I was on the phone last night with Young-Won (hehe, wow, haven't called him that since I was 15) when all of a sudden a hear several large bangs and the door slamming from downstairs.
I freeze in my tracks and sit up in my bed.
"Hold on, Young-Won," I whisper into my cell, "I think someone is downstairs. I don't know who it is."
"Ookay," he replies apprehensively on the other line.
I tip toe to my bedroom door and twist the doorknob slowly, pulling it so that there is a little crack to let the hallway light spill in.
I see the light from the kitchen reflecting off the white walls that lead up the stairs so I know someone is in the kitchen. But who? I hadn't heard the door open at all.
I then hear my roommate's dog's collar jingle softly around the living room and breathe a sigh of relief. It must be my roommate's girlfriend (or whatever she is).
Now, I am sure I have posted about this girl before. From the very beginning that I met her, I know that despite her fake smiles, her phony laughter, and her attempts to try to be cordial, that she never truly liked me. One: because my other roommate informed me that the first night that she met me she argued with J.B. (the homeowner and "the love of her life") and told him that she was "jealous" of me because I lived with J.B. and she didn't.
Two: because of the looks she always gives me. And the tone of her voice when she talks to me. Have you ever just got the feeling that someone thought you were this minuscule little ant and talked to you as such? That's how I feel whenever she talks to me. As if she is envisioning herself on a pedestal and me as a peasant toiling in the fields.
But I could look beyond that. I even tried sympathizing with her. I told J one night when he was over that I kind of see where J.B. was in the wrong, kind of leading her on. I tried to think of her whenever she came over to make him dinner, helping her with the dishes.
But last night, all that went out the window.
After hearing the loud bangs, and at first thinking that it was a burglar and then realizing that it was just her, I went down the steps with Y.W. on the phone with me and asked her if everything was okay. The next thing that had come to my mind was that she had fallen.
"I'm fine," she said with a bit of attitude. Okay - now what's up, I'm thinking.
She comes storming up the basement stairs.
"You know, E, the next time that you have to take the top off the trash can in order to stuff your trash into the trash bag, it just means that you need to take it out," she said slamming the trash can around the kitchen like a crazy person.
Whoa, wait...it's my fault now?
"I saw there was still room left in the trash bag. I didn't think it'd be such a big deal," I said, cupping my hand over my phone.
By this time she had two of the trash cans (the one in the kitchen and the one from downstairs) sprawled over the kitchen floor and then a bunch of trash bags just lying next to each other. She was in front of the refrigerator with a trashbag throwing out a bunch of stuff.
I was so perturbed that I didn't feel I needed to say anything else, lest I get in her face and tell her a thing or two. I went downstairs to quickly throw my clothes into the dryer (which by the way, I am never able to really finish my laundry at any one time because she is always in the basement because that's J.B.'s room, and so once she's down there I always feel rude going down and walking through the bedroom to get to the laundry room) and then walked back upstairs.
She was still throwing stuff away from the fridge and I quickly walked past her, glancing over her shoulder to make sure she didn't throw any of my food away (because they both, J.B. and her, would do that in the past without asking. Food that was still good.)
First off, who is she to talk to me like she is my mother? I moved out to get away from all that. Not to have someone stand in the kitchen, first scare me half to death thinking we were getting robbed, to then scold me for something trivial like a trash bag.
Second off, she isn't even my landlord, and she isn't even supposed to be living there, so why is she there? Because J.B. is in Iraq and has no control over her and what she's been doing to his house (as if he had that much control while he was living here, but that's besides the point.)
Third...I come from a big family where it was normal to use the last bit of space in the trash bag because there were so many of us and if we kept wrapping up trashbags at the sight of it getting the least bit full, at the end of the week we'd have a monsoon of trashbags on our front lawn for the trashman. So we were taught as kids that you wait until you fill the entire trash bag before taking it out. And that trash bag was certainly not full.
I can't even believe that this is a topic of discussion and it has become even more of an issue that she is there when it wasn't intended for her to be.
Where is my license? When can I get out of this hell hole that I live in?
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