(still being edited)
*
"Mom, that's the third time that same car has gone
by. They're looking at us. Mom, wake
up."
I stirred from what sleep one gets when parked under a
street light.
"Mom, there they are again. Let's get out of
here."
"No, Lucy, this has to be a safe place. We're right across
the street from a city park."
"Mom, there they are again and this time they are slowing down."
She was right, the car headlight approaching did seem
menacing, coming up slowly, like a predator cruising on asphalt looking for
prey. I realized only then that the car
was likely full of guys out in middle of the night looking for someone
vulnerable to rob or worse, like us.
The key was in the ignition so I pulled out of the
parking space fast. We squealed through
the flat blocks south of Hollywood Boulevard and they were following us. So I approached a stop sign, went through the intersection, then, as
the predator with headlights followed, I made a fast U turn and got on another street going
a different direction. When we made our way up to the
boulevard, there were too many people around for their pursuit to continue. We were
safe.
"I don't get it," I said as we pulled up to a
curb. "That's a city park, we should be safe there."
"Mom, city parks are where the gangs are. I tried to tell you."
I thought a minute and said, "We should go back to our
old neighborhood."
For the next few weeks we slept in our car about a half
block from where we had been living when a landlord stormed into the apartment determined
to get us to move. She threatened calls to child services when Lucy and I
didn't make any more noise than any mom and preteen daughter. She claimed she had
evidence of criminal behavior, and "I will use it if I have to." She
was knocking on the door harassing us several times a day until I finally caved and gave thirty days notice to move.
*
*
For three years we'd lived in that apartment on Franklin
near Cahuenga in what was once a cherry part of town, so the structures are
elegant but old and affordable to a single mom.
The day we moved in the guys across the hall were carrying furniture out, not looking happy. I improvised a line about them moving out just as we were moving in.
"Just wait," he countered. "After about
three years they'll start making it so awful for you here, you will have no choice but to move out."
"Why would they do that?"
"Rent control.
They can't raise the rent unless the apartment is vacant."
"Oh come on," I said. "That sassy black lady landlord Summer isn’t going to throw a single mom and her daughter out onto the streets."
But Summer did.
Almost to the calendar date three years after our move-in, the campaign
to get us to move out began.
... (More needed here. what she did has to be worse and describe her more)
The black former disco dancer now building manager would put 3 day "fix or quit" notices on the door almost every day for things that made no sense to me. She'd claimed the noise my 14 year old daughter made with her friends in the afternoon was causing neighbors to complain. The harassment got so bad, I finally just turned in a 30 days notice with a vague memory of the conversation I had the day we moved in. "Don't worry, we'll find another place that's better," I told Lucy.
... (More needed here. what she did has to be worse and describe her more)
The black former disco dancer now building manager would put 3 day "fix or quit" notices on the door almost every day for things that made no sense to me. She'd claimed the noise my 14 year old daughter made with her friends in the afternoon was causing neighbors to complain. The harassment got so bad, I finally just turned in a 30 days notice with a vague memory of the conversation I had the day we moved in. "Don't worry, we'll find another place that's better," I told Lucy.
I didn't realize how much the rental market had changed in
three years. In neighborhoods where
there used to be "Now Renting" signs begging for tenants, they now
had waiting lists. When you applied, instead of feeling welcome and that you were about to move into a new home, managers eyed you with suspicious and asked about source of income and credit
rating, then mentioned there were a dozen other applicants for the same
apartment with a look that said, and you aren’t going to come out on top.
About 28 days after serving her our 30 days' notice, Summer
stood outside our door asking when we were going to be out of the apartment. I said, We haven’t found a place, we need to
stay another month, and she said, "No you can't. This apartment is rented
you have to get out so we can get it ready for the new tenants."
As the guy
who bought my dad's old desk was carrying it out, he said,
"Look I found this." It was a
"Happy Thanksgiving" card I'd sent my parents twenty years ago that
had gotten lodged in the back of a drawer.
"Oh yeah," I said and was stunned.
"Kinda strange," he said, "since Thanksgiving is next week."
"Yeah."
*
First place we stayed after we lost our apartment was a
hotel in our neighborhood that had a large sign advertising weekly rates. I was shocked at how dirty it was so went out and bought cleaning supplies then
unpacked my professional quality camera that I had not used much lately. I took several pictures of the motel room, of dead bugs and human detritus in the corners, when I got to the bathtub, I
gave out a shocked moan that brought Lucy into the room.
"Why are you taking pictures of that?" she asked.
"Evidence. I'm collecting evidence, this is a health
hazard, how can they rent a motel room in this condition?"
She laughed. "This is what motels for homeless people are like, I tried to tell
you."
Next day I was steaming wrinkles out of a pair of jeans and
Lucy asked, "Where are you going, mom?"
"To the free Thanksgiving dinner for homeless
people."
"Why? We've got food."
"I need to network."
"Mom, homeless people don’t network."
"Well I do and I'm homeless."
Her current boyfriend sat on the floor legs crossed yoga
style in front of her. They looked at
each other and laughed.
"Okay, mom you go network with the homeless, maybe you
can sign up some PR clients."
They laughed and laughed as I put on a last touch of makeup
and went out the door saying, "Yeah you laugh, but I'm going to find a way
to get us back into a home. You guys can sit there doing nothing all day long
about this, I'm not."
"Mom, this isn’t going to work. Mom.
Mom." She called out to me as I walked down the motel hallway, but
I ignored her, certain all I needed to do was circulate at this dinner for
homeless people and find out where they stay, how they get through the day, see
if a couple other single moms want to combine forces and "we can rent a
mansion, have you seen all the empty mansions" I said out loud as I drove my
twenty year old Ford to Presbyterian Church where they were feeding the
homeless that day.
I came back a few hours later stunned, disappointed. "I didn't say a word to anyone," I
told Lucy when I got back to the motel room. "No one wanted to talk. I kept
trying to strike up a conversation with the people near me and no one wanted to
talk."
(Describe the room more. It was SILENT. People eating and not making eye contact or saying a word. Me with my briefcase dressed for success... )
(Describe the room more. It was SILENT. People eating and not making eye contact or saying a word. Me with my briefcase dressed for success... )
*
Sleeping on the street in our car began to feel normal. Some days we'd stay in motels, and when the cash ran out, we'd find a place to park the car in a different spot to sleep, not in our old block, but close enough to feel like
home. All night there were loud sounds , helicopters going overhead, airplanes, sirens. But the streets north of Hollywood Boulevard were quieter than most.
I got so used to the sounds and feelings that come with sleeping in a car on the street that they became soothing. Mornings, I'd hear "runners" from the studios drive up to different houses on the block to drop off "Pages" that were to be shot that day or copies of the morning's trade papers Variety and Reporter. The sound of their cars pulling up, double parking, and footsteps as they trotted up to front doors and back served as an alarm clock for me. We'd wake up and get out of the neighborhood before sunrise.
I got so used to the sounds and feelings that come with sleeping in a car on the street that they became soothing. Mornings, I'd hear "runners" from the studios drive up to different houses on the block to drop off "Pages" that were to be shot that day or copies of the morning's trade papers Variety and Reporter. The sound of their cars pulling up, double parking, and footsteps as they trotted up to front doors and back served as an alarm clock for me. We'd wake up and get out of the neighborhood before sunrise.
I had a battery operated AM radio and I'd listen to Art
Bell on his show "Coast to Coast," describing spiritual or
technological phenomena such as rays of light that could be UFOs or… just weird
phenomena that were the topics of his show.
During those weeks, Bell would play an audio tape that he'd
been sent of the noise that is supposedly way down miles deep in the earth under Siberia. It
was a sound of thousands of humans in a massive crowd echoing with what sounded
like howls and screams but it could just be a jumble of human voices, thousands
of them.
Wow, writing this story today in 2019 I went to YouTube and
found it so here it is.
I know I heard Art Bell's voice as I half-slept through the night say the words in audio above:
Art Bell: I have a clean copy of it now and I warn you,
this could scare you.: He tells of a man who collected audio tapes and things from the super natural. He'd copied one that was called "the
sounds of Hell from Siberia."
Bell read from the email: "I suggest you warn the listeners in
advance so they have the option to turn the radio off for thirty seconds while
it plays. It is true and I for one wish it
wasn’t."
Then he'd play the audio, and I'd sit behind my steering wheel under the street light listening to the sound of what seems like humans howling in hell while Lucy slept in the passenger seat.
*
The weeks we slept in
our car just off Franklin Avenue in Hollywood because it almost felt like home,
I'd listen to those deep Earth voices in the "Sounds of Hell" recording
on Coast to Coast AM and wonder what we were going to do next. 
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