Re-walking the Walk

Our troublesome tenant is gone.  She is to be out of the unit by March 20.  I am cautiously optimistic but there is a chance, particularly because of her declining mental health, that she would fail to meet the deadline, requiring us to start eviction proceedings anew.  She has known for nearly a year that she would ultimately be required to vacate and receives 60 days hard notice, along with access to monies to cover all of her relocation expenses.  Monies for a moving company, packing materials, first and last month’s rent on a new unit and even $400 for cleaning services, are drawn from her generous relocation escrow account.  The tenant however disappears for several weeks prior to her move date.  She arrives with her father on move day.  My colleagues, working upstairs hear her screaming at her father.  Two guys arrive with a U-Haul but are only there for an hour or so.

In the early evening she leaves a hysterical and angry message on both my cell and home phones.  I have victimized her and put her and her family through hell.  At no time has she acknowledged that the whole nightmare is precipitated by her failure to pay rent.  She lives rent free for well over a year, accesses free legal services and receives an enormous relocation sum but she doggedly maintains that she is the aggrieved party. 

We enter the next morning.  The heat is blasting.  Stuff is strewn all over.  It’s hard to see that anything has been removed at all.  She’s lived in the apartment for eighteen years.  There are years and years of relative normalcy under the layer of madness.  We are under the gun to get the place cleaned out and pull permits and make repairs to avoid fines from Building and Safety.  Spuds clears the place out and makes half a dozen truck runs to Goodwill.  He gets the place nearly emptied in about a day and a half. The day after her “move” the Ring Camera captures her on the walkway.  I frantically call Spuds to assure that the newly changed locks are locked.  Two days after the tenant returns the keys and gives written notice that she’d vacated, she e-mails, requesting the return of some possessions.  It’s too late.  I don’t respond.  We didn’t have the heart to toss a stack of family photos and if she doesn’t bother me for a couple of weeks, these will be mailed to her forwarding address.

I visit the nearly empty apartment with Spuds.  The citrus trees in the yard are in flower and the aroma wafts into the musty apartment.  On a walk street, but for birdsong, it is very quiet.  The yard is shaggy but will regain its former charm with a bit of grooming.  It seems the legal saga is over, and it is time to choose paint colors and tiles and make the place that we loved so dearly beautiful again.

There are pointless meetings and ceaseless testing at school.  We are, despite the fact that the majority of our students are undocumented, stressing the transition from ESL to a career path and into the school’s vocational program.  There are courses in construction and plumbing but our population of women generally do not enroll in these classes.  All of the other training at the school is for careers that require legal permission to work. 

Assembly Bill 2098, the Adult Education Block Grant Program-Immigrant Integration, passes in September of last year.  This, without so stating explicitly, gives local consortiums the leeway to provide the services that best suit their unique populations.  Our unique population, for the most part, is undocumented, yet we are pressured to hurry them through ESL and into training for a career, that until there is another amnesty program, they will be unable to work at.  Instead of touting medical careers, a lot of our students would benefit in learning entrepreneurship, towards prospering in a cash economy. 

I believe that I have far less recent teaching experience than most of my colleagues.  While I find the new vocational push misguided, I am eager to learn about stuff that will make me a better teacher.  A new administrator calls ceaseless long meetings where ESL teachers break into groups by level taught in order to brainstorm.  My Level 1 group is weary of the new new thing.  For me, it is easy to embrace the new, but for seasoned, experienced teachers, the expectation of changing one’s teaching practice for each new trend or requirement is soul sucking.  Whenever something new is suggested, it’s usually met with hostility and resistance.

One of Celia’s eyeballs is completely grey. She wears a modest scarf, long skirts and has no cellphone.  While my fellow beginning level teachers, for the most part, claim that their students are incapable of installing a number of phone apps that augment traditional classroom learning, with the exception of Celia, all of my students have installed and are able to use, and certainly enjoy, a number of different apps.  I offer my phone to Celia so she can play a game with us, but she demurs.  I suspect that there is some sort of religious prohibition and notice, that she is absent the day after declining my phone offer.  I’m afraid that she’s offended but she arrives early the next night and says that she’d missed school because she was enrolling in a vocational program for practical nursing.   She tells me that she has no phone because she’s afraid it will be a distraction.  I point out that once she begins working a nurse, she’ll need a cellphone for a variety of reasons.  She reluctantly agrees. After watching a lively game of Kahoot!, I believe she may be softening and will offer her the use of my phone or a school IPad the next time we play a game.

Veronica has been enrolled in my class three times.  She has a pierced lip and paints on ruby red lipstick, ala John Crawford.  Her tight fitting, low cut garments, show off enormous boobs, which I presume have been augmented.  She doesn’t come every night and when she does, she’s usually an hour late.  Perhaps she’s a church caretaker but I suspect she earns her keep as some sort of sex worker or exotic dancer.  The other students keep their distance, but I listen to Veronica’s frustration at not having been able to complete level 1B.  She has dark brown puppy eyes and the sexy camouflage masks a childlike sweetness that I’ve grown to find beguiling.   

Ronaldo, an attorney in Guatemala, misses a day of school to take his high school age daughter to Las Vegas to play in a soccer match.  His older son teaches history at a Compton Magnet High School.  Until recently, his son lives in Brooklyn, enrolled at NYU in a Chicano studies PhD program but hating New York and disappointed with the program.  He sticks it out for a year, knowing that dropping out would break his mother’s heart.  One day on the phone with Ronaldo, he breaks down and reveals how miserable he is.  Ronaldo placates his wife and puts his son on the next flight.  He now enjoys his teaching and aims to finish his PhD locally.  Ronaldo will likely complete ESL 1B with flying colors.  I doubt if he will practice law again but at least his kids will provide vicarious satisfaction.

The last paragraph that I write here usually serves as a guidepost and call to optimism for myself.  I promise Himself that the day the tenant moves out that I will buy a pack of cigarettes, which will be the last one that I buy.  As there is unexpected agita with her departure and I am uncertain as to whether there will be future retaliation, I pick up more than a single pack.  I know better than to make promises that unforeseen circumstances might render me unable to keep, but I am definitely committed to a Girl Scout try on the smoking thing.  And while my school district seems oblivious to the legal status of many adult students, in my own little classroom, with the crayons and alphabet practice cards, I will keep trying to support the integration of individual immigrants. Happy spring!