MARY JANE'S STORIES: THE RAID

MARY JANE'S STORIES: THE RAID

The avenue that led to the apartment, Valentine Avenue, was far from romantic: although the name recalls the imagination of love, the street was dull, gloomy, so dreary that it forced you to turn constantly to make sure that no one was trying to attack you from behind. The landlady had made a two-bedroom apartment a refuge for seven people, arranging for two plasterboard walls to be raised in order to sacrifice the living room to give space to two extra bedrooms. It was inevitable that the guests were mostly low-income people or people trying to make a living for the day, but never in life would I have thought that that particular day would come. Why was I there? Well, at the time I was in a relationship with a person who very selfishly forced both of us to live in financial straits in order to provide for the expenses that his hobby required. As far as my monetary contribution, my meager salary was invested in half the rent, and in the purchase of food and various products for cleaning the house. Living in that hovel was like perishing a slow and painful death, and the total indifference to a minimum of hygiene and cleanliness on the part of the housemates led to exasperation. Only I seemed to feel disgusted at cooking using those stoves and those cabinets invaded by hundreds of cockroaches. The couple occupying the first room on the right, said goodbye to all of us after they learned they were expecting a baby. After a few days, a woman showed up for a cognitive interview with the landlady, asking to be able to rent a room to her nephew: a boy little more than a teenager, lazy, dirty, a deadbeat, who spent his days locked in his room or on the street corner. A few months after his arrival, I was taken by surprise one evening after returning from an exhausting day of work; the door had been forcibly knocked down, the rooms turned upside down and all abandoned after what appeared to be a scuffle. I feared that some thieves had broken in and possibly attacked the tenants who were in the house. I couldn't hear any voices, until a few sobs broke the quiet. I saw S.e C. shocked and incredulous, sitting in silence with totally absent gazes. C. told me what happened: a SWAT team raided to arrest the new roommate, a fugitive murderer who, after killing in New Jersey, had found refuge in the Bronx. The boy tried to escape through the emergency stairs accessible from S.'s room, but the agents were able to stop him and handcuff him. Fearing that other accomplices would occupy the apartment, the team rummaged through all the rooms looking for clues. The few times that I think back to some events of the past, the questions of people who cannot understand why I tend to forget things relatively quickly come to mind. Then I smile, I bring Mary Jane to my lips and, holding back the tears, I say to myself "because this is the only way I know to keep walking". Martina.