Discarded Excerpts from My Memoir (1)

by: Melissa King

This is the first in a series of deleted excerpts from the rough draft of my memoir that I feel are too interesting to throw away. They aren’t polished pieces, but hopefully you will enjoy reading them anyway. Some names have been changed.

It was early fall of 1996. I had just moved into a two bedroom townhouse just outside of Atlanta in Marietta, GA. The town home complex was a bit shady and kept up by management only enough to be livable. I felt safe walking around during the day, but it was nothing like the palm tree surrounded one bedroom where I had lived in Orlando. This place was only $650 per month though, and since I was interning, it was the best I could do.

I still needed to find a roommate to afford it. My part-time telemarketing job wouldn’t cover all of the expenses alone. Being a Christian, some new friends of mine mentioned that some of the local churches had bulletin boards that often listed people looking for roommates, so I decided to start there.

I soon found a women in her late 20’s who was friendly and sincere. She had medium toned black skin, short black hair, and her name was Zahrah. She seemed like a nice Christian lady.

She had a steady job as an administrative assistant, while I was interning at an independent record label during the day and working part time selling a dating service to single and recently single men and women at night. Zahrah spent most of her evenings in church or at bible studies.

I quickly became convinced that Zahrah was involved in some sort of cult. She came to me fairly early on in her stay with me and asked if she could pay the rent a week late because she had an opportunity to purchase a car. She was getting rides from friends before this. I wanted to help her out, and said yes. She did end up paying me when she said she would, but that was not the last time I would be presented with a financial request. One month later she said that she wanted to give her rent money away to the church because she felt that God was asking her to have faith that he would provide. I told her that I didn’t think so and that she needed to pay me by the first. She did.

The next month she came to me again and said, “I believe God wants us both to give the rent money away. He will bless us both if we do. He is asking us to have faith in him.” I told her I didn’t believe that, and it was important to me to pay the bills. When the first of the month came, she told me that she gave the money to God. I became enraged. How could she possibly be thinking this way? She would not reason with me. I screamed at her that God wanted her to pay her bills. Our relationship quickly escalated into one of great tension. I told her she had to move out. She said that she would not. I called the police.

When the police arrived, I explained to them what was going on. They told me that verbal agreements are binding in the state of Georgia and that I could only get her out by going through the eviction process. I could not believe what was happening. She smiled and went back to her room. She believed that God was blessing her with the room for being faithful to him - apparently on my telemarketing dime.

I was only nineteen years old. The next few days passed slowly. I spent all of my money on rent and I felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown for the first time in my life. Not only was I being stretched to my financial limit, but I had a person living in my home who was unwilling to pay the rent or bills because she believed that the God we both believed in was telling her not to pay - and there was nothing I could do about it. I was so angry. I spent my days at work calling government agencies trying to find out my rights.

I finally called my mom and told her I needed her, that I didn’t feel I could handle this alone. Within a few days she packed her clothes and drove the eight hours down from Ohio.

My mom is not someone anyone wants to mess with when you cross her. She is so reserved and quiet, that you wouldn’t know that she is also tough, a fighter, and fire can come out of her mouth. When she arrived, we made a plan. We stayed downstairs in the living room and when Zahrah came home from work, my mom confronted her. Zahrah didn’t give in, and said that she did not legally have to move. She went up to her room and shut the door. My mom and I then shut off the circuit breakers so that she couldn’t use the electricity. Shortly afterwards, Zahrah came down and tried to turn them back on:

“You will not use the electricity in this house unless you’re going to pay for it,” said my mom in a staccato tone.

“Oh yes I will. I have a right to that electricity,” Zahrah bullied.

My mom stepped in front of the door to the breakers forcefully and held her hand to it.
“No, you will not.”

“The devil must be influencing you.” Zahrah said with her head leaning forward and her eyes wide open.

“Excuse me?! Who are we talking about? I think you’re the one that needs to get right with God,” my mom charged.

Zahrah turned around swiftly and went back to her room.

The next day, we sat in the living room again waiting for Zahrah to come home. When she appeared, we shut off the breakers, except for in the lights in the living room. My mom and I sat and read. Well, I tried to read... but I couldn’t help but be excited by the tension in the household. When I was with my mom, I felt like the kid standing by the big kid who everyone else is afraid of.

Soon, Zahrah appeared.

She went into the kitchen.

My mom looked at me with wide eyes, as though she was saying, “Does this woman think she’s going to cross me again?”

We heard some pans clanking, and my mom got up, sturdy and strong, and walked into the kitchen to watch Zahrah. “You are not going to use that stove until you pay.”
“Yes I am. I need to eat something.”

Then my mom forcefully grabbed the pan out from Zahrah’s hand and put it on the counter behind her.

“You are possessed by the devil,” Zahrah accused.

“You’ve got some nerve telling me I’m possessed by the devil.”

Zahrah finally gave up and went back to her room.

The next day I called my leasing agent and told them what was going on. They said that Zahrah was never approved to live in the apartment because her credit was bad. They were on my side, and said that we could change the locks because technically I went out of my agreement by letting her move in without approval. I didn’t know the process and thought because they hadn’t called after she applied, that it was okay for her to live there. They said she could take it to court, but a judge would throw the case out.

So the next day we scheduled for the locks to be changed while Zahrah was at work. I went into work at the record label, and my mom cleared out Zahrah’s room and put everything on the front lawn. Later that night my mom told me that she found several melted candles with wax on the floor, and two voodoo dolls that looked like us.

That night, I came home and around the time Zahrah would be returning to find herself locked out, we shut off the lights to appear as though no one was home. She tried her keys. They didn’t work. She tried again. Then she knocked and rang the doorbell several times.

She then must’ve gone to a pay phone (we didn’t have cell phones yet) because about 10 minutes later the police arrived. They knocked on the door loudly. They walked around the house and shined their flashlights into the windows. The phone started ringing every few minutes. My mother and I were upstairs scooched down underneath the windowsill. I was scared and thrilled simultaneously. I tried to look out the window and my mom pulled me towards her. “Get down!” she said in a hard whisper. If my mom had not been there, I would have been too afraid to not respond to the police. But they never yelled “open up” or anything like that. Finally, after about 10 minutes, they drove away.

Zahrah called the leasing agent the next day. The leasing agent told her they couldn’t help her because her name wasn’t on the lease. We never heard from her again.