We Had This Neighbor...

When we lived at the other house, we had this neighbor named Mary. Mary was white, and she had two little girls, Charity and Lauren, who had black fathers. Kasi and Charity became best friends, and Mary and I became friends. This was about three years ago. A couple of months before we met, Mary had heart surgery, and ended up losing her job. She had zero income, and neither one of the girls fathers were paying child support. The only source of income she had was food stamps.

She started spending a lot of time at our house, eating our food. She claimed she had to sell her food stamps to her friends so she could have money for rent and necessities. There was one month when junior and I paid her power bill for her, so that the girls wouldn't spend the summer months living without power. To pay us back, she bought us food with her food stamps.

Then her kids started breaking my kids toys, and she wouldn't say anything to them, and would just look at me and say sorry. One thing in particular was Brandi's doll swing that cost us $30. Her youngest, Lauren, sat in the seat and broke the part that made it swing. Mary just looked at me and said there was nothing she could do because she had no money. This was after months of her eating every meal at my house...that's three extra people we had to feed...and spending endless hours on my computer. She would walk in the room where my kids were watching tv and tell them to give her the remote, because she was the adult. (I didn't know at the time...Ryan told me later) I never told Junior about the broken swing, because I knew he would be furious. He was already a little ticked that she was giving out our phone number to her friends and stuff because her phone was turned off.

Well, one day in the late summer, our car broke down. The kids were back in school at this time, so we borrowed a truck that only seated three people to go run some errands and get the parts to fix our car. As we were pulling out of our driveway, she was walking up the road to our house, and flagged us down. She wanted to know where we were going without her, because she needed to go to the grocery store (her food stamps had come in that day). Junior told her we couldn't fit everyone in the truck, and that we had things to do that day. Well, she got so mad. She acted like it was OUR responsibility to get her to the store..oh, because her car was repossessed. Anyway, the next day, she sent her oldest daughter, who was 7, up the road to get a roll of toilet paper. Junior was in the yard, and she walked up to him and said her mom said to get a roll of toilet paper from us. No "can we borrow one", but "mom said to get one". Well, Junior told her no, and sent her home empty handed. That was when Brandi said something about her broken swing. Junior lost it. he drove down to her house and told her not to come back to our house because it was not our job to keep them up, especially if her kids were going to break our kids stuff.

Not too long after that, she moved, Well, technically, she got evicted. A few months later we ran into the friend of hers that she moved in with, in wal-mart, and I asked about her. The woman said Mary was in jail for assaulting her. I was shocked. The woman also went on to say how Mary told her that my husband was racist and hated black people, and that is why he told her not to come back to our house. That's right, the man who fed her and her kids, paid her bills, took her where she needed to go, and let her practically live at our house for about four months, is a racist and hated her kids.

I was so angry at first, but then I found it amusing that she would feel the need to say things about us instead of admit that she was in the wrong. But, whatever.

Why am I telling you all this?

Well, today we had to go get a new cable box, so we grabbed Brandi off the bus and headed there. She was hungry, so we stopped at McD's to get her a happy meal. She ran out to play in the playland and Junior and I ordered. I went out there to see what she wanted to drink, and who was sitting out there but Mary. She did not look happy to see me. She was even more unhappy to see Junior. But I was nice, said hi, asked about her kids...she had the youngest with her...and she was nice enough back.. I was tempted to ask her about what she said about Junior, but I didn't.

I was very, very nice.

Even though she didn't deserve it.