Newlyweds

When Brad and I were first married we found a basement suite that fit our budget of pretty much nothing, close to where Brad was going to college. It had two rooms: a living room/kitchen and a bedroom. I would say it had a bathroom but it was more like a closet partitioned off with a piece of cardboard. The ceilings were low, the floors covered in a practically burlap carpet and the walls were fake wood panelling spotted with greasy handprints. Our landlord was a very fat, very old man with a German accent who after some months confided in us that he had worked for the SS under Hitler and had killed several people in that role. Perhaps it was a form of resourcefulness picked up in the army that led him to manage to squeeze two illegal suites into that basement.

We had a neighbour.

I washed off the handprints, furnished it with things we had given to us or found in the garbage (literally), hung up our picture of Jesus overlooking Jerusalem and a Harley Davidson calendar and made it our home. We played Tony Hawk video games and Dance Dance Revolution, ate pan after pan of homemade brownies, let the dishes pile up and had just-married sleepovers every night.  I worked full time and Brad went to school. We had our future to work towards and we did so with determination.

A Korean friend of mine gave us these special souvenirs meant to bring happiness to marriage.

Brad made me a birthday cake

Eating the birthday cake

Our first Valentine's Day

One day our basement suite was broken into. They took our laptop, playstation, a snowboard, a bunch of video games, some change we had been saving and Brad's favourite sweater. We brushed it off and I started locking the door.

We quickly found out our neighbour was an alcoholic. He was a tall man with a moustache who clomped around loudly in big cowboy boots. He had a rough and very loud voice. I was scared of him. I would skirt past him as quickly as possible whenever we crossed paths, usually in the dark, shared storage/laundry room. He would stare me down and stomp past me-loudly-in his boots. One night I woke up to the sound of our neighbour right outside our bedroom window. He was cursing and saying the foulest things I'd ever heard. It was so gross I thought I would throw up. This started happening regularly. It went on for months. At three o'clock in the morning, we would hear his cowboy boots coming up the walkway. Clip-Clomp. Clip-Clomp. Clip-Clomp. Then he would stop in front of our bedroom window and start his vile rant.

On one such occasion he finished his rant, stomped loudly down the stairs, cursing as he went, shut the door to his suite, and turned on country music so loud we could hear it as clear as if it were playing in our own apartment. On this night, it wasn't going to end. I nudged Brad-"go tell him to turn it down." He refused. I begged. He still refused. I threw off the covers. Brad watched laughing as I put on my shoes (I wasn't going to face those cowboy boots barefoot) and declared, "I guess I'll have to be the man of the house!" I was shaking as I opened my door and crossed the crowded storage room to his door. I knocked loudly. No answer. So I banged on the door, hard. I shouted "Turn that down RIGHT NOW!"

Then, it was silent. He came to the door and opened it. I screamed at him, don't you ever curse at our window again, don't you ever turn your music on so loud again, don't you ever wake me up again or you will be sorry you did! I was pointing my finger at him. When I was finished I looked at him. He suddenly seemed smaller. He was scared of me! His eyes glazed over and he said, sorry Ma'am, it won't happen again, I promise.

It didn't. From that moment on, he was quiet as a mouse.

Christmas came. We had lived in that basement suite for over a year and a half, and I was pregnant. Our landlord gave us a bottle of wine for Christmas. I'm not sure if he knew we were Mormon but we thanked him for it.  We went away to visit family for a week and came back to find mouse droppings in our bed. With an odd bittersweetness we gave our notice to the landlord. We gave the wine to our neighbour, and moved the same week.