We got neighbors when I was ten. Meaning, when I was ten, we moved from the undeveloped outskirts of Austin to the big city of San Antonio. Suddenly, I went from having my grandma for my only neighbor to having Dawna who was my age and lived right across the street. We never hung out at school — we didn't have any classes together — but we’d hang out after school and on the weekends. We were both mostly poor and weirdly dressed with slightly redneck-y backgrounds.
Dawna lived with her dad. I don’t know where her mom was. I think they were just divorced and her mom wasn’t very interested in being a mom. Her dad was probably an alcoholic because every time I saw him he was drinking beer and smelled like booze head-to-toe, but at the time he seemed kind of cool in a scary way.
He was tall and averagely built with a long face draped by jowls and covered in pockmarks. I remember him wearing a busted cowboy hat all the time even inside, even at night, so maybe he was bald on top, but he had a long gray ponytail coming out the back. I don’t think he had a job because he hardly ever left the house.
Weird as it seemed to me at the time, my parents had no problem with me going over to Dawna’s house any time I wanted to. I didn’t feel one hundred percent confident that I was safe at her house, but that uncertainty made it much more exciting than my boring house so I liked it.
One time I was over there and she asked, “Wanna see some pot?”
I followed her into her dad’s room and she pointed me to a small plate on his dresser, piled with seeds and tiny sticks. It didn’t look like pot to me, but then again I had never seen pot before. We stared at it together and then left.
There was an old guy who lived a few houses down from us. Rumor had it, he was a pervert. From what I can tell, every neighborhood has at least one pervert and some of them really are perverts and the others are just lonely old people. I don’t know if this guy was one of the real pervs or if he was just an ol’ sadsack. I never heard any specific stories about him.
I guess Dawna’s dad got wind of the rumor, though, and on Halloween night when all the kids were roaming around getting free diabetes pills and razor blade apples, he took a handgun over to the dude’s house and rang the bell. The old guy had his yard all decked out for Halloween with a fake dead body in a chair and everything. He opened the door holding a bowl of candy but instead of minors in mummy costumes, it was Dawna’s dad waving a fucking gun in the guy’s face and yelling at him to stay the fuck away from the kids.
Me and Dawna and some others were trick or treating at the next house over when this started so we got a pretty good view of the scene. Dawna seemed super embarrassed. We watched her dad finally stumble off the porch and go back the other direction to their house. He was definitely very drunk, weaving and bobbing down the sidewalk. We all skipped the old guy’s house that night and the next day my dad told me I wasn’t allowed to go to Dawna’s anymore.
At Christmas, we agreed to exchange gifts with each other (value no greater than five dollars). I got my mom to take me to Michael’s and I spent a long time picking out four complementary-colored puff paints for Dawna. I boxed them and wrapped them and presented them. She presented me with a used Wilson Phillips tape. I didn’t care because I knew she didn’t have any money in the first place, and I liked Wilson Phillips, and my mom had paid for the puff paint so no skin off my back, right? I got a new-to-me tape and I got to look around at Michael’s which was one of my favorite stores; big win, really. But then at school, she told everyone that I gave her used puff paint for Christmas. And the details she offered up, like, “They were all open and had dried up paint around the outside!” — well, she knew how to describe a used puff paint tube. She was very convincing.
I figured she struck preemptively because she was embarrassed about the second-hand tape and was worried I’d rat her out. It made me sad more than anything, that she thought I would tattle on her to a bunch of losers at school.
Not long after Christmas, they got evicted in the worst way where your landlord puts all your shit in the front yard and your neighbors come by and loot you and then whatever’s left gets rained on.
My mom watched the pile for a few days to see if Dawna’s dad was going to come back for anything (he didn’t) before she went over there and pulled out a couple of (new, unfilled) picture frames. She gave me a five dollar bill and told me to give it to Dawna the next day, for the frames.
I found Dawna during lunch and gave it to her. She looked sad. That was the last time I saw her; I guess she moved away.
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