A Timely (Reverse) Homage

We used to live above a witch - er, woman from whom we rented a flat. To this day whenever I think about her my blood freezes in my veins. Think about the meanest person you've ever known. Then you must've known Barb.

Barb turned out the light on Halloween. She threatened not to renew our lease when I told her that my necklace fell behind the bathroom vanity because there was a space between it and the wall and she had never sealed it like I had asked. She made up some bullshit story about city laws and salting when baby Maddie and I tumbled down ten icy back stairs from our landing to hers in the winter.

She was bitter and cynical. The hallway leading to the basement laundry room was lined with books on feminism – hard core ones. She had been divorced and her grown kids did not have much to do with her. When I looked at her, all I saw was an ugly person, through and through. She happened to like Madeleine, though and gave her gifts for her birthday and Christmas. Since I wasn’t rude enough to throw them back in her face, we accepted them gracefully, but I was never positive that they weren’t tainted with some toxic substance that she brewed in her kitchen and painted on kid’s toys.

Barb snored, so loudly that we could hear her from her apartment below us. On a regular basis I would call her number (blocking the Caller I.D., of course) to wake her up so she’d turn over and stop. The snoring was so loud it would keep us up nights. She finally got wise and took her phone off the hook at night. I forgot what we did after that, pounded on our floor maybe?

When the handles to our window and screen doors broke, about a year apart, she called me “handle impaired.” And she wasn’t being cute. I can still hear her voice – it resounded like a worn out foghorn. She used it quite often to complain about everything. We put our tiny little hibachi grill on the grass that I guess was designated for the tenant in the garden apartment and she had a hissy fit. She knocked on our door one winter afternoon and stormed past me when I opened it to check what our thermostat said. Then she threatened to put a lock on it, even though there had never been any rules laid down about temperature limits. Once when Madeleine was having a horrible, terrible-two-type temper tantrum, one that tried every iota of my patience, wore out my already exhausted constitution, she called me up and said that I was obviously stressed out and she thought I should take a hot bath to calm down. When we moved out of our house, she sent us a bill for the handles she had to fix. Oh we wrote her a check ASAP. Not.

I cannot say that there are a lot of people in this world that I hate. That’s a bad word and much too strong to use too often as applies to people. But I hated Barb and I still do. Of course I rarely think about her, but last Sunday we were in our old town near the old place and the old bat. So I thought about her. And now it’s fun to write about all that stuff because she is long gone and far away.