They start off shy, watching us from across the street as we begin bringing things out of the house and setting them on the sidewalk. Then a short, brown-skinned woman in a long skirt, large white t-shirt, and sandals comes across the street with a toddler by her side and pushing a stroller in which an infant sleeps. The toddler hugs her side. She appraises the stuff on the sidewalk, and asks my wife how much, in Spanish. Free my wife says, which makes the woman smile. Almost as soon as that magic word is spoken and understood, more women appear, as if summoned by an unseen bell, also with small children in tow; two or three of the women are pregnant. All wear long skirts and sandals, none wears a mask. They whisper among themselves. An older woman emerges from the small house next door and makes a beeline for a standing lamp. My brother-in-law and I wrestle a queen mattress and box spring out of the house and set it against the white picket fence. It is immediately claimed and the box spring is carried across the street by a short, slight man wearing Nike slides. When he returns for the mattress I gesture an offer of help, but he just smiles, gets the mattress over his back, and staggers across the street beneath the load. The metal frame is left in the dirt of the front yard. The women grow bolder; one even enters the yard through the open gate and starts sifting through a pile of electrical cords, an ancient computer tower, a keyboard, cable modem, and a couple of surge protectors. We politely ask her to stay beyond the fence. Two toddlers are climbing inside an old china hutch. My wife and her sister Kathy bring out glassware, small kitchen appliances, purses, coats, a box of canned goods, a red cookie jar shaped like a rooster.
This is our third trip to clean out Nancy’s house in Santa Maria. Nancy is my wife’s older sister. Nancy and I actually went to high school together. She had a stroke in August, open heart surgery in September, and has been in a rehab facility in Arroyo Grande since. She has suffered from diabetes for many years, is almost totally blind, and needs kidney dialysis three times a week. She will not return to the small, dilapidated two-bedroom house she has rented for the last 20 years. My wife and sister-in-law are making decisions about what to keep and what to toss or put on the sidewalk. The house is a mess. One bedroom is jammed from stem to stern with stuff that has piled up over time. On our first trip we found a four-year-old Canon inkjet printer that had never been opened. There were a few pieces of furniture that had belonged to my wife’s long deceased grandparents. Boxes of albums, Barbie dolls, a collection of Star Wars toys, two soccer balls autographed by Rod Stewart, the musician Nancy had followed for years, attending more than 100 of his concerts. There was mold in the bathroom, rust stains in the toilet, and the smell of dogs in the carpet. Dust bunnies followed in our wake across the kitchen floor.
I began filling two four-yard dumpsters with all the junk we had piled in the carport two weeks ago. It had obviously been picked over. Blankets, boxes of papers, lengths of carpet, beach towels, Christmas ornaments, cracked pottery, chipped cups. The crowd of women and children on the sidewalk had expanded and now numbered more than a dozen. They watched us expectantly, wondering what treasure might emerge from the house next. As I made my trips from the carport to the dumpster the absence of color on this block of Fesler Street struck me. Drab. Older cars and pickups lined every foot of curb, a sign that the little houses were occupied by multiple families. I heard the cry of small children from the house next door, though I had no way of knowing how many there might be. I’m glad that some of Nancy’s stuff will be put to use by others, but this scene depresses me, as it has every time; this is poverty. One of the mothers is younger than my daughter and already has two little ones and another on the way. Why? I want to scream. Don’t you see that the more kids you have the deeper into poverty you sink? I think of the influence of the Catholic Church, its stubborn resistance to birth control and family planning. Children are a gift from God, insurance for old age, is this how these women think? I don’t know and don’t have the language to ask. What I see is that Nancy’s junk is their upgrade. What I think is that the places they came from must have been dire. I feel anger building inside at the injustice of the world, of the twists of fate, luck, and misfortune that define so many human lives; of the indifference of the wealthy. I look at the woman, most of them heavy, and wonder what ailments they will face in the future. Diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure? There must be a school nearby because in the mid-afternoon kids stream past the house; two teenage boys don Latex gloves and climb into the dumpsters. I count five children under the age of twelve entering the house next door. How many souls live under that roof?
On this trip we make good progress but will need to return one or possibly two times more. The house must be vacated by the 15th. We will put Nancy’s belongings in storage and see where she lands. In addition to everything else, she has tested positive for Covid. We’re all beat after a long day. We head down the 101 to Los Alamos and eat flatbread and drink two bottles of good wine between the four of us. The sun begins to set over the hills. Even with a full stomach and a warm shower in my immediate future I can’t get the appraising eyes of those women on Fesler Street out of my head.
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