Dakota's room

Got the keys to the new house Friday. Most of the weekend has been scrubbing walls and ceilings with bleach and TSP, hacking back the waist-high grass and weeds outside, hauling stuff to the dump and scraping unmentionable stuff off the floor.

Did I say it's not as bad as it looks? Actually, it is as bad as it looked. But it looks a bit better already with the new windows in (outside trim to be installed next weekend). Most of the nastiest stuff is cleaned off the walls and floor now. But in some ways the condition of the house is worse than I'd hoped, though it's more or less what I feared.

According to the neighbors, rats roamed the crawl space under the house, and the girl next door still remembers the nightmarish screaming of rabbits being slaughtered in the back yard by the former owner (must get rid of that shed with the built-in hutches.) But the thing that bothers me the most is the thought of the small child who lived here. His name was spelled out in letter stickers over one bedroom door. Even in that room the walls were stained here and there with the fine spattering of dried blood from junkies priming their needles. The thought of this child weighs on me as I work, finding parts of old baby bottles and lost toys scattered around the yard and in the house. I can't stop thinking about what his existence here must have been like, and wondering if he is safe and cared for wherever he is now.