The Roommate

Unlike at Cindy’s my new place bedroom curtains were dark! There were blinds and chocolate brown curtains over the blinds, it was awesome for someone who worked nights! I could sleep in the day time just like it were night time! I got up around 7pm, my new Roommate, who we’ll call Laura, made dinner. She made pork chops, mashed potatoes and veggies. It was delicious. Especially considering I hadn’t had a cooked meal in weeks. She packed me lunch. Very nice gesture but I  wasn’t quite comfortable cos  from experience that all gets tired, fast! She told me she gets food stamps and doesn’t mind sharing food. She always cooks more than she needs anyway. Mind you the closet and fridge were empty when I got there, I don’t know what it is that she cooks too much of. She had less than $20 left in her food stamps card and it was mid month, she wasn’t sure if she was still going to get money for food from the government. Just Saying! This is all stuff I put together from her stories, she talks non stop, when you do that, you’re bound to bust yourself. Okay, Millionaire. I hate to be negative Natalie, but all my experience will have been in vain if I don’t learn from them.

MB was kind enough to take me to work my first night at the new place. It was her day off, but she didn’t mind. She even took me home the following morning. I insisted on taking her to breakfast the following morning. So we went via Mc Donald’s of Some fast food restaurant on our way back to mine. My roommate was home when I got home. She was fixing up the place and cleaning up haha, just my frigging luck. I had to ask her if she were a neat freak. She told me she isn’t, just a bit OCD. I don’t know if it’s an American thing or not but a lot of people I have met here claim to be OCD. Anyway, the condor was clean though, not in a weird way, like Cindy’s. It was lived in. It didn’t look like a house for sale smdh. I was so glad I didn’t have to clean that three storey house every again! By the way when she and her husband stopped talking, she stopped cleaning! I don’t know if husband was making her clean of what! She started cleaning again when they made up. The condor was a two bedroom, Laura had the main bedroom, both rooms had walk in closets, the entire place was carpeted besides the obvious, bathroom and kitchen, one bathroom with toilet and bath in the same space, a door and a nice space with sink, and drawers, don’t know what it’s called, the entire place smelt amazingly! The moment you walk into the main door, the smells just, aaah, love it! We had a living room with a flat screen tv mounted on the wall, cable was disconnected, she was “going to pay” for it the following week when I moved in, no internet, she was about to do that to, or not, but that was the story, dining room set between kitchen and living room and a cute balcony. Laura really did the place up, it was so cute. She was obsessed with Live Love Laugh, she had those words all over the place. Not in a distasteful manner though. Even the candles she was burning in the living room had those words, the place mats, everything. Oh and there was office space near the living room with a printer, a lamp and a trash can. Whenever we wanted to work there, which wasn’t necessary because we had desks in our bedrooms, we could just put our laptops there and go to town. There was a coin Laundry downstairs for the six units.

I went straight to bed the following morning after work then got up around 3pm, Laura was home, she was unemployed hashtag former millionaire and spent a lot of time in her closet. It was a walk in but not that big. Plus she had the entire place to herself, all I did for the first week or so was work and sleep, no need to be trapped in the closet unless you insists on being weird #MissMillionaire! We hung out in the living room when I got up, she told me more of her stories, how she is a nice person and people always took advantage of her. She had been married before, has two grown up kids both homeless and heroin addict. She had recently kicked her son out of her place because she was under the impression he was clean but he started doing drugs again under her roof. She didn’t want to be involved with any of that. Her daughter was staying in motels and at friends’ houses with her boyfriend and their four year old who, apparently is Laura’s reason for living. Laura’s fiancé is in prison, he had been for almost two years and had another two-ish to go when I moved in. I found out over the course of my stay that he is a White Supremacist. Go figure, black person living in a supremacist’s place, recipe for disaster! She was not on speaking terms with her mother nor one of her sisters. She was very close to her other sister though. The sister lives with a boyfriend in a huge house the sister owns. The sister is on house arrest for drug possession. Her boyfriend supposedly snuck the drugs in the sister’s handbag when the cops stopped them one night, that’s how she ended up arrest.

Laura, after losing all her money from her business partner, he ‘framed’ her for forgery and all kinds of white collar crimes, she ended up in jail and lost everything. She lost her amazing home and cars and all her assistants. Now she’s on food stamps and lives with a roommate from Africa! Apparently her case was big time, it made news. It didn’t indeed, I googled the story and found her mugshot and a few others that had nothing to do with the case. This was all a while after I had moved in. I didn’t mention the mugshots, they did freak me out though. I don’t know anybody who has mugshots, especially that many. Put it this way, I didn’t know women with mugshots until America cos I also found one that belonged to one of the ladies I lived with. I won’t tell you who, but just saying!

Laura, she was very close to her niece who works in a nursery with her ‘abusive’ girlfriend. She can’t break up with her because they work together blah blah blah. Laura also knows a lot of people who are addicted to ‘prescription’ pills. She has friends with Health insurance who could get those drugs for her, she would in turn sell those drugs to her connections and get a cut. This is all stuff, I was picking up from putting two and two together from her stories! She was always on the phone in that closet of hers, talking to all kinds of people. They would come meet her in the parking lot, where she would spend less than two minutes and be done. She would sometimes call these people and be like, where’s my money? You know drug dealer type scenarios? I felt like I was dreaming. Really? This is the person I’m gonna room with after everything I’ve been through!

Her boyfriend called everyday around the same time from prison. He would do a collect call type thing (reverse call) but apparently before something happens, there’s a three minute gap between when those people start billing you and not or whatever, so in that three minutes, she would go, I love you babe! Just for him to know she was ok. Also, apparently she is jealous, she had to say those very lines in case she were with another man. Really, you’re gonna control me from Behind bars? He must be really powerful!