Thursday morning, I was almost out of time. Instead of walking through Elysian Park, I chose the short walk to the Baxter Stairs with Rosie, “my” dog. Rosie and I walked up the hill on Ewing Street, trotted along Park Drive. Then we started down the stairs. About a third of the way down the steps we saw a man and an elderly pit bull climbing up. Behind them seemed to be a silvery dog, which turned out to be the bold coyote. At first, I assumed they all were together, until I noticed the second dog was holding back. And that it wasn’t on the stairs, it was on the dirt footpath that led crossways over one of the undeveloped lots next to the steps. The pit and his owner passed, and Rosie and I moved closer to the coyote, who skittered back about fifteen feet.
When we were level, I stopped, with Rosie, to look at the feral animal. She was looking back. I say "she" because I suspect that she was a mother: she was so set on getting to a particular location. She clearly wanted to cross the steps, probably has a den on the other side, which also is undeveloped. Maybe I should say un-ruined, not undeveloped. In any case, we all looked at each other. She inched closer. She waited for Rosie and me to leave, but her impatience was palpable. As we did leave, I turned to watch her carefully resuming her way. Then we reached a landing and, as we continued downhill, the coyote was clipped out of view by the turn of the steps.
The coyote made me think of a different species of den mother, a human one.
Susan, who used to live across the street from us, was a sort of den mother to the Echo Park gang. She had been raised in the house across the street, after her family bought it, moving from next door. She was in her late thirties, mother of three teen-agers. Susan is assimilated-Latino -- I wouldn't be surpised to learn her family has been in the States far longer than my own -- and her children’s father is part Danish. At least one of her daughters has been to Denmark. After Susan and her children were kicked out of their home on Echo Park Avenue -- their expulsion following a July 3 shootout on Echo Park Avenue at which no one is known to have been shot, but the neighbors drew together to have Susan’s landlord toss her out of her place, under a law that makes landlords prosecutable for the gang activities of their tenants – they moved into the home of Susan’s recently widowed grandfather who was one hundred years old. It became Susan’s job to care for her grandfather, Salvatore, and it seems she did a poor job.
Shortly after Susan moved into Salvatore’s place, the gang started hanging out on the porch of the pretty, well-maintained home. Night and day. Susan appeared to be directing the merchandising of drugs. Occasionally we’d hear her shouting things such as “ Ghetto is as ghetto does!” And shushing her wards. She kept order, and she ran the business. When her son practiced rapping, she hissed at him to be considerate of the neighbors, though it wasn’t his rapping that bothered us, it was the idea of teenagers armed with loaded guns, sitting around. (He was a decent rapper, and a lot of his raps featured his mother.) We never had a personal problem with any of the people on the porch. But the atmosphere was unpleasant, and the presence of firearms and open air drug sales pushed it out of the realm of tolerance/acceptance and into…something else. We considered moving. We heard a lot of ugly talk, and we saw a lot of ugly behavior.
When things were peaceful, they played a lot of K-earth 101, cranking it when Sweet Home Alabama came on.
Susan had polish; she had leadership skills; she knew how to talk to anyone, it seemed. But she was emotionally unstable, and, at least later, she was an addict. She had three children, and no straight job. She belonged to the biker-culture as much as she did the gang culture, and at one point she disappeared for a few weeks because she was suspected of having snitched on her proteges.
Susan also tracked the wildlife on the block – all of those days and nights on the porch, I suppose. not to mention the fact that she had been raised here. She had raccoon stories. And when a cat was run over on the street, she sought to find its owner. “That’s someone’s pet,” she said, asking me if I knew to whom the cat belonged. When we didn’t find its owner, she and I put it in a box. I called the city. Susan knew the habits of the hawks and owls. She had a lot of pets herself, including a box turtle that escaped and was found crossing the street.
When Salvatore died at the age of 103, Susan’s brother, who is a firefighter, bought the place, paying off Susan and other heirs. I don't know where Susan's money went. Her brother set to work renovating the house, getting it ready to rent. It took many months, since he worked mainly on weekends, with his wife, their toddler with them. He gutted the house.
Susan became homeless (in her own home) and snuck into the dirt basement to sleep, along with her son. Her brother tried to throw her out many times. He admitted to neighbors that he had found mail in the basement, though he didn’t return the mail. He wasn’t prepared to go that far in incriminating his sister, mail theft being a federal offense, as the mailman pointed out (he knew exactly who was stealing the mail). Some of my husband's and my own correspondence went missing, as did a few pieces of jewelry and the knives that I once bought at a yard sale Susan held.
Susan's brother rented the place to a glossy, young, up-and-coming actor, the actor's girlfriend and his girlfriend’s daughter (now his wife and step-daughter). Susan and her son disappeared. Susan’s cat was abandoned. (Later, the cat was adopted and renamed.) I have heard Susan’s son is doing okay, getting his life together in a job corps program. About Susan, I have heard nothing except that she has been seen in the neighborhood.
