A change of pace

Every now and again I decided that I would post some of my "other" writings on by blog. I haven't really been real committed to this blog at all so I figured that I would include and UNEDITED short story I recently wrote. The story was inspired by my "elderly" addiction to the obituaries in The Columbus Dispatch, the local newspaper here in Columbus, Ohio. I copied and pasted the obit from online and emailed it to myself and then several months later, wrote this story. I had no direction when I started this and, after you've read it, may see that I had no direction at all. As usual, feel free to email me at nyaekle@wowway.com if per chance you even are here reading this at all, and if you wish to respond or comment on any of my writings or musings. Here is the short story simply entitiled, Mrs. Stapleton. It has no real significance to any person, living or dead.






Mrs. Stapleton died yesterday. At least that’s when they found her body. The coroner in Columbus said that the temperature in her body indicated she had died sometime within 72 hours of when he examined the body. Neighbors knew the morning she died; she wasn’t going back and forth to the spigot to fill her watering can, pouring water and love over all of her treasured botanical children.

The neighborhood had once been a crown jewel in the farming community of Columbus, Ohio. It had gone through many incarnations, including the urban decline which was sparked by the spouting of suburban communities during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. The 1970s were definitely a hard time for the area. Aside from the fact that many of the traditional caretakers of the homes, the men, were dying from various ailments, the more plentiful the homes for sale became, the cheaper the selling prices were. More so than not, many of the original owners either sold to slumlords or kept the houses for tax deductions and rented them out. They weren’t nearly as concerned about the beauty and charm of the once grand homes as they had been when they lived there and raised their families. Many of the homes went back to the bank, which were less concerned with even trying to sell the houses, opting to find new mortgages at higher values in the newer suburban areas.

So with some elderly, mostly black, families still in residence, and more often black widows, many of the vacant homes in the area were boarded up and during the drug boom of the 1980s, became crack houses and headquarters for rising gangs. The economy of the area began depending on the drug money and as a result, the forgotten east side became an eyesore and crime-ridden haven sitting on the edges of the immediate inner-city downtown area.

The early 1990s proved to wheedle down the nicer homes that were left as the original owners, again most black women widows, began to die off. The younger generations that had not been killed and had stayed in the area, were either held prisoner in their own community by the gangs and wanna-be gangs or themselves were caught up in the cheap world of crack cocaine.

But appreciation for the grand old estates began to rise again in the mid-1990s as many gay men began buying the homes, sometimes in number, and fixing them to beyond their original fashion. Some animosity grew between some of the black families that remained and their new mostly white gay neighbors, claiming the renewal of the area was a form of gentrification and another way for the “white man” to push the black man out of the only areas they had left. And while the new gay residents had no problems living with or amidst the existing families, even with homes in disrepair and shelters to drug users, the tension became somewhat violent at times. Not that some of the black owners weren’t accepting and welcoming of the neighbors and their dedication to restoring one of Columbus’ once nicest areas. During many meetings black owners and gay owners stood side-by-side in City Council meetings, demanding funding for the restoration of the area which had become known as Olde Town East. After about five years or so, the hostility subsided as two of Americas most hated and discriminated against groups formed an unspoken allegiance and the pride became universally accepted and beyond the bounds of race and sexual orientation.

Among the most vocal, and prominent, of the supporters of the renovation of the beloved area, was Mrs. Stapleton. She was so respected that even the hardest of the gang members, such as they were in the Midwest town, went to far as to take their caps off when passing Mrs. Stapleton working in her yard and the adjacent lot she had bought from the city after the house which had stood there was burned to the ground. She would be bent over, support stockings showing, pulling weeds and trying to keep the neighborhood beautiful. They’d turn the bass down on their stereos so as not to disturb Mrs. Stapleton’s neighborhood garden and park or, more recently, Mrs. Stapleton’s frequent naps.

Mrs. Stapleton had outgrown her garden years before she bought the corner lot on Madison after the most stately home in the area burned. Arson investigators suspected the fire had been started, especially since the remote owner had just taken a policy out on the house six months prior which tripled his payout should the house burn, but they were lax in pursuing it, as other more violent crimes piled up each day. Mrs. Stapleton had been taking a break from watering her city-wide famous poppy garden and sipping on a glass of iced tea with a sprig of fresh mint from her herb garden, when she had noticed her creeping phlox had crept as far as it could, already daily taking jaunts outside of the wrought-iron fence. She looked up from the phlox and saw the rubble being removed by the city and sauntered over to the man standing amongst the workers who looked the most important.

“Don’t reckon you know what the owner plans on doing with this lot?”
The man turned to her, expecting to shoo some child from the sound of the voice, filled with excitement and youth.
“Sorry m’mam, what was that?”
“What’s gonna happen to this here lot?”
“Oh this? Well, the owner has signed land rights over to the city and we’ll list it for six months and if she don’t sell, we’re gonna auction it off.”
Putting her hands on her hips, Mrs. Stapleton remained silent for minutes. She uttered a “humph” and allowed a Chesire cat grin to envelope her face.
“You gonna be here a while?”
“As long as it takes to get this cleaned up. Neighborhood’s got enough dirt and eyesores as it is. That’s what happens when. . .” He trailed off, realizing he wasn’t in the company of the mostly white men he generally dealt with. Mrs. Stapleton knew what he was going to say and as much as she hated to entertain the thought, knew there was some truth to what the man was saying. But she still didn’t like it. I’m black, she often thought to herself whenever race was blamed for the decline of neighborhoods. And I ain’t so rich either, she thought, so poverty and pride were not synonymous in her mind. She knew, though, that the lack of pride stemmed from centuries of mistreatment and she also knew that a good deal of the young black folks had forgotten too soon what she and millions of their recent ancestors had endured to get the right to even buy a piece of land, let alone the right to vote on how it was taxed and who oversaw their city. It was this and total apathy, she thought, that ruined the black youth. And the idea that anyone, whites or Europeans, or anyone else, owed her something because her ancestors had been enslaved boiled her blood. She often held impromptu lecture lessons to youths in the area that she caught “acting a fool” and told them, “Stop blaming the white man for your problems and looking for ways for them to pay you off. Go out there and do something, each and every one of you, to prove everyone wrong. Don’t go hoodin’ around the area, wearing your colors and dealing the dope! Go out there and clean up your houses and help old ladies like me who cannot clean their yards, and study hard and stay in school, go to college, and then worry about trying to right the wrongs.” From what everyone says, those lectures, as hard as they were for us to endure as kids, saved many of us from poverty and crime and even death, and steered us in the right direction.

Twenty minutes after first approaching the man about the land and finding out that the city was asking $1000.00 for the lot with a ten-year abatement on the taxes, Mrs. Stapleton returned from her home, somewhat dirtier, and full of pride. She’d dug up from beside her Azeleas, a Mason jar and removed ten pristine one-hundred dollar bills, placed them in the side pocket of her housecoat, and reburied the jar, demonstrating she felt more confident in her own neighborhood for all to see to store her money than she did in a bank.

“Here you are sir. One thousand dollars.”
The man looked shocked.
“Ma’mam, I am not authorized to complete this transaction.”
“Hmmm. Well then, I tell you what. You looks like a honest man to me and I will trusts ya. I want you to take this to whoever the man in charge of this here property is and tell him that Mrs. Imogene Stapleton wants to buy it and make it a community garden and resting park.”

Two hours later the man returned with the city attorney, contracts in hand, and Mrs. Stapleton’s Community Pride Gardens and Park became a beacon of pride and unity among a neighborhood where people had lost all hope of identity.


She began digging the whole yard by hand. A few days had gone by before some of us kids in the neighborhood actually felt guilty walking by as a sweating Mrs. Stapleton worked dawn to dusk turning the land, one shovel at a time. Before the first week was over, over twenty neighborhood kids and adults were there, shoveling land and moving paver bricks, laying the paths to and around the picturesque little slice of utopia in a bullet riddled community. I think some of us did it because we couldn’t wait until noon when Mrs. Stapleton would leave and return with her homemade iced sun tea, arguably the best I’ve tasted in my life. She would also bring sweets she’d prepared the night before. Looking back, one wonders how this woman had the energy to be out there at all, let alone the fact that she still took care of her own yard and gardens across the street and baked goodies for a bunch of incorrigible kids. I can still remember the smile of pride she had when we all would tell her how great her tea was. Retrospectively, I suspect the smile was there because she’d managed to get kids who hated each other, members of so-called rival gangs, to work hand in hand as brothers. She certainly had every right to smile for this reason if she didn’t realize what she’d done.

She also took in laundry and sewing, mostly from white businessmen who had been referred to her from their colleagues. She charged so little for her services that the businessmen always tipped her more than they paid for the service itself. I suppose a lot of wayward thugs often thought about how much money that lady must have. And she was so vocal about her distrust of banks that it was universally assumed she kept the money in her house. Yet as long as she lived there, she proudly boasted, she’d never been the victim of crime or vandalism, “unlessin you account for the squirrel that bit through the wire in the attic and caught fire.” She chuckled when she told this story, which was more often than most of the stories she told ad nauseum.

And the year I graduated from high school, sitting in the front row was a strong and robust Mrs. Stapleton, in her late eighties, smiling from ear-to-ear as her babies were starting to make something of themselves. It wouldn’t be until some of us committed to sign to university that we would learn that Mrs. Stapleton’s money didn’t always just sit in Mason jars in her cupboards or under her fertile soil. When myself and a number of other youths from my neighborhood went to sign for student loans or to apply for an United Negro College Fund scholarship, we were politely informed that our entire four years of college had been paid in full and were handed a letter, hand written, with our names on the outside, in a beautiful penmanship. I feel compelled to share my letter as it personifies the respected lady of 515 Madison Street.

Dear Jefferson,

My o my, how long its been now since I first yelled to you to keep off the sycamore tree out yonder in the front. I laugh at myself each time I think of the look on your face when you scurried down that old tree like a scolded cat and high-tailed it up the alley back to your house.
I want you to know that I thank you for all you’ve meant to me. And I know, you may not know that you’ve meant anything to me, but you have. You and all the kids around here, the good and the bad, because you’ve all taught me as much as I hope I’ve maybe taught you. Shoot, I wouldn’t know nothin’ ‘bout Biggie and Tupac if it wasn’t for y’all. And I know that the sweet sounds of Patti LaBelle and Antia Baker will do all you horny boys some kinda “good” when you gets someone to your dorm room. I just want you to remember to always cover your baby-maker and always treat the ladies, or in your case honeychild, boys nice. I especially want to thank you for opening my eyes so long ago to the struggles not only of today and yesterday’s black youth, but in your case, a gay black youth. Until the day I die, baby, I will always stand up for you as a brother, sister (now ain’t that just some of Mrs. Stapleton’s humor for ya, honeychild?) mother and neighbor. We cannot fight for respect and equality within the black community without standing for those same civil promises and liberties within all types of people, white, black, Asian, (except for that Chinky little bastard who rooks people for all of their money over at that cleaners) Christian, Jew and Muslim, straight and gay, adult and child! Honey, Mrs. Stapleton is getting old and life ain’t got a lot of years left with me. And long after this old body ain’t doin’ nothin’ but fertilizing the plants over yonder at the Gardens and Park (where I’ve told them I want to be laid to rest before going to meet my Jesus), old Mrs. Stapleton’s gonna need a promise that you kids, especially the ones from here in this neighborhood (or Hood as you young’uns calls it) will always be true to yourself, stand up for rights when wrongs is done, respect all fellow man no matter how different they are from you, and preach and teach love and not violence and hate. I tooks in laundry for a lot of years and I wanna give this money to help you kids make a better life for yourselves. Lord knows, I ain’t got much education. Had to call a few friends and look in a couple of dictionarys to write these letters. So go on, get your schoolin’ and make a place for yourself in this world to help others. I hopes that you someday find a man who is half the man you’ve become, cause honeychild, when you do, he’ll be the second greatest man in the world!

All my love,
Mrs. Stapleton