The following is a true story, as I remember it at least, from when I was a kid.
âWeâre having the bus stop moved.â
I was 15, and my 15-year-old neighbor and friend Gabriel had just come back with his family from the house they were about to buy. We lived in Queens Village, a lower middle class neighborhood in eastern Queens, NY, and they were about to move to Jamaica Estates, a decidedly upper middle class neighborhood 15 minutes away.
They were a peculiar family. The father, Komal, was a Pakistani immigrant who got a job at McDonaldâs and worked his way up to assistant manager of two locations. The mother, Maria, was Puerto Rican, on her third marriage. She had three sons, each from a different father. Though he tolerated his two stepsons, 15-year-old Gabriel and 10-year-old Daniel, the father doted heavily on his only son, Ivan, then 5 years old.
Gabriel was excitedly telling me about their new large house. It had four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a huge backyard. The only issue with it was that there was a bus stop at the front, meaning strangers would be lining up on their front yard and they couldnât park on the street. Gabriel said it wasnât an issue.
âNobody wanted the house because thereâs a bus stop. Theyâre stupid. All you gotta do is go to City Hall and ask them to move it. They gotta do it. Itâs your property.â
I thought it was bullshit. If you could move a bus stop, nobody would want one in front of their house. But Gabrielâs family was the most determined family I ever knew.
When they first moved into Queens Village four years before, their Ford Taurus was stolen. It was an older model that didnât even have an alarm. They then spent the next 4 years making sure nobody stole from them again and they could get the hell out of QV.
They bought a 4Runner with LowJack. They erected high fences around their house. They bought two big dogs, a second one because the first one was too nice. Cable? Illegal. They rented out the basement, which was also illegal. There was even a rumor that they had an illegal phone with unlimited minutes. The father rarely spoke to his stepsons, so a family vacation was out of the question anyway. But according to them, vacations were a waste of money. Money they could put towards a sizeable down payment on a new house.
And that day had arrived.
âWe just gotta sign all the papers and flip this house.â
The end began with a doorbell.
It was after school, and I looked out my window to see Daniel. Daniel was a nice kid, but he had several learning disabilities and I wasnât exactly friends with him as much as he just hung around Gabriel when he came over. I was surprised to see him by himself.
âI canât get in my house,â he told me.
Apparently his mom and older brother werenât home yet, but Komal was home and not answering the doorbell. I walked Daniel over and rang the doorbell a few times. No answer. I let him watch TV in my living room until Gabriel picked him up.
âKomal is sick,â he explained. âHe was napping.â
I thought it was funny, and I told my mom the story later. She told me he had actually been sick for a week.
âOh Komal is very sick, he was very sick the day they had to sign the papers and Maria even told him to wait, but he insisted.â
I told my mom that that was risky since he might miss something on the contract. But he insisted on closing the sale and selling his QV house as soon as possible. He reached the finish line.
The next day he was dead.
One year before, Komal was diagnosed with leukemia. The doctor told him heâd have to go through chemo and itâd be a tough battle. Komal never went back or told anyone about it. I have no idea what his thought process was, but a part of me canât fault a guy who tries to ignore death as it rings his doorbell.
The down payment was gone. They could have moved in, but they had no money to make even the first mortgage payment. They didnât even bother moving and the bank foreclosed on them.
They lost their house. They tried desperately to keep it. With the rent from the basement and the salary Gabriel and Maria made from their new jobs, they had enough to cover their present mortgage. But Komal signed away the house. In fact, he signed it away at such a steep discount, so desperate he was to get out of dodge, that they only had enough to pay off the mortgage they owed.
Komal did have a small life insurance policy from McDonaldâs, but a lawyer contacted Gabriel and Maria and told them the hospital where Komal died mishandled his case.
âThe lawyer told us they wonât release the full paperwork. Why? Because theyâre hiding something. You gotta be smart with these hospitals.â
The lawyer asked for the life insurance payout as his retainer and they never heard from him again. They then moved, penniless, into a small two bedroom apartment in an even worse part of Queens.
Itâs a tragedy I often think about, with lessons I canât quite articulate. Â
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