I faced and dealt with some serious challenges yesterday with my neighbors, the three kids who have become good buddies with my own three, and who have been regularly attending my Wednesday after-school children’s class. I’m still trying to process what happened to get me to a point where I was ready to slug José. I was actually challenging him to a fight on my front sidewalk. The kid is nine. What was I thinking? As I recall, I was only trying to get his attention, so instead of fighting, I took his bike away from him. He was riding on it at the time, so you could say I had managed to get his attention alright.
But wait, let me back up. It might make me look really bad to start the story where I was at my worst. Apparently I don’t mind looking bad. It’s okay. Call it foreshadowing. Now you’re really wondering how did I get to a point where I was ready to fight with the neighbor kid. And steal his bike.
It happened like this. I was out all day. I was feeling pretty fried. This week has been really tiring for me, a lot of output, the start of my new blog at the local newspaper, lots of things happening in my Baha’i community, and the start of the spring craziness with the end of school and teacher appreciation luncheons and so on. (With three kids in school this year it’s more intense than ever, and I am beside myself with all the permission slips and notices that come home. If one of them misbehaves at school or wets his pants or gets sick, forget it, I have to set aside most of my day just to cope mentally.) Right, so I have a full plate, I guess that much is clear.
I had just returned home with the kids after school and sent Irazu on her way across the street, as I always do. Council and Paolo wanted to go outside and enjoy the beautiful afternoon sunshine, and Vigil wanted to stay in and dance to his new CD. (Oh. The CD? “Hip Hop Alphabop.”) This was all fine and well. But I knew I had to take care of some things at my desk. I could not be backyard monitor with my own kids as well as the neighbors descending upon us. Sometimes they are not home, but when they are, they usually just invite themselves into our yard. I am inconsistent about how I handle it, but I lean toward being permissive about it lately.
Yesterday was different. I didn’t want them over. So I said to Council and Paolo, ‘You may go out and play, but you must stay in the back yard, and friends are not allowed to visit today. If they try to visit, tell them, ‘My mom said no friends are allowed to visit today.’” They agreed to this and went outside happily. Council settled in a sunlight-dappled patch in the grass to read her novel. Paolo strapped on his homemade bow (a curved stick strung with a nylon cord that his grandfather crafted for him last summer) and commenced pretend play on his own. Vigil was doing breakdancing moves in the living room. All was peaceful, for about five minutes.
I heard Luis, 4, and Brian, 6, in the driveway. I opened the window. They’d ridden their bikes over. “Luis, Brian,” I called to them. “I told my kids no friends visiting today.” Brian looked up at me and said he was just leaving. He was trying to get Luis to come home, he said. “Okay,” I replied. I let it go. A few minutes later, the same thing happened. Luis appeared not to understand that he couldn’t visit today.
Council came inside looking sad. “Mama? I told Brian that my mom said no friends visiting today and he said, ‘Your mom is stupid.’” “Uh-huh,” I said, starting to come to a simmer inside. “He’s angry that he’s not allowed to visit today. But it’s okay, honey. It’s his problem. I’m not stupid and neither are you. Can you go back out and enjoy yourself?” She nodded sullenly and left.
A few minutes later I heard kids in the driveway again. This time it was José, on his skateboard, as well as his two brothers on bikes. I opened the window again and, feeling a little irate, said, “José, go ride your skateboard on the sidewalk or in your own driveway. I told my kids no visitors today.” He gave me an exasperated look and left abruptly.
Shortly thereafter, the three boys were in their own driveway, but they were angry, or at least José was really angry. They started throwing trash into our yard. First to be launched was a large, heavy stick. Fortunately, it did not hit my children. I heard the clatter of the stick and went to the door to witness a partially-deflated basketball come over the fence in a low arc. Understandably, my own children were by this time quite distracted from whatever they had been doing on their own. This became something of a war. I think my kids were saying stuff to the effect of, “Stop throwing things over,” but when they saw me, their pleas were directed at me instead. As I stood and watched, pieces of trash continued to come over the fence.
I went to my back stoop and peered over the fence at them. They tried to hide a bit. The mother was nowhere to be seen. This is the way it usually is. “Hey,” I said. “Stop throwing things into our yard. You could hurt someone. Please treat us with respect.” No response, no eye contact. José, brooding, caught my eye for a moment. He had the look on his face I have seen before when he is really angry. I saw it about a week ago when he was having an argument with his family, and I heard him screaming and yelling from inside their house, and there was a loud crash. His father tore off in their car shortly after that and I wondered what had happened. Days later, at our children’s class, José had a large bandage on his wrist. He explained that he had punched an upstairs window and had been rushed to the hospital for bleeding. The window is still broken, a sad reminder of the temper problem we all seem to having.
Moments later my children came to me again, complaining. Trash was the problem but so was the name-calling: “Stupid.” “Doofus.” “Poopy head.” The boys were perching themselves on the fence between our yards, spewing verbally. By this time Vigil was not interested in his breakdancing anymore and he wanted to know what all the action was about. Now it was pieces of crumpled paper and bits of other refuse that they were pulling from their own trash bin and tossing into our yard. Soon afterwards, José drew a mean cartoon of me and titled it, “Hether.” Vigil was the one to receive it and informed me that Brian had tossed it over the fence. At this point I was trying to bring everyone inside.
I made another little speech over the fence to them: “Stop throwing things into our yard and calling my children names. Do you want to be invited over again? Do you want to be able to play with my children? This is not the way to make friends.” My own kids did not want to come back inside, so they began to cry. My simmer began to come to a low boil. After a great deal of persuasion, I brought them inside.
I heard angry shouts outside, and through the windows I could see José racing along on his bike in front of our house. He darted into our driveway and I had a clear sight of him looking into our windows and shouting fierce epithets. In a flash, I went outside to confront him, concerned for my own property and possessions, overall really fed up with the lack of adult supervision for these children (the mother was inside the whole time, and we had never spoken since we moved to this house last July, although her children visit regularly and she occasionally leaves her house, unannounced, to do errands, while her three boys are visiting in my yard).
José was just exiting my driveway on his bike when I got to him. I stood directly in front of him and held the handlebars. “Get off the bike,” I said. He froze. “GET OFF THE BIKE,” I said again. He did. I held the bike.
“Do you want to fight with me?” I asked him, exasperated and irate. He was silent, staring. “José, do you want to fight with me? Is that what you want? Because you are acting as though you want a fight. We can fight right here. Is that what you want?” A thought breezed through my mind that the neighbors were watching, and what a sight this would be. A grown woman wrestling a bike from its boy and challenging him to a street duel. Oh, this was choice. Too bad the mother wasn’t there to see. An afterthought: my own children were also watching, from inside the house. Let this be a lesson, I thought, the point of which will be processed later. Point? Mom is a bad-ass who fights nine-year-olds. Wait, let’s re-think that.
Standing there on the sidewalk in this face-off, I hesitated for a moment about where to take this. I didn’t really want to fight José. I just wanted to call him on it. I wanted to get his attention, and set a limit, and let him know that this ridiculous, unchecked behavior was not going to be tolerated around me. Throwing large, heavy objects in my yard, and calling me and my children names, and in general being angry and ferocious simply because I said he could not come over and play—this was not acceptable, regardless of his temper issues, regardless of his anger with his parents, regardless of regardless.
So I took his bike. Wordless, I turned around, and brought it up my front steps, and took it inside my door, and set it down.
When José saw this, he ran to his house like lightning, up the stairs, and commenced bawling to his mother. I could hear him from my porch. “MAMÍ! MAMÍ!” He was wailing. I couldn’t believe it! Where was fierce, ferocious, nasty José? And—on the heels of that—oh no! Now I’m in trouble, I thought. I felt like a kid again. And not in a good way.
So I walked to their driveway and stood near their door. The family lives on the second floor of a large, three-family home. The first floor is vacant; they are renovating it to rent. A second-floor balcony is overhead near their door, overlooking the driveway, with a good full view into my own backyard. I could see no one. But I could hear José, loud and clear, wailing in Spanish to his mom. I could not understand all that he said. How he may have been portraying the incident. But I did know this much: I had gotten his attention.
Brian emerged from the first floor entrance. He was crying, holding his left arm to his chest, a large bloody wound on his left elbow. My anger drained from me for the most part, but still pumped with adrenaline, I actually felt a little sorry for him. “What happened?” I asked. Through his tears, he said, “I fell on my bike.” “It looks like you need a Band-Aid,” I said. “I don’t got no Band-Aids,” he returned. “Well, can you tell José I want to talk to him?” I asked. He went in.
A few minutes later, José and his mother appeared on the balcony. This was new. I was actually talking with their mother. The circumstances were much less desirable than I would have liked for a first exchange. But at least it was something. I suppose it took this happening to force us to acknowledge each other verbally. She nearly physically restrained José to stand there. He was still wailing and was trying to avoid interacting with me. I looked up at him.
“I’m sorry I took your bike, José,” I said. “I was angry. I will bring it back if you will promise me something. I want you to promise not to throw things into my yard anymore, and not to call me or my children names.” He wailed and cried and wouldn’t stand near the railing or look at me. His mother scolded him and said something reprimanding what he was doing, but also asking him what this was about. He spoke to her in Spanish, through tears, and in that way I am so familiar with of casting himself as a victim.
In a way, I was glad this had happened, and that I had done something that clearly made José look like the victim. It gave me something to come over and apologize for, rather than coming over angry and incensed, informing the mom about how bad her boys had been. Instead, here I was needing to ask for forgiveness and apologize, but my behavior, not coming out of the blue, but as a reaction to some other bad behavior, needed explanation for the mother to understand what was going on. This required José to confess his actions, which was the main problem I was having—the mother had no clue what was going on, or if she did and was doing nothing to correct it, this was a wake-up call.
I stood and waited a moment while José explained, and when the mother looked back at me, I looked at her and said, “I’m sorry. I was angry. I’ll bring the bike back.” She spoke to me for the first time ever, “It’s no problem. I’m sorry about my kids.” I retrieved the bike and set it in their driveway. My three children were all outside, peering down the driveway at this scene, and I shooed them back in. Luis and Brian were out, too, all watching. I noticed that my hands were shaking a little. The adrenaline was starting to recede.
Back in the house, it occurred to me that I had just witnessed a real milestone. In part it stemmed from just saying “no” to these children. I have known from the first days of moving in to this house that these kids do not have much in the way of limits. On one hand they are skilled and streetwise. They are left to play, for the most part unsupervised, in their driveway and on our busy street, on their bikes or not. They drift into our yard and into our house because they are seeking adult supervision, but they do not know it. The adults in their lives, from what I see, are often either silent or scolding. I can relate, I have been there and still struggle with that myself. The kids themselves are very sweet and have much capacity for kindness—I have seen that with my own eyes—and when I have put José to work in my yard (because that is what I am doing with my own kids) he is cooperative, capable, and a joy to be around. But when he is told “no,” such as, “No visiting right now,” he begins to lash out. He needs to know, from someone, that it’s not okay to do that, and eventually, he needs the tools for dealing with his anger.
Of all people, I’m one to understand that need.