Irwin Ramento leaves this house every day, it’s what is required of him as part of this care home. The residents are to be out of the house for most of the day except for lunch and dinner.
So, Irwin walks every day with a funky shuffle. Some days he is very present and in his body, other days his eyes are glassed over which is a clear sign that he is medicated. The medicated days are the worst days for Irwin to be let out because when he has the urge to do number one or number two, he’ll drop his pants and do it. It doesn’t matter where it is, he’ll just let loose.
On one of Irwin’s medicated days, he climbed over Martin Vilora’s fence and defecated on his newly manicured grass. Martin was not a man who was prone to violence but the hours of labor he invested in meticulously trimming the lawn to his liking only to have someone from the ‘Mento House’ come shit on it was too much. In a blind rage, he armed himself with an aluminum baseball bat and began to swing it wildly at Irwin. In a panic, Irwin stood up to run but he lost his balance and instinctively grabbed onto Martin to prevent himself from falling. Martin felt utter vile revulsion at the thought of being touched by someone who he considered to be lower than an animal. He pushed Irwin away and put enough distance between the two of them for the wind-up. Martin let his arm completely relax and let a twist of his hip turn his swinging arm into a whip with the bat providing the pop at the end. Pop it did, the sound of metal against bone was sickening and Irwin went down in a heap. As medicated as Irwin was he shouldn’t have felt a thing; in fact, he should not have died at all. But there he lay on the pristine lawn convulsing for another few minutes before he finally expired. By the time the EMT arrived, it was too late to do anything. Martin was never convicted for Irwin’s death, it was ruled as self-defense. However, Martin would become tormented by Irwin’s ghost and the ghastly smell of his fecal matter permeating his house and property. Eventually, he was forced to sell the house, after that it was rumored that he moved back to the Philippines.
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MARA
At the opposite end of our block lives a thirteen-year-old girl who stays with her feeble grandparents. The elderly couple lives on a fixed income and is only able to afford the very bare essentials and not being able to drive any longer prevents them from doing their shopping and bill paying. In the end, it was their granddaughter Mara that they depended on to do everything. It was a great responsibility to be placed on the shoulders of a thirteen-year-old girl. One afternoon while coming back from Times Supermarket with a bag of groceries for her grandparents she came upon a woman who appeared to be in desperate need of something from a man that she was talking to. She rubbed her body up against his and cradled her forehead under his neck and tried in desperation to kiss him. The man was disinterested in her advances and kept looking away every time she tried to caress his lips with hers. The woman perspired with frustration, she begged for his attention now, she grabbed his hand and put it under her skirt but he pulled away. Finally, he looked the woman straight in the eye and handed her a small plastic bag that seemed to be filled with little white rocks.
“Money…… I don’t want your smelly crotch on my hands…..five hundred for the whole bag.” The woman grabbed for the small bag and the man snapped it back. “Money first.”
The woman hiked up her dress and removed a wad full of cash from inside her underwear and held it out for the man to take. His face was twisted in disgust as he removed a larger zip bag from his pants pocket and held it open for the woman to put the money in. The man handed over the smaller bag to the woman who ran back to her car where a man and infant child were waiting, The woman removed a glass object that looked like something that she held above a bunsen burner in science class. The woman and the man were huddled around it and wrapped their mouths around the glass and smoked the contents, all while holding on to their baby at the same time. Mara looked back at the man who tossed a small bag of the white rocks to her. Catching it in her one hand she stared at it and stared at the man and shrugged her shoulders.
“Sell it to your friends at school and keep the money, when you run out, come to find me and I’ll give you more to sell,” the man walked past her and climbed into a black on black Mercedes parked down the street.
A month later, the living situation of Mara's grandparents improved exponentially. With more food to feed them, better furniture to comfort them and nicer clothes for them to wear, the two elderly people no longer lived on the brink of destitution. Mara got her grandparents a new kind of toilet that is used in Japan. Because they had a hard time cleaning themselves after using the bathroom their new toilet would help wash them with a nice jet of water to help cleanse their particulars. The next day Mara found the man who gave her her first bag of rocks so that she might replenish herself. On top of that, Mara gave the man a taste of half her earnings out of respect. The man was impressed and gladly handed Mara her next bag, the girl graciously accepted and bowed to the man and waited. The man did not return the bow but instead chose to turn and leave. This is where Mara seized the advantage of the moment and removed a paring knife from her waistband and stabbed the man in his kidneys. She then sliced the insides of both his thighs. She waited patiently until he buckled to his knees, then she applied the blade to his throat where she cut him open from ear to ear. She moved quickly and took all the white rocks in the plastic bags from his pockets and stuffed it in hers.
On the day that Irwin Ramento was killed by Martin Viloria, Mara Ah Sing became the most successful drug dealer on the block at thirteen years of age.
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WHERE I LIVE
My house is simple, its smack dab in the very middle of the block where everything central passes by its gates. It's a simple three-bedroom house with two bathrooms and a very spacious living room and a quaint kitchen. It's one of those matchbox houses that survived the 70’s and became a monument to a time that would end up being fondly remembered by modern daydreamers. It’s not as if this house has not had its share of happenings, it’s been broken into, and squatted in by the homeless. But it also had its share of weddings in the backyard and it welcomed three generations of children and grandchildren. Unfortunately, everyone who has ever lived in my house has died in it as well, such is fortunes share of tragedy in exchange for a roof over your head. The old Hawaiian family who lives down the block said that our entire neighborhood was built on the grounds of an old heiau of human sacrifice and that most of the rock walls which decorate each house in one way or another come from the very foundation of that old Hawaiian temple. My house was said to be placed where the old kahuna prepared the bodies for ritual offerings to their gods.
Be that as it may, I can’t say for certain that this is the reason for everyone’s death in my home and that it is the same reason for the odd occurrences in my neighborhood. I will say that in my home I am its only specter attached to the very grain of these wooden walls and tiled floors. All who have lived here are deaf to my warnings in their waking moments and in their dreams. I can never seem to reach them until it is too fatal and too late. When they finally see me after they’ve left their physical bonds it doesn’t matter. It never does matter.
Ah yes, here we are, another moving truck pulling into my narrow driveway and another vehicle filled with a hopeful family trying to make a new start never realizing that this is the end of their road.
photo credit Hawaii news now
This looks like the house in Makiki near the freeway.
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