had the choice before
Susan tells me, “After we had Sky put down, my daughter Gayla wanted to go look at the pound right then. But I was just not in the mood. Finally, it’s like I’m gonna need to go. I’d always had a dog.“We went to the pound. But I don’t want anything too old; I don’t want anything too young; I don’t want anything that’s gonna tear up anything." Under her breath she adds, "like a dog." She continues, “I don’t want anything too quick that is gonna kill my big orange cat that’s used to strolling around the back yard with crippled little Sky. The cat’s gotten real leisurely." Now a languid talking cat she says, "Look at me! I’m in the backyard."After a pause she admits, “I just didn’t know what to do ‘cause I never had the choice before. I’d just end up with stuff.“And then there was Jet. I wasn’t really paying that much attention to him; he wasn’t as spectacular then as he is now. I was looking at these other dogs. The lady was there talking to Gayla and said. ‘This is such a good dog. He’s so smart. And he was a lab mix.'“Ok, well that’s not a pit. I’ll try that, right? So you get your dog. You take him to the vet. He’s seven months old, he weighs 40-some pounds, and he’s gonna grow whatever the percentage was. It turned out he’d be about 55 pounds." She pauses. "He’s over 80!” Susan’s expression is part delight, part what-can-you-do.
He's a lab mix
“People would see him and at first they’d go, ‘Mixed with pit?’ And I’d go, No. I don’t think so. Some people who seem to know more about dogs said, ‘He’s got this place right here (across the chest) and he’s real jowl-y. That’s a shar pei. He’s mixed with shar pei.” And I’d say, Okay..., maybe.“And then my roofer came out. He’s on the roof,” Susan gestures to a spot above our garden seats, “and he goes, ‘What kinda dog is that?’” As if repeating an old joke, Susan replies, “He's a lab mix,” The roofer asks, “Have you ever heard of a Cane Corso?”“I looked on my phone and googled: lab mix with Cane Corso. They are just these gigantic dogs, a kind of mastiff! The dog that pops up—I could show you that picture and tell you that was my dog and you’d believe me. They are exactly the same.” Susan smiles.The mystery of Jet’s heritage satisfactorily solved, I'm ready to hear more. I redirect the conversation and state the first prompt, "Tell me the story of moving into this house." With ease Susan switches gears and reaches for her answer with all of its attending stories and vivid details.
I had all these dreams
“I lived downtown in a house on the corner of Lemon and Hewitt. When I got that one…” Susan pauses and starts again, “My daughter was born in May of 1975 and her father was killed in October of 1975. I got a lump sum from social security for survivor’s benefits—less than $2000, but $2000 was a lot of money back then. It took awhile for me to get my money. I bought that house probably a year or so later. I loved that house.“I worked as a clerk typist, and I was going to college and I was going to be a social worker, and I had all these dreams. I was pretty young. I just wasn’t making enough money as a clerk typist. So I went through this apprenticeship program and now I was working as a millwright apprentice. I made good money. So I thought that instead of paying all those taxes, I would buy another house and then rent it out.“This house belonged to some people that my mom worked with. The husband and wife got divorced and he remarried my mom’s friend. He lived here with his second wife and finished raising the kinds. Then, once the kids were through high school, they had to sell the house and split the profit with the first wife."
A more desirable neighborhood
“The house sat empty for a while. It's in a way better location than the one downtown. Houses downtown, they’re craftsmen, really cute, but the neighborhood is not desirable. This is a better location. It’s in a really good school district. It’s got a shopping center—way too close—but it’s there!” She gestures over her back wall to the side of a large Stater Brothers market.“I came and looked at it. It seemed so big to me, but I went ahead and got it. But I couldn’t rent it out for the first year because of the FHA loan. You can't just buy property, you have to live in it. So I was only gonna live here for a year and then I was gonna go back to the house I really liked, which is the house on Lemon street.“I bought this house. And as soon as I bought it construction went bad. The apprenticeship job was still there, but there has to be work. I worked for different contractors. I was working for a United Riggers project down in Irvine and they had a strike. So United Riggers would send me to work at different jobs. Really I only had to work one day a week—I made enough."
Escrow & Sweat Equity at 27
“But you have to be employed the day escrow’s ready to close you. I would work for one or two days and then I wouldn’t work. That would be when United Riggers would do their paperwork. It wasn’t like fax machines, it was through the mail. Finally, after the third time, even though I wasn’t actually working, United Riggers just signed off on it ‘cause they kept getting these things.”“At that point I was getting kinda worried. Since the owners knew my mom, they had given me the key to the house. So during the time I’m on strike, I go in and tear out the carpet and repaint. But I’m doing all that for somebody else’s house. If I don’t get to buy the house because I’m not employed the day escrow closes, everything I put into the house is just theirs. But I didn’t really know that. I’m just thinking, Oh! Okay.” In a lilting voice Susan speaks as her younger self.“You were what," I ask, "twenty-something...?” She says, “I was 27.” I respond, “We don’t know a lot when we’re just 27. We’re still learning how to do things.” But Susan isn’t quite as generous with her past self, “Well, it would seem like I shoulda known that. But I just didn’t."
Not as wealthy as I pretended
“At the time, I was not as wealthy as I pretended I was. It would have been smart to have a moving company pack up and move me. But at the time I had a boyfriend with a truck who, you would have thought, would have been helpful.” Susan makes a face and adds, “I learned through our relationship that whenever I really needed him, he was not available.“So it was me and my mom. My mom was less than 60, but it seemed like she was old. Now I’m older than that! Just me and my mom loading stuff into the cars and driving it over. It was so much work! It was so much work to move over here that when it was time to move back I just never did.”I ask Susan, “What year was that?” She replies, “1983.”Of the WIMN interviews so far, Susan has lived on our block the longest. She remembers who lived in which house before the current residents. She knows who to call when there's a leaking water line, or a semi truck idling too long behind Stater Brothers—because she notices. Just like she noticed a neighbor walking with a limp, and stepped out to ask, Are you all right? Her kindness and curiosity helped birth this project.
Ahead, more of Susan’s lively and heart-wrenching storytelling and, by request, art by Jess.