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“What does this mean?” Lisha Hall hadn’t learned to read when she was younger and had thought it stupid to try and learn now. She could pick out a few words and know them. Her first and last name mostly, and little words that did you no good if you didn’t know what the rest of them meant. “It has our name on it. See? Hall.”
“It says…. Let me focus it a minute here.” While she couldn’t read, Jimmy couldn’t see well close up. Distances weren’t that bad, but close up stuff hurt his head, he told her. No one even made glasses that would make the words big enough for him, Lisha thought. “I don’t rightly know. Something about Rogen. I have to take it to the window for better light.”
“At least I can admit I can’t read. You won’t admit that you can’t see your hand in front of your face.” Jimmy told her that she’d be able to read his mind when he stuck his fist in her head. “Is that even a good threat? Christ, Jimmy. You’ll have to do better than that if you’re going to shit talk to me.”
They never hit each other. They rarely argued past just saying things. They’d had a lot of ups and downs throughout their marriage, and some of them were really down. Just the other day, Jimmy had found out that he had sarcoma—stage four soft tissue cancer. They didn’t give him long to live, as it was inoperable. He had even less time for him to be considered active.
“It doesn’t even say where this is from. For all we know it could be from right across the street.” She looked out the window and shivered. The only thing across the street from them was a trash dump. Lisha hoped that her kid would do better than that. “I’m going to call the newspaper office and ask them what they know. Surely, they would know where this came from if they printed it, don’t you think?”
She did but doubted that Jimmy would get any answers. All those HIPPO rules, or whatever they were called, was fucking up a lot of things nowadays. As she laid back on the bed, in the only room that was at least a little cleaned up, she thought about Rogen. The girl had been smart, she’d give her that.
“Too smart for her own good, if you ask me.” The kid was forever getting into their business. Why, she’d even had the nerve to balance their checkbook when Lisha told her that she didn’t know if they had any
money or not. Turned out that not only didn’t they have any money, but they were in the hole about two hundred dollars. Bounced check fees were a killer.
But it was her knowing how to save her brother that had shocked them all. And to find out that not only could she read well, but she could run a computer too. Rogen had been close to her forth birthday when she’d saved his life and called the ambulance, all the while her and Jimmy had been standing there with their mouths open. They’d been lucky no one had believed her when Rogen had told them that they’d tried to kill him.
After that, not only did they watch what they said around her, but they also were careful about what they did to Jamie. Rogen seemed to be around every corner waiting on them. She’d even taken to letting her brother sleep in her room on the floor, like he was nothing but a puppy.
Lisha had hated Jamie since the day she’d found out that he’d ruined her for other children. He’d been so big, and—well, she’d not really taken good care of herself, so when he was born, he tore her up inside. Not only that, but he’d made it so she’d not be able to carry another child even if she was to get pregnant again.
“Fucking dip shit.” For months, even years before Rogen had become his watcher, Lisha had tried everything to get Jamie out of her life. To make him suffer as his daddy and she had. Her and Jimmy had wanted ten children, enough so that they’d be able to live in the lap of luxury for the rest of their lives on the government’s dime.
But that had never happened. And when they’d gone to the welfare office to tell them that they had a dummy in the house, a note had been on their file that said that they were not only to be turned down for any extra income, but they were to be cut off from all government help. Lisha had always blamed that on Rogen. Jimmy didn’t think it was possible for her to have done anything like that, not being so young, but Lisha had known better.
“I just got off the phone with the newspaper. They are rude, did you know that? Anyway, they won’t tell me where the article originated from, only what it said.” She asked him if she’d read it to him. “Sort of. They told me that Rogen Hall was considered a hero for saving a family from a burning car. Something about it being a great risk to herself, but I don’t get that. Why would she even bother if they weren’t her family? I guess I will never understand her. Rogen will always be a mystery to me.”
“To both of us. When was the last time you heard from her? It had to be a while ago.” He told her. “Six years? Wow, never would have thought that. Christ, really? Six years? I wonder if I’d even know what she looked like now.”
“She’d never be as beautiful as you are, my love.” She loved him for that, and he tossed the paper on the bed. “I’m going to go and see if I can rustle us up something to eat. You suppose a good faerie came in and cleaned up the kitchen? I’m getting sorely sick of living like this. It’s much too late to try and clean it up now, don’t you think?”
“Yes. We should have done it years ago, I guess.”
They were hoarders. And worse than that, they never cleaned up after themselves—really, never. When they cooked, the pans were put in the sink to “soak.” They only used paper plates and plastic forks. Those were tossed away. And the only reason a pan or something would get washed was because they needed to use it again. The only thing that ever got cleaned up was the coffee maker, and that had better be clean at all times, she thought.
Making her way through the piles of newspapers, she nearly fell over a stack of books. Neither of them read, and why they had kept them was beyond her. But they kept everything. Even if it broke down, fell apart, or even caught fire, as a few of the fans they’d gotten had, they would just toss it aside and go out and find another one. Thank God for auctions.
Their entire house had been furnished at some time in auctions. They’d sell off the good stuff if they didn’t want it, then keep the rest until they needed cash for something. Or it simply ended up in a corner with the rest of the crap. Lisha was just bypassing a stack of empty cans when she heard someone at the front door.
Answering it, she made sure not to allow whoever it was to be able to see inside. They’d been living there since before the kids had been born, and so far as she could remember, no one had been at their door since the kids left. She asked the woman there what she might want.
“I saw in the paper that your kid is a hero. I wanted to come over and ask you what you might have thought of that. I’m sure you’re not proud of her.” Lisha, no longer concerned about what this woman saw, opened the door wider. “Also, I don’t know if you are aware of this, since I have never seen you go to the mail box, but they’ve bought up the houses along this block, and you have to move out. I would have told you when the letter first came out, but...well, I don’t like you, so I’m telling you today because this is the last day you have to get out. They start bulldozing them in the morning.”
The woman, Lisha had no idea what her name was, left her standing there, cackling as she left—actually cackling as she walked away. Closing the door, Lisha looked at the paper in her hands. It was bright blue and the lettering was huge at the top. But she could see the numbers on it. Thirty and then a twenty-two. Running to the kitchen, she found Jimmy looking at the instructions on a label.
“We have to move.” Jimmy stared at her with that blank look. “Here, look at this. It’s a notice of some kind. Jimmy, they’re going to tear down our house. A woman just came over and told me that today is our last day we can live here.”
“I wondered why no one was harping on us about rent being due again. It’s been a few months.” He took the paper to the window, and she had to wonder again why he did that. Was there some sort of magic that came in that helped him see it better? “You’re right. We have to be out of here by six tonight.”
They both looked at the clock, and Jimmy wondered aloud if it was working or not. Pulling out her phone, she knew that there wasn’t any minutes left on it, but it kept the right time. It was five minutes until six now.
“What are we going to do now?” Jimmy said he didn’t know. “We don’t have any money to move. And what will happen to all our things? We’ve worked hard on saving things for a rainy day.”
They’d only started hoarding when the trash wasn’t picked up. After that, it was sort of fun seeing how high they could stack shit, and which one of them would be the one to topple it all. Just the other day it had taken Jimmy an hour to dig her out of the newspaper stack that had fallen over onto her. They’d both been laughing so hard, she thought she was going to be there forever.
“I guess we just take what we need.” She looked around when he did. “I don’t have any idea what that would be either, love. Perhaps we can get some of our cleanest clothes? Some of the things that we can sell. I don’t know where we’re going to put ourselves after this, but we can’t live here anymore. That bastard of a landlord, he should have told us what was going on. Not let us be in the dark.”
