Befriending Strangers

She lived across the hall from the older Japanese women with an angry diabetic husband and a Bichon. There's a picture from Pasadena Weekly of  them walking in the rain together, the two women and two Bichons all wearing hooded raincoats.

The people we bought our apartment from in fact referred to that side of the second floor as "Bichon Alley". The side of the hall facing Central Park, so you know whom to rob, is the one with the larger units. Their apartment was rented by her boyfriend, an heir to the Rogers spoon fortune. I'd think it was one of her stories but she once showed me their treasure chest of antique silver cutlery so it was probably true, maybe all her stories were.

She herself came from money or rather had come from Vietnam with her family then had come into money when a moneyed matron in Connecticut took an interest in Maya and her sister, saw to their expensive educations and (infered by Maya), set them up for life. It was primarily that mother Maya talked about, it was a long time before I realized her other one was still alive. I have no information about her, so I'll leave that part of the story alone.

I met her while we were moving in. Her dog was threatening to mark the plant in the lobby and I pet him.  She invited me and Spike (my now fifteen year old little white pound dog) over for a  playdate. I asked if she'd ever read the children's story "Harry the Dirty Dog" about a little white dog with black spots who gets lost and so dirty people assume he's a black dog with white spots. Maya turned out to have a signed copy of the book along with shopping bags of designer clothes, bought and never put away, a bag of miscellaneous jewelry from Tiffany's and piles of toys for Harry. Harry the dirty dog would stand on their front balcony like a Castle puppet show, yipping at Raymond Ave.

While Spike and Harry would tear aroung their tower apartment marking themselves silly, Maya would tell me about her Lyme disease, her expensive lifestyle and her unhappiness with the building.

She was most unhappy with Feb, the Castle building manager, who was unhappy with her as she had a habit of inviting strangers over to their apartment, stranger than me and Spike. Her aquaintances had once crashed a wedding, incurring the dread $200 fine. Hopefully, they drank at least that much in wedding booze.

I have only ever picked up one neighborhood stranger, on Madison Avenue where we lived before Castle Green. It bears no resemblance to Madison Avenue in New York. It's middle class at best with ugly Brady Bunch era apartments and no activity on the sidewalks. The exception to that was a twelve year old girl I saw one day throwing oranges from a neighbor's tree under the wheels of cars. I weighed the danger against the diversion and befriended her, because she was the only thing happening on Madison Avenue. The only other kid on the block was Special Ed, so I was as close as she could find to a peer. I had two little dogs whom I dressed, I liked to do odd art projects and Leif and I had assembled a huge array of vintage Legos with which we would all build towns.  She populated her town with Lego sharks which was probably a premonition of trouble. Her mom approved of her friendship with responsible adults (yes, me and Leif) and would let her come over when she needed peace and quiet to sew Amber's pageant dresses. Amber had been little Miss Hawaiin Tropic one year and met a couple famous people, so her mom was convinced pageants were Amber's ticket out. As it turned out juvenile detention was, but more about that later.

I loved the twelve year old. I took her to assist me at a dog adoption event and she spent all her money at the Bulldog kissing booth. I bought her lunch with my meager change. Another time Leif and I took her to Petco for Petco's Halloween Event, in which we were entering our dog children dressed as killer bees. Amber brought her cat, the one cat entered in the competition. I whispered to the Petco staff that they had to give her a prize as she had brought a cat so they did. Leif and I mostly hoped it was clear Amber was not our child, as her mother had dressed her for Halloween as a sexy witch,in a black tutu, fishnets and heels. I guess that's what a child would wear in a beauty pageant, but no one said those were healthy. Over the next year Amber started junior high, made new friends and lost interest in her cat, whom I adopted out to a new home though my specialty is dogs. It helped that I had a picture of Amber's cat wearing a Frankenstein pet costume.  No long after that Amber and her mom moved to Altadena which her mother hoped would be a better neighborhood for them.

Girl's witch costume from MrCostume.com

Back to Maya and her Lyme Disease. She smoked copious medical marijuana. She would invite me over to binge with her after, but my binging years are mostly past so she would cook for her housekeeper so she would have company eating. Then of course she'd let her clean up after her.

She had fluid leaking from her ears and she wore Depends. I didn't see either, I'm taking her word for it in this account. Her boyfriend mostly hid in the little attached office, but I don't know if he was hiding from me or her. I do know she said he was very gracious about her inability to have sex due to Lyme Disease but they shared a bed.

Her boyfriend had a train set, the larger scale my husband wishes he could afford. They had room to lay it out in that tower apartment, but they never finished it. I'm not sure what happened the day they stopped, but everything in their apartment looked like that, like it had been interrupted abruptly. Maybe when she came done with Lyme Disease.

Maya spoke very fast, either like she was on drugs or manic. It was possible to understand her, but exhausting and it was better if possible to tune her out. Especially since she didn't notice and it wouldn't hurt her feelings. It was unclear who had diagnosed her with Lyme Disease, but she was very sure that's what she had. She attributed the urine leaking, ear leaking, fatigue and weight loss to this, and who am I to argue. My mother was mysteriously an invalid for many years and pointed to Lyme Disease till many doctors and finally a slow drip cured her.

Not long after meeting Maya I was in Old Town, my new suave neighborhood, with a friend at Barney's Beanery so she could order something vegan and I could order blueberry chocolate pankcakes. As we waited for our order I checked out the girls at the bar (more anthropologically than sexually). There were the girlfriend types, like I was, a little plumper and self entitled, and there were the no-boyfriend types, a little thinner and edgy. I was admiring one of them when she turned and said "Hi, Rebecca". She was my long lost beloved child neighbor, now 14 year old, Amber in a coffee shop not in her neighborhood and during school hours. These facts borderline concerned me so I enquired. She calmly shared she had run away from home and was living in Pasadena with her friends under Suicide Bridge.

I bought her pancakes and invited her over for warm clothes, better sleep-under-the-bridge clothes. After she left with the scuzzy young guy who had waited outside while she came up. I contacted her mother. I didn't tell her where Amber was, just that I had seen her and she was safe. She wanted me to take Amber in and in fact Amber wanted me to take her in, but Leif understandably did not. So instead I gave her the warm clothes (I tried to pick things she would find acceptable wearing) all my Snackables (packaged cheese, coldcuts and crackers) and the stuffed animal dog she had given me two years ago when my own dog died. The stuffed animal was so she would have company under the bridge. She happily took it all.

Pasadena's "Suicide Bridge"

I wanted her to know other adults, have better adult resources than I am, so I introduced her to Maya and her boyfriend who came through and offered her a job walking Harry. Maya cautioned me not to tell anyone Amber was homeless, as Feb never liked Maya's homeless friends. Food and job in hand Amber went off on her way, only she didn't show up when she was supposed to walk Harry. Maya wrote it off as irresponsibility.

Amber showed up next in juvenile detention, where she'd been brought in as part of an under-the-bridge raid. Her mother took me to see her since I'm apparently such a good influence. I told Amber I hadn't ratted her out, which she believed. She also told me the guy who offered her the job walking the dog, Maya's boyfriend, had been texting her ever since they met. Texting "you're too cute to be homeless" and other things a fifty year old man shouldn't text a fourteen year old girl. I had told them she was fourteen.

I started to avoid Maya, because I felt like I probably ought to tell her her boyfriend had come on to my fourteen old friend, but I didn't want to. Maya moved not long after, apparently too unhappy with Castle Green and convinced it was aggravating her undiagnosed Lyme Disease. Amber was next dispatched by her mother to Utah, because it's legal there to detain a juvenile in school against their will. Interestingly I already knew this as Leif's brother, the one who never left home till he and his mother left his father to move to Oregon together, had also been detained there as a teen.

I later heard from a neighbor that Maya's boyfriend had since died and her dog had been stolen. I think there may be more to it than that, I imagine her losing her Harry in a custody battle, but regardless I'm sad for her and still feel guilty for not staying in touch.

When she was home for Christmas, Leif and I took Amber out for pancakes.