A New Foundation
A renovation of necessity
Place
It was tucked back behind a subdivision marked with a Target; a tree struck by lightning out front, prickly evergreen bushes guarded the windows, the yard was torn asunder by attempts at gardening long abandoned, black cups of tulips lay turned by rains from the previous month. It was evident no one had entered it; not because of some foreclosure sign- no it was still all paid up- what gave it away were the cobwebs on the door handles and dirty screen door.
The windows were dusty with months of pollen, chunked with globs of the yellow dust where the rain couldn’t carry it away. It had been a prettier house once. The earthy green paint showed, it wasn’t chipped. But inside, through the windows, items mounted. Mail, boxes, games, books, bags, and clothes all tumbled forming cliffs on the tables and chairs- a clothing-slide was imminent.
A woman came by every few weeks. She picked up the mail on the porch and pulled the cans around for the trashmen. She rarely stepped inside, that was too much, it wasn’t real from the driveway. The door lead to a mess she couldn’t control; so the cobwebs on the handles were spun thicker and thicker.
Person
The target was Jasmine’s favorite haunt. She’d start there in the early mornings with a sign begging for a few quarters- then make her way down the rich road to the left or the busy storefront road to the right. Everything started at the Target. The store had all she desired- boxes, games, books, bags and clothes in the heaps. They hadn’t taken her up on employment, any of the times she’d offered. This was what she did instead.
Luckier weeks she’d find a nice place to sleep in an open container behind the store or on a table one of the restaurants left out for the evening. It was a surprise she was the only homeless one in the area, it was rare to see another man or woman with a sign around her two streets- and they were never around her red dot in the sky.
It was a blisteringly hot morning, just before a long dry spell by the scent of it, when she started towards the storefront road. Jasmine had tied the sign around her neck and swung it behind her to keep any burning sun rays that hit her face-on from ruining the sign. The houses were so pretty around these parts- families loved on them. The one on the first corner had these silly little gnomes she always waved to; after all, that’s what you did with neighbors. The second corner house had a hammock on the gray porch, and the uniqueness went on. Hotter weeks like this one she would walk a bit further in the mornings.
Today was the perfect day to walk around the neighborhood. She took a turn at the first corner and counted the differences between the homes. In the middle of the road sections they were pretty similar- it was like the odd ones out were, well out. Until she came to the stop sign.
The house in front of her and the stop sign had the grass up to her knees and a tree split in two at the top. Even the flowers were sleeping at an angle. Mail was piled up on the porch and spiders were guarding the doors at their handles. Not being in a rush, Jasmine peeked around the driveway. There wasn’t a car there. All the lights were off. The windows, well the windows showed a house just like a Target. Jasmine took in her surroundings- everything was quiet- she brushed off the cobwebs and turned the handle.
Place
Someone was inside, the warmth of their body shocked the house back to life. The steady creaks the human’s feet worked out on its floors were hot stones on the back, stretching out the muscles. The human investigated the piles of clothes and games. It parted the tables, shook the dishes and waved off the flies. It cared again, someone cared.
The pipes hadn’t been used in months but it fought to make them work. The human twisted the rusted handle and with a strong shove the home made the water run, hazy and orange at first, but it worked. The chipped paint didn’t seem to bother its new guest and the grey-green tile that had earned complaints about so long from the trio of past owners went unmentioned by this new resident. She played with the cords on the blinds that were wrapped in strings of dust and laid down on furniture that was softened by months of room to breath with the temperatures. She stroked the red walls, tasting the dust with her finger and shook the little wooden tables for stability, pushing them just to the point of squeaking. The couch pulled against the floorboards, and it was all too happy to let the floors give just a little and for the walls to be an anchor again. It had forgotten the joys of accommodating a resident, how nice it was to be needed and how easy it could be. Not every woman or man would place weighty things in and leave them to wear against the floors. Not every resident saw it only as a storage bin.
Person
The house was nice a long time ago. No one had stepped foot in it for a few weeks, dishes were piled up in the awkward yellow tinted sink and the stovetop was filled with dust and water damaged cookbooks but she made do. The floor creaked like an animal who had its tail stepped on. Stacks of all manner of materiality were shoved wherever they could go; tables and chairs were hidden beneath sweaters and jackets no adult could fit in. There were doors locked shut leading around the house but the living room was beckoning to her. It was a mean red, dark like blood but strangely warming with the country stained wood tables around it. The blue striped couch was hoisted on legs of the same stain.
Jasmine followed a tight hall down to the rooms on either edge of her. A bedroom stacked with containers and old furniture was on the right, a bathroom on the left. She stepped over a pile of unused cleaning supplies to land on cracked floor tiles tinted with a dulled green color. The caulk had worn out and the handles were dusted with rust. Jasmine twisted one; water coughed its way out eventually running transparently. The toilet housed a few spiders and the soap dish was covered in long popped bubbles and crumbled pieces that had dried apart. The paint was rolling like Christmas wrapping paper left in a hurry.
Leaving the grey-aged bathroom, she ignored the door at the end of the hallway; baseball cards erupted out from under it. Those squares were everywhere, in the vents and under the desk, she found them on the couch and in the wardrobes. She tried to sell a few, just enough to get a canister of generic paint, but most were damaged from time.
The living room, though cluttered, was too inviting not to stop and take a rest in. No one would notice for a long while that she was here, and the walk had been hard on her all this time, especially with the weather they were having. She led with her left leg and slowly fell onto the couch, pressing it against the wall. It creaked and, with a light puff of dust, gave in to her weight. She wasn’t much to worry about but you never knew with these old pieces.
Birds chirped off in the distant neighborhood. The open side door let the caws in and let the dust circulate in the air. Jasmine watched the billions of particles float in the single beam of light that managed to craft a path across the house. She could work with this.
Place
The house hadn’t felt so relieved in years. This resident was scrubbing the walls, brushing off the dust and cleaning the windows. The house could see clearly into the neighborhood, it creaked a little less, best of all, it was brighter. The sun could reach the living room for the entire day while the kitchen could feel the warmth of it as the new resident cooked in the morning. She’d cleared change from the furniture for her meals. The spackle of bacon grease from the morning skillet against the backsplash warmed its soul. The swift citrus polish on the oven refreshed the kitchen and the frequent steps she made across the house, the twisting of the handles in the bathroom and the sliding of the curtains, stretched each part of the home back to what it once was. She vacuumed daily. The basement was cleared and the spiders ran for the bushes outside. It was peaceful and alive inside its walls once more, it was needed. It could serve.
Months went on as this resident, Jasmine as she referred to herself, kept quiet never disturbing the mail the true owner had thrown at its face. She was never caught, careful to pull the curtains at the same time each day and to be upstairs between three and five. Her cleverness never ceased to amaze the home as she was careful to leave a note explaining the new cleanliness- a gift from a relative whose name she’d pulled from an old photo on the fridge.
Jasmine worked hard to improve each and every corner. The utilities were always working so she started to fix the rust on the handles and the tiles missing their glue. On her trips out and around the neighborhood she gathered cans, eventually enough to buy what she needed, and stole what she couldn’t afford. The house felt healthier every day and Jasmine’s steps brought a bounce of joy to it every time. Each creak of the boards made a higher note while the rush of water was a welcome bout of clean in the sink. Nothing was sour or rancid anymore.
Person
She woke from her first nap realizing the opportunity she’d found. This could be her home, at least for awhile. No one had stayed more than a few minutes all that time that she watched it. The house needed work of course but she could work. Jasmine could wipe down the windows and spruce up the bathroom, nothing was difficult to do in a house, it only took patience.
Jasmine found an old vacuum behind the abandoned cleaning products just before the bathroom. She ran it across the curtains and the floors, she slipped it under the desks and tables. The couch wasn’t a dust bunny nest once she was through. Jasmine moved onto the dishes and with a little extra work made the kitchen smell like fresh citrus. Everything was sparkling after a few weeks of elbow grease- she rewarded herself with a fresh meal of bacon one day. She wiped the splashing grease off the walls with a paper towel roll she’d found under the table- still fresh in a dusty old Kroger bag.
The refrigerator was a whole other mission; the food inside had rotted months ago and the smell had built up to a horrible aromatic crescendo. She wore the dish gloves expecting something bad but nothing like what was actually in there. Milk had turned a dull green with chunks floating about, the log of cheese was a rancid garden with grass growing better than it did on the lawn, a packet of baking soda had fought valiantly but succumbed to the mold in the air. She scrubbed it for two full days and left countless packets of air fresheners she’d found on the side of the road in there, but nothing fully solved the problem.
Jasmine shifted between the fridge, the basement, and the attic as she worked. The basement had an ecosystem working with clothes covering up for nocturnal creatures and the washing machine housing a family of a rodent you’d rather not mess with. The attic was clean with the exception of the raccoon who’d beaten Jasmine to the squatter’s rights. She fought it off anyway, careful to keep it at a distance by jousting at it with a broomstick. With another week to clean, the upstairs became her favorite nook of the house, they’d hidden hundreds of board games in the loft ranging in age from the mid-50s to the late 90s. The stairs were piled with clothes of all sorts and sizes.
As the basement slowly regained its functionality, she washed and folded the pieces. She stacked them in a laundry bin she’d found to be the home of a nice set of mice. After a quick spray, she felt comfortable placing freshly laundered clothes in it. The baskets were stacked up on the dining room table where the only window into the house that wasn’t pitch black or hidden by a tree sat. Jasmine had come up with a clever tool to justify her cleaning: a note placed over a picture of a young boy and his mother. She explained they’d paid for the cleaning only last Tuesday and that he loves her very much. The owner had only come by a few times but never actually stepped within the house’s perimeter, Jasmine had a bag packed under the couch and a spot tucked behind a few boxes in the upstairs just in case the owner ever decided to peek her head in.
Place
She’d touched the attic. Not just touched- cleaned! She scrubbed its floorboards and polished the corners of a single window up there. No one had done that since the builder decades ago. It felt so good to be free, to be embraced once again and in such a depth. She’d carved out a place for herself in the attic and a little bag under the couch in case someone scared her away. Would it go back to the dirty way it had been if this resident, if this Jasmine, left?
How could anyone shoo her away? After all of this work she’d put into it. How she sat there and cleaned and lived and laughed in between its walls. She was the owner now, and one of the best. The home let its foundation relax, the walls weren’t tense, the gutters caught the rain as they straightened out in the fall weather. Everything was better this season. Until the mail slammed against the storm door.
Person
Jasmine was upstairs when she heard the thunderous smack and the preceding boom. The storm door shook right out of place and fell into the window of the front door, shattering the pane. It was something that couldn’t be hidden by curtains if she fixed it, no note would justify it.
She investigated the crash, shrapnel was all over the middle of the living room, where the door led. The clock on one of the piles was getting closer to the three mark. The owner usually stopped at the door for her mail in the next few minutes. Jasmine didn’t have time to fix it or the knowledge to. She reached under the couch, grabbing her get-a-way bag and made for the doorway- right as the sound of a car pulled into the driveway. She turned, peeping out of the pane of the front door, she reached both hands up to lift herself for a better view, she let the bag fall.
Jasmine ran back upstairs, turning off every light she passed. Most of the bedroom lights were off but the one in the kitchen was too risky to get. “What on Earth…” said a voice just beyond the front door. More glass tumbled from the tiny pane as whoever was on the other side of the door moved the storm door out of the way. Jasmine tried to slow her breathing and lie as still as she could with her bag between her feet. She tried to pinch it with the tips of her toes, it was annoyingly evasive. Rolling to the side to look for it, the little blue couch covered her height perfectly. It was a nice stained white oak color, much cleaner than when she’d found it. Her feet were nowhere near the bag, it wasn’t even in sight. Jasmine pulled herself up over the couch; the bag wasn’t on the table or cushions either. It wasn’t upstairs at all.
The tiny duffel bag rested on the table right next to the front door. She’d grabbed it to run but the car pulling in had left her in a mad rush. The bag was in plain sight, Jasmine had to hope the owner assumed it was part of the cleaning crew’s work, the nonexistent cleaning crew’s work. “Is someone here?!?” the owner screamed from downstairs, she’d found the bag.
Place
The mail had never broken the home before. Years and years of letters crashing against the glass had never done much more than shake it. To think it would attract the owner who had abandoned it so long ago too, it was karma. Just like the lightning that always struck the home’s trees, this bad luck was destined to leave a layer of dust and loneliness again. Jasmine was sure to be found out; the owner was coming in. It could feel the keys slip into the door and the creaky joints snap the age off and come back to life. Jasmine’s bag, she’d pulled it from the couch but- there it sat. It was in plain sight and worst of all it was unzipped, all her clothing was exposed.
The home had nearly forgotten what she looked like, the old owner, a mid-sized older woman with spotted hair and a bag draped over her arm bigger than the duffel Jasmine had assumed as her own. It could only imagine what the sight of a clean home did to her, to Darla. “Who the….is someone here?!” She shouted. “I’m calling the police! Show yourself! I am armed and I will not go lightly!” It felt Jasmine rise on the floorboards of the attic; the gentle pause as she thought about showing herself. The creaking steps as she made her way towards the dining room.
Person
“Don’t, uh, don’t do that, please. My name is Jasmine and I’ve been, well I’ve been living in your home,” Jasmine said, her hands raised to the top of the door frame that separated the attic. Darla fumbled around in her bag, pulling out a small pink spray bottle. She aimed it at Jasmine. “I’ll, I’ll leave, right now. That duffle bag is full of my stuff, if I could just…”
“You’ve been living here? Did you touch my things? The piles and games and furniture?”
“Yes ma’am, it felt like…payment. It was the least I could do for staying in your space. I fixed a few things too, got the sink working again, the upstairs and downstairs are clear of vermin.”
“How long?”
“Five, almost six months.”
“So, I’ve been paying for you to have electricity, water, television, internet- all of it. And all you did was clean- hell all you did was a break-in and stay? You probably pawned whatever you could too!” Darla started to shake. She looked about the rooms, surveying what possession were still there.
“No ma’am. I just needed a place to stay. I needed a home. Your’s seemed like it needed a resident, that’s all. If you just give me the bag, I’ll…I’ll be on my way,” Jasmine lowered her arms.
“I need to sit down. Six months? You’ve been here for six months and I’m only now noticing?” Darla sat back on the couch, stretching the couch into the wall just like Jasmine. Jasmine took a few steps into the dining room.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve done nothing but care for this house. I really appreciate it, truly. It probably saved my life- what with how blisteringly hot the summer was,” Jasmine took another few steps.
“I’d find shelter in that weather. And an abandoned house with air conditioning- I’m surprised there aren’t more of you living here. I’m equally surprised it isn’t trashed to bits,” Darla pulled her bag onto her lap and hugged it.
“I couldn’t do that to such a beautiful home.”
“At least someone sees it. My sons, they never did. They just called it small and stuck baseball cards in all the vents and stacked their games on the stairwell. Piled their clothes up in the basement.”
“No the bones of this place…it’s beautiful. The windows are elegant and the kitchen, oh you should see it in the morning when the sun hits it just right,” Jasmine said as she took a seat on the floor next to the broken glass.
“I used to make breakfast for the boys when the kitchen lit up like that. You should see it on Christmas morning after a good snow, not like the dry season we had this year. It looks so beautiful. They’re away now, off to study all kinds of business and medicine. It isn’t the same.”
“I understand,” Jasmine said. She waited a few minutes before standing. She reached a hand out to Darla who took it reluctantly. The older woman on the couch looked up to Jasmine with a somber face. “Thank you for letting me experience what you took such great care of.”
“No…I should be thanking you- for reinvigorating my old home. I’m glad it has found a use other than a placeholder for my memories. Would you…I can’t tell my husband about this but, would you stay here? Just keep it together and clean. Cook me a meal a few times a week as pay?”
“Ab-absolutely ma’am. Whatever you want me to do, anything I can do I will,” Jasmine gripped Darla’s hand tighter, shaking it like a soda pop going to your worse schoolyard foe.
“When you get around to it, paying the bills would be nice but, for now, let’s call fixing it up your payment, shall we?” Jasmine nodded. “You’ve done a great job here, how does the bathroom look?” Darla asked.
“Please, let me show you. I had to switch some of the tiles and redo the paint,” Jasmine let Darla lead the way. The duo examined every inch they could. Jasmine listened to the memories of the previous owner, laughing and smiling at the boys antics and a mother’s love, and Darla surprised and bewildered by the bold choices and brave repairs Jasmine had made with little to no money to her name.
It couldn’t be happier either. Healthier than it had been in years, now both of its residents were inspecting the foundation and properties with a new found fascination. The home was useful again, and for a long time to come.
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