Dear Rowan, April 20th Wichita, KS
Well, I have arrived safely, and
found an apartment so I have a roof over my head. That is really all I have to
say that is really good news. Wichita is . . . flat. It is certainly a good
deal bigger than Arbuckle, and seems to stretch on for miles comparatively. But
it is really not so very different from Arbuckle or Bend at first glance,
except for the size. The whole city seems dusty, and has a feel of poverty to
it. There are nice enough buildings in the historic part of downtown, but even
they feel like they were really nice once, and are clinging to their pasts for
all they are worth, because their present condition is one of disrepair or
minimal and unskilled repair, making them look more like Frankenstein's
creations than buildings that were built whole and were once beautiful.
The only apartment I could find at a
decent price is a basement of a tiny little house. The main floor is rented out
as its own apartment. There is a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and main room.
When you open the door there is a "landing" about twice as deep as a
normal stair step, then the stairs plunge precipitously down under the house.
The edge of the floor above sticks out over the stairwell so that if you were
to come down the stairs upright, and were a few inches taller than me, you would hit your head. Fortunately I am short enough
to just miss it without having to stoop, since the stairs are so steep that
bending down may be hazardous. The stairs empty into a narrow "hallway" that
branches off to the main room and bedroom on the left, and the kitchen and
bathroom on the right. The hall is narrow, and the wall opposite the stairs is
brick, having once been a central fireplace and chimney column for both levels
of the house. The fireplace is sealed up though, and it did not even seem to
have a mantle before, just a hole in the bricks which has since been badly
bricked up.
The landlord is an older woman, I
refuse to call her a lady, who complained the whole time about how tired she
was of continually showing this place, when in fact she had not been down into
this apartment for years. Every surface that had once contained water, sinks in
the kitchen and bathroom, the tub, even the toilet, had a covering of dead
bugs. And all she said about it when I was rather nauseated was that maybe she
should have had someone down to clean the place. She wouldn't even have done it
herself, and she is the one renting it out! The fridge is stuck into an
unfinished, unsealed hole cut into the drywall in the kitchen, which backs into
the space below the stairs. I shudder to think what may be living in that hole,
since there seems to be just an empty void behind the bulk of the fridge.
There is no dishwasher, and the stove
is electric with the wire rings, none of which set flat, and there is only one
rack in the oven. Apparently the last tenants must have taken the other rack
with them when they left, because she swears that there used to be two. She
very generously said I could buy a new rack or new stove rings if I wanted to.
Not that she would buy them, or reimburse me for the purchase, just that I
could buy them if I wanted them.
The bathroom is the largest room in
the whole house, partially because it is also the laundry room. There are plugs
for a washer and drier in a large closet in the bathroom. There is no washer or
dryer, and she again generously told me that if I wanted them I could buy them,
otherwise there is a laundromat a few blocks away. Even if I did want to buy a
laundry set, I have no idea how I would get them down those stairs, around the
corner into the hall, and then through the tight squeeze and ninety degree turn
into the bathroom.
The bedroom has a single-wide bed
frame in it, but no mattress. Apparently the last tenants took that too. Sadly,
a single bed is all that would fit in this tiny room and still allow room for
standing up to get dressed without having to go out into the main room. There
is a closet, which is just deep enough for a hanger, although I think that once
there are clothes on my hangers things will hang at an angle. The closet has
sliding doors, which is great because otherwise I am not sure you could fit a
bed in the bedroom at all, unless it was one of those like in old movies that
could fold up to the wall.
The main room is large enough for a
TV and a chair, or maybe a love-seat as long as you were ok having that be the
only furniture in the room. I don't know where even a nook-sized table and
chair would go for eating on, the landlady just said to use TV trays that can
fold up. She is such a classy lady I can hardly stand it.
In her ad she said that there were
mostly basement windows, but that the main room had a full sized window. Well,
if full size means a bathroom window size, then yes, it is full sized. It also
has a beautiful view of concrete, weeds, and trash. It is a completely sunken
window, with no view at all, and no real light to speak of since it is on the
worst side of the house for sunlight. The basement windows are the little, two
panel type that peek out onto the lawn, and if you were trapped in the house,
you would be in big trouble because I don't think you could fit a toddler
through these things even if they opened. Which they don't, because there is a
layer of dirt and weeds that has built up over the bottoms of them, effectively
reducing their light input to a brownish haze that wouldn't even be bright
enough to find the light switch on the wall by. Speaking of lights, apparently
the last tenants ran off with the fixtures as well, because there are just bare
bulbs in all the rooms. Again, the landlady said I could buy fixtures if I minded the bare bulbs.
The upstairs neighbors are gems too.
There are three broken-down cars in the two driveways that go to the house, one
from the front and one from the back. The unshaven man who was sitting in rusty
lawn chair on his porch, (which is just big enough for the door to swing open,
so the door can't open if you are sitting on the porch) in a wife beater tank
top and paint plastered jeans that he had hemmed by walking off the backs of
them, said he could move one of them so I could park in a driveway instead of
in the street. Of course he finished his cigarette, yelled back into the house
while folding up his lawn chair, and out came a woman with rats-nest hair,
wearing a matching tank top and cut off daisy dukes, carrying a filthy toddler
in an also matching tank top and a diaper (They must sell wife beaters in
family packs around here). A black lab mix, probably around 8 months old, came
bounding out of the house with them, and the guy promptly put it in a plastic kennel beside the front door. They all piled into the least decrepit looking
car and pulled out, belts screaming in protest, and left. I don't think he
meant me to use that spot, since it is the closest to his door, but hey, he
left it open. He can move one of his other junkers if he wants to park
somewhere else. That dog has been barking its head off quite happily ever
since, at least as far as I can tell. After a while I just tuned it out.
The only really good thing about this
apartment is that it rents by the month. It makes me wonder if all the things
she said the last tenants took when they left were ever here at all. And she
said that the last tenants stayed here for four years. I can't imagine living
in this rat hole for four years. The only reason I took it at all is that I
already spent about a month's rent on a hotel room, and since this place rents
by the month I don't have to worry about a long term commitment. It is also in
a residential area within walking distance of downtown so I won't have to worry
about driving downtown to find a job.
I already went and got a cheap new
mattress and a few things for the kitchen, milk and eggs and such. The mattress
was kind of fun to get into the apartment, since I had to slide it down the
stairs, then slide down the mattress to get below it and maneuver it into the
bedroom. When I really think about it, a slide would be so much cooler than
these precipitous stairs for getting down into the apartment. Then you could
have a rope ladder or something to get back up again. Or the convertible stairs
to slide things like in the movies, so they could be stairs when you needed to
go up, but you could flip them down to be a slide for coming down. That would
add just a touch of awesomeness to this otherwise rather vile abode. Tomorrow I
plan on getting everything I can clean taken care of in this little dung heap,
then unpacking. And the day after that, the job hunt begins! Once I get a nice
steady job, I am going to look around for a better apartment in a better
neighborhood. And of course I need to find the best coffee shop in walking
distance, because I don't want to sit down in this little cell writing any more
than I have to. This place is just temporary and all I really need it for is a
place to sleep at night. But at least I have a place, I am out of the hotel so
now I have a physical address, which always helps when putting in job
applications, and I have a plan for getting this new life on track. Things can
only look up from here, right?
I'll write again when I have any
news, job, cool coffee shop, meeting the man of my dreams who has been waiting
for me here in Wichita, you know, just any little news like that. I hope you
are doing great, and you can write back to the address on this letter until I
find a better place!
Your friend,
Emily
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