The ‘Bowel Movement Rental’ Agency & The Nightmare on Lakeview Avenue

The Baltimore slum lord is a particular beast. He practices apathy as a living commitment to owning property. But his property is old and hazardous. It wears lead paint as a house coat. The built-in microwave from 1940 remains crusted in tetanus and sixty-year grease. Nothing is replaced or up to code. The oven has a gas leak. The back door doesn’t close. Because of this the heating bill is high and the mice are as much of a roommate as the cold. Often not even living in the state of Maryland, he can’t manage his own property. Instead, he has someone else–rude and uncompromising–act as a figurehead, prattling rehearsed bits of lease legalese. 

The day we went to see the property, I was hopeful. There was sun. There was a building. There was the smell of farm mulch and city exhaust. There was a door. There was a dog walking its owner like a kite. There was a sepia picket fence. There were steps. There was a porch the size of a classroom. And then there was the apartment– the bottom half of a multifamily home split into two.  

The apartment opened to a foyer which led down a hallway. To the left was the front bedroom situated off the dining room. The bedroom was tiny, about the size of a Chipotle bathroom, but it faced the front of the house and in this way, grabbed the light from the deck like a fist collapsing a fly in its palm. The dining room doubled as the living room and was coated in a color offensive to pink. It was like a Pepto Bismol gurgled up, shat into a bottle of Orangeade and swirled with the dirty end of a tampon. 

The second bedroom was slightly bigger, but darkness swallowed it like a father who, desperately trying to escape the conviction of embezzlement, might swallow a bottle of Lorazepam. Then, there was the kitchen–also tiny. Perhaps the length of my arm span, curtailed by a pantry that hadn’t been cleaned out in the last 15 years. 

Back then, naivety was an old wisdom tooth I had yet to get extracted. Safety, to me, was constructed, a promise as simple as following the rules. If I pay to live here, I thought, then safety will meet me in return. Back then, it had never occurred to me that someone would allow two young girls to live in an uninhabitable apartment. 

From the moment we moved in, the red flags sprung a hydra of heads. Sure, there were copious red flags I had ignored–for one, we had found the apartment on Craigslist; for two, BMR, the rental agency, accepted credit scores as low as 500. But never did I think that the cracks in the hardwood floor would metaphorically expand. 

The oven was an old machine. Nearly 100 years past its inception, it clicked viciously when turned on. Past the clicking, there was a smell. A swirl of eggs and backwards air. At first, we didn’t worry about it too much. Just turned it on for quick meals and an occasional dose of gas poisoning. That was until us and everyone who came over mysteriously started throwing up. Each day we wiped the gripe from our mouths while hovered over the toilet. We did this until we realized, Fart, our property manager, would not pull the wool of racism from his eyes long enough to believe two young Black women that the oven was leaking noxious gas. I called BGE. They came and within two minutes diagnosed the oven as hazardous due to a gas leak. The red tag went up. It was this notice attached to another round of insisting that the oven was finally replaced. That was the end of month two. 

By month three, there was the microwave issue. Or rather, the lack thereof. The device was built-into the wall. And it seemed it and the walls were built in the same year. The light on the outside didn’t even wink. It was stone cold dead. When we told Fart that the microwave didn’t work, again, he didn’t believe us. When we showed him the microwave didn’t work, he said he’d send His Guy to check it out. What ensued was a 5-month back-and-forth in which His Guy would come over to our house for hours, tinker with the microwave, and then say, he needed to come back after ordering an obscure part. I fantasized about running Fart’s voodoo doll under scalding hot water. 

Also by month three, it started to get cold, but the back door wouldn’t close properly. Instead, it left a fine slit of light and cold air seeping through the cracks. Mice were waddling into my best friend’s bedroom like children into a pool. The bedroom was next to the bathroom door–which was off the hinges–and the bathroom’s mirror was placed at a height that only a person 6’8″ would be able to use. The bathroom was above the basement that smelled as if a ghost spit all his dead memories on the concrete floor. At some point, we withheld rent in the hopes of getting something in our broken home fixed. Shortly after this, Fart stopped by. 

Hey, is something wrong? You haven’t paid rent. 

Yeah, everything is wrong. We’re not paying until you’ve fixed something in this house. 

Oh, I just thought you didn’t pay because people in this neighborhood can’t read. And because of that, usually can’t use the computer either. 

I looked at him as if a bug had crawled out his mouth and was sitting on his upper lip humping it like a moth to a lantern. Everything went red. In every room, I saw his voodoo doll slathered in peanut butter and being viciously eaten by a mouse. But my anger subsided when I realized that beneath was deepening sadness. In every room, I felt further and further from home.

That winter, my mom came to visit. Sleeping on our bright pink couch, she complained that she couldn’t sleep because all night, she’d heard mice playing Shoots and Ladders. By this time, we’d gotten a cat, but she saw the mice more as fidget toys to idly spin by her paws than as prey to consume. 

This reminds me of my childhood– growing up on Baltimore Street.

How so?

We had rats in our house. And cracks in the floors. 

You know it’s bad when your boomer up-hills-both-ways parent tells you your home reminds her of poor, Baltimore youth. 

Lakeview was the first time I had elected to live with a close friend. Each one of these housing mishaps made our relationship more and more tense. And yet, each tension required us to talk. To sit with each other’s emotions. We built a stronger bond that is now stronger than ever. 

Housing is a human right. It is a basic need on the hierarchy. If I were Mayor Scott, I’d make housing free. In the meantime, all I can do is make sure I know how I want to live. And protect that at all costs.