Crossing Boundaries
Chapter 11: Landlords
Anika Paranosz
With a little flourish on my z, I sign off on the down payment for the new apartment. I cannot wait to tell Nadya. Our new landlord, who is a kind elderly gentleman, tells me that we can move in whenever it suited us. He even said that we would work things out with our current landlord.
My current work schedule is odd at the hotel, giving me much more free time to make the necessary preparations for the move. While waiting for Nadya to come home, I put some traditional music on and begin the process of packing. Thankfully, there is not too much.
"Packing already?"
I turn to face her, smiling widely. I jingle our new apartment keys in front of her. "I finished the last of the paperwork today."
She gives a cry of delight before spinning me around in a circle. "A new place!" Her eyes gleam with excitement. Her energy knows no bounds. Her childlike exuberance makes me quite jealous.
After showering the hotel off herself, Nadya throws herself into her packing. She packs with such gusto that eventually she shoos me away, telling me to be useful and make supper while she finishes the packing.
I was in the middle of kneading bread dough when there was a heavy pounding at our door.
"Open up!" came a harsh male voice.
Cautiously, I open the door a crack, only to find the livid face of our landlord staring at me. He roughly shoved open the door, knocking me backwards onto the bare wood floor.
"Leaving?"
I nod mutely, praying that Nadya was staying hidden.
"I don't think so, bitch." He grabs me by the hair and pulls me up to face him. "You're not going anywhere 'til I say so." He smelled like cheap vodka and I nearly choked on the smell.
He didn't get the chance to do much else because from the open door came the cry of, "POLICE! Let go of the woman."
The landlord dropped me roughly. Everything was quite anticlimactic from that point onward. The police were able to apprehend him without a fuss, and he went quietly.
Nadya emerged from her bedroom with a concerned look. "Ani, you all right? I called the police when I heard him come in."
I gave her a hug in thanks. "To answer the question you refuse to ask: no it was not the man who raped me." I sighed heavily, wishing for the hundredth time that this ordeal would be over soon. "Supper?"
Supper was a quiet affair. It was strange to know that we would never be here in this apartment again. Despite the awful neighborhood and disgusting nature of the building, I had grown to like the little apartment. It had been the first place I had ever lived in on my own, so it held a special meaning for me. Halfway through the meal, I jumped up from the table and ran to rummage through my purse.
"On my way back from signing the papers, I got the pictures done." I push the photo envelope across the table to Nadya.
As she looks through them, she smiles and laughs. "I like this one." She shows me the picture of us smiling hugely and wearing ridiculous hats. "We need to frame this one." Then she gets up and rummages through one of the packed boxes. "Aha!" Triumphantly she emerges with a silver picture frame made to look like leaves. Slipping the picture in, she proudly shows off her handiwork. "Perfect!"
When we moved into the new apartment the next day, the whole experience seemed so surreal. It finally felt as though we were living a new life; the sort of life we had dreamed about on the ship voyage.
The week was spent making the place truly ours. We painted the walls in a mixture of bright vibrant colors, and warm inviting tones. All of the wooden molding was stained a deep mahogany, which matched the furniture we had brought with us from the old apartment. I painted me room a deep teal, with a swirling border of white circling the room in three places: on the bottom, in the middle, and at the top. My new curtains were a sheer white, matching the border. Nadya was nearly the complete opposite of me. She painted her bedroom walls with a fiery orange, with maroon squares as her border. The rooms were a perfect visual representation of our two distinct personalities: Nadya, the vibrant one, and me, the more peaceful one.
The finishing touch to the apartment was to place the picture of us on the mantle in a place of honor. We surrounded it with trinkets of our homelands. We marveled at the work we had done. This was truly our new home.