That’s What She Said: The Wrong Side of Town

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I lived in a rough
area of the city for six months. I had heard mostly bad stuff about the area: rampant
crime, shootings, and only half-hearted recycling efforts. Now before you
dismiss me as a bourgeois wuss, I grew up on a reserve in southern Saskatchewan
and while not exactly the Mad Max Fury Road of lawlessness that the media
suggests, it definitely had its moments of privation – no drinking water,
showering under a spitting shower head, and roads during the spring that were
more suggestions than firm commitments. So I can rough it, I just prefer not
to.

The first few days
after moving into our new digs, my fears were allayed. People were actually friendlier
than in other areas of the city. Everyone always said hi as I pushed the
stroller down the street and asked me about my day.

However, things began
to move sideways – or more specifically out of our yard. My partner owns a lot
of tools and this seemed to be a concern for one of our neighbours so he
repeatedly lightened our load.

In most cases, we knew
who the thief was, footprints led directly to his house. But footprints aren’t
the open and shut case that my reading of Nancy Drew led me to believe. My
partner wanted justice and when that wasn’t available, he elected for petty
revenge.

“I’d like to spray
paint the word ‘thief’ on his fence.”

“Not to sound
unsupportive, but doesn’t everyone already know he’s a thief?” I asked.

I mentioned the spray-paint
plan to my mom. She thought it was a terrible idea: “If you’re gonna spray-paint
anything, write ‘sex offender’, that’ll get people talking.”

Our contact with crime
continued. My car was broken into. Although it was so dirty to begin with, I
could not assess if anything had been stolen. Old Tim Horton’s cups still there?
Check. Garbage bags of clothes I meant to give away for the past six months?
Check. Box of my books, “Rose’s Run”? Check – every single copy.  (Talk about adding insult to injury.)

Then the thieves delivered
their cruelest cut. On my birthday, someone stole my cake from our front steps
as we carried in groceries. It said happy birthday. It had my name on it. And
it was an ice cream cake. In my opinion, these three facts put this crime on
par with murder or at least a terrible case of diarrhea.

After that, everything
that couldn’t be nailed down was locked in at night. My boyfriend went around
checking locks at night when he couldn’t sleep. I was more sanguine – because
I’ve lived in a place where larceny was so commonplace that I stopped taking it
personally. From my time there, I came to understood that most crime was the
result of addiction, poor decision-making and economic capriciousness – yes, I
really learned a lot those years I lived in Alberta.

Theft wasn’t the only
concern, I realized, when one night there was a shooting on our street. The
next morning, it was all the neighbourhood could talk about. We stood on the
street and postulated reasons why it happened like aspiring Hardy Boys.

That night my
boyfriend saw a strange car parked behind our house. He threw on his coat (and
pants when I reminded him) and stomped out the door. Outside, he banged on the car
window, demanding the person identify himself.

A few minutes later he
returned, somewhat embarrassed, and explained that he had interrupted a cop who
was on stakeout.

My boyfriend said, as
he gazed out the window at our neighbourhood, “This place has changed me.” I
offered to buy him some spray paint to cheer him up.

We were moving that
week (unrelated to all the crime we’d experienced – our landlord was moving
into the house with his family) but the street did not want us to go. My
boyfriend had loaded a truck full of furniture when police cars started
appearing. Within minutes the entire street was cordoned off.

I pulled up outside the
area and saw him trapped inside; we were like a frustrated Romeo and Juliet. Except
instead of spouting poetry over the barrier, we decided to go for KFC. Half of our
household was on the back of the truck but we were unconcerned. We’d reached
that point where our possessions had no hold over us – plus if a thief could
get past thirty odd police officers, then perhaps that level of robbery
expertise deserves to be rewarded.