Another Home, and Another Home

}My mother arranged for me to live in a red brick 3/2 house down the street from her. We didn't always do so well living close to each other. The best relationship we ever had was when I was living in Corpus Christi, a good eight-hour drive from Dallas. We went out to eat on a regular basis, and Mother always got a rundown of what was wrong with my life. She was my fixer, and she tried to make all my problems disappear.

Mom tried to understand about bipolar disorder, but she never did. She accepted my diagnosis, but never understood how deeply it affected me. I couldn't overcome my symptoms by trying. Bipolar is a medical disorder which requires medication to keep symptoms under control. Mother had it, but she refused to acknowledge problem throughout the years to me or herself. She had diagnosable problems for most of my life. I realized this in retrospect. I had inherited the disorder from her side of the family, but she never accepted that some of her life problems came from the same disorder that had interrupted my life so many times. I had no brother or sisters, and no close family members I was alone in the world with my pets. My mother died at the age of 92.

I moved from the house on Mother's street because my next-door neighbor was persecuting me. My dog, "Shadow," the German Shepherd, would go to the front gate and bark at people and noises. My neighbor's two little boys slept in the bedroom next to the front gate. It was an unfortunate situation.

The neighbor took things as far as contacting the city to give me a neighborhood citation. He reported to the city that I hadn't been cleaning up the yard of feces. I don't know how he knew, because there was an eight-foot wooden fence between our properties. He annoyed me to the point that I finally asked my mother to help me move off of her street.

I moved to another 3/2 about a half mile away. The house was located next to the DART train tracks. I didn't realize there would be noise from the train, but I heard the train on a regular schedule. One night the conductor blew the horn, and I jumped out of my bed. I changed my sleeping room from the back of the house to the front bedroom. I could still hear the train on the tracks, but it wasn't so loud. Sleeping in the front bedroom alleviated the problem somewhat, but the train still interrupted my sleep. I had no idea there would be such a problem when I moved in. The owner glossed over the problem when I had asked before renting.

I had asked the landlord for an !8-month lease because I intended to move to Corpus Christi after my mother passed away. She didn't die in 18 months. The landlord wrote the lease for only eight months, and I didn't notice when I was signing the contract. He thought he could get more rent for the house than I was paying.

"Two Men and a Truck" moved me to a 3/2 in a different location. It had 1600 square feet, a fireplace, and a sunroom. I brought Mom over and she rolled through the house. She was pleased I had moved to a house as nice as the ones I had grown up in.

I had a lot of boxes and furniture. I directed for the movers to put the majority of boxes in the garage. My back slowed me down in unpacking the boxes. It took a while, there were still boxes in the garage, but the majority of the boxes were unpacked, and I felt like I had settled into my new home. It was spacious and bright, and the pets enjoyed the big, grassy back yard. I thought I would live there forever.

I had my friends over. Jennifer and Lisa had been my running buddies for a while. They were not as well educated or aware of behaviors that one wants to keep out of their life because of problems.

Jennifer got pregnant. She stayed at Lisa's house toward the end of her pregnancy. The father of her child was an illegal Mexican who ran from his responsibilities. He wrecked their car and ran from the scene. Soon he ran from Jennifer. She stayed at Lisa's house until she had more money to live on. Lisa got disability, and the rent on the duplex was paid without Jennifer having to pay anything. She was very pregnant by this time.

Jennifer got a job as a waitress, but she wasn't able to save much money. As her time approached, she went back to her father in Battle Creek, Michigan. He had driven the long expanse to get his daughter. She was 24.

The baby was a little girl that she named Alejandra. She was as happy as she could be playing mommy and going to church. Her life seemed to have gotten on a better track. But she wanted to return to Dallas, and when she did there were problems.

She and the baby stayed in a by-the-week motel. She made contact with one of her old friends, Manuel, who was a general contractor, and made plenty of money. When they brought the baby to my house to visit, Manuel was the perfect doting father. He carried the baby into the house and settled her in on the floor on the opposite side of the room we were. We were smoking pot and she didn't want the baby to get secondary smoke. They seemed the perfect parents. They weren't.

Manuel would come home from work about 5:00 every day, and then Jennifer would walk to the grocery store to get their dinner, and then cook. It seemed to be going well. Jennifer had the day with the baby and Manuel helped with her at night.

What Jennifer didn't know was that Manuel was abusing the baby every day when Jennifer went to the grocery store. He treated the baby like a rag doll. One time the baby slept for three days. As a new mother, Jennifer thought this was normal, but Lisa told her there was something wrong.

One day when Jennifer got back from the grocery store, the baby was unconscious. Manuel took Jennifer and the baby to the emergency room, then
he took off for parts unknown. The baby had a concussion, broken ribs, and a broken leg. Manuel had abused the child every time Jennifer was aw y. Manuel was out of the picture, and Jennifer was arrested for child abuse. The baby was on life support. Jennifer was in jail, she began to believe that she was just separated from her baby, not being able to accept what had actually happened. She fell into numerous mental problems. The baby was removed from life support and passed away a few months later.


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