Chapter 4

My Saturday morning isn’t starting out very pleasantly.

I’m sitting in the living room, enjoying my Italian roast blend coffee when I hear a rustling on the front steps. Immediately, I sit straight up in a lurch, my body tensing on the couch. My ears are prickling, and an ominous feeling looms over my head with uncertainty.

The rustling and scraping sound stops briefly. I sigh with relief and allow myself to relax and lean back into the couch once more. Perhaps the culprit is the breeze outside, catching on a tree limb that scraped across the front porch or something.

Then, the fear immobilizes me, and my mouth hangs open in paralyzing horror. I can hear a man cough and clear his throat just outside the front door. Then he jiggles the door knob.

Someone is breaking in.

Reaching for my cell phone on the coffee table in a fluster of panic, I fumble shakily to push the numbers of 9-1-1 onto the keypad but before I can even get halfway accomplished with that task, the door swings open.

I’m being robbed, and I’m going to die.

Oh my God.

Wait…I recognize the man who barrels into the room. It’s my Uncle Marshall. He’s wearing a tattered and dingy long-sleeved flannel shirt and looks annoyed at the front door. A black and brown baseball hat that reads ‘Astros’ adorns his head and covers his signature disheveled stringy blond hair that at the age of sixty, is quickly speckling with strands of silver.

He’s wearing white washed jeans with a hole in the knee and as he glares down at me on the couch, I recoil slightly at his domineering presence.

“Um…hi Uncle Marshall.” I lick my dry lips and sheepishly stand up to greet him. I want to tell him its rude to barge in on somebody unannounced, but I fear his backlash won’t be worth the trouble for me. He’s never been one of my favorite relatives.

He coughs again and sniffs, and wipes his nose with a handkerchief, retrieving it from his back pocket.

“Olivia?” he asks in a grumbly voice. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He appears to be just as surprised to see me as I am to see him. He pushes the rag back into his pocket and sizes me up, staring at me while I feel like a lab rat under his scrutiny.

Okay, so I guess we are not going to establish proper greetings here after all. I shift my weight and scratch my head, running a nervously shaky hand through my hair. “Uncle Marshall…” I begin. “I…um…I live here.”

“What?” Uncle Marshall shakes his head in disbelief. “Why?”

“I’ve been taking care of Grandma for four years,” I state defensively. He needs to get a clue! Where else would I live?

“Well Mom is gone now.” Uncle Marshall shakes his head with a finality that rakes me across the coals and makes me shiver. 

“I know…” I mumble and trail off while looking at my bare feet on the floor.

“Well what the hell are you still doing here?” He raises his voice as if to imply my presence in his mother’s house is unacceptable.

“It’s only been a week since she died,” I state. “I haven’t moved out yet. I’m still trying to go through grandma’s stuff and make sense of everything. I need to determine what all needs to be taken to Goodwill and what keepsakes should be divided to the family.”

I’m grasping at straws here, defiantly pleading my case to end this nightmare. I need Uncle Marshall to retreat. It’s too early in the morning to be this stressed out.

“That ain’t your decision to make.” Uncle Marshall sniffs again and raises an eyebrow, taunting me as if in warning to argue with him. I take a hard swallow and stand there, meekly nodding while I gaze out at the spring day beginning in the front yard and beyond.

Uncle Marshall is grandma’s eldest son, and my late mother’s older brother. He has never been a favorite of mine, needless to say. Even as far back as I can remember, going back to childhood essentially, I always thought of Uncle Marshall as a bully.

In my opinion, he’s a lazy deadbeat who mooches off of his exhausted, over worked wife who is a nurse at the local hospital. Aunt Debra, Uncle Marshall’s wife, has to pick up just about every shift she can beg for in order to keep their bills paid. Every time I see her, which isn’t very often, she always has dark circles under her eyes as if she’s running on fumes and not enough sleep. She’s encapsulated by fatigue and I feel sorry for her.

Uncle Marshall has a gambling problem, and it’s been so out of control in the past that grandma had to bail him out of a sticky situation once where he spent all his money on the slots in the casino rather than pay his mortgage for three months in a row.

Aunt Debra was none the wiser, trustfully believing that Uncle Marshall was paying the bills on time just as he was supposed to. It turns out, that after she’d either go to bed for the night or head off to work, he’d hit the casinos and burn through their savings until it dwindled into absolutely nothing.

I remember grandma telling me stories about how she had to keep a tight watch on her purse strings whenever Uncle Marshall came around for a visit. I watch with foreboding as Uncle Marshall helps himself to a glass of milk from the fridge. He gulps it down loudly and then expels a guttural, disgusting burp that makes me wince.

He slams the cup down on the counter without bothering to wash it. I scrutinize every move he makes, keeping my muscles still, but my frantic heart gallops in my chest as my stomach churns with waves of anxiety.

What is he doing?

He walks to the laundry room and peeks inside. Thank goodness I don’t have any of my bras or panties laying out to dry on the counter in there! Walking back into the kitchen, he opens a few drawers and rifles through them, making me scream internally with rising frustration.

He coughs again and moves past me to start walking down the hallway when I finally muster up the bravery and courage to stop him.

“Uncle Marshall?”

My voice is meek and timid.

He grunts and mumbles something inaudible and walks into one of the guest bedrooms, but not the one I’m using. I jog to catch up to him and notice him glancing out the window.

“Uncle Marshall, is there something I can help you with?”

He turns around as a slimy grin curls across his lips. “Yeah.” He rubs his head under his hat and then adjusts it back on his head. “You can get out.”

I’m in shock. What did he just say to me? Heat rushes to my face and my breath quickens. 

“Get out? What…I mean…” I scramble for the right words, but my mind is a basket case. My fraying nerves are basically a scattering of alley cats at this point.

I guess my panic is amusing to Uncle Marshall because he chuckles. “Yeah, that’s right. You need to leave.”

I try not to allow the stinging tears access to my eyes, but they are brimming, threatening to spill over the sides of my cheeks. “You can’t kick me out…” I whisper softly. Grandma wouldn’t kick me out.

Uncle Marshall studies me for a moment, narrowing his eyes. “You got money to pay the rent then?”

“Rent?” I ask with perplexity. “Grandma never charged me for any rent.”

He shakes his head. “That ain’t my problem sweetheart. Grandma ain’t here anymore.”

I stare at him in dumbfounded disbelief. I need to wake up. I pinch my wrist, secretly praying this isn’t really happening. 

It doesn’t work. Uncle Marshall is still standing in front of me, daring me to defy him. I’m not having a nightmare after all. Well, I am, only this one I can’t escape from because it’s real life.

He clicks his tongue and winks at me with a grin full of malice. “Guess your freeloading time is up isn’t it, darlin?”

I glare at him, seething. Uncle Marshall is one to talk when it comes to freeloading. He has an eBay store that he runs out of his house, which is what he calls his career, despite never making any money from it.

Well, that’s giving him far too much credit, so let me rephrase that testament. The room in his house where he claims to sell items for people is more or less a tiny closet type of room in the back of his house that’s full of dusty, weathered and used items that nobody wants.

He isn’t successful at his trade in the slightest, so the brunt of the burdensome bills fall on poor Aunt Debra’s shoulders.

I can’t believe that he has the audacity to stand here and point a degrading finger at me, behaving with such condescending snide that he really thinks he’s above me and actually has the power to kick me to the curb, essentially making me homeless.

“You can’t do that,” I scoff, shaking my head as if he’s insane, (which he is).

“You wanna bet, sweetie? I’m the only living child and I have inherited all of my mom’s belongings, including this house.”

He chuckles, baiting me further but I can’t help myself. I’m hurtling for a tailspin here.

“Stop…calling me sweetie,” I shudder with disgust.

“Well one of two things are gonna happen here.” Uncle Marshall heaves a sigh and looks like he’s going to give it to me straight.

“Okay…” I say with guarded caution.

Uncle Marshall gestures animatedly with his hands. “You are either gonna pay the rent, or you are gonna get out.” He points to the hallway, leading back out to the front door.

I take a deep breath. Maybe I can negotiate with him. He doesn’t strike me as the type to offer up a compromise, but I give it my best shot anyway.

“How much is the rent?” I ask him, knowing he’s going to spew out some high number off the top of his head so I prepare myself in advance.

He sneers at me and grins. “1700 dollars.”

I gasp, truly in the depths of abysmal shock at this point. “1700 dollars as in…like per month?” I shriek in panic.

“Mmm-hmm, that’s right sweetheart.” He continues drawling out the pet names even though I’ve asked him to stop.

“Uncle Marshall…” I shake my head and cast my eyes to the floor. “I can’t afford that, I don’t even have a job right now.”

“Tough luck darlin.’” He clicks his tongue again.

“Can’t you just wait a few weeks? I am trying to get myself adjusted. I promise to find a job by the end of the month, then I can pay.”

I hate myself for sounding desperate, but judging by the look in Uncle Marshall’s cold eyes, he’s not interested in being persuaded.

“I have a tenant who’s ready to move in,” he tells me with disregard.

“When?” I ask, even though I’m dreading his answer.

“In the next couple of days,” he states in an aggressive, matter of fact type of tone with a smug grin.

“Are you kidding? That’s not enough time for me to move out!” I wail. “I don’t even have anywhere else lined up to move!”

I could hit him, I’m boiling with such forceful rage. How can he do this to me? We are blood relatives, bonded by grandma. This is no way to honor her legacy.

“I need to get a renter in here so I can start collecting some income,” Uncle Marshall dares to confess.

“Grandma would be rolling over in her grave if she knew you were in her house treating her granddaughter this way.”

I hiss at him and clinch my fists into angry balls.

Uncle Marshall shrugs defiantly. “Sorry darlin.’ That’s the way life is sometimes. Grandma’s gone, and the house is mine now.”

Fresh tears well in my eyes once again and this time I let them fall, tasting their saltiness that represents a swell of despair and bitter animosity. Part of the resentment I’m saving for myself. I should have expected an ending like this, but honestly the thought never even crossed my mind at the time.

On the very night I graduated from high school, my grandma had a stroke. This was supposed to be one of the happiest nights of my life, but instead I had to make a selfish choice to move in and care for her. I didn’t have a mother to do it for me, she was gone. It was up to me to help grandma, and nobody else was going to be there to step up to the plate behind me.

Uncle Marshall is grandma’s only living child, so I guess in his mind that earns him the glorifying right to do whatever he pleases and bully those that are vulnerable…like me.

At the time, I thought it was a great idea because it got me out of the house with an uncaring father and his flashy, annoyingly over the top new wife. Of course, I had to also make the choice to place my college dreams on the back burner because grandma needed me around the clock, twenty-four hours a day.

Now, as I recall those memories as if I’m trapped in a snow globe, four years have gone by and I have nothing to show for myself. There are no prospects of a career and I’m facing eviction by my very own, cruel and heartless uncle.

Now what am I supposed to do?