It was the second day after Christmas in 1991. I was on a holiday layoff, and my unemployment was beginning the following week. My toddler played on the floor while my stepson played his Nintendo. I told my partner that I’d be back in ten minutes and went out for cigarettes. I came back about eight minutes later, and all hell had let loose. I opened the door, and a rush of natural gas hit me. My stepson lay back in his chair, half-conscious. He dropped his controller and was too dizzy to pick it up. My partner sat in the rocker, her eyes closed. I yelled at them to wake up. Their eyes opened immediately they staggered to their feet. They got our toddler out while I pulled my stepson to the porch. The toddler had been too close to the floor to be affected. The fresh air revived the other two.
It was a damned good thing I had only run to the corner; otherwise, I would have come home to a tragedy. There was no question about us going back into that death trap, but most of our friends were two hours away in New York City. My Mother-in-Law, bless her kindly heart, would have driven from Little Ferry to pick us up, but she didn’t have room to house two adults and two children.
We had no choice but to call my parents for help. They lived in the same town and had a large apartment. Yet we stood on the porch discussing alternatives until it started to rain. You see, my parents were barking mad. And I’m not talking casually narcissistic. I’m talking about the kind of crazy that should have put them in managed care before they spawned.
Mom had been outright civilized since her bipolar diagnosis the year before. And foolish me, I thought she was staying on her medications. Dad was shaping up to become a fair grandfather. So we decided that we had no choice. I called them up and asked for their aid. Dad brought the car over and even helped me open every window in that apartment and pack a few overnight bags. And so began six months of hellish torment that landed me in the Blair House Apartments.
It wasn’t an ideal situation, to say the least. Both my parents were cat hoarders but were down to only five. That meant there were litter boxes in every room, which my father cleaned three times daily. He was forever walking around with a plastic scoop and a plastic bag. But we still had to keep an eye on the toddler every moment. There was also the matter of tobacco smoke. My mother had quit cold turkey while recovering from a heart attack. My father still smoked like a chimney but stayed in his room with it. So the only hazards were Mom and Dad. Bored from making each other’s lives miserable, they focused on us.
As I mentioned before, my mother was bipolar. She had slow cycles and became psychotic during her depressive stage. Which lasted for years. She used to accuse me of hiding in the closets and swearing at her, and I had to get notes from my teachers proving I was in school. She was also a toxic narcissist and suffered from extreme agoraphobia. She hadn’t set foot outside her apartment for the three years before her heart attack. She went right back to not leaving her home when she got home from the hospital. She spent her days with the shades drawn so she could pretend it was still 1953.
Mom was totally dependent on my father for everything, from the shopping to driving her to her dialysis appointments. So, of course, she hated my father with every fiber of her soul. This is because she was a toxic narcissist who drove off everybody who ever gave a damn about her. My father was literally the only person she had left, so he got the brunt of her venom. I have no clue why my father put up with it, except he was as crazy as she was. He was also a narcissist, and they reinforced each other’s narcissism. To my father, Mom was an unappreciated put-upon artist. To my mother, Dad was a genius nobody else could appreciate.
Dad was a mystery wrapped in an enigma. He had an official diagnosis of “Psychosis,” but nobody had the first clue why. He lived in a waking dream that he believed with incredible sincerity. Intelligent people fell for his gibberish, and many of them lost money. My mother never failed to assure them that he was right and the people who wanted his head were wrong. Together they formed an invincible wall against reality. And this was the shit storm we walked into.
My mother was very gracious to my partner when we arrived. She was even nice to my eight-year-old stepson. Both my parents hated my family. They loathed the person who “stole” me from them. My father hated my stepson because my partner wouldn’t let him express his Munchhausen by Proxy. Dad used to love to diagnose my brother and me, and his “prescriptions” usually involved taking away a favorite food. We didn’t let him pull that with either of the boys.
It was different with my mother. She had been the stepchild while growing up, and she delighted in trying to inflict every abuse she suffered on my poor kid. My partner and I set limits. And limits sent her into a fury. She also couldn’t stand that she was not the toddler’s guardian and fought the boundaries we put on that. We also wouldn’t let her pit the brothers against each other, which drove her into mad furies.
I was pleasantly surprised that my mother was being nice to everybody. I was under the misapprehension that she was still taking her psych meds. And I was getting optimistic they were helping her. Then, as soon as we had a few minutes alone, she shook me down for 60 bucks. Once she had cash in hand, my mother was her usual nasty self. I spent more time between Mom and my family than I spent trying to resolve the situation.
Our first step was to have someone from the gas company come and look at the apartment. The tech came the next day and confirmed what we already knew, the place was a death trap. The gas leak registered 10 points over the lower explosive limit. It’s a wonder the building didn’t blow each time I lit a cigarette on the porch.
My suggestion was to turn off the gas and install an electric stove. The landlord turned us down flat and conveyed he was very upset we left the windows open when we left the building. So I went to the city safety inspector and explained the problem. He told me he’d look into it. He called me back the next day. He told me the problem was solved, and we could move back in, but he was vague in explaining the solution. So I went to city hall to talk to him personally.
He was just as friendly as could be. He told me that he installed a new gauge that would warn us if there was another gas leak. So I asked the question he didn’t want to answer. “When are you going to install it?”
“It’s already installed,” he said with a big grin. “The problem’s solved. You can move back in right now.”
“Where did you install it?” I asked
“In the basement,” the weasel replied.
“So how am I supposed to know if there’s a gas leak if the gauge is in the basement,” I asked. “Are we supposed to sit in the basement and watch the meter in shifts?”
That was when he started getting nasty and sarcastic. I listened to him, and I interrupted. “This is not acceptable,” I said, and he got even more abusive. I left intending to call in the state. But I wasn’t sure who I should call.
So I got out the blue pages and called every office remotely concerned with housing. I left a ton of voice messages that were never returned. I spoke to an even dozen secretaries and gatekeepers. I wasn’t even paying attention to whom I was calling. I just called. And finally, I got a guy on the phone who started asking me the right questions. He said he would like to help me, but the state only regulated buildings with four or more apartments. I thought I was in a duplex, so my hopes were dashed. The nice man gave me his name and direct number and told me to call him if anything changed. I held on to his name and number like a magic talisman.
My partner was out with the kids while I was on the phone. Of course, that was when my mother decided to strike. Mom was furious over my partner doing some basic cleaning in the kitchen. She felt it was disrespectful. And I got to hear all about it while trying to make my calls. Finally, Mom demanded that I send my partner and stepson to stay with my mother-in-law. Were it possible, we would have done that instead of moving into crazyville. But my mother didn’t care that my mother-in-law lived in a studio. I also pointed out that we would lose our Section 8 voucher if my partner left the county for more than a week. Mom kept saying I was wrong until I showed her the handbook.
Mom instantly went on the attack, which she always did when I didn’t fall for one of her cons. And the more I refused to fall for her con, the angrier she got. Finally, Mom got so mad she told the truth. She called me an idiot for not getting sole custody of “THE BABY” so I could have the AFDC. Then I would never have to work. We could buy a house and all move in together. That way, I would all be safe from the misfortunes waiting for me in the outside world.
That was not going to happen, and I repeated to Mom that I intended to remain with the mother of my children. Mom saw that as a challenge and started trying to anticipate my objections. And. Without any provocation from me, she swore that my partner could have visitation, and she would never dream of getting between them. Which pretty much told me that was precisely what she planned to do.
“Let me think about it, Mom,” I said because that was what I always used to say before giving in. She left with the cat-that-ate-the-canary grin Mom always wore when she got her way. But this time, I wasn’t giving in to her. I told my partner what was up as soon as they came home. We agreed that we would be better off back in that hellish apartment than where we were. So I told Mom that we decided not to risk our Section 8 but would return to the deathtrap and negotiate with the authorities.
My father was all for it and offered to get the car. There were too many people around for him to handle. He was spending more and more time in his room playing solitaire instead of starting his yearly tax work. Mom began to scream that we couldn’t go. My partner ignored her and started packing our toddler’s things. I started getting my stepson’s stuff together, and the kid was so glad to be going he helped me! Then Mom shocked the hell out of me by calling my mother-in-law and begging her to stop us. I didn’t even know they were in contact.
Unlike my parents, my Mother-in-law has good sense. She begged us to stay because she was convinced our window sills were filled with lead paint chips. I knew my mother-in-law too well to dismiss her concerns. And neither my partner nor I were eager to return to that apartment. So we compromised by agreeing to get our toddler a lead test before deciding to leave.
Then my mother-in-law told me Mom had been calling to ask her to take in my partner and stepson. Plus, she told my mother-in-law I asked her to do it. Which only meant she kept doing it, did it harder, and was twice as sneaky. I was furious and asked my mother never to do anything like that again.
We didn’t see much of Mom for the next few days. She hid in her room, only leaving to eat or spoil her grandson. When Mom did show her face, she mocked the idea that “her grandson” could have lead poisoning. I made a doctor’s appointment for the day after New Year. So far, we lived with my parents for five days, but I remember it as being forever.
1992 was starting with a real bang. We had been in hell for almost a week. It was zero-degree weather, and Mom had forbidden my father from driving us to the hospital because the entire blood test was absurd. She mocked us about it while we got the toddler ready and walked to Warren Hospital.
We got the test results immediately, and they were terrifying. Our little boy had a toxic level of lead in his system. The doctors were adamant that we couldn’t return our son to that apartment. And Mom couldn’t have been happier. Suddenly it was her idea to get a blood test. I don’t know how I held back, but I let that slide and let her crow.
You would think that Section 8 would have some regulations about children not growing up around lead paint. Or maybe the state or federal government would have some sort of law to protect children from lead paint. Surprise, there wasn’t any. In fact, the Section 8 handbook was careful to mention this. We simply hadn’t been paying attention. Section 8 insisted that we either move back into that apartment or face eviction and the loss of our voucher. And they gave us a week to change our minds.
This is where my training under Larry Marra Sr came to my rescue. I spent the rest of the day at the library and discovered a loophole. We could demand a new apartment if we could prove our current residence was uninhabitable. The doctor was willing to back us on the lead paint hazard. I figured we could use more proof, so I called the country health board for a lead paint inspection. Then I tried to find a loophole where I could get the state to inspect the apartment, but I couldn’t find anything.
I returned to chaos. My stepson had befriended my mother’s favorite cat, and her jealous rage traumatized both the kid and the cat. Mom blamed my stepson for upsetting “the baby,” and my poor partner comforted both kids while ignoring the raving madwoman. The toddler was frightened to tears, and my partner did everything to keep things together.
My partner hadn’t been having an easy time before we had to move into the madhouse, and I don’t know how they had survived it. I had to put my foot down again and tell my mother that we would take “THE BABY” back to the deathtrap. She knew I meant it because I had followed through on other threats.
Once I had everything quieted, and my mother was stewing in her lair, I left. It had been a hard day. First the lead test, then my few hours in the library. And after confronting my mother, I found out we got an eviction notice. I excused myself and did what I always did when under pressure. I took a long walk and found myself at our apartment. And I just stood there and willed myself into finding a solution.
Somebody once said that we see, but we don’t observe. That was certainly true in my case. I had been living in Phillipsburg for nine years. I had passed by the building I had been living in a billion times before moving in. But I never really observed it. That night I looked carefully at every inch of the building. First, the front. Then I went to the side where the blue paneled building met the row of brick-faced row homes my landlord owned. There was something off about the gap between the buildings. If they were detached, I should have been able to see lights from the windows on the other side. I got closer and really looked and found a wall. A wall attached my building to the row homes. Further examination showed I stood on a shared foundation.
Counting apartments, I came up with eight. Eight flats meant that the town had no jurisdiction over safety enforcement. The city inspector and his bogus gas pressure gauge had no business in this affair. And I had the phone number of a state employee who promised he’d help if he could. I laughed and danced and yelled, “motherfucker!” People walking past must have thought I had lost my mind.
I decided to stick my head into the apartment and make sure everything was in order. The laughter died in my throat. The door had been jimmied, and the whole apartment had been tossed. Drawers had been taken out of the dressers, and the contents were thrown all over the floor. The kitchen cabinets had been ransacked and furniture overturned. The only thing taken was an expensive rocking chair my mother-in-law gave us. That kind of killed my buzz. My mood had turned back into cold anger when I went to the phone booth to call the constables and make a report. It was a good thing we already removed everything of value.
The next day, I was on the phone at nine sharp, and the man I had spoken to before answered, and he remembered me. I told him about my discovery that my supposed duplex was actually an octoplex. He asked me about the gas leak again, and I answered all his questions and added about my son’s lead test. He wanted to come over the next day, but I had to watch the toddler then, so I rescheduled to Thursday at Two. Which was when the board of health inspector was due. I thought that having the two inspectors at once was an incredible stroke of luck. And it was!
Tuesday afternoon, I let Dad play with the toddler while I was on the phone with Warren County Legal Aid. We had the eviction coming up, and I wanted to counter sue the landlord for moving expenses. My father was in rare form. He had enough reality for the next decade and needed to vent. Of course, he bitched about what a horrible person my partner was. Then my mother came in demanding to know when I would leave my partner. She had a lawyer lined up to help me with custody. I have no idea how I kept it together.
My nerves were shot on Wednesday. I walked my stepson to school and went straight to the death trap. The landlord had brought in an electric stove sometime since I had last visited, and it just sat in the middle of the kitchen. The gas stove was still set up, and I had to pick up the kitchen around two stoves. God, I must have smoked half a carton of cigarettes before the state inspector showed up. Only he wasn’t an inspector; he was a detective with the Attorney General’s Housing Law Investigation Division. You could have knocked me down with a feather after he showed me his badge. I hadn’t paid attention to whom I was calling, and I accidentally called the state attorney general’s office on my landlord. And things got better from there. The first thing he did was scoop up paint chips from the window sill and sniff them. “Have you had this place inspected for lead yet?” he asked.
“The board of health inspector should be here any minute,” I replied as he shook his head at the thermostat that wasn’t hooked up to anything. Then he found the new thermostat the landlord scabbed in. He didn’t seem happy with it.
“Good, I want a word with him,” he said ominously, referring to the board of health inspector, who was already ten minutes late. The landlord’s office was only a few doors down, so I sent the detective over to get acquainted and give a tour of the basement. At that point, I was beyond mere joy and had something akin to a religious experience.
The County Health inspector arrived a half-hour late. By then, I had seen the detective walking to the basement door with the landlord behind him. The detective looked professional in a stylish leather raincoat and really sharp boots. The county inspector looked like he had just stepped out of a dive bar. I remember him as looking like Dwight from “The Office.”If Dwight was 20 pounds overweight and sported a hostile sneer.
He got out the lead meter which made scary noises as he approached the walls, which were five times the maximum safe amount of lead for an adult. The window frames were up to 40 times the maximum safe amount for an adult. It was slow poison for a toddler to be in that building, and it wouldn’t be too healthy for my older stepson or my partner and me. To this day, I’m glad I listened to my mother-in-law and did not move back into that death trap.
Then, the county health inspector started this bullshit speech about how high lead isn’t really that toxic. He added that it would be his professional testimony if I sued. I couldn’t believe the bullshit was coming out of his mouth.
Please note that I never said or made any threats about suing. And I never said anything about lawsuits outside my immediate family. Larry Marra used to give long lectures about never warning anybody you’re going to sue. So I was kind of shocked Dwight mentioned it. I bet an attentive reader will have figured out that my mother was behind it. I don’t understand why it didn’t occur to me at the time. But it didn’t, and I didn’t find out about it until I started to seriously lawyer shop.
The detective returned before I could ask the county inspector what the hell he was talking about. He came up the stairs by himself. I could see the landlord’s van speeding up South Main St, so I figured something big had gone down. The detective came in with stains on his raincoat. And something had taken a big bite out of the toe of his boot. I could see his toes through that hole.
“Are you from the board of health?” the detective demanded, showing the county inspector his badge, who paled when he saw it. He gave me a “how-the-hell-did-you-do-this?” look. I wonder if he would have believed it was blind luck?
“Yeah,” the county inspector replied, looking frightened.
“There are rats in the cellar,” the detective said, wiggling his big toe.
The city of Phillipsburg, NJ (or Pee-burg as the locals called it) had been built on the banks of the Delaware River. The Pee-burg rats were larger than New York sewer rats. They were also super-aggressive and known to chase and kill cats and small dogs. The detective and Mr. Landlord went down into the basement, and the rats literally rat-packed them. The landlord resorted to the slowest friend defense and ran the hell out. The detective managed to escape with a bit of shoe gnawed off, but not before he saw the state of the basements. Rats had been gnawing at the gas pipes.
“There are rats down there,” the inspector repeated, outraged. “They attacked us!” He put his foot forward to show where a rat had bit off the toe of his boot. There was blood on both boots. The detective fought back.
“I don’t do rats,” the county health inspector replied. “I do chemical hazards like lead paint and old dry-cleaning fluid.”
“Well, I’m heading to your office to talk to the rat guy,” the state investigator replied. He picked up the lead meter’s readout and whistled. The county inspector looked like he wanted to kill me. “Jesus Christ! You said you had a kid, Bill?” the detective asked.
“Two,” I replied. “One is nearly nine, and the other will be two in April.”
“Whatever you do, don’t bring them back to this apartment. I’m begging you.” The detective said.
“We already got the baby a lead test, which was extremely high,” I replied. “That’s why I called the county inspector.” The said inspector was flop-sweating. I think he was afraid of what else I might have told the state investigator.
“The city inspector said he installed a new gas pressure gage down there,” I said casually and loved how the rest of the blood drained out of the health inspector’s face.
“Nobody’s been in that basement in twenty years,” the detective replied. “The lock was rusted, and I had to break it to get inside. All the gas pipes are rotting and rat-chewed. I’m having the gas turned off at the source and yellow tagging the basement.”
A Yellow tag meant that the landlord had a specified time to bring the basement up to code. Usually, it takes about 60 days, and only authorized personnel with safety gear can get down there. It got red-tagged if the repairs weren’t made, and the whole building was condemned.
The detective left with the county inspector, and the county inspector’s expression was priceless. There was no excuse for Section 8 to make us move back in. My knees grew weak, and I found myself choking back tears. I won! That hadn’t happened to me much in the last few years. This was the biggest win I had since my youngest boy was born. I was escaping my parents and their madness. The sheer relief made me shake. It took me a few minutes to get to the phone and report back to my partner. We had won. It was like a miracle. Of course, I was wrong.
The Traumatic 90s 