I just got off the phone with Kurt, the landlord of our nice little shithell apartment.
I had called because of Maria.
Just under a week ago, Maria accidentally broke Ashley’s baking stone, an expensive piece of cookware. An honest mistake made while she was cleaning, and a replacement was to be ordered right away. Maria was directed to the website, where it was assumed she’d order it from. She didn’t do it that night, and she left for the weekend, so we don’t even know if she actually ordered it.
Earlier tonight, I came home, and asked Ashley, if she’d yet asked Maria if she ordered a replacement baking stone. Ashley had not yet asked her, so I asked Maria, “Did you order the baking stone yet?”
“What? Yes.”
“Great, when’ll it be here?” I asked, assuming she was given a shipping date, as most online stores do so.
“What? I don’t know.”
“They didn’t give you a shipping date?”
“What, does she need it before Thursday?”
“I don’t know, I just wanted to know if they gave you a shipping date.”
“What? I don’t know, they said five to seven days, or something.”
“Okay,” I said, and relayed the information to Ashley, who was in another room.
When I return, Maria asks me, “Did Ashley say anything about her stone this weekend? Was she all like, ‘boo hoo, my stone’?”
I look at her and say that Ashley just wanted to know when she’d be getting the replacement.
Several minutes later, she’d been talking to herself, as she claims, though it was loud enough to be heard in the other room, where I was. I came in, having just remembered that she owes me for the phone bill. I collect the money, no problem, because she apparently has enough on her now. She’d complained in previous weeks about not having any money, not even enough to pay the rent, even though she’d received a $600 check from the school before the 14th.
She grabs my phone, and I was reminded of another thing:
“Oh, could you get a phone card, please? I don’t have a long distance provider,” I say to her.
“So, what? You don’t want me using your phone? What would I need a phone card for?”
“You make long distance calls at 10 cents a minute, you can make them cheaper with a phone card.”
“I don’t care, I’ll pay more, it’s my money.”
I shrug, because I can’t argue with that. “Just trying to save you money.”
“Well, I don’t know what to about whether to get Sprint or Verizon…”
I pause for a bit, then say, “You can just get a phone card at any carry-out. I’m not asking you to go get your own cell phone just because Ashley and I make our long distance calls on cell phones.”
“Oh, well, I don’t want a cell phone, I had a really bad deal with PrimeCo.”
“Sprint is pretty good, but Ashley’ll suggest Verizon.”
“You know I can’t afford a cell phone!”
I shrugged again, because I thought it was fairly obvious that she could have whatever she wanted, if she’d ask her parents for it—from what I’ve seen, they’ve never said no to her.
I was playing a video game, and Maria asks me where my cell phone is. I have never let her used my cell phone before, so I looked at her and said, “What?”
“The cell phone, did I leave it here?” She doesn’t have a cell phone.
“Do you mean the cordless phone?” I ask.
“Cell, cordless, same thing. Come on, Amanda, did I leave it in here or not?” she says, repeating herself while I shake my head ‘no.’
When she stop talking long enough for me to answer, I say, “You didn’t bring it in here.”
“What’s with the attitude tonight, girl?”
I shrug it off, but apparently it was a truly snide comment to her, and she continued to mock me while she was in the kitchen.
“You’re all like in my face and with the attitude tonight, girl, what’s up with that? You’re all like ‘nyah nyah maria’ and shit,”
After about a full minute of this, after I’d returned to playing the video game, I finally say, “Would you just shut up?”
A heated argument, wherein Maria claims that I denied her use of the phone, and I asked her to tell me when. She couldn’t come up with a time or day, or even if it was a few hours ago, so instead said, “See, you don’t even remember!” I stood calmly in the center of the room when she got in my face, literally, and waved a finger in front of me. Her eyes were slightly bugged out and wandering in all directions as she threated, “I am this close to kicking your ass!”—a comment she had earlier this month claimed Anna (from 816, or 817, I can’t remember) had said to her in an argument. (That one was started after Anna passed on a message from an absent Ashley that she was to move out of the room, because Ashley was now paying to have the room to herself.)
Earlier in the argument, I pointed out to Maria something about her that had been bugging me for a long while: she was constantly trying to get me involved in situations that I was not part of and attempting to use me to get information about Ashley. I don’t know what she wanted to do about it, but I kept asking her to leave me out of things. After a week or so of her living here, Mike (I don’t know his last name or what apartment he’s in) spread a rumor about her, and she assumed it was Ashley.
Maria sat outside Anna’s door when Ashley was there and actively eavesdropped on their conversation. Maria came in after that and tried to get me to go out there with her, then to agree with her that they were wrong, then said, “You as my witness,” to which I replied, “No! I am not involved in this, please stop trying to bring me in. I don’t mind listening to people vent, but I don’t want to get involved.” She continued that night with venting, but didn’t ask me to be involved again . . . until the next day. During another conversation in which Maria again vented about Ashley on the same subject, she grabbed my wrist and said, “You as my witness, Ashley-” I didn’t let her finish. I jerked my hand back and told her no, and left the room.
Back to tonight, Maria denied asking me if Ashley said anything this weekend. She then compared me to Lametria, an old roommate who moved out before she moved in, because I thought she behaved a little slow. Maria said I, like her, react to everything with open-jaw stupidity.
When things calmed down a little, Maria decided, “Okay, tell me. Tell me what it is you don’t like about me.” So I told her. I let her know every little thing she did that got on my nerves, including the racist slurs, including calling my choice of music “Chinky” as well as describing every Asian she sees as “Chinky.” We were watching Fear Factor a while ago, which had a Korean woman in it, and constantly called the woman, “That chinky girl.” I said, “Could you please stop calling her that,” but, I guess she didn’t hear me.
I was constantly interrupted with, “I never did that,” or “I never said that,” and I said, “Would you just be quiet long enough so you can listen?!”
“You’re 24 and act like you’re in high school,” I said.
“You act like you’re in high school,” she retorted (I’m 19) , “with your video games,”
“Games have nothing to do with age!” I said.
After a while, she says, “Well, I got some things to say about you girl, oh boy.”
“Go on, say it. I’ll listen.”
“You talk so much about things I don’t care about, like your stupid animations and your stupid art, and you go on and on about your video games.” (I talked to her one night about it when I first met her. When she responded with disinterest, I never brought it up again.)
“And I’m sick of your stupid attitude,” she continued. She said that no less than five times during the argument.
“And the dishes,” she said.
“I do my dishes every day,” I replied.
“Yeah, right,” says, and grabs a dish from the sink that I’d just used not more than 10 minutes before the argument.
“I just used that!” I said.
“Yeah right, don’t talk to me.”
“Thank god.”
“I’m sick of your stupid attitude,” she continued on, after she declared I’m not allowed to talk to her.
“If you’re going to say I can’t talk to you, the least you could do is return the favor,” I said, and walked into Ashley’s room.
“That’s right, go run to Ashley,” she said as I shut the door.
I sat down in Ashley’s empty closet and called Kurt.