Springle...The House

Characters:

Bernice Leslie Watkins (nee Barnett) aka Ms. Watkins (mom):

Outside of The House:

Respected

Worked at School

Union Representative

Neighborhood Leader

Community Icon

Inside of The House:

Alcoholic

Smoker

Vindictive

Jealous

Fearful

Lonely

Damaged

Conflicted (forgiving, angry, progressive, traditional…)

Stephen Thomas Watkins (my brother and youngest child):

Stephen would be 10 years old this month (June 1972). He saw the world as scary. He couldn’t understand why everybody kept yelling at him. When he was afraid, he cried. He cried when the wind blew. He cried when things that flew went by (flies, birds, butterflies…). You see, to him, everything that flew was a bee. Everybody knows that bees are scary. Even though he had never been stung by a bee, he had heard that he could and that was enough. He was also quite clumsy. So when he tried to run, he tripped over his feet. When he tried to jump, he misjudged the distance and overshot or landed flat. Instead of encouragement and guidance, he received laughter and ridicule especially from his father who he so desperately wanted love and approval from. That’s what happens when you are raised by parents with unresolved issues. All mom and dad did was to point out and focus on what was “wrong” with him. Dad had the attitude that Stephen didn’t really look like him and was too dark to be his son. Dad sort of tolerated him. Every time Stephen made a mistake, Dad was very critical and belittling. He acted like Stephen was an embarrassment. Dad also constantly referred to Stephen and me as his accidents. He felt the need to explain us to other people this way because dad was 40 when I was born and 42 when Stephen was born. He thought he was too old to have children as young as we were as he had grandchildren older than us.

Outside of The House:

Clumsy

Whiny

Afraid of everything

Friends with a few

Inside of The House:

Lazy (never did chores)

Messy

A pain in my ass

Irresponsible

Cried about everything

Stinky (didn’t want to take a bath/shower)

Everything a younger brother is supposed to be

Leslie Susanna Watkins (oldest child):

Leslie would be 12 years old next month (July 1972). She was a tall, skinny, “light-skinned”, girl. She worked so hard to try to help her mother and gain her approval. She was smart (a straight-A student). She was an athlete (could play basketball to rival any of the boys in the neighborhood). Leslie had a gift for making and fixing things. She was also very skilled at taking care of situations, people, plants, and animals, anything that needed taking care of, anything but herself. Leslie had been made to feel that she was unnecessary. She felt small and in the way. She also had considered suicide when she was about six years old after her mother had called her and Stephen into her bedroom. Ms. Watkins had come home from work on a Friday after she had cashed her paycheck. She had all of the money in her hand and began to lay it out in little stacks. She told the children “This stack is for the light bill, this stack is for the gas bill, this stack is for the mortgage, and so on.” She ended with “and if I didn’t have you, I could buy a pair of shoes.” That was when Leslie started to feel unnecessary and a burden to her mother. Because Leslie loved her mother so much she considered killing herself so that her mother could buy a pair of shoes. But Leslie could not figure out how to kill herself without being afraid. She thought about slitting her wrists, but didn’t want to have to watch herself bleed to death, and didn’t want to leave a mess for her mother to have to clean up. She thought about taking some of her mother’s pills, but didn’t want to have to think about dying while she waited for the pills to take effect. She thought about shooting herself or running out into traffic, but knew of a person that had shot themselves and didn’t die. She didn’t want to have to live a life trapped in a messed up body because the attempt hadn’t worked. So she decided to stay alive and try to be as small and out-of-the-way as possible. The only way she could figure to do this was to be as good as possible. Do everything her mother asked of her and more.

Outside of The House:

Scholar (straight-A student)

Athlete

Gardener/Landscaper

Entrepreneur (dog trainer, babysitter, errand runner, snow shoveler, hairdresser, etc….)

Protector of Stephen/Self

Low Self-esteem

Inside of The House:

Cook

Housekeeper (laundry woman, floor mopper, dishwasher, etc….)

Protector of Stephen/Self

Low Self-esteem

Bookkeeper (keeping the checkbook, writing out the bills)

Nurse (taking care of Ms. Watkins while drunk, aftercare of drunkenness, etc….)

Errand Runner (grocery shopper, dry cleaning, cigarette buying, etc….)

Handyperson (painter, fuse changer, wood refinisher, furnace maintenance, storm window changer, etc….)

Poncho (Stephen’s/Leslie’s pet dog that Stephen received on his 9th birthday):

A black and white “German Shepherd mix” (basically just a mutt)

Miss Cat (Leslie’s pet cat):

A multi-striped cat gotten from the neighbor when her cat had kittens

Miss Cat got her name because of her flamboyant personality

Cheryl (Leslie’s best friend)

Outside of The House

My mother, Ms. Watkins as she was widely known, was a well-respected member of society. She worked as a school transportation aide. These aides rode the school buses with the students to keep the children safe and in their seats as they were transported to and from various schools in the area. Ms. Watkins was considered to be one of the top aides and was liked and respected by the children, parents, bus drivers, and school administrators. She was instrumental in getting the aides admitted into the school bus driver’s union and was a union representative. Ms. Watkins was a smart woman.

Ms. Watkins was also well-known and respected in our neighborhood. She was sometimes called the Mayor of Springle Street. She started our block club. Our block was Springle Street between Mack Avenue and Goethe Street. The block club got some amazing things done. We had better police protection than most neighborhoods in our area. Whenever Ms. Watkins called the police they came right away. Sometimes she would call and ask for the tactical mobile unit or the canine unit of the police department. They never questioned her; they just sent what she asked for. There were nights we slept in the basement because we could hear gunfire on some of the blocks that surrounded us. My mom always said, “Bullets don’t have names on them and don’t care who they kill.” All of our street lights worked. If a streetlight went out or was broken; the neighbors called Ms. Watkins and she took care of it. We had no graffiti. Our neighborhood took advantage of city-sponsored benefits like the swim mobile. The swim mobile was a huge tank of pool water transported by an eighteen-wheel semi-truck to neighborhoods throughout Detroit so that the kids could go swimming. She also arranged for the bookmobile (mobile library) to come and for the mobile immunization service to come. The mobile immunization service also tested for lead and sickle cell. All of these things were sponsored by the city and cost our neighborhood nothing. These services were available to everyone, but only Ms. Watkins took the time and effort to utilize them.

Ms. Watkins also got small business owners to start extending credit to single women. During this time period, most single women were denied credit on their own. They either had to have a male co-signer or be married. Well, my mother was divorced and gainfully employed and did not see why women could not be allowed to have credit accounts in their own names. She went around to the various businesses in our area and spoke to the owners to negotiate with them to extend credit to her. As she did this she also informed them of her philosophy regarding women having their own credit, which eventually led to them extending credit to women based on their ability to pay and not based on their gender. She was an amazing woman.

Inside of The House was a different story.

Inside of The House

A Saturday, June morning, 5:30 am, 1972 during summer vacation. Me just waking, lying in bed waiting for the madness to begin.

My brother, Stephen, is still in his bed with the covers pulled over his head. I can hear my mother, Ms. Watkins, moving around. Which means she has already had some of “the hair of the dog that bit her” that she keeps on her bedside table. It consists of a small shot of some of the alcohol she consumed the night before, or some Coca-Cola and an aspirin, two hangover cures. Mom has gotten up to let Miss Cat out. Miss Cat would rattle the metal blinds in the morning when she wanted to go outside. Typically, this was early in the morning and it was usually my mother that heard her and got up to let her out. She is opening the metal, vertical blinds in the living room; muttering to herself about why do I always have to be the one to let the cat out!? It’s not my cat! I told these damn kids when we got this cat that I was not going to be the one to take care of her. My mom is now moving into the dining room, which is across from her bedroom. So, when exiting her bedroom she immediately steps into the dining room. She is now opening the vertical, metal blinds in that room. The dog, Poncho, who is supposed to be my brother’s pet, is still “sleeping”. He is waiting for me to get up to feed and walk him. He is quite attached to me, and if he could speak would say that I am his human and my brother is not! As my mom moves out of the dining room and into the short hallway that leads past Stephen’s room and the only bathroom and into the kitchen; she passes Stephen’s room, my room and into the kitchen. I keep my eyes closed, pretending to be asleep in the hopes that she won’t want me to get up yet. In the kitchen, she makes her coffee and takes it and her pack of cigarettes back through the house, out onto the front porch to sit, sip and smoke until she feels that us lazy, ungrateful children should be up. It is now 6:15 am and, according to Ms. Watkins, waaaaay too late for these damn children to still be in the bed on a Saturday, summer vacation morning!! My brother and I have been granted a very temporary reprieve from the morning madness. I relax for what few, short minutes I know I have left before she is finished with her coffee and cigarettes. It is now 7 am, and that temporary reprieve has been much too short-lived. Here she comes back into the house. Through the living room. Through the dining room. Into the hallway. Past our bedrooms (I can now smell fresh cigarette smoke). Into the kitchen. Washing her cup; if mom was nothing else, she was neat and clean. Opening a cabinet. Moving things around. BANG! BANG…BANG…BANG…BANG!!!!! On and on the banging goes. She has gotten two pie pans out of a kitchen cabinet and is banging them together like a crazed marching band cymbal player. I don’t know why we even had pie pans. It’s not like she baked. This is accompanied by the sound of her yelling, telling us only lazy people sleep this late and how ungrateful we are to have gone to bed with the house in such a fuckin’ mess, etc.… I groan and get up. I’m already dressed, as we weren’t allowed to sleep with our bedroom doors closed and we never knew who may have been in and out of the house while we slept; or what may happen that would make it necessary to fight or leave at a moment’s notice. The mess that she was complaining about was someone forgot to push a chair up to the kitchen table (we never ate in the dining room), or one of us got up in the night and there was a glass in the sink. Our house was never truly dirty. I let the dog out into the backyard. I had trained him to use a certain part of the yard to “go” in. While he was outside, I put food and water in his dishes. My brother had gotten up and was “using” the bathroom (hiding). I found the mess my mother was yelling about and fixed it. I let the dog back in and pretended to clean my room. I never put all my clothes away. It was my one act of rebellion. I stayed in my room until Stephen came out of the bathroom. Now, it was my turn to hide. The bathroom was the one room where we were allowed to close the door. As I finish using the bathroom and am getting some tissue to wipe my butt; I hear my mother, who has now gone into the basement, yelling “you’re using too much toilet tissue!!!!” She has been in the basement listening to how many times the toilet paper dispenser has gone around. Wow! So I now have another rebellion. Whenever I use the bathroom and I know she is in the basement, I purposely make it sound like the toilet paper dispenser is going around a lot!! I’m sure I will pick up more small rebellions as time goes on. It is now 8 am.

Whew! So much has transpired in The House since 5:30 am. It is now 8 am and I am hungry. I go to the refrigerator and, yay, there is actually something I can make for breakfast this morning. Some days I would either have to go to a friend’s house to eat or go fishing down at the Detroit River to catch some breakfast. A few other options would be to go hunt discarded pop bottles to return to the store to get the deposit money, or go run some errands or do odd jobs for some of the neighbors to get money. This morning, there are eggs, bread, milk, bacon, and cereal. So, I actually have a choice as to what to have for my morning meal. I don’t believe that we were actually poor, even though my mother was supporting us by herself. She owns/is buying the house we live in, which is a two-story flat; which means that this house has one residence downstairs, where we live, and one residence upstairs that is occupied by people who pay rent to my mother. Each residence is totally separate and has its own address. She also had income from her full-time job of educational/transportation aide. She got money from her various boyfriends, and from the blind pig across the street that she helped run. For those of you who have never heard of a blind pig; it is a house that sells liquor illegally and has some sort of gambling going on. In this case, the gambling consisted of running numbers (a lottery-like game which was called the numbers. The people who worked for the numbers racket were called number runners. They collected the bets from the gamblers and delivered the payoff when the gamblers won. Sometimes, these number runners were said to be "running numbers." The winning numbers were often determined by the final digits of the winning payoff results of horse races). My mother also prepared and sold food in the blind pig. I found this to be interesting as my mother hated to cook and most of her food wasn’t that good. I guess when you’re drinking, anything tastes good. I mention all of this to say that I don’t know why we didn’t have food sometimes because my mother had multiple sources of income. But, as I recall, she also had multiple vices that required she spend money; the two major ones being cigarettes and alcohol.

So, I start making breakfast while my mom is still in the basement doing God knows what. It can’t be laundry since I am the one who does that. I am enjoying cooking. I can find solace in the sound of the bacon sizzling and the smoky, sweet smell entertaining my nostrils. My mom comes back upstairs and is watching me beat the eggs. Her only comment is “how can you beat the eggs so fast?” She doesn’t really bother me because she knows I would never cook for just myself. She is happy to have me at the stove because she really hates to cook as she has told me numerous times. She found out I could cook kind of by accident.

I could see how much work my mother had to do when we were younger, and I wanted to help so she wouldn’t be so tired all the time. I was six years old and my mother hadn’t gotten home from work yet, so I decided I would at least try to cook dinner so she could rest when she got in. I stood on a chair and cooked a big ole pot of spaghetti with homemade sauce. I had seen her do it so many times. Spaghetti was one of the things she could cook that tasted good. When she got home, she said, “I smell food”. “Did someone bring food?” I said, “No ma, I cooked spaghetti.” She went to the kitchen and tasted the spaghetti. Her eyes lit up as she licked her lips and smiled. She said, “This is really good!” She asked me if one of the neighbors had actually made it or if I had had help; and how did I reach the stove? I said, “No ma, I stood on a chair!” I was so proud of myself. Her face clouded over, and she said, “Never do that again!” “You could have fallen or caught yourself on fire!!” I mistook this for scolding and at the young age of six did not realize that she was not angry, but afraid for my safety. All I knew was that I had tried to do something helpful, something good and I was being yelled at. We ate the spaghetti that night, and though I didn’t really cook anything else for about a year; I now knew that I could cook and so did my mother. I got an Easy-Bake Oven that year for Christmas.

I finish up the toast for breakfast and put food on the plates. I enjoy one of the few sane, quiet moments in The House as my brother and I sit at the kitchen table to eat, and my mom takes her plate to eat on the couch in the living room while she watches tv. My brother and I discuss things like “what if life is really someone reading you a bedtime story and when you wake up you’re at home in heaven?” Or, “did you hear that voice whispering your name when you walked past mom’s room and she wasn’t home?” At any rate, breakfast was pleasant this morning. Who knew what the rest of the day would bring? We would soon find out.

It is now about 9:30 am. I cleaned up the kitchen after we all ate breakfast even though it was Stephen’s turn to do so. I did it so I wouldn’t have to hear my mom yelling and complaining. After cleaning the kitchen, I go around the house and gather up everyone’s dirty clothes so I can start the laundry. I go into the basement to get the laundry started, and check to make sure there aren’t any clothes stuck in the clothes chute. Our house had a small door in the bathroom that was connected to a chute that emptied into the basement where there was a laundry basket. Sometimes Stephen would stuff his dirty, balled up clothes into this chute and they would get stuck instead of falling into the clothes hamper. I would then have to take out the clothes I could reach from the top and pull out the clothes I could get from the bottom. I would then have to take the broom and use the handle to get the rest of them. Poncho is my shadow now, and for the rest of the day. He has followed me into the basement and is lying on the rug in front of the old sofa that is down here, watching me do laundry. After sorting the laundry, I put the first load into the washer, and am now able to check on other things. Since the cat’s litter box is also in the basement, I check to make sure that it has been cleaned out and doesn’t need new kitty litter. Of course, I need to take care of this. I don’t mind though, it is my cat. I see that the floor needs to be swept, and the trash can needs emptying. I do all of these things in quick order. I sigh and bend to sit and I hear “Leslie come here!” Damn! I thought since I was in the basement doing chores I would be exempt from any of my mother’s other demands. Wrong as usual. No matter how much I worked it was never enough. I was starting to think my real name was Cinderella. She calls again. I guess I am not responding fast enough. I answer back loud enough for her to hear me as I am still in the basement and she is upstairs. “Yes, ma,” “I’m coming.” When I get upstairs I am immediately accused of yelling at her and having an attitude. Neither of which have crossed my mind. I endure the verbal lashes long enough to find out why she has called me. I am given a list of what else needs to be done today. Clean the bathroom, dust the furniture, mop the floors and water the grass. “Oops, I forgot,” she says “pull the weeds.” Even though this is quite a list, I plan to be done by noon. I’m going to work as fast as I can so that I can get out of the house. I say “yes ma’am” to all of this and return to the basement to finish the laundry. By this time the first load of laundry is finished washing. I put it in the dryer and start the second load to washing. I only have two more loads to go…four in total. Poncho and I go upstairs to clean the bathroom, dust the furniture, and mop the floors. He and I then go outside to pull the weeds and water the grass. Poncho likes this part of the workday. He likes running around, trying to eat the water as it comes out of the hose, and helping to dig up the weeds. I rinse him off with the hose and let him shake dry before we go back into the house. We go back to the basement to finish the laundry and rest a bit while folding the clothes as I sit on the sofa. Whew! All done. It is now 11:50 am.

I bring the clean clothes upstairs and distribute them to their rightful owners. I am right on time. It is 11:59 am as I go back to the basement to get my bike so that I can escape. I am just going out the back door with my bike and I have to wait while my mother tells me I am only allowed to ride my bike in a four-block radius, and not to go into anybody’s house unless I get permission first, and what time I have to be back, blah, blah, blah. At least she didn’t say I was on punishment this time. I leave the house and am freeeeee until 3 pm when I have to come home to check in. I hurry up and leave the house before she can think of anything else to have me do. Poncho watches me leave as if I were going off to war, never to be seen again. Stephen has missed his opportunity to leave when I did because he was still piddling around in his room trying to figure out how not to do his chores which only consisted of taking out the upstairs trash and cleaning his room. He won’t be there for long. As soon as my mom takes her medicine and goes to sit on the front porch to smoke and start her daily alcohol intake, he will sneak out of the back door with his bike. My mom likes to sit on the front porch, where she is blocked by the tall bushes that grow in front, watch people and drink beer out of her colored Tupperware cup. She thinks no one will know it’s beer if it’s in that cup. Soon her drinking buddies, all of them men, will be over and the beverage will change from beer to liquor. Also, the whole gang will move inside of the house. Or, if I’m lucky, they will all go across the street to the aforementioned blind pig to hang out for the rest of the day. I will have the privilege of being up with her tonight while she has her head in a bucket, and her ass on the toilet; I’ll be giving her water so she can rinse and spit after she vomits and wiping her face with a cold, damp face towel. Stephen will be in his bedroom with his head under the pillow so he can’t hear her being sick. He’ll be allowed to close his bedroom door because it is directly across from the bathroom and she won’t want him to see her sitting on the toilet. I have walked my bike two houses over to see if my best girlfriend, Cheryl, can come out and ride her bike with me. Sometimes, she and I just sit on the steps to her front porch and paint our nails and listen to music. Today, she gets her bike and we go riding around. First, we go to our neighborhood park which is just at the end of the street. No big adventure, we were just glad to be out of the house. She had as many responsibilities as I did, except she had three younger siblings she was expected to look after (Bridgette, Craig, and Deshaun). Deshaun was still in diapers. She also had an older sister that lived with them, Selma, who was a heroin addict. Selma drank, smoked weed, and did any other kind of drug she could get her hands on. But, heroin was her preferred drug. She had buck teeth, was cross-eyed and bug-eyed, had hair on her chin and chest, and a big, nappy afro. She looked like a DNA accident/experiment gone wrong.

Cheryl and I have finished swinging, going down the slide multiple times and running throughout the park. We now agree to ride our bikes farther than we have been given permission. So we ride over to Conner Avenue, a main street which is three blocks west of Springle Street and is. We go north on Conner until we get to the big gravel yard. We like to go here because we can climb the fence and climb up the big gravel “mountains” to just sit and look out over the neighborhood. It is very peaceful and calm here. We just sit and occasionally talk, but mostly just sit. No one is here to bother us. No younger siblings or demanding mothers. We sit for about an hour, climb down, get back to our bikes and ride home. Our ride home is in silence. We are both thinking to ourselves, “What will I return home to?” As we get closer to home we pedal slower, wanting to prolong the ride. When we get to our street and turn in, we look at each other and sigh. To our great pleasure, no one is looking for either of us. We are not in trouble for having been gone so long (we have only been gone for about an hour) or riding outside of our allowed boundaries. We pedal up the sidewalk to my house, park our bikes and sit on the steps of the porch. It is now about 1:15 pm. Just as we are starting to relax, Cheryl’s mom, Hazel, walks over and says to Cheryl “Would you and Leslie like to go to the beauty shop to get your hair done?” We both say “yes!” I tell her that I will have to ask my mom first and get bus fare. Hazel says “I’ve already done that. Just put your bikes away and go. Only make sure to go and come straight back when you are finished.” We are delighted. We hurry to put our bikes away and get going. We run to the bus stop and only have to wait a few minutes before a bus comes. We enjoy the 30-minute bus ride to the beauty shop as we laugh and chatter along the way. When we get to the shop Cheryl is taken in right away. I enjoy sitting and listening to the various conversations, music, smells, and sounds of water and hair dryers; a rare chance to just be. Cheryl is done in about two hours and looks great. I wish I could get my hair done at the shop sometimes, but my mom hasn’t let me go since the last time I went and the lady let the perm (chemical straightening) stay in my hair too long and burned my scalp. This caused much of my long, thick hair to break off and fall out. My hair is still in the growing back phase. In the Black culture hair is such an important thing. You are constantly being judged by how long your hair is, and if you have “good” hair. Good hair is typically considered to be wavy or straight. The less kinky it is the “gooder” it is. My mother had very long (almost to her butt) and wavy hair. She always told me my hair was too good to be bad and too bad to be good. I kind of never understood or cared what any of this meant. My mom hated doing my hair. There was a lot of it and getting it washed and styled was a long, grueling process, especially when my mother did it. She yanked, and pulled, and cussed, and told me I was “tender headed.” I tried to be brave, but her roughness and impatience were impossible to endure without some tears. I learned at a very early age to do my own hair. The only reason I had gotten a perm was that I wanted to stop having to straighten my hair with heat.

Cheryl pays and we leave to catch the bus back home. There is a record shop next door to the beauty shop so we stopped there first. They are playing one of my favorite songs, Midnight Train to Georgia by Gladys Night and The Pips. We miss the first bus, but the buses run about every fifteen minutes so we don’t care. We each buy one 45 (single record) and then catch the bus home. The ride home seemed like life was great. Cheryl’s hair was done, we each had some new music to listen to, the weather was perfect, and nobody bothered us on the bus. We arrive at our stop and get off. It is now about 3:45pm. We only have to walk eight houses to get to my house and ten houses to get to hers. When we get off the bus we see police cars on the street. Uh, oh what has happened while we were gone? The closer we get to home we can see that the police cars are in front of my house. We start running. The police are in my front yard and on my front porch. I tell Cheryl to go to her house. The police ask who I am and I tell them that I live there. They let me go into the house. My mother is in the living room in her bra and panties. She has a sawed-offshotgun under one arm and a .22 rifle under the other. She also has a new black eye. I am surprised the police let me go in. One of her boyfriends, Freddy, has beaten her up. While Cheryl and I were gone, Freddy had come over for a “visit”. Freddy was a Viet Nam veteran and known to be “shell-shocked” (suffer from PTSD). My mother had been warned by multiple people not to get involved with Freddy. Everyone knew that he had “episodes” and was very violent during them. He had been shot, stabbed, and beaten up many times and none of this had had any effect on him. Well, today, during his “visit” Freddy had had one of his episodes. He had punched my mother in the eye. Luckily, our boarder, Freeman was home and helped my mother get Freddy out of the house before he could hurt her further. This had been accomplished by my mother’s brandishing of the firearms she was now holding. LaRon, our family friend from across the street has come over to try to calm my mother down and make sure my brother and I are ok. LaRon sends me and Stephen into my mother’s bedroom. He then goes back into the living room where my mother still is. He takes the rifle from her. She then comes into the bedroom where Stephen and I are standing together. She still has the sawed-off with her. She is standing between Stephen and I with the gun pointing at the floor. Somehow, the gun goes off and blasts a hole through the floor. Stephen and I immediately go deaf. The house shifts into chaos again. LaRon snatches the gun from mom and shoves her onto the bed. Stephen and I are taken into my bedroom by Aunt Cloria (LaRon’s sister). The police rush in and handcuff LaRon, because he told them that the shotgun was his. It was a defining day. This was the day that I determined that I would not live here a day longer than I had to.

LaRon was let go after it was discovered that no one had been shot. The sawed-off shotgun was confiscated by the police because it was illegal. Freeman was pissed, but soon got over his anger. Stephen and I could gradually hear again, although both of us would grow up with a slight compromise in our hearing; Stephen in his right ear and me in my left, due to being in such close proximity of the shotgun blast. The police went away, and my mother calmed down and got dressed. All seemed to have been resolved and for a few hours everything was fine. We cleaned up any disarray in the house.

It was about 6:45pm when we had finished eating dinner. I had cleaned up the kitchen and put away any leftovers. It was about 9:15pm and we were about a half hour into a television show we were watching. It was rare, but we were all watching tv together. When, all of a sudden, there was a commotion at the front door. Someone was banging on the door and yelling, demanding to be let in. It was Freddy. Shit! We thought we were done with all of this. My mother told us to stay behind her as we all went to the front door. She told him to go away and don’t come back. Of course this didn’t work. She told us to stay right behind her as she opened the door. We had not noticed that she was holding a can of mace/pepper spray behind her back. She opened the door and as Freddy tried to rush in she sprayed him directly in the face. She sprayed like it was hairspray and he had a new do that he was trying to keep in place. As he choked, screamed and backed up we moved forward as a unit. I had picked up the cat and threw her in his face. She instinctively put out her claws and grabbed hold. As he ripped the cat from his face her claws took a good amount of flesh with them. He ran from the front porch leaving his lovely jacket lying on the floor of the porch. Stephen promptly picked up the jacket and threw it in the never-ending mud puddle that resided in between our house and the neighbor’s house. We had to stay outside to let the mace cloud clear. We never saw Freddy again.