CHAPTER 7: iLL at the Inn

Chapter 7 - Shelter of More Harm: From Delilah to Peninah                

Part I of II parts  

This particular Chapter was admittedly a long time coming. I would like to tell you that it’s because “life got in the way” and that’s true.  But the real reason is simply because I still hold a low-key level of exasperation with Peninah, the antagonist of this chapter.  And I always want to be fair in my portrayal of events that happened to me during the American Pandemic - in spite of how brutally UNFAIR some awful people were to me. So, I worried that I would write this chapter laced with that undercurrent of exasperation instead of some basic human understanding - which I do try to extend to most people.  

But Peninah vexes me still because she was a “Christian fraud” from the outset.  I mean, I give Delilah (see previous chapter herein) credit: for at least in her moments of rare, raw authenticity she ADMITS that she is a monster and has profited from doing monstrous things her whole life: hence, her stolen house, her stolen cats, her stolen fortunes from her 5 ex-husbands, her stolen Pandemic Funds from every government scam she could run in Illinois and NEVER be held accountable - and my stolen Rental Assistance. Delilah will, at least, ADMIT she is a monster and a criminal. So long as you promise to not hold it against her…I mean she lures new unsuspecting tenants in with TALK of being a Christian but she drops that charade on about Day 2 and admits “Well, I just say that because I find people like to hear it and who cares anyway?” 

Oh. I see.

So the infuriatingly maddening part of Peninah who now enters as the antagonist in THIS chapter is that she actually believes her own heresy and blasphemy.  She tells you from the outset that her Christian faith is all she has and shows you her grandpa's antique bible on PROMINENT display in the foyer. So, Peninah demands you believe her CHINO (Christian In Name Only) Act all day every day.  And I’m so tired of being sucker-punched by evil incarnate who do evil yet call themselves GOOD.  

So, hold onto your hats, friends….Away to Peninah’s we now head….    

If you recall, Delilah’s narcissistic violence landed me in a local DV Shelter that turned out to be MORE violent (due to the staff physically harming the women residents) than Delilah’s domicile ever was - and that’s saying something as I almost saw a teenaged boy murdered there at Delilah’s, remember? 

But as fate would have it, the “downlow” Safe House I landed upon through the “in town grapevine” was run by a matriarch named Jael.  Sadly, days before I arrived to stay with Jael, she had taken a terrible fall - fully shattering her left shoulder. Her adult grandson, Jacob, was doing his level best to help her out - but he worked 14 hour days and nor was he trained in elder care.  As such, I tried to do what I could given that she did take me, a total stranger, into her own home.  She asked for no money but I couldn’t stay there without offering her some compensation -  as she was on senior fixed income and in poverty dire straits herself.  And with Delilah stealing my entire <future housing IHDA Rent Assistance Tenant Grant>, I truly would have had NOTHING to pay Jael had TwitterFam not come to my rescue at this time in December 2021. Thank you, again, kind internet strangers for ferrying me to safety.  You truly saved a life. 

The Order of Protection Hearing that I filed against Delilah and Ahab, which was continued back in November, was next set for hearing in December 2021 while I was staying with Jael.  I appeared by Zoom but Delilah and Ahab appeared in person there at the Courthouse with a full dramatic entourage of Delilah’s 2 maids in tow with her.  She was dressed in her “high-low” crushed velvet formal evening gown, a fake fur and her stilettos (again) - similar to how she was dressed that Sunday when I first met her.  She began talking, CEASELESSLY, out of turn and the Judge literally lost her mind on Delilah and sternly screamed at her and over her, to no avail: “Ms. Delilah - you need to be silent right now or I will hold you in contempt of this Court!” the judge yelled over and over again….

But because Delilah will NOT be shushed by ANYONE, so she just kept talking OVER THE JUDGE demanding that the Judge dismiss my OOP case against her because I was homeless and, therefore by her thinking, not entitled to protection from her and Ahab’s violence.  She literally told the judge that homeless people shouldn’t have any rights.   Finally, the judge literally verbally trounced Delilah and threw down the gavel: 

“Not one more work, Delilah! And I mean it. You WILL NOT continue to speak out of turn in my courtroom or you WILL go to jail. Do you understand me?” 

About this time, Ol Ahab realized that Delilah wasn’t winning any points with this judge so he had to physically pull Delilah away from the center of the courtroom, together with the bailiff, where Delilah was pacing dramatically to and fro in front of the judge - as if performing for her starring role in a nonexistent episode of Law and Order - and I heard Ahab forcefully tell Delilah to shut it - OR ELSE they would get in REAL trouble. 

That scene unfolding as it did on my Zoom Screen will never NOT be funny to me.  I was tempted to quip: “Judge - you were out of patience and out of your mind with that woman after JUST 5 MINUTES; now, just IMAGINE my life - of the past 5 MONTHS WITH HER and that incessant mouth of hers and maybe understand how I came to be standing in your courtroom in the first place?!”

But I said NOTHING and continued to stifle my internal laughter at this scene of the truly absurd courtroom dramatics unfolding on my Zoom Screen. 

The judge literally lost her mind on the extreme entitled narcissism of Delilah trying to invoke her entitled right to be judge and jury OVER and IN PLACE OF the judge. Talk about Exhibit A for me in the REAL trial of this matter….

Now, I don’t know if you have ever seen a judge instantaneously lose her presence of calm mind upon the badgering by an incessant crazy defendant, but this scene that unfolded that day with Delilah trying to commandeer full command of the judge’s courtroom with her hissing histrionics and narcissistic dramatics - but this was truly the surreal stuff of movies and absolutely belongs on an episode of CourtCam as it was full-tilt BONKERS.   

Just Wow. 

But I continued to say NOT ONE THING as this incredulous scene unfolded and, instead, I just put on my best “courtroom poke face” and silently roared in laughter while staring blankly at the Zoom Screen.  The judge literally SCREAMED at Delilah in a way that I had wanted to since the day she tried to murder her great grand-nephew in the driveway, and every day after that in sheer frustration - yet I never did.  Hearing the judge “Gone Wild” on Delilah’s disordered behavior did my soul good.    

Ultimately, the Order of Protection case was continued AGAIN to late January 2022 BY Delilah who said that she needed time to hire a lawyer for her and Ahab.  And THAT is where my thousands in IHDA funds ultimately went: Delilah paid her OOP defense lawyer $7k+ to represent her and Ahab against me in the matter - so there went the entire $6500 that was not hers to spend and that belonged and still belongs to me for my housing expenses during the pandemic.  

AND THE STATE OF ILLINOIS UNDER GOVERNOR PRITZKER allowed the injustice of this theft of State Pandemic Housing Funds for the homeless to be misappropriated to Delilah’s own personal litigation defense fund in her domestic abuse case.  And NO ONE IN ALL OF IL LAW ENFORCEMENT SEEMS TO KNOW HOW TO HOLD A THIEVING CRIMINAL RESPONSIBLE IN the State of Illinois - including ISP and the IL Attorney General - regarding stolen Pandemic funds.  Maybe stop doing victory laps, Governor Pritzker, and realize your Rome is burning.  I note that the State of Missouri is actually prosecuting several DOZEN of these Pandemic Fraud cases PER WEEK in the Eastern District of MO yet the State of Illinois has no such similar prosecutions underway to clawback stolen funds.  Welcome to IL: If you’re a white collar criminal stealing State money - this #1 corrupt State will ACTUALLY HELP YOU DO IT AND COMMIT YOUR CRIMES.  ILLINOIS: Where all the rich people are criminals but only the poor are prosecuted for pot possession.   

And worse still: is the fully broken Domestic Violence System for VICTIMS in Illinois.  For you see, the State of Illinois had NO lawyer for me as the VICTIM of domestic violence because the lawyer given to clients in the Domestic Violence Shelter told me she has roughly 3600 cases dozens of dockets EACH WEEK; and I was far more articulate than MOST of her battered clients, so, it was just “tough toes for me” - I had to go it alone without any assistance of counsel or advocate because the system in Illinois is real-time COLLAPSING under the broken of the failed DV System here. There is NO HELP, NO HOUSING, NO LEGAL REPRESENTATION - nothing - to assist you in such a catastrophic crisis and that’s just the way that it is and things will never be any better until and unless Governor Pritzker starts demanding transparency in spending, full financial accounting and government oversight to all of these failed State nonprofits and shelters to whom he allocates MILLIONS - but who then serve only themselves and their greed with those millions.  They serve no real purpose but to unjustly enrich themselves on taxpayer money.  And THAT TOO is a crime - but someone would actually have to care about prosecuting white collar crime in Illinois and they do NOT. 

And so it goes…..

But after robbing me, her penniless tenant, of my IHDA housing fund and misappropriating State Pandemic Funds to unjustly enrich HERSELF, Delilah sure made sure she and Ahab had a good lawyer to represent THEM.   And to add insult to injury, Riley in Georgia, who kept me safely housed in the Winter of 2020 and for whom the State of Illinois awarded this “back rent to” - he’s just out of luck and will never be repaid because the State of Illinois is built BY criminals for criminals and there is NO ONE in any position of power who has any ETHICS to do the right thing in this State.  

To my readers reading this:  SHOULD you be at all sufficiently outraged at this injustice suffered by me (and every other DV survivor in IL) and care enough to want to DO SOMETHING to help: I beg of you TO PLEASE HELP ME and others like me. Please call Governor JB Pritzker of IL and ask him WHY his State of Illinois allows domestic abusers to steal and misappropriate State Pandemic IHDA tenant housing funds to INSTEAD pay their own defense attorneys in their ADULT ABUSE legal matters with said stolen Pandemic funds. That is horrendous and needs to be fully called out right here and right now for just what a full failure of the State government in IL that it is.  IHDA has no idea how to stop felons from unlawfully thieving such State funds. The IL AG has no clue how to bring such scofflaws to justice.  And the REALLY stupid part is that Governor Pritzker, in his infinite wisdom, just put the same failed Agency - who has no idea how to account for its allocated funds stolen - in charge of a HOMEOWNER PROGRAM FOR POOR PEOPLE IN IL!!!!

Now, if they cannot even claw back stolen TENANT funds, what makes Governor Pritzker believe that IHDA will be any more capable of handling HOMEOWNER FUNDING PROGRAM for the poor in Illinois? This is just bad policy and bad decision-making by Governor Pritzker with an Agency with a proven failed track record in Illinois.  

So, the phone number for Governor Pritzker’s Office, should you care to call this insanity out on my behalf is: 1-217-782-0244. 

Please care, America. Please call.  It’s the only way that what happened to me won’t happen to future other DV victims just like me in Illinois.  And it’s likely the only way I will ever see JUSTICE from Delilah stealing these State funds from me.    

And that is ANOTHER and one final, last thing I would like to say about the failed Domestic Violence Assistance as it currently exists in Illinois. Ultimately, I did not NEED an attorney to represent me in the matter because I eventually DROPPED the OOP Request against both Delilah and Ahab in January 2022.  But, it is worth noting, that I could not SECURE ANY attorney to represent me because literally everywhere I called WITHIN that same town refused because Delilah was the aggressor/Defendant and most of them had already tangled with her as the litigious lunatic that she is in various prior other matters in that town.  And most of the lawyers who had not previously represented Delilah and her vexatious litigious nature, they were all part of the corrupt organized crime mobster legal system in place in this janky Central Illinois town.  So NO JUSTICE would have been even possible for me - and for too many others just like me - in a town where organized crime has literally taken over the town and “one of their protected mobsters” happens to be the accused abuser. That is an unfortunate reality for FAR TOO MANY in Central Illinois stuck in the pit of this fully lawless land of Downstate Illinois.  

Worse still - all of the lawyers OUTSIDE of this specific town in Central Illinois all turned me down because I was the Petitioner and not the Defendant/Respondent abuser.  The bottom line is: all the lawyers want to “make bank” charging the violent DV aggressors a minimum $5k retainer to DEFEND them. There is no money to be made if you are the VICTIM; therefore, the large majority of lawyers simply will not take your case.  This needs to change IMMEDIATELY.  We need a National Group of Lawyers who ONLY represent the VICTIMS in DV cases - and have sufficient TIME and ATTENTION and low case loads to devote to EACH CASE. Because it is a CRIME that so many victims are left unaided by legal counsel in such matters.  The lawyers the DV Shelters typically retain have roughly 3k+ cases PER WEEK on the various dockets in the County and simply do NOT have the time to help MOST clients.  So. if your abuser did not actually light you on fire rendering your case “high priority” by the system in IL - you are unlikely to receive ANY assistance of legal counsel and this MUST CHANGE - because you can bet your boots the abusers all show up with their well-paid, silk stocking bully lawyers in tow. 

This is a complete failure of the State government in Illinois to properly OVERSEE & ENSURE that all of the millions given to DV advocates actually “trickles down” to help the VICTIMS of domestic violence.  Because no government oversight or “success metrics” demanded translates to: no victims getting any help or housing or lawyers or resources -  and so the abusers simply WIN EVERY TIME in Central Illinois and just move on to give their next “new victim” a similar beat down and terrorizing experience -  because that’s just the system in place by organized crime in Capone’s Cornfields of Central Illinois: THE ABUSERS ALWAYS WIN in such a broken, fully corrupt system. Because Delilah absolutely DID go on to terrorize and abuse again - many other victims, after I fled her home. 

I know this because many of her subsequent victims reached out to me for help when the same (or worse) happened to them - and I had to be the one to inform them that abusers like Delilah just get to WIN and PREVAIL every day in corrupt, LACKING ANY ETHICS REFORM, State of Illinois. And because Delilah is a Jezebel with a murderous spirit and no one in all of IL law enforcement nor Illinois government seems to know how to take down such a petty and persistent criminal.   

The whole failed system is guilty as hell.  

And thus and so, when Nick Carmody of Twitter tweeted out my plight, one of his followers took interest in my particular “life catastrophe” and sent considerable assistance to me by way of good advice, monetary assistance and also her friendship. And when I tell you that sometimes friendship is critically needed JUST AS MUCH as cash resources - I speak the truth.  I will forever be grateful to Rochelle in New Jersey.  From the outset, we hit it off because she was caring for her mother at the end of her life as I did my father - and she was roughly my same age and also had no children.  So there were many similarities between us that caused her to take a special interest in my then-problems.  And for that - and her daily friendship in the coming months thereafter, I will always be eternally grateful to her.  I do not exaggerate when I say she is surely a big part of WHY I made it to tell THIS STORY via my Memoir and WHY I am still alive today.  I am so grateful to her because I was so blessed by her in so many different ways.  

One of the things that Rochelle did that was immediately so helpful to me was: she sent me an iPhone.  I constantly complained about how “broken and garbage” the Obamaphone is that I had.  It constantly locked up, it dropped 50% of calls mid-call and it had a 5 megapixel camera that took TERRIBLE, low grade pictures.  This junk camera on the phone may seem trivial to you but I assure you that it is not.  For I ultimately learned that my IDES Pandemic Unemployment Claim did not process back in July 2020 BECAUSE the screenshots of my ID and SS card which I uploaded to IDES came out “blurry” and so IDES, in their infinite incompetence, never told me so that I might correct the deficit and, thereafter, IDES also refused to CORRECT the issue in September 2021 when the problem was ultimately discovered.    I lost $17k in Pandemic Unemployment, at a time when I most needed that money to literally survive during Lockdowns, simply because the quality of the phones the Lifeline Program provides is typically junk and they are largely unusable.  To this day, I still use the iphone Rochelle from Twitter sent to me and I think of her Every. Single. Day. as I use it throughout each day.  She saved my life and helped with SO MANY THINGS in the next 2 years - things that would have been made infinitely harder or even impossible WITHOUT the iPhone.  I will forever be grateful to her - sincerely and deeply.  

But meanwhile, with the legal OOP case against Delilah and Ahab continued until late January 2022, I had to find a path out of that town where she lived.  There was nothing left there for me as there was nothing there for me to begin with when I first moved there - except her offer of housing.  That particular small town in Central IL where she lives is losing population to the tune of 25,000 since 1990 which is roughly 5,000 residents per every 5 years and the YEARLY flight from that town is accelerating even more now post-pandemic.  But as I said, manufacturing and industry abandoned this pothole town long ago, organized crime set up shop in the vacuum of all industry and jobs leaving - so now EVERYTHING is fueled by corruption there.  Hope has no home there and people SENSE THAT - when evil takes over their town - they can SEE IT ALL AROUND THEM - so they just vote with their feet and leave.  The ongoing false narrative is that EVERYONE is leaving the State of Illinois because of the high taxes.  No - it’s because of the pervasive evil that omnipresent corruption allows to flourish - and with no SUBSTANTIVE Ethics Reform ever undertaken in Illinois - it’s a pit of despair there.    

Which industry IS still being PROMOTED AND FUNDED by the corrupt LOCAL government players who remain there? Better police equipment, better police technology and million dollar egregiously overdone police stations, a bigger jail, a more punitive courthouse where the innocent ALWAYS lose because justice is fully for sale there and drug rehab centers for all of the addicts this town’s hopelessness, despair and poverty create - so those vulnerable addicts can then be trafficked from those rehab centers.  The wealthy corrupt mobsters have plundered it all for themselves and now any “investment” goes towards surveilling and punishing the poor people who remain - simply because they are TOO POOR to flee and move away elsewhere far away from that nightmare.  

That town is fully tragic.  Hope has no home there. 

So, I reckoned that it was best to put it all behind me and move far away from such hopelessness. Jael was against this decision because we truly had forged a friendship through my adversity, she enjoyed having someone like me around to help her with her medical issues, her labrador doggo and generally helping her out with all of her household chores and errands.  She really could NOT understand my insistence that I simply could no longer live in a town where JUSTICE is impossible - and fully for sale  - because the crooks have fully corrupted it all - AND my violent abusers might be around every blind corner I could turn on any given day. So there was ALL OF THAT BAGGAGE plus the town was seriously a dump.  Most of East St. Louis IL’s poorest, most disinvested areas look BETTER than 90% of this Central IL town does - so it was an easy decision for me to leave there post haste.  

And SHOULD that worse case scenario happen with my abuser(s) in that town hunting me down - as their ongoing verbal threats suggested they were trying to do- the local cops would AID my abuser in allowing her to further terrorize me - for they had already done so MULTIPLE TIMES. 

No thanks. That’s a HARD NO good ol’ boys - you run your corrupt racketeering protocols on someone else….And Americans wonder why acronyms like ACAB are born….Well guys, when you NEVER help the victims and you always mentally align with the violent abusers - the citizens are naturally not going to trust you. Ever. This is just where we are because of your abhorrent behavior over the decades.   

So ALL OF THAT considered - I had to leave as immediately as possible - despite how much I may have cared for Jael.     

So I told Jael the decision had already been made.  I simply cannot live where HOPE has no home there: hope of a better tomorrow, hope for True Justice prevailing, hope for the people prospering and thriving and hope that all money and resources be invested back into the people and the communities and NOT the corrupt cops and government.  God put within me a heart to always seek justice, always do right by people, and to always extend mercy and kindness -and I simply COULD NOT do any of that in a town filled with corrupt and EMPOWERED criminals and mobsters.  Hope has literally no home there.          

PART II

And just like that, TwitterFam next ferried me from the safety of the “downlow Safe House” onto a seemingly safe path forward out of that corrupt pothole town of Delilah’s demonic sphere of corrupt influence - and onto hoped-for better and brighter days.  I found the place while browsing online one day in December 2021.  The ad was essentially for a “communal boarding house” that was just not described as a boarding house - and was, instead, advertised as “an oasis of tranquility and safety.”  In a more literal sense, it was an “Extended Stay Historical Inn” but it was NOT a hotel or motel - just a historic mansion that was quite sizable and impressive - just from my initial online search.  

That “advertised description” of a tranquil oasis seemed PERFECT for me.  The only slightly “off” thing that sent a bell off in my mind was the owner repeated the word “QUIET” over and over again in her ad description: “quiet room rentals, quiet surroundings, quiet businesses, quiet people, quiet grounds, quiet and peaceful, quiet common areas, quiet hallways etc.  You get the idea…

Yet, I was not at all put off by this “repeated QUIET description” because I am, broadly speaking, a very quiet person by nature.  I write, I read, I pray and I scroll the internet.  And I was trying to bring my Pandemic Memoir to fruition - so a quiet NEW setting, far away from Delilah, was exactly what I needed.  I mean sure - I have my moments of blaring “Jesus and Bosephus” in my personal vehicle whenever it comes on just like everyone else - but I didn’t even OWN a stereo or tv to “blare” INSIDE wherever I lived - so it <seemed to be> an inconsequential point.  

The owner and I first spoke over the phone and I came to learn that her name was Peninah. She asked only for a 3 (minimum) month Lease Agreement and she asked for a reference to speak to the tenant’s good character - and that was it.  Easy enough for me to accomplish - AND I liked that she only wanted 3 months - for I would not be *legally obligated to stay per my Lease* in the (seemingly unlikely) event I landed upon another Delilah.  Remember - one of the MAIN reasons I did not leave Delilah after my first weekend there and she tried to physically murder her own great grandson was because I had just signed a 6 Month Lease with her and unwinding THAT in the Courts is always expensive because housing court ALWAYS favors the landlords - no matter how abhorrent they may be.     

Peninah told me that there were 4 long-term residential tenants who lived there that were actually also employees of hers at the Inn paying “half rent” in exchange for work around the property; then there were also additionally 3 business tenants there - and at least 4 more permanent residential tenants who lived there - and all had been there LONG TERM, FOR YEARS. Among those “employee tenants paying half rent” there was a housekeeper, a groundskeeper, a maintenance man and a computer guy - for all of her wifi and security maintenance.  

And holy guacamole - did this place have the SECURITY I required in the aftermath of Delilah and Ahab.  Both the online advertisement for the place and Peninah effusively bragged about how “comprehensive and 24/7” all of her “next level, sophisticated security and surveillance was.”  The place was tricked out with OUTDOOR cameras that surveilled for miles in every direction leading up to the property, cameras throughout every inch of the gated grounds surrounding the whole compound and a gated front parking lot that required a remote and a code in order to access the parking lot of the property - along with an alarmed gate at the entranced. And cameras pointed at every parking spot on the secured parking lot. And THAT was just the security for the EXTERIOR OF THE PROPERTY.  

Peninah assured me that the INTERIOR areas INSIDE the property had cameras in all common areas of hallways, the kitchen, the laundry, both the front and back doors as well as alarms should the INTERIOR be breached in some way by someone not authorized to be there. 

I was immediately SOLD on the place - if for no other reason than the SECURITY and peace of mind it provided.  Delilah and Ol Ahab could TRY and come at me here - should they somehow find the place which would be nearly impossible, but they would never succeed.  And that was reassuring.  

  

In the aftermath of Delilah and Ahab and not knowing how much or how little they might put efforts towards trying to actually hunt me down - this place seemed PERFECT for me.  Also, it occurred to me that SO MUCH of Delilah’s constant slander and false accusations against me to local law enforcement in her town would have been easily proven demonstrably FALSE to law enforcement had there been security cameras at her house.  And that’s just why Delilah did NOT have any such cameras in her home - she does not need nor want any cameras telling truths over her baldfaced, slanderous lies.  Consequently, I was encouraged to have cameras PROVE MY INNOCENCE (and the fact that I live the life akin to a really boring nun should same ever be questioned) in the aftermath of my nightmare with Delilah and Ahab. I have nothing to hide and security cameras will only ALWAYS fully exonerate me - so I had no concerns.  

      Peninah was older, 70, and divorced with grown children living elsewhere.  She had a career working for the State of Illinois with TASC so she had a very lucrative State pension from that job.  For those of you who may not know what TASC in IL: TASC is a special kind of deferred probation and the acronym stands for “Treatment Alternatives to Street Crimes” and it provides case management and intervention for those whose lives have been adversely impacted by incarceration and who are referred to evaluation and treatment in IL by law enforcement, judges, jails, IDOC and DFS or other first responders.  Basically, if you are an accused defendant in Illinois, you are likely to be referred to TASC and THEY then have full control over your life.  It is promoted as something BETTER than the normal probation but TASC has its many critics in Illinois one reason being because too many crimes in IL are ineligible for TASC referral - including violent crimes, DUIs and drug crimes. Are you sensing a theme here in Illinois, folks?  Anything involving the government of Illinois doesn’t really FUNCTION properly - at least not in Downstate Illinois it does not anyway.    

Given that Peninah’s career was legal-adjacent, I told her about my career as a litigation specialist and how I had done primarily catastrophic medical injury law but had left my legal career in 2009 to care for my veteran father in the last 10 years of his life after he suffered a stroke.  She remarked that she, too, now cared for her aged and infirm mother who was 96 years old with some dementia beginning to occur - so we seemingly had “caring for an elder parent in their last decade of life” as yet ANOTHER common link between our lives. 

Peninah then remarked that a legal background can be so very valuable for many different reasons in life - and I agreed.  I began to tell her how I had worked solo and with Eviction Lab and certain other lawyers doing eviction defense for tenants during the Lockdowns in 2020 and I also told her that so many public defenders are truly heroes to me - something I thought would demonstrate that I, too, believe that many accused criminal defendants are fully deserving of a second chance, good legal counsel and a “court diversion program” where applicable - among many other things - similar to her work with TASC.  To this Peninah went oddly FULLY SILENT on me and immediately changed the subject to her CURRENT job of welcoming and caring for everyone at her Inn; and then, she dovetailed, unprompted, into a conversation about her devout Christian faith.  Okay - fully noted: our past work INFORMS our lives but Peninah was not one to spend even 5 seconds ruminating over the many injustices within the criminal justice system in America despite what she HAD TO HAVE WITNESSED working with TASC in Illinois.  

Oh. I see. 

But her next remarks about her devout Christian faith were encouraging to me as she extolled how important a Christ-centered life was to her and told me how she spent literally HOURS praying every day.  

Really? Hours? How did she run the boarding house AND care for her aged mother, full time, if she had SUCH a constant daily prayer life? That was admirable.  Kudos to her.  

Peninah then mentioned that she had her granddaddy’s old Bible on prominent display in the foyer at the base of the staircase of her Inn and she told me that it surely was one of her most coveted possessions in her life.  She made passing reference to an impoverished childhood and how she now is grateful as an adult for every single good thing in her life and that she believes in living simply and without excess or luxury. Again, THIS, too, seemed to be a positive parallel between our lives and so I was encouraged - very much so, as she seemed to be the exact OPPOSITE of Delilah's life of self-indulgent excess and constant thieving.  She literally seemed like the opposite of Delilah in every possible way and that was a huge relief to me.   

I realize it was <perhaps> somewhat unfair for me to compare Peninah mentally to Delilah from the outset - but trust me, after escaping such a harrowing jezebel with murderous intent - it was REALLY IMPORTANT to me that I find a SAFE place to land - filled with SAFE other people.  For I wasn’t sure I could survive another Jezebel with a murderous spirit on the heels of what Delilah attempted to do in trying to intentionally devastate and ruin my whole life and my good name by her slanderous false accusations against me.  So, yes, safety and some certainty that this next landlord would be, at least, sane - THAT was important to me.        

Go figure.    

Factoring in Peninah’s State pension together with what she profited from having business and residential tenants at her Inn, I reckoned that she was likely pulling in close to $10,000 per month just from those 2 sources of income alone.  And THAT was a good thing in my opinion because it meant that Peninah was not secretly a pauper, desperate for cash, and willing to do any illegal thing to get it - as Delilah had been.  Peninah was not a ‘broke joke fraud’ frontin as a rich millionaire as Delilah had been.  Nope: this lady actually had spent a lifetime painfully setting up her retirement so that she would not be in need nor in any financial dire straits during her retirement years and was, by all objective measures, fiscally responsible and comfortable in her finances.  And THAT told me that she was a planner and responsible and NOT a reckless spendthrift like Delilah.  Everything about Peninah’s place seemed POSITIVE and exactly what I needed AT THAT TIME in my life.  

I did my own due diligence on Peninah, of course.  I looked up her Inn, the property itself on public databases, I searched HER NAME in legal databases and did a background check on her.  I read online reviews and learned that she used to run the place as a “Special Events” overnight type bed and breakfast but had, since COVID, switched over to longer term, extended stay rentals.  There was only 1 really negative review about the place but the author of that review posted literal PARAGRAPHS about how Peninah ripped him off of some kind of “Package Deal” at the property.  I noted also that NO recent residential tenants, all of whom Peninah said had ALL lived there for years, had posted any reviews - positive or negative - ALL of the reviews were from YEARS ago when it functioned as a bed and breakfast.   I reckoned that, on balance, there were more good reviews than that one extremely worrisome bad review - and nobody was accusing Peninah of being a crazy Jezebel with a murderous spirit in their reviews of her place - so it seemed OK.  

The one thing that did bother me was that I asked her for a reference FOR HER - someone who had been a tenant there for awhile and left but had good things to say about her AND living there as a full freight paying tenant.  She punted and said everyone who became a longer term tenant was STILL living there and that I would meet them all when I got there.  

Well, if everyone moved in and just never left - I guess that was that.

No character references of her own to offer.  Duly noted.  

Yet Peninah did call my reference, my friend Elisha in St. Louis.  Elisha later told me that it was an odd phone call for her because the ONLY thing Peninah asked her was if I kept a clean house.  She asked Elisha nothing about me AS A PERSON, my habits, my finances or history of timely rental payments, my lifestyle etc  Elisha told her very bluntly: “She keeps a clean home AND she is literally the ONLY cat person whose home I have been in that I cannot detect any cat odors or allergies from the cats because she does next level cat care - so there was never any litter box odors lingering, nor fur flying and the house was always kept tidy so the cats and her Dad could easily move about the home.”   

And that response fully satisfied Peninah.   

And honestly, that inquiry, albeit very limited in scope, seemed fine by me - because I had just spent 4 MONTHS trying to clean Delilah’s grody kitchen to no avail. So if Peninah was a neat-nik and a cleaning cadet - THAT would be a welcome change of pace for me.  I appreciate a clean home AND I will spend considerable effort making a space CLEAN - especially if it serves a COMMON good for others besides myself.  And in my own inquiries regarding Peninah, I could find nothing <on paper> that would suggest my NEW landlady was a full-tilt crazy person or lifelong criminal - so it seemed like a good next step forward for me.    

And thus and so, I journeyed forth on December 28, 2021 to Peninah’s boarding house.  I thanked Jael for all of her help, loaded my car and off I went into the snowy unknown of a new town much further North in Central Illinois.  It is AGAIN worth mentioning that TwitterFam made this move possible for me with their donations to me and their sage advice, suggestions and prayers - and for that I will always be grateful.  At a time when I most needed many people to rally around me and help me find a way forward, TwitterFam did exactly that.  I owe you a debt I can never repay.   But as God as my witness I will one day pay it ALL forward.     

As an aside though, prior to departing for Peninah’s on the 28th, I was running BEHIND from when I told Peninah I would be arriving on December 26th as I tried to get Jael sorted and taken care of by local home health workers to assist her in my absence.  Peninah told me that my room was available anytime after Noon on Christmas and here it was already 3 days AFTER Christmas - and I still had not arrived at her boarding house.    I also spent those last few days at Jael’s doing laundry FOR HER and cleaning the room with the daybed I had stayed in - so it would be all ready for the next “in need female” fleeing that janky rural DV Shelter.  I cleaned her kitchen and made some easy meals for her to eat until her new home aide could be on the job from the local senior homecare company.  My marine Daddy raised me right and he told me that we are ALWAYS to leave a place better than how we found it.  And Lord knows I tried my level best to do exactly that for Jael - an uncommon angel sent to me at a time when I most needed one.  She shall never be forgotten either.  I carry you all with me, every day, as I make my way forward in this grand journey.   And because of all of my TwitterFam, I had a path forward and rent fully paid for December and January 2022.  Things seemed to be falling into place for me.     

So, I arrived at Peninah’s Boarding House on December 28, 2021 in a new town I was wholly unfamiliar with and that was, in my mind, a good thing.  Best to forget Delilah in the dust of that pothole town where she lives and corruptly crimes and terrorizes the unsuspecting on the daily there.  Upon my arrival, Peninah met me at the front door and gave me a <very> hurried tour of the considerable compound.  As promised, surveillance cameras were EVERYWHERE protecting both the perimeter and the exterior of the property as well as access to the physical property itself and the common areas INSIDE.  Peninah gave me a remote for the gate to access the property and then she showed me to my room. 

I noticed during my tour that the entire Inn seemed deafeningly silent.  As if no one was anywhere and I had entered a very dark, somber mortuary or mausoleum.  Dark, heavy draperies covered every window, the wood floors were all very dark and dank and covered by very dark, colorless area rugs -  and the furniture was all old dark wood - perhaps some of it antique.  

The darkness, the eery stillness and the abject silent weight of this place was palpable.  I remember silently thinking as I toured the place with Peninah “she wasn’t exaggerating about that QUIET adjective she was so fond of overusing in her rental advertisements…”  

I reckoned that it was just quiet because we were in the middle of the Holidays and most people were likely away with friends and family for the Season.  Easily explained and not a big deal.  

  Peninah was a very small, very petite woman - no more than 5’ tall and likely not weighing 90 pounds soaking wet. She had a palpable and pervasive nervous and frenetic energy about her that belied her “I’m so soft-spoken, pleasant and happy” chatter.  One look at her and you could discern that she was VERY tightly wound, very rigid and tense - with a barely contained <some unidentifiable negative emotion> just under the shiny surface of her polished veneer. While she told me how laid back, mellow and easygoing she is and how she also tries to make her Inn the same laid back, jovial and warm type of place - she was unconsciously physically picking at a scab on her wrist, causing it to bleed.  She also unconsciously snapped her fingers in a frenetic manner whenever she finished her sentences - as if to put an audible exclamation point on her thoughts.  And she had a strange way of talking AT YOU but without ever making eye contact WITH YOU - instead looking all around and aimlessly pointing out unrelated things along the walking tour.  Peninah had wispy blonde hair, blue eyes and was sporting blue jeans and a sweatshirt.  Very unassuming and unpretentious in her style and manner of dress; yet something about all of her unspoken frenetic energy was internally, for me, rather exhausting just to witness.  She did not seem like a woman who was well-acquainted with inner calm.   

Perhaps I could share with her the blessing of John 14:26 and the Peace of Jesus he gives to us all. 

During this walkabout of the Inn Peninah led me on upon my arrival at her place, Peninah seemed fully frazzled, forgetful and in a bit of a hurry to be done with our tour and any in-person interaction with me. She kept insisting that in spite of her written list of things to acquaint me with that she was just CERTAIN she was forgetting to tell me 100 other important things so I should just TEXT her if I had any follow-up questions for her about the place.  She seemed sweet enough though, broadly speaking, during that first encounter with her.  She told me (again) that she was devoutly Christian and showed me her aforementioned granddaddy's antique Bible on full display in the main hallway.  This repeating of her Christian values to me was reassuring to me if only because - although Delilah constantly insisted she was a “devout Christian” - the only “religious relic” in her house were items of the occult (sage burning, horoscopes, Scientology propaganda and a prosperity bible by Joel Osteen.) At least Peninah actually owned a REAL Bible and had it on prominent display - even if it was her grandaddy’s, an antique with cracked pages and likely never touched.  This putting her faith on display in her home rather than living it in her heart was, with the benefit of hindsight, a massive red flag that I missed. 

Sigh.

Trust me, friends, I’m learning. They gotta earn it with me nowadays.  There is no longer any IMPUTED goodness just because someone TELLS me they are a Christian - they must NOW SHOW ME with how they live their life.  

But at this point, I was WANTING TO BELIEVE Peninah’s every attestation of devout Christianity…to my grave detriment.     

She told me the names of all the other residential people who lived there as we traversed the property but, honestly, it was such a mad rush of names with no distinguishing characteristics attributed to any one of them that I promptly forgot all the names. I did note, though, that with the exception of her maid, Haga, they were ALL the names of GUYS.  

Well, now that seemed odd to me….

Why did no other women besides her housekeeper (at half rent) want to live there, I wondered silently to myself… 

Peninah reassured me that I would eventually know who was who and what was where and that the place took some getting used to because it was truly SO LARGE and expansive.  It was a palatial spread and the grounds looked very nice - from what I could discern of them in the dark of Winter.  

As we entered a large bathroom UPSTAIRS on the tour of the place, she mentioned that I shared that bathroom with 4 other tenants upstairs.  She assured me they were all clean about using the “community bathroom” AND that her maid, Haga, cleaned it every single day just to ensure it stayed VERY clean.  

Um….over the phone she mentioned sharing a bathroom with only 1 other tenant and I assumed (my fault) that would be another FEMALE.  Sharing it with 4 other MEN - that was potentially worrisome - and fully false from what she stated on the phone to me.  

Also too: Peninah never mentioned ANY stairs.  She had probably 15 pictures online with her rental ad and, odd, NOT ONE OF THEM, pictured the very steep, extraordinarily cumbersome main staircase I would need to climb - just to get to my room each day.  I asked her about this because I was legitimately confused: how could she leave out the fact that the room would be up roughly 15 stairs AND ON THE SECOND FLOOR from her online rental ad? Well, because, if the truth be told, MOST PEOPLE would keep looking for somewhere else to live because stairs are a pain unless you are in your 20s or early 30s.  And everyone Peninah rented to was over 55. So, it was an INTENTIONAL withholding from her advertisement that Peninah did on this particular topic.

Oh the TRUTHS that we learn after the fact, am I right?  

I decided to file THAT away mentally in my brain and just let it go because the more I questioned her on this intentional omission from her and her phone conversations with me, the more “silently simmering” Peninah seemed to get.  I told her that stairs were a huge challenge for me due to my Huntington’s balance issues.  She then said that a room DOWNSTAIRS was coming open in early Spring and I could have that room - so, AT WORST, I would only have to live as a shut-in upstairs for 2 months and could move downstairs on March 1, 2022. 

What could I do? I had no Plan B so I just prepared to live UPSTAIRS as a shut-in for the worst of Winter in IL. I would somehow make it work - I told myself.

I mean what was I supposed to do? I had already given her the deposit, signed the 90 Day Lease Agreement and I was there and it was cold, dark and the Holidays 2021.  I honestly just wanted to collapse.  So, we agreed to “work on the room downstairs for me” and finalize that at a later point - and so I went forward with moving into Peninah’s.

LESSON LEARNED: If people will straight up lie in their rental ad AND on the phone about their available rental unit just to get you to sign on the dotted line and give them cash: they are lying liars who lie, broadly speaking, also in life.  Please don’t make yourself learn that lesson the hard way - repeatedly - as I have done.  I fully get it now.  You lie to me on Day 1, that means you will lie to me every day after that, too - as a manipulation just to get what you want - and you are just not a serious person.  

But NO AVAILABLE RENTAL HOUSING in Downstate IL means that desperate decisions are made in desperate moments and tenants are consequently FORCED into living situations they otherwise would NEVER CHOOSE were there any, available options.  So, dear readers, you best believe the landlords of Illinois (and America) are intentionally exacerbating this current housing crisis in IL and America - because NO OTHER HOUSING OPTIONS means tenants just have to accept liars and thieves for landlords - and that’s just the way that it is and things will never be any better.  And the bad actor landlords love this power imbalance the Pandemic gave to them all.  

We MUST demand better, America.       

 And then came the next shoe to drop from Peninah just as I was trying to mentally accept the new TRUTHFUL reality of my rental and all of the stairs involved: she also mentioned that each time I needed to use the bathroom, I would need to bring with me to the shared bathroom my own toilet paper, my own hand soap and my own towel, my own cleaner and sanitizer to wipe everything down when I because she did not provide such things - because, as she told it, she USED TO DO ALL OF THAT, and people just took advantage of her constant generosity. 

Just WOW.

Okay then. Peninah the Christian is NOT a giver. So noted.  

I can tell you though, if I were charging $700 and $800 a month for essentially 4 walls for people to live within and then making those same people all share 1 bathroom in my boarding house (illegally), I would be certain that I supplied what was helpful, needed and useful in that bathroom - and NOT make everyone trek down the hall with a bucket of supplies they might need - just to use the toilet and sink. And I’m guessing that if she were honest about THAT lived reality and TRUTH of the shared bathroom scene - she would have far fewer takers in her boarding house.  Although, truthfully, guys don’t much care about shared bathrooms.  I’ve come to observe that most guys over 60 years old have literally almost ZERO standards for how they live and what the accommodations are.  They are not at all picky or particular in this regard. But I was beginning to fully understand just WHY there were no other FEMALE tenants there - except for her maid Haga.     

When my short whirlwind tour of Peninah’s compound was complete, it was 4pm in the dead of Winter and nearly dark outside.  I was tired from packing and the long drive there and just wanted to have dinner and go to bed.  Peninah told me that the local bowling alley had the “best pizza in town” which seems perhaps weird but trust me - in some of these small towns in rural IL - you are lucky to even find mediocre bowling alley pizza.  What passes as “the best” in these podunk rural towns of Illinois you must always remember is compared to literally NOTHING else in town.  So “the best” often turns out to be “merely meh” - but I was starving and literally any bad pizza nearby would be just fine by me.  I brought the eats back to my room and, sitting to eat it at the appointed table in my room, I began to truly take in my new room rental at the Inn.   

It was literally a room made up of wall-to-wall windows on all 3 exterior walls; and yet, every window was covered by thick, unparted, heavy, yellowed draperies.  They were yellow - but not even close to the same shade of yellow as the wallpaper in the room was trying to still be - so that was odd.  I half wondered if whoever had originally chosen it was, perhaps, somewhat color blind - due to the extreme mismatch therein.  The wallpaper was a much paler yellow yet seemingly splattered with a strange brown, erratic and irregular puddles pattern going on that had the appearance of  old coffee stains all over the wallpaper.  I’m not suggesting it WAS old coffee stains  - just that upon close examination of it -  that’s what it APPEARED as - which was, admittedly, a rather unfortunate visual.  For what could have been a sunny shade of subdued yellow all by itself was ruined by the spiraling brown, puddle pattern overlay on the wallpaper.  It looked like the kind of wallpaper that you might pick up, in bulk, very affordably at a going-out-of-business sale somewhere so - kudos to Peninah for clearly saving money on wallpaper.  For what does wallpaper really matter at the end of the day? So long as it covers the wall - it has, in fact, done its job.  No big deal, I reasoned.

There was an easy chair and a desk/table for eating and writing.  I noted almost immediately that the chair might prove problematic for long hours daily of writing this Memoir as it was the hard, wooden kind with the spindle rods for a back.  Nice to look at if you like THE LOOK of old, antique furniture - yet torture to sit in for more than 5 minutes.  No worries, I would fetch my own substitute desk chair elsewhere in town.  

There was a sink and a microwave and a little cabinet to store kitchen stuffs in with a marbled surface and that seemed utilitarian.  And an in-room sink was crucial - as I washed my hands regularly, at least several times per day, due to the pandemic and my own OCD germaphobia.  That would be an ESPECIALLY important habit and routine to engage now that I was living in a COMMUNAL boarding house amidst a raging and ongoing Pandemic in America.   

I then noticed the bed was fully bare - yet ON TOP of the bare mattress there was a really old and yellowed, rather gross, used pillow tossed at the head of the stripped bare bed - and the old, yellowed pillow had no pillowcase.  I had a pillow and bedding of my own in tow so I made quick work of making the bed with my own new bedding from TwitterFam.  I put the old, dirty pillow by the door to return to Peninah in the morning and then I began to put my clothes away in the dresser and closet. But when I opened the dresser, I found some women’s clothing and shoes in the drawers and the shoes were on the floor of the closet. 

Well that was odd. 

How peculiar - especially considering Peninah told me repeatedly how well she cleaned the rooms at her place - together with her tenant-maid Haga. 

Odd also, too, because it wasn’t AS IF I had arrived early or prematurely, back to back, on the heels of the departing prior tenant on Christmas when Peninah told me to come.  No, she had had 3 full ADDITIONAL EXTRA days in which to thoroughly clean out and properly sanitize this room prior to my (later) than expected arrival.  And this thought ALSO occurred to me in that moment: WHOEVER this woman was who used to live in my room and left some of her belongings - she <could have been> the “tenant reference” I requested of Peninah prior to moving there - when Peninah had insisted all of her non-employee tenants had been renting from her for so long and so long term had been there for years that there just was no one who had lived here, left and had good things to say because everyone just stayed forever.  

So, that was another troubling lie by Peninah. 

 Oh. I see.  

And then, as I began to set up a few pictures I had of my Dad and Elisha amidst my belongings, I noticed the SURFACES of everything in the room felt sticky and very grody - as IF they had not at all been even superficially cleaned prior to my arrival and after the last tenant vacated.  

Odd…

Oh well - no worries - I always cleaned all surfaces in hotel rooms anyway when I stayed in hotels - so I would treat this new long-term room rental of mine just the same. I grabbed cleaner and rags from my car trunk and went to work wiping down the surfaces of everything as well as the handles on anything in the room with my antibacterial cleanser and sanitizing wipes.  At least the commonly touched surfaces like microwave buttons and the table tops would be FOR SURE clean - because I did it personally, by hand, myself.  

With everything superficially wiped down by me and my own new and clean bedding put on the bed, I was so tired and decided to call it a day.   It was somewhat bothersome to me on a vaguely unsettling level that this “unclean condition with someone else’s clothes and shoes and yellowed old pillow on the bed” was how the room had been given to me by Peninah. I mean, if you didn’t have time to properly clean it - just tell me and I will cover for you and extend a measurable degree of compassion about it all.  But don’t lie about it over text and tell me how hard you and your staff worked cleaning it perfectly just for my arrival.  

When I mentioned to Peninah that I found dirt and sticky stuff on several of the tables and someone else’s clothing and pillow still in the room, she immediately blamed her maid, Haga, and said that she can be sloppy sometimes and Haga “must have overlooked those items when cleaning the room fully. No big deal. Just put the clothes and stuff in the main hallway closet DOWNSTAIRS FOR HAGA and she would get to it later that week.” 

Oh. I see. 

Sure. So for the sake of ‘hoped for’ domestic tranquility - we’ll just  call it all: overlooked filth.

For my first few days there, Peninah would text me, first thing in the morning, asking if everything was ok and if I was settling in ok.  We began a  daily “correspondence by text”  that sometimes went on for over an hour. I told her limited information about the lunatic landlord in STL and how that whole experience had me fleeing the State and that I was in the Address Confidentiality Program with the Illinois Attorney General’s Office.  She seemed sympathetic to the whole ordeal and was aghast at just how brazen he was. She said she understood because, even though mine was just a lunatic landlord and of no other relation to me, she had a similarly maniac ex-husband that caused her to VOW to never marry ever again.  We commiserated over “why such people have to be just SO AWFUL in this life” and agreed that all you can really do is pray for people that are so heinous.  

Over those first few days of our daily text discourse, Peninah told me about her own heartbreaking childhood wherein she was abandoned by her parents, who packed up her siblings, and just took off for a brighter future elsewhere, intentionally leaving Peninah all alone in the home - as an 11 year old child. 

My God.  Who would do such a thing? 

And why take the siblings but not Peninah? She confided that she was left to fend for herself “for a very long time” and she nearly starved to death.  Finally, thankfully, someone at her school became worried about her and began to make official inquiries with State agencies.  Her full abandonment by her mother and father was then realized by authorities eventually her GRANDPARENTS claimed her - and the grandparents raised her until adulthood when she married young to build a new life and her own new family. 

There are no words for the level of permanent emotional anguish such a traumatic abandonment causes at such a young age - in ANY person.  This kind of trauma is so disturbing and so chilling that it made me truly wonder about how and IF Peninah was really OK with it all as she claimed to me then.  

I then realized she had mentioned when I first applied over the phone to live there that she cares for her aged mother.  I gasped: “Do you NOW care for that same mother who abandoned you at age 11?”
She replied: “Yes.” 

I was shook.  

This truly was mercy and love in motion and I could not fathom overcoming such unspeakable abandonment and such searing childhood trauma to then care for the mother later in life in her waning years with medical issues.  She told me the Dad had died years earlier but that she was still caring for her Mom and worse - the siblings the parents ran off with would NOW have nothing whatsoever to do with Peninah or helping Peninah care for their mother - now that she needed a high level of care.  She said they all lived within an hour but refused to lift a finger to help Peninah care for the mother. 
  Abandonment aside, I know full well what caregiver fatigue is after having cared for my own father and I know that EVERYONE in such a role needs regular breaks.  I immediately offered my help to Peninah in this regard and told her that I am CPR certified, catheter care certified and was currently taking online courses to learn best practices for Memory Care patients.  She seemed relieved that someone, anyone was offering to help shoulder the load with her and she thanked me for caring.

As a Christian, I have often heard it said that you do not know the love of Christ until you can sit with your own betraying Judas.  This is true and by all objective measures - Peninah was doing just that in caring for her abandoner mother. Just wow.  I will admit, I was inspired by such Christ-like love and hoped that if ever called to do the same for my many betrayers - that I could find it in my heart to be as merciful and full of love and understanding as Peninah apparently was to her own mother.       

It then came to be New Year’s Eve 2021.  I went to the local Friar Tuck and bought a low-alcohol sparkling moscato that I like and I made an assortment of finger foods of meats, cheese and crackers to enjoy.  That year had been quite trying, to say the least, and I definitely wanted to cast out the old and ring in the NEW - ever hopeful that 2022 would FINALLY be a good year for me.  I go to bed ridiculously early most nights so, of course, I did not make it until Midnight that New Year’s Eve 2021.  But I poured some of my moscato at around 8pm and stood out on the deck and with a hopeful heart watched the snow fall gently all around.  The moment seemed vividly magical and so, so emanating with hope.  I found it odd that no one else who lived there was anywhere to be seen and not at all celebrating the occasion -  but I finished my glass of the drink, stored the rest away in my mini-frig and said my official goodbye and goodnight on the unfortunate year that was 2021. 

Better days just HAD TO BE ahead of me.  

But, on balance, in many ways, 2021 was much better than 2020 had been because I had enjoyed the time renting from the elderly marine and his doggo living in Springfield, I had rehabbed from my asbestos exposure in 2020 “via Zoom” doing respiratory therapy and had achieved some improvement in lung function.  The only truly “bad” part of 2021 had been Delilah’s disordered drama-trauma.  And honestly, I had learned SO MUCH about just how fully broken the DV System is in Downstate Illinois for victims and how truly awful and violent shelters are and why most homeless people would rather DIE than enter them and just how fully corrupt it all was in Capone’s Cornfields of Central IL - that it was really hard for me to see the second half of my 2021 with Delilah as ALL BAD.  Sure, Delilah is ALL BAD as a person, and while it is true that “what doesn’t kill u makes us stronger” - it is also true that EVERYTHING is a teacher if we pay attention.   Drifting off to sleep that New Year’s Eve night of 2021, I definitely was counting my blessings in spite of the hard lessons learned that year. Because if you can still find gratitude buried under the ruins of someone else’s slander, insanity, criminality, blasphemy, malice and intentional devastation towards your life - you’re going to be OK.  Because THAT relentless persistence to still see the GOOD in this world no matter the bad that you witness - that will truly carry you through the worst of times.  And persistence multiplies resilience and fuels a relentless resolve towards the things in this life that truly matter: faith in your fellow humans, hope in a brighter tomorrow and love which literally illuminates the whole world, blotting out the darkness of all the Delilahs.  Happy New Year….           

PART III

The very next day of New Year’s Day, Peninah abruptly announced that she would be leaving and headed to Tennessee for January and February - the two worst months of Winter in Illinois and that she would return on March 1, 2022 - or very late February.  And who could blame her though really? Winter in Central Illinois once the holidays are over is a beast: frigid, dark and barren.  I, too, would head South for those months as I always used to do to Georgia in my former life, if I had the opportunity so ain't no shame in that game.  Many of the wealthy in Illinois do precisely this so that they simply get to escape the drudgery of Winter.    

But before Peninah left for Tennessee, something very unsettling happened.  Someone did laundry in the basement and failed to clean off the lint from the dryer screen.  In response, Peninah sent this wholly bizarre and unnecessary “Group Text” to all of the residential tenants (the ones who were not also her employees) and basically accused everyone of trying to burn down her house.

What the…??????.  

That struck me as a bit of an overreaction to something so routine and mundane that is truly an easy thing to absentmindedly forget to do.  

I mean, I get that it is a fire hazard to forget to clean it off, but I also had come to know enough about the “cameras in the common areas” to know that Peninah absolutely could have reviewed the security footage to learn WHO was last in the basement and therefore WHO accidentally forgot to clean the lint screen AND she could have, instead, chosen to have a private “friendly reminder” chat with the “offending tenant” just to firm up the idea of how important it is to remember to clean the screen.  But no - instead - she took the opportunity to admonish and rebuke the WHOLE GROUP for the mistake of one.  This had a very “chilling effect” among everyone in that it caused ALL of the Not Guilty tenants to worry just WHAT they might accidentally do ~ NEXT ~ to stir up Peninah’s ire and cause such a public rebuke by her over text message.  What a terrible way to run a house business full of tenants you CLAIM to want to feel at home and stay forever, I thought silently to myself.  You should want to have your tenants feel at ease and at home there; not constantly on edge worrying about your next strange group shaming text.
How peculiar I thought…

Sadly, I would come to learn that although this was MY first such “group shaming text” received from Peninah, it was old hat for those who had lived there for any length of time.  Yes, you see, rather than be a mature adult, Peninah “managed her business by text message” so that it could be, by nature, one-sided and no tenant would dare even THINK to question her or her methods.  This one “group terrorizing text” about the dryer screen would be the first of many because Peninah had literally no idea how to properly INTERACT with her tenants, or people in general.  As one of her other tenants told me: “It’s her way - or the highway and just STUFF IT about any thoughts you may have regarding her shockingly dehumanizing texts to everyone, ok? She speaks to us passive-aggressively via text and seldom any other way. It’s just who she is.”

Oh. I see. 

“But why would you be a long-term tenant here if she’s ALWAYS like this?” I asked him

“Because I’m not a long-term tenant.  I’ve only been here 3 months myself. But I can find literally nowhere else to live IN ALL OF IL because of the ‘LACK OF ANY HOUSING CRISIS’ in this State and at my age (60) homelessness would equal certain death - so dealing with her regular GROUP SHAMING TEXTS and often batty behavior is just the price of admission here.” 

Oh. I see.

And then on the heels of that (unsettling) conversation with that tenant named James, the thing I could not have predicted even if I had had a crystal ball foretelling the future for me - then happened next….

And it shook me to my very core, TwitterFam…           

On my way bringing in my laundry basket from my car, I banged right into Judas in the hallway right outside my room door.  

Yes. THAT Judas - from Delilah’s house of horrors in the town I just fled. The one and the same Judas… 

You have got to be kidding me…. 

 That was all that I could manage to think at that moment. I had not heard from Judas since he peeled away from Delilah’s on Halloween 2021 yet here he was - apparently ALSO living at the same boarding house in which I now was, too.

Oh. My. God.  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

This was a potential catastrophe of unimaginable problems for me because I never really got a good “feel” for him while living at Delilah’s. He seemed ultimately self-serving and I did NOT need him ratting to HER, Delilah, where I now lived - especially with the emails I had received from Delilah and Ahab indicating they were driving the streets, murderously looking for me so they could END me. So yeah, the sudden appearance of Judas in my hallway seemed like a very bad omen indeed to me. 

But then his first words to me were the most hysterical mash of paranoia and self-centered thoughts that I nearly laughed him right onto his bum. He looked aghast upon seeing me and exclaimed: 

“Did you FOLLOW me here?”

(Sure, Judas. You guessed it.)  

🙄<insert dramatic eye roll here>🙄

(Sure Judas. Because of course while fleeing the violence of Delilah and Ahab, landing in a pit of a DV Shelter for over a month, handling the legal issues against them including the Order of Protection, contacting lawyers, leaving the DV Shelter to hunker down off-grid at an underground real “Safe House” - amidst all of that - sure Judas, you betcha, I was secretly stalking you, living in the parking lot bushes here, Judas, and just determined to follow you EVERYWHERE you went…)

Some people’s capacity to think ONLY of themselves at all times truly boggles my mind.   

But his first comment to me, while being funny in its pure selfishness, was also deeply unsettling to me because THAT is just the kind of irrational paranoia Delilah instills in people once they FINALLY flee her.  “You can’t leave me! I will hunt you and find you and never let you have any peace!” is her daily rally cry to those who have encountered her and tried to leave her.  

So there Judas and I were sizing each other up in the hallway and TRYING very awkwardly to make small talk but the chasm between “making nice” and BOTH of us now very worried about any kind of peaceful future at the boarding house was PALPABLE between us.  He had nothing to worry about from me - I would never betray his confidence.  But if he thought giving Delilah my whereabouts would get him money or a better job at the University via her mobster connections  - you betcha he would offer my whereabouts up to her in a heartbeat.  So that was worrisome to me…      

Apparently, in our search for housing, we both seemingly avoid the same “online ad scams for rentals” yet are also both drawn to the same TYPES of legitimate housing ads listed online.  And THAT is exactly how we both came to appear on the doorstep of the exact same boarding house many miles away from Delilah’s house.

I just could not believe it was him, in the hallway. of my new housing, telling me all about how he lived literally right next to me in the room on the other side of the common interior wall shared by both our rooms .  

Oh, this just kept getting worse and worse by the minute for me…. 

We briefly “caught up” with each other but you could TELL he was as deeply <unnerved> by this latest turn of events as I was.  He kept asking me (I assume internally hoping and praying) if I was maybe just there for the night or a week.  I told him no - that I signed the same 90 day Lease he had with Peninah.  He looked concerned. So I told him straight up:

“Peninah knows the highlights of what happened with Delilah as I felt I had to give her the TRUTH and informed consent in renting to me.  I told her Delilah is still sending threatening emails via Ahab and leaving threatening voicemails. But Peninah is certain that her surveillance and security system here will absolutely put Delilah and Ahab in jail should they find me, or you for that matter, should they try something unlawful.” 

   He then confessed: “I have spoken to Dellilah since leaving her house.  And ALL she talks about is YOU: where you are, what you are doing, are you writing your book and movie all about her, where can she find you, how she wants to murder you and find you and have Ahab end you once and for all when they do find you etc .  She is literally beyond obsessed with you and her sole focus and intent all day every day is destroying YOUR life.” 

Of course she is obsessed with me: because she is a jezebel with a murderous spirit…no surprises there.  

I shrugged nonplussed at Judas and declared: “Yeah, she already tried all of that and it turned upon her own stupid head and just revealed her to be the lying liar who slanders and lies. So, if that’s supposed to scare me - it doesn’t. She’s pathetic.  I’m not worried about her.  The only reason I would be worried is if you cannot keep YOUR mouth shut and you tell her where I am.  Because, Judas, the only other person who knows where I physically live is Peninah and she’s not going to INTENTIONALLY draw drama to her own property. So, IF Delilah finds out where I am, it will only be by your hand and your betrayal of me, Judas.” 

He then spent 15 minutes trying to convince me that he was trustworthy and trying to assure me he never even told Delilah where HE lives - because he knows she is unwell and very unstable and dangerous so he would NEVER tell her where I live either.  

Yeah, sure, Judas.  I guess we'll just have to see what kind of honor and integrity your Judas heart actually has, is what I was silently thinking.

But he also had to circle back to self, because he is Judas after all, and mention: “And I know you have legal filings against her and Ahab but I just ask that you please don’t ask me to testify or get in the middle of all that.  I just don’t need the drama of her rage and vengeance coming after MY life as she has yours - along with her mafia Daddy powers - so I would appreciate being left out of all that - whatever comes of it in the future….” 

Oh. I see. So you admit she’s a murdering maniac monster yet she <might> one day help you land a good Professor job at the Illinois universities so I should NOT expect you to be a righteous man and HELP ME take down a demented & violent predator so she can prey upon no one else. 

Got it.

Just Wow.  

Yet it was so obvious that Judas was literally STILL in total fear of Delilah that she would ruin his opportunities as a professor in Illinois and/or otherwise “blackball and blacklist” him in life with her malice and her mafia connections in Capone’s Cornfields of Central Illinois - that he knew he had to stay “on her good side” and not potentially have her hunting him as she admittedly was me. And he had been gone from her for 2+ months.  In that sense, I felt rather sad for him.  He may be selfish and egotistical but he was also ultimately very still very frightened of Delilah.      

And then, suddenly, a third tenant came upon us in the hallway and so, naturally, Judas introduced me to Stephen as if he, Judas, had just met me 5 minutes ago. 

Oh. I see. 

So, we’re just going to LIE and pretend we just now made each other’s acquaintance and pretend as if that whole unmitigated nightmare in our prior dwelling at Delilah’s just <never happened> according to Judas…

Alrighty then. 

And what was I supposed to DO in that moment of Judas’ baldfaced lie? I don’t believe in lying because it always comes back to haunt you - somehow, some way. So, truly, what was I supposed to do standing there looking at both men, now being FORCED into pretending I knew neither of them before so five minutes ago? Was I to correct Judas and tell Stephen that Judas lied to him and that Judas and I actually go way back to days of thwarting in-home robberies by the nutty homeowners themselves? 

Hardly. 

I had no good options in that moment, so I just rolled with it and I let Judas lie FOR THE BOTH OF US - and that NEVER sat right with me.  

But I now knew, WITH FULL PROOF, that Judas will lie at the drop of a hat if he somehow thinks it benefits himself to do so.  As I said, I never got a GOOD vibe from the guy when I house-shared with him at Delilah’s.  He once mentioned being 1 of 6 children and the other five siblings were all sisters.  Yet he was not close to any of them and never spoke to his mother again after he joined the military at 18.  And he never married. Any guy who rejects ALL of the women in his family, or they collectively rejected him, is suspicious to me.  So, Judas had, in that full exchange, just reaffirmed my apprehensive feelings regarding him.  

He was just not someone who you can trust because he will always save himself FIRST and will likely not even think to save anyone else AFTER that, so, - he is who he is. Judas.   

Later that same first week there, another “group shaming text” came from Peninah text-admonishing SOMEONE for leaving a few bread crumbs on the kitchen counter.  That text went about how you would expect: screaming into her Dictatorial Text Technology to announce to her 5 ‘non-employee tenants’ that Haga the maid was not anyone’s mother and our mother didn’t live there and we better start leaving the kitchen spotless - OR ELSE…”

And maybe it’s just me - but if I were living somewhere nearly rent-free in exchange for CLEANING as Haga the alleged maid was, I would have just wiped down the counter and stray crumbs and refused to make an international incident out of something so small.  But the message was now VERY clear: IF you used the communal kitchen EVER - you had best SCRUB it cleaner than how you found it lest you be the subject of her next terrorizing text of group shame.   

I was beginning to understand WHY Peninah’s ONLY question for my reference, Elisha, was “Did I clean things and keep a clean house.” She wanted to ensure she rented to tenants she could turn into indentured servants because her maid obviously did not clean the place - remembering the condition of my filthy room how I first found it.  And neither did Peninah spend any time cleaning this dump - obviously.  Things were just <starting to> click - and not in a GOOD way.  

The pressing question on my mind was this: Why did Peninah treat her tenants, most of whom were closer to her age than mine, as if they were incompetent, clueless children constantly needing to be reprimanded into learning how to properly adult?  MOST were VETERANS that she infantilized with her “I’m not your Mommy” mocking texts.  Just, why?  Why ASSume everyone wakes up every day just thinking of new ways to wreck her world? That’s a really terrible way to go through this thing called life, in my opinion.    

I would (much) later come to learn that “any mess” was a massive TRIGGER for Peninah because when her grandparents begrudgingly took her in after her parents abandoned her, the grandparents essentially forced her to be their constant child~maid for ALL the hours she was not in school.  So, she “acted out” anytime anything was even slightly amiss or a mess as a subconscious form of reactive-anger to that childhood abuse.  By reliving it and being the one with all the power over others, she could, in a futile attempt, try to reclaim that power she was denied as a child.  It was all so unfortunate and psychologically diabolical. 

And the cognitive dissonance of Peninah demanding everything be spotless at all times with nary a crumb dropped anywhere; yet not wanting to have to do the cleaning herself (hence, my filthy room upon arrival) because THAT just reminded her too much of her own childhood drudgery come back to life - was truly astounding to me.   The more Peninah shared with me about her childhood and her past, the more I could see how all of those unhealed wounds just manifested themselves in very ugly ways in her PRESENT DAY life.   She CLAIMED to offer one big happy family where everyone cared about each other and looked after each other at her Inn; but in reality, her fear of ADDITIONAL abandonment or rebuke and how <cold> that made her come off just drove literally everyone away to just TRY and live silently behind their locked bedroom doors - for fear of accidentally setting her off.  And the more she “acted out” in her passive aggressive texts and scary ways at the boarding house, the more EVERYONE pulled really far away from her - the exact opposite of what she truly yearned for from her home.  It was truly tragic to witness.   

I studied psychology and psychoanalysis in university because the topic fascinates me.  If there was just ONE THING I could tell Peninah to her face without her internal pressure cooker always on high exploding, it would be this: “We repeat the traumas that we do not repair.” 

And that is sadly Peninah’s lived reality.  I picked up on that very early on.  If she would just admit that she still carries those deep wounds from her childhood and needs help, she COULD get help, heal and learn HOW to build successful, mature, nurturing adult relationships.  But, instead, she busies herself scream-texting at everyone OR fishing for constant compliments and daily validation that everything she does AND how she does it is flawless and perfect.  There is no place for even objective criticisms of any kind.  And that’s how someone gets to be 70 years old with the emotional maturity of an 11 year old, STILL wounded child.  It explained WHY - despite having so many blessings in her life - Peninah was utterly joyless.  She always seemed tragically sad and put upon and burdened and that is precisely because she was MADE to feel that way by her grandparents as but a small, defenseless child.  

     And thus and so, that first month of January Peninah left for Tennessee and I began to finish unpacking, do some laundry and get fully situated in my new digs. Of note was that the laundry room in the basement was not free.  You were to furnish your own supplies and pay $2.50 for a wash and $2.50 for a dry.  $5 per load was no better than the local laundromat who had drop off and delivery service when they were done laundering your clothes.  

So, no supplies like toilet paper and paper towels or hand soap provided by Peninah in spite of her rather exorbitant rate for what little you actually received in return for renting from her; AND the laundry previously advertised as free was, in fact, $5 per load of a regular, standard, single person size washing machine and dryer.  And the woman was financially very well off so she could have afforded to put 4 or 6 industrial washers and dryers there to allow for efficient and convenient in-house laundry with modern and large capacity loads.  But she had 1 small size washer and 1 dryer among 15 people living there which constantly caused laundry scheduling problems.  Therefore, with the suggestion and financial assistance of Rochelle in New Jersey from TwitterFam, I simply started sending my laundry out for laundering by the cleaners down the road.  Because with their laundry services, my clothes came back to me delivered, folded, wrinkle free and ready to wear within a few hours and was only $25 per month.  Peninah could keep her ripoff “in house” laundry.

And I would not have minded the “shared bathroom” with more than one other person except that Peninah lied AGAIN.  When first she said one other on the phone and then during my tour she said I shared it with all 5 non-family tenants, I came to learn that the customers of her BUSINESS CLIENTS used the same bathroom too.  Consequently, there were SEVERAL times per day that I needed to use the bathroom and it was ALWAYS occupied. And I’m not someone who has bladder urgency issues - fortunately.  But between everyone’s showers, regular toilet use AND the business tenants and their clients using it too, it was rarely available.  And so I literally had to buy a BUCKET to keep all of my own toilet paper, hand soap and towel in to lug down to the bathroom for each simple pee but ALSO because so many times I literally had to pee IN the bucket because the bathroom was ALWAYS occupied.  That was something Peninah truly should have been far more truthful about in her advertising.  But she decided to lie and evade instead.  When people show you who they are: believe them.        

And in our ongoing daily “text chats conversations”, I began to notice something <else> disturbing about Peninah:  I noticed that when I was remarking positively about something GOOD about her boarding house, she beamed and was full of kindness - if not even a touch of humble-brag in response.  And THAT PART of her was pleasant and okay.  Yet, anything she perceived as even an indirect NEGATIVE observation or complaint - even where none was intended - she was…full of discord and VERY displeased.  She made it very apparent from the outset that one should seek to PLEASE her at all times and keep any critiques to yourself.  She, of course, conveyed this reality by telling me just how OPEN TO constructive feedback and new ideas she was.  And yet - she just was not open to that at all - in the lived reality of life with her as a tenant. 

For example, I mentioned that my room was VERY DARK at night - so dark I could not see to read at nighttime because there was only one lamp in my whole room with only 1 dim bulb and the ceiling fan inexplicably HAD NO LIGHTS on it - just a fan.  When I made an offhand remark about needing to go buy additional lighting she commented that the rooms were set up that way to maximize efficiency and minimize utility usage in order to keep costs down so she doesn’t need to constantly raise the rents there. 

Oh. I see. 

So I was supposed to sit in a mostly dark room after 5pm at night in the dead of Winter so she could save on her utility bills. Got it. This is all she gave for nearly $700 per month: four walls; with extremely limited access to lighting or water. What a great grift if you’re Peninah. What a total rip-off if you’re her tenants.

It was in that disclosure of miserly frugality, that I then realized WHY the shower seemingly had no pressure nor heat: she had a water saver installed on it and the hot water heater set to the lowest possible setting.  I know because I actually checked it in the basement.  If you enjoy hot, hard water blasting showers, never ever let someone else control how much water you get nor how lukewarm it only goes when you use it.    

On a purely hygienic level also though, that was alarming. This was January 2022 and America was in the middle of the Pandemic.  Hot water and clean people is a really important issue amidst a raging pandemic in a communal setting.  Just gross. And sad.     

There was ALSO an issue in the “communal kitchen” shared by us all.  Peninah had her own fully loaded and modern kitchen within her own private quarters off the main entrance to the building.  She frequently cooked for her Mom, so the story went, which is why she needed her own private kitchen.   But all of the tenants were to use the “common kitchen” in the back of the house.  And that was fine by me except that the kitchen was all show and no go.    And what I mean by that is this: there was flatware provided to use but they were old, discolored and still rather crusty from prior usage.  There were plates - but none were microwave safe.  There were a few random pots but they were all old and rusted.  There was a knife block but all the knives were dull, rusty and unusable.  The kitchen was set up to superficially LOOK GOOD in a pass-through  by any  prospective new tenant but <in lived reality> it was fully unusable to actually use to cook or prepare foods.  

And that was truly troubling…

But it got worse….

One afternoon I saw Haga the maid-tenant digging under a table and tablecloth in the corner of the hallway leading to the kitchen.  She had every conceivable necessary kitchen item OF HERS secretly stowed away in a private space all in rubbermaid containers under that table precisely so that SHE would be able to use the kitchen with HER things - having found the “community kitchen items” fully useless to use - as any normal person trying to cook even so much as a frozen pizza would.   

You have got to be kidding me.  So the whole kitchen was a false front, except for the microwave, the oven and the kitchen sink with no hot water.  And, so, sanitizing community-use dishes…during a Pandemic was just not going to happen in that kitchen. Also, though, the dishes of Haga were intentionally in the main kitchen hallway - hidden under the table by a long tablecloth - yet ALL in full view of Peninah’s hallway surveillance cameras.  Why? So that THEY WOULD KNOW if anyone tried to use Haga’s private kitchen stash of actually USEFUL kitchen items.

 Oh. I see.   

And when I asked Peninah about my observation of Haga’s hidden kitchen stash she flew into a combative and defensive snit - claiming that Haga was given FAMILY heirlooms that she chose to use and cook with instead of what was provided for everyone else….

Uh huh.  Sure, Peninah.  Except that I saw most of her “kitchen stash” as she was digging through it looking for something particular and it was ALL random Walmart kitchen stuff and rubbermaid containers.  But the point of this ridiculousness was: it was HER PRIVATE WALMART stuff because Peninah and Haga absolutely KNEW the stuff put out for “the commoners” in the kitchen was bunk.  And they simply WANTED it that way so that Peninah could save on the bills with no one using the inhospitable, unworkable kitchen all while giving tenant-maid Haga a kitchen to use when she wanted to cook.  

And sadly, the guys who lived there were largely ok with this.  Because they mostly got food to go from restaurants or ate cold cut sandwiches and weren’t really interested in cooking.  I was the only one for whom this janky, no good kitchen would be a problem because I needed to cook healthy, doctor ordered meals and now there was simply no real way to do that outside of a microwave. The men decided to just “suck it up” and avoid confrontation about it with Peninah and that worked GREAT because then she and Haga essentially each had their own individual kitchens with their own private things with which to cook that WERE functional and useful.  

Oh. I see. 

So, me being me and seeing a problem with an obvious solution, I decided I would replace everything old and unusable in the communal kitchen and make it welcoming, homey and useful for  ALL OF US.  I reached out to area local churches, told them of our need, and they donated almost everything that kitchen needed - as they had it on hand in storage from previous church rummage sales.  So grateful, so blessed.  And the guys, much to my surprise were elated and very encouraged about all the new things I was adding to the kitchen from the local churches - including a tea kettle and new knife block. Turns out - they all WANTED to cook meals too but, seeing the nonfunctional condition of the kitchen, had just resigned themselves to a life of fast food and cold sandwiches.  But now we could all cook and maybe even share a few meals together.  So grateful, so blessed. 

It’s worth mentioning that Peninah was NOT HAPPY with these new changes & additions. She had to PRETEND like she was - but in reality her agenda was to DISCOURAGE tenant cooking in the kitchen to save on utilities and to ensure the tenants didn’t happily hang out cooking in the kitchen together- chatting. Because in Peninah’s paranoid mind - we might all compare notes and begin to put the pernicious Peninah Puzzle together faster than I inevitably did.

Oh. I see.

And then the unthinkable happened: I had been there at Peninah’s for 10 days, discovering all of these little idiosyncrasies and peculiarities about her and her boarding house and then suddenly, WHAM: I came down with OMICRON-COVID.  I had, thus far, managed to avoid being felled by COVID again ever since my nearly fatal case of it in March/April 2020. I had been free from its ravages all the rest of 2020 and throughout all of 2021 so I began to think that perhaps I had some sort of ongoing NATURAL immunity to COVID during all that time since I had had such a severe initial case of it.   

Until now. At Peninah’s less-than-sanitary boarding house.

I had noticed that literally NO ONE there wore masks but that was not unusual for rural, Republican Downstate IL during the Pandemic. But there was also no sanitizer at appointed places as hotels always had.  And with everyone using the one bathroom AND with NO SOAP provided for the clients of the business tenants, what did Peninah EXPECT to happen under such conditions?    

I had been fighting a sore throat and headache FOR 3 DAYS and finally I was dead on my feet and fully sick.  I texted Peninah to tell her (even though she was now in TN) that I was sick and would be getting some soup and medicines delivered but I was too weak to go downstairs to fetch it - and was there someone who could grab it for me and bring it upstairs to outside my door? And she replied:

“Oh, you caught it from everyone else there that is sick?  Everyone there has been sick for WEEKS with COVID.  Well, you getting it, too, now -   that was bound to happen with the others sick with it RIGHT NOW in the House - but I will ask James to bring your stuff up for you.”

Oh. I see. 

So…you moved me into a boarding house marinating in multiple cases of COVID, where everyone uses shared common bathrooms and a kitchen, and there is no hand sanitizer and NO hot water to ensure sanitization of anything commonly used - and you didn’t think that it was important to TELL ME that several tenants were currently riddled with COVID before I agreed to move in?   

WHO does such a reckless thing amidst an ongoing and sometimes fatal Pandemic? Especially when I had already told her all about my nearly fatal case of it in 2020 and how I nearly DIED from it.  Because had I been fully informed about COVID running amok through the whole place, I likely would have made a different decision about where to move.  

My money in her hot little miser hands, though,  was far more important to her than my health and safety and her telling the truth. 

Oh. I see.
And so it happened that I was laid flat by COVID <again> for the whole month of January 2022.  In the last week of January 2022, I had my “trial hearing” for the Order of Protection against Delilah and Ahab scheduled via Zoom.  Her buffoon lawyer (I’m not exaggerating - for a mobster’s lawyer as he’s known around town -  he was truly not at all bright or an effective attorney AT ALL)  called me one time in late January to try and “settle” the matter.  He asked me what I wanted to drop BOTH Orders of Protection.  I told him I obviously wanted my $5500 portion of the IHDA Rental Check Delilah had outright stolen from me but I also had one other demand:  

I wanted her to agree to monthly visits from a local veterinarian to check up on the cats, Garfield and Sammy.  In my time living there, I realized to my horror she had allowed Sammy’s claws to grow thick, callused and curving inward INTO the soft pads of his paw, causing him excruciating pain to walk or even use the litter box properly.  And Garfield routinely needed wound care because she let him loose to roam the grounds all day and he invariably came home with “battle scars” and I wanted to be certain BOTH cats were looked after PROPERLY now that I would no longer be there to care for them. 

Delilah’s lawyer called me the next day and said she offered to give you only $400 of the $6500.00 and it was a HARD NO from her on the veterinarian care at YOUR expense, not hers.  I told him that Delilah does not get to just decide how much restitution she gets to make from her outright theft of State Pandemic Rental Assistance funds and he seemed to shrug and say: “Well, then see you in Court.”   

Leading up to the day of trial, I already knew that I had to dismiss it due to the fully fraudulent Affidavit e-filed to the Court on my behalf by that janky, unlawful DV shelter; but I allowed the Hearing to proceed just until everyone was assembled there in the courtroom and then I took control of the entire situation like a boss: I asked the Judge to rule on the matter of my IHDA Rent Assistance Delilah had stolen and misappropriated because it was specifically listed in the Order of Protection and the cops said that the judge would tell her to return it to me since it was MY property.  The judge punted, because of Delilah’s mafia ties in the town, and said that “cops routinely give horribly wrong legal advice and that I never should have believed what they told me because her courtroom was not the proper venue to litigate that dispute.” 

Just great. 

I then told the judge I was unable to proceed with the trial because I had discovered too many errors and omissions that existed on the Affidavit filed by the DV Shelter on my behalf in reviewing all the paperwork for the trial that afternoon.  I had only received a copy of the Affidavit that same MORNING from her clerk and I was stunned to realize just how much the DV Shelter altered my original Affidavit and that I was uncomfortable moving forward with the trial because of those errors and omissions. I also told the Judge that I was choosing to dismiss the matter entirely because I now lived far away from them both, elsewhere in Illinois, near Chicago, and I had been fully assured that LOCAL law enforcement where I now lived was ready and able to take both Delilah and Ahab into criminal custody should they persist in their unwarranted stalking and violence against me and that because I knew Delilah truly only wanted yet ANOTHER opportunity to attack and slander me, I would not afford her that which she thought herself ENTITLED to have - one more hours lung punching session of me - in court.  

Nope.  Not going to happen.  

And I warned both Delilah and Ahab that where I now live people owned guns and were prepared to shoot first and ask questions later should they EVER try to come near me again.  And that if their threatening emails did not stop I would publish them online for all the world to see what a true menace Delilah is.” 

And that was that.  The judge dismissed the matter and banged her gavel.

But Delilah was having NONE OF IT.  

I watched incredulously as Delilah spun into a total uncontrolled rage fit right there in front of the Judge and the whole courtroom.  She told the Judge she wanted her “Law and Order Shining Star” moment against me in this trial and this was completely unfair because they had spent all weekend preparing and I didn’t get to just DISMISS it without giving her a chance to show that she is the star capable of persuading an (empty) courtroom of her magnificence and she wanted to again demand I be arrested immediately.” 

Yes. She really said all of that.  The judge just yelled “Good Day, Delilah!” and she promptly vacated the courtroom with Delilah’s lawyer scurrying to follow the Judge AWAY from Delilah’s crazed wrath.   

And then she chased her lawyer and the judge out of the courtroom into the judge’s chambers and my Zoom feed cut off.  But Jael was there, in court, prepared to testify on my behalf, and she gave me a blow by blow thereafter: she said that Delilah went running into that same private judge door (forbidden for non-lawyer, common folk to use) and Delilah could be heard for MILES demanding all of her retainer back from her mob lawyer (which, as you will recall she paid with MY IHDA Rental Tenant Grant) because she didn’t get to beat up on me again so she wanted her money back.  Seeing Delilah come unhinged on her lawyer and literally chase after him as he tried to flee from her was all the visual I needed to know that I had made the absolute right decision in NOT providing Delilah her “movie star courtroom moment” plus another opportunity to attack me. Delilah would be livid and screaming about it to Ahab for days.  And I didn’t have to witness ANY of it now.  Good, let Ol Ahab try to contain her wrathful vengeance leaving that scene.  Not my circus, not my monkey - ever again.  Buh bye - Delilah….

As January turned to February 2022, I continued to have “morning text chats with Peninah as I recovered from Omicron.  She shared many things with me and I told her a few more of the details about Delilah.  She assured me that she knew just how awful those “Problem People” can be because her mother was one of them and had been her whole life.

So Peninah’s mother was a Jezebel with a Murderous Spirit, per Peninah. 

Interesting….  

I mentioned that the shower head did not seem to be adjustable and the water pressure was like a fine mist and my head was scratchy because I was struggling to rinse all of the product out of my long, thick hair.  She had her live-in maintenance man boyfriend install a new shower head and that was a welcome surprise: no argument, no fit about trying to save money - just hearing about an issue and promptly fixing it.  That is something I truly value in a landlord and she did do, at least, that much. 

And that was the thing about Peninah: one day she could be so effusively nice and accommodating and the next day she’d be on a tear about how the whole world was against her and everyone just took ugly advantage of all of her neverending generosity.  She was often warm and friendly, telling me about her life and her Mom - her Mom’s various health challenges etc; but then other days she would seem slowly simmering with an inexplicable and unexpressed rage and would seem just generally overburdened and annoyed with every aspect of her life.  She continued to engage in unbecoming “gossip girl” behavior whenever I mentioned one of the other tenants in passing and she would make untoward comments about them in response - and that bothered me immensely.  For one, as the owner of the boarding house, she should have been above such schoolyard nonsense mentality but also - it made me wonder what she was revealing and betraying about ME to all the others.  She had made it abundantly clear that, despite how the home had been advertised as one big joyous family, everyone was to stay behind their locked private doors and chatting among the other tenants was strictly and harshly frowned upon.  For you see, Peninah did not want any conversation to happen IN HER PROPERTY that she was not a party to herself.  So, friendships among tenants, even just daily chatting was not forbidden exactly - but Peninah had her way of conveying her preference: “You should talk ONLY TO ME because everyone else here is a halfwit ner’dowell anyway…”

OH. I SEE.

I once struck up a conversation with James and realized he wrote Christian poetry.  That interested me and I told him that I would love to read it sometime.  That next day, when I went to walk down the hall, I found a copy of his poetry book left for me at my door by him.  I left him a thank you note along with some bakery goodies I had bought at the local grocer and it seemed like a lovely exchange.

But then out of the blue Peninah asked me: “What did James leave at your door and you at his? Are you two corresponding or something?” 

I told her about the poetry book and how I did not know that he penned religious poetry and how he had left a copy for me and I gave him a thank you note for it.  And in the middle of this honest explanation to Peninah, it occurred to me: Oh. My. God. - she saw him leave something in my bag on my door on her surveillance of the hallway and then ALSO saw me leave something for him at his door.  And rather than be ENCOURAGED that there was goodwill among her tenants, she spun into paranoia and “are you both plotting against me” instead.  It was then that she made a final remark along the lines of: “Yeah, his poetry is good but he’s not someone I would befriend if I were you. You should stay away from him.” 

“Oh?” I wondered silently questioning this bizarre mandate from Peninah. If James was a bad guy - why did she allow him to live there?  And if he was not a bad guy - why was Peninah essentially telling me that he was a bad guy and to be avoided? That seemed peculiar and unfair. But I said nothing except: 

“Ok, Peninah, whatever you say.”    

Her roost, her rules. No friendly banter with the other tenants would be viewed by Peninah as any kind of POSITIVE occurrence in her boarding house. She alone should be who I regularly spoke to there - even if just by text when she was away from the property. Alrighty then. Message received.       

In Winter 2021, I was being assisted by a local group in my new town as a victim of domestic violence (from Ahab and Delilah) and the one way they “helped” was by providing food to me weekly.  I would go meet them and they would load my trunk up with food.  Most of it was food I cannot eat or it will exacerbate a Huntingont’s flare in me.  But about 20% of it I could use especially if they gave any meat or fresh fruits and vegetables or old fashioned oats.  So the remaining food was somewhat of an issue - what to do with it.  I told Peninah I was just going to tell the ladies helping me to stop giving me the food as I did not want to waste ANY food.  But then Peninah came up with the idea of a “Blessing Table” where all of the extra food I could not eat would go on a small table outside the common kitchen and EVERYONE could benefit.  I thought this a great idea and I immediately began filling the table each week with all kinds of food - hoping that maybe it truly would help the other tenants.  For in her ongoing dishonorable gossip to me about the other tenants, Peninah had egregiously revealed to me that all of the tenants there lived on disability and what their medical disabilities were. I knew that Judas lived off his VA Pension as he searched for a permanent professor gig just from my chats with him at Delilah’s house.  But apparently everyone at Peninah’s was really borderline destitute and all living on SSI/SSD or some form of meager disability pay.

This made me happy to think I would be able to help my fellow tenant neighbors even if Peninah frowned upon fellowship and friendship among and between us. So I eagerly set the whole table up and even added a pretty flower vase full of beautiful (artificial) white flowers someone had given me as a thank you for helping them.  It was very lovely and really brought the whole “Blessing Table” together in appearance.  

And then Peninah had to go through and rearrange the table I had laid out and everything on it -  TO HER LIKING - and she added 1 expired food item of her own to what I had added to the table of abundance.  

Oh. I see. 

Whatever Peninah….Your House, Your Credit for doing it….

 She also put a handwritten note from her to all “Family of her Inn (meaning the silenced tenants) telling them all about her new Blessing Table she created with all of the food she had bought for everyone for the benefit of everyone calling her place home.” 

You know, I truly believe in doing charity anonymously and without a lot of vainglory ego stroking attached to it; but Peninah taking credit for my idea and acting as if she herself had donated all the food and put the whole table together for the benefit of her tenants was admittedly irksome to me.  She irked me at times when she did stuff like this.  Especially because she ALWAYS repeatedly told me that she was a private, devout Christian-  always giving and doing for others - but wanting no recognition for any of it.  So, it was her <hypocrisy> in this regard that I found irksome.  

But whatever - I just rolled with it.  I knew in my heart that God loves a cheerful giver and HE SAW what I had done and that’s all that mattered to me.  I created something with love and charity in my heart, at a time when I had precious little to give to others, simply hoping that it would somehow bless and help the guys living there who may otherwise struggle to put together a meal sometimes. If Peninah had to call it HER  “Blessing Table” from her to them to marinate in her own vainglory about it all - let her. I did not care - so long as it helped EVERYONE there. 

And almost immediately it DID begin to help the others there as food RAPIDLY disappeared from the Blessing Table.  I kept an eye on it daily as I made my tea in the communal kitchen so that I would know when more food was needed.  I noticed not many people were ADDING things to it - which was my <original idea> with it: sort of a Robin Williams motto of “If You Have - Give and If You Need - Take” but the actual reality of how it was utilized was certainly OK with me. For if the guys couldn’t afford to GIVE and only needed to use things from the table, that just was PROOF how helpful it was to everyone there.  And I will never judge someone’s inability to give as I, myself, was only able to GIVE and create the table in the first place because I was being given the food for free by local DV helpers through a church.  Let us share and just be glad that my neighbors were also benefiting from the blessing given to me by others.  That’s how kindness and generosity is supposed to work, after all.  

And Peninah reassured me that she was watching on the surveillance camera from her phone and she had seen literally EVERYONE take something they needed from the Blessing Table daily.  Several times per week she told me who she saw (from watching the house surveillance on her phone while still in TN), what each person took/needed and how it truly was helping everyone - especially Judas - and what the most popular items seemed to be.   I was thrilled with Peninah’s “surveillance reports” of the Blessing Table being able to help others there so much - and I personally watched how quickly everything disappeared seemingly almost within hours of me adding to the table. Encouraged,  I asked the DV helpers if they could give me a bigger haul.  I told them I was living communally with others and that there was a great need for extra food there where I lived.  And just like that, the DV church helpers loaded me up with a double blessing size each week and began to add personal hygiene items and clothing too.  Peninah beamed as she watched (remotely) the filled boxes of provisions being brought in each week and my heart was overjoyed.

I also was in daily communication with Rochelle in NJ this entire time from TwitterFam. She helped nurse me through Omicron by making good suggestions and sending financial help to keep food and medicines delivered during my convalescence in January.  And when I told her all about the “Blessing Table” she sent me money to buy a few nice things so it wouldn’t all be “food pantry stuff” and the guys could maybe have a few frozen pizzas, fresh fruit and vegetables - which are a rarity from food pantries - especially in Winter in Illinois.  That is just who Rochelle was - someone with a good heart who always wanted to help where help was needed.  I truly valued her friendship and daily input and comic relief as much, if not more, than the provisions she always sent to me.  She was a godsend and miracle in my life in Winter 2021 and I will always be so thankful for her.  

Then one day, not too many weeks later, I saw something that seemed amiss.  I was starting to head down the kitchen hallway from the foyer but I stopped at the glass door dividing the two.  Through the antique pane glass window of that door, I saw Haga putting almost ALL of the food and other items on the Blessing Table into a large black trash bag.  I quickly retreated and stood near and sort of under the stairs by the tenant mailboxes area and a side door. In the event Haga walked MY direction, as HER bedroom was right off the main foyer, I would seem to just be nonchalantly checking for any mail. Standing there and waiting for the moment to pass, I pondered what it all might mean..   

 Peninah had never mentioned that Haga was taking any of the items for herself from The Blessing Table but Haga was VERY disabled herself, standing only 4’ tall and with considerable ambulation and obesity challenges.  It was hard for her to walk, let alone shop, I reasoned.  (This was also why the Inn wasn’t REALLY and TECHNICALLY clean anywhere at all unless we cleansed it ourselves.  Haga wasn’t up to the job of being the housekeeper for the whole compound but Peninah had pity on her and called her “the maid” and allowed her to live there half-rent since disability pay certainly doesn’t make $650 per month rent an easy payment for ANYONE trapped in that poverty system.  

I also reasoned that MAYBE since Peninah and Haga were longtime friends, maybe Peninah just didn’t want to tell me that Haga was ALSO in  need within that house.  I understand how shameful it is to have to ask for help - trust me, I understand this more than most after the past 4 years of my life.  I wasn’t about to knock Haga for being in need, too, like the rest of us. But why take it all, I wondered? I was determined to go view the table when she cleared that hallway so I would know what Haga had left and what she had taken - because maybe there were certain things AS A WOMAN that Haga needed that I had not been able to put on the Blessing Table.  I wanted to know so that I could help her, too.  

So, just as I was about to evacuate my “hiding in plain sight spot” by the tenant mailboxes near the stairs, I saw Haga come through the dividing door into the foyer with the bag filled with all of the Blessing Table items and proceed to unlock Peninah’s private quarters. She placed the whole bag there in Peninah’s place and then went to her own room - never even seeing me there off the foyer.  She left empty handed which means ALL of the Blessing Tables’ contents had just been delivered to Peninah’s possession in Peninah’s private room - while Peninah was still in Tennessee.   

No. 

No way.

Literally, no way.  

There is NO WAY I just witnessed what I just saw. 

But I had. 

I may be really deaf sometimes, depending on the frequency of one’s voice, but my prescription eyewear gives me perfect 20/20 vision and I ABSOLUTELY just saw what I saw. 

Buy WHY? Peninah was a very wealthy woman.  My initial assessment of her finances factoring in her roughly $10k per month in PASSIVE income from the Inn and her State pension - that just scratched the surface of her wealth.  She told me, in passing while conversing over those past weeks, of her other rental properties in other States and her stock holdings etc.  She was NOT a woman who needed free food from church DV helpers. 

How perplexing…  

And thus and so, I wandered towards the kitchen to see what was left on the Blessing Table by Haga - if anything and I found one lone can of peas. That was it.  Everything else was just GONE. And as I stood there pondering THAT - I bumped into Judas (again) as he was coming in the back door and not anticipating anyone would be standing right there inside the door at the Blessing Table.  We made small talk and looking at the table he said:

“Seems like that Blessing Table Peninah made is really blessing people here. That’s good.  I can’t use any of it personally because my doctor put me on a strict Mediterranean Diet following my gallbladder surgery but how great that everyone else is benefitting from it. That Peninah really had a great idea there with that table for blessings.” 

I was a little stunned by his disclosure so I asked: “You mean you can’t use any of the food on the table at all? Have you been able to use any of it… or ?” (Because remember - Peninah had specifically told me that Judas was taking his own fair share of things from the Blessing Table DAILY since the onset of its existence.) And now I was hearing he had never taken a single thing from the Blessing Table.

He replied: “No, I've been on this Mediterranean Diet per doctors strict orders since January 1st - but I do GIVE things to the table, when I can, and they seem to disappear quickly, too, so it’s so good that this table is helping so many here.”  I agreed and we cheerfully parted ways.

What exactly was happening with this Blessing Table and WHY was Peninah telling me people were benefitting it from it who weren’t and not mentioning people who were actually benefiting from it? And why had Haga dumped nearly the full haul of the most recent donation I placed on the table directly into Peninah’s empty quarters? If Haga needed it all for herself - why didn’t she just take it all to her room off the foyer and directly across from Peninah’s? No one would be the wiser, (I certainly wasn’t going to gossip to anyone about it) and she would have easier access to it all when she cooked.  Why, why…why - my mind was beginning to spin in an effort to make sense of it all - to no avail.     

And so I shared with Rochelle what all I had seen go down. And Rochelle, in her usual wise and cheerful countenance, told me simply not to worry about it.  I had other things more pressing to be concerned with - like my ongoing safety from Ahab and Delilah and getting myself FULLY recovered from Omicron - so she encouraged me to forget about it entirely, keep doing good in the World and just let go and let God sort it out.  She reminded me that MY intentions were true and what anyone else did after that point - well, that was on them. 

And THAT is why I keep telling you, folks, that Rochelle in NJ of TwitterFam was worth her weight in gold to me during this Season of my life.  Left to my own jaded and skeptical legalistic mind, I <might have> engaged in some really uncharitable thoughts about Peninah and I always try to avoid that - especially when such thoughts were likely FULLY unwarranted.  Taking Rochelle’s good advice, I resolved in my own mind that obviously Peninah needed that particular set of donations for some good reason and she would see that they were properly used.         

PART IV

And thus and so, time went by and January became mid-February -  and THAT was when the true trouble ensued in my new life at Peninah’s. 

Ever since I had spent THE MONTH OF JANUARY essentially in bed recovering from Omicron, my head was inexplicably itching.  I thought perhaps the water mist in the shower was insufficient to actually RINSE the product out of my hair during my showers.  I fortunately don’t suffer from allergies or itchy anything so this was uncommon AND annoying.  To her credit, when I mentioned it to Peninah, she had her maintenance man tenant install a new shower head that was variable and could at least get a stronger pulse to it.  THAT seemed to help somewhat.  But a week later it got SO ITCHY I opted to do a Zoom call with the local Urgent Care.  

And without seeing me in person, without asking to see my scalp but merely on the description of a persistently itchy scalp, they told me I probably had lice and that I should treat for 14 days….No nits, no bugs, no EVIDENCE of lice and yet their uninformed Nurse Practitioner via Zoom was CERTAIN she was correct. This is why I generally do NOT like Nurse Practitioners.  They are largely reckless with their medical OPINIONS not based in fact. 

But if you are like me, and especially if you are a germaphobe like me who has NEVER even known anyone to have lice let alone had it yourself in your far too many decades of living, this dire proclamation from any medico will send you into a tailspin.  And it did. 

I initially TRIED treatment in my room over the sink but the stuff they tell you to use is gunky and awful and thick and it was truly gumming up Peninah’s sink.  Rochelle was aware of Peninah’s propensity for <silent fury> and she did NOT want me to unintentionally trip Peninah’s anger alarm by wrecking her sink so she suggested I go to a local Hilton and she would pay for it while I treated the problem for the full 14 days. 

When I tell you that she was and is an angel among us, believe me.  Just being immediately AWAY from Peninah’s made me FEEL cleaner.  And the odd part was - I treated daily for 14 days, as directed, but I never once combed out anything that could even be considered a louse or even a nit.  By this point I had done vast research online to see what they LOOK LIKE when you pull them out of your hair and the only thing I ever pulled out of my hair in those 2 weeks was the gunky lice treatment.  It was indeed an hours long chore daily with my long, thick hair AND I lost hair in the process.  And I kept checking the clothes I brought with me and all of my belongings and my car and NOTHING.  And my incessant head itching abruptly CEASED as soon as I was staying at the hotel.  Even on the first night, it seemed IMMEDIATELY better - but I attributed THAT to 2 days of lice treatment having already occurred.  But why did I see literally NO evidence of lice if I did, in fact, have lice? Are lice totally invisible and unmoving? How should I know? I never had the problem before.   

I began to suspect medical malpractice by the local Urgent Care. Maybe I had an extreme and sudden case of dermatitis - how would THEY KNOW when they never even examined me? Telehealth has a lot of problems along with the many obvious advantages is all I’m going to say. 

So, I went back to Peninah’s after 2 weeks of lice treatment and resumed my normal life.  I had been getting all of my clothes still professionally laundered so there was no cross-contamination while I was at the hotel.  When I came back, I sent all of my bedding out for cleaning and then decided to read a book that Sunday afternoon. 

And as I was reading that book, a bug literally crawled down my ear.  I screamed and fled Peninah’s place again.  How could this be happening again? Maybe I didn’t use the RIGHT treatment the past 14 days?  

I returned to the Hilton for ANOTHER 14 days (totaling a month) and treated AGAIN for 14 days.  But I became so frustrated with NO EVIDENCE of any lice that I was certain I was not being THOROUGH ENOUGH when I combed my hair out.  So, I sought medical intervention at a nearby physician’s group and they told me flatly: You do not have lice or any evidence that you ever had lice. But you do have an irritated scalp from raking your hair for a problem you do not have.” 

Ok. Great. Thanks for the misdiagnosis in the first instance, Urgent Care.  

But just to be on the SAFE SIDE, prior to returning to Peninah’s Inn, I had my room professionally cleaned by a very good and very thorough local professional. I told Peninah I wanted to take NO CHANCES and be sure that the room was fully SANITIZED (since it wasn’t when I moved there) and that I was hiring outside help.  I stopped short of blaming HER janky flophouse for the problem because APPARENTLY it was a nonexistent problem that I had suffered FOR A MONTH. She was not pleased but what could she say, really? This was necessary for me to have peace of mind moving forward.  

My professional cleaner’s name was Joel and he was very thorough and patient.  But the grime and raw filth he found “under the surfaces” in my room was revolting and truly vomit-inducing.  He went to pull up one area rug and it stuck and resisted so hard that it hissed and cracked when we tried to scrape it up off of the floor -  due to YEARS (by his estimation) of grody filth AND the room not having properly cleaned prior to when I occupied it.  He next took the ceiling fan down to clean it and, seeing how fully gross and COVERED in grime and dirt that it was, I literally began to retch outside on the deck.  After his inspection and assessment, he told me it looked like, in his professional opinion, that the place had likely never been deep-cleaned or sanitized including the rugs and curtains, windows nor baseboards, around and behind the furniture nor the floors themselves, under the area rugs - in…over 5 YEARS!!😮 

Oh. My. God. 

Oh. My. God. 

No wonder I seemingly got lice in this fleabag boarding house.  And no wonder I succumbed to COVID almost immediately upon moving there: the place was, per him, fully uninhabitable as it was given to me just a month prior.  He then proceeded to spend 5 HOURS (he had estimated 2 before seeing the extent of the deep levels of YEARS of grody dirt in that room and he deep cleaned EVERYTHING and scrubbed and deep sanitized all of the aforementioned things. He didn’t move the bed because Peninah said she did not want any of her antiques to be ruined by my cleaning personnel so he did literally everything he could with that limitation put upon him by Peninah. 

All told, it cost me $500 (again, paid for by Rochelle in New Jersey from TwitterFam) and it was well worth it for PEACE OF MIND - and to know the room was FINALLY clean now.  It may not have ever been truly cleaned before - but it finally was NOW. He even took before and after pictures and video for his own website  - the difference was THAT dramatic.  

But as all of these revelations of just how DISGUSTING my room was as it was rented to me by Peninah were told to me by Joel, I began to share them with HER by text - because I wanted her to know that I knew how catastrophically filthy this professional discovered her property to be.  And honestly, a small part of me hoped that by communicating to her just how AWFUL it was - she would just maybe do the right thing and offer to pay for the professional cleaner or split the cost with me.  

Nope. 

My room, my problem was her stance. 

And Peninah began to get noticeably incensed that I had a now third-party, independent witness to what a filthy pit she was running as a business.  At one point, my cleaner Joel went into the “common bathroom” and came back with a FILTHY white rag just from wiping across the countertop.  And yet, Peninah claimed Haga the maid cleaned that bathroom for us - daily.  Oh no she did not.  Not based on Joel’s cleaning rag after only one swipe across the filthy counter.  Of note: the counter was actually multi-colored and TEXTURED in the communal bathroom and so from a visual standpoint, it generally LOOKED mostly clean. Yet one swipe with a cleaning rag and the TRUTH of the terrible dirt and filth was revealed. 

This was yet ANOTHER superficial “false front” by Peninah - just like the kitchen was.  LOOKS ok and SEEMS ok - from a passing glance - yet get into it and you realize, again, no one had sanitized anything - in forever.   
Now, to be fair, again, Haga was extremely disabled and had some obvious birth defects and obesity issues going on - and I am nothing but extremely sympathetic to issues affecting the disabled for I am a disabled American myself.  But Haga could barely WALK - let alone clean.  She was roughly 4’ tall and walked with a considerable hobble that made it apparent she truly struggled with mobility. There was simply NO WAY she could be the sole person lugging vacuums & mops up the stairs and into all the areas that needed cleaning.  She could barely hobble in from her car to sit in her room.  And that was not her fault.  The fault was obviously with Peninah for employing someone to do <such a critical function> at her boarding house - knowing she was fully INCAPABLE of doing the essential functions of that critical job.  

And I was none too pleased to realize ANY of this.        

And so my professional cleaner Joel offered to clean the communal bathroom for an additional charge - since it was obviously very much in need of a deep cleaning and sanitization - especially during a raging Pandemic where multiple people had fallen ill with COVID during the prior month. And Peninah very calmly replied: “Sure, YOU can pay him to do all of that additional cleaning in the bathroom if YOU want it to be clean.”

Oh. I see. 

She was fully STILL abdicating her professional responsibility to offer up a CLEAN boarding house.  Ultimately, I told Joel to pass on the bathroom.  I didn’t have the money to cover any EXTRA not in the original bid and Peninah surely wasn’t going to help get the place clean.  I was living in a filthy pit; but at least MY ROOM was now deep cleaned and sanitized.  At least I had THAT MUCH now in my favor.

However, ALL of these back and forth texts about how filthy her boarding house was had Peninah fully riled.  She suggested that the ceiling fan - the dirt on which was SO THICK he had to empty each blade into an old pillow case prior to taking it down to deep clean it -that was just “normal Prairie Dust” and just endemic to living in Central Illinois, according to Peninah.  

Uh no - Delilah’s kitchen WITH A CEILING FAN was arguably a grody mess and it TOO was on the Central Prairie yet her ceiling fan in her kitchen had no such “normal Prairie Dust” on it. I would know - because I had cleaned the dumb thing.  Furthermore, it was a greasy, dark, corroded layer of DISGUSTING dirt and grime oily filth  that my cleaner ultimately cleaned off that ceiling fan in my room at Peninah’s.  It was not mere “dust” because THAT I could easily understand. This looked like motor oil mixed with chocolate pudding and mud - with a TOP LAYER of “prairie dust” on it.  And it was ALL OVER the fan.   

So the more I countered Peninah with: “No, my cleaner has documented that X, Y and Z were beyond even habitable it was just so filthy and gross” the more irate and irascible she became towards me via text. Well, guess what, I was none too pleased with her EITHER and Peninah was just going to have to STEW in it because I was in NO MOOD to have to, as always, agree with her, that somehow this was all MY fault and ultimately praise her amidst this rolling filth disaster she had put upon me - which is what she clearly WANTED me to do.  She kept fishing for validation and compliments - for me to tell her how perfect and fine everything was amid this disgusting cleaning quagmire. 

Nope.  Not gonna happen Peninah.  Go get your supply somewhere else. Not today, Jezebel.  

I was already out $500 extra bucks (plus tip) for my cleaner on top of my monthly rent for a room that was deemed “uninhabitable”  and now she expected me to tell her that it was all OK by me that ANY of this happened in the first place? 

Nope. 

And then Joel and I decided to take a break and sit outside and enjoy some lemonade from my frig.  Joel and I had cleaned for over 5 hours that day and we were growing tired and he still had to professionally polish the hardwood floors.   And while we were sitting there, Peninah sent her boyfriend and on-premises maintenance man to scold my cleaner and tell him to leave - because Peninah was UNHAPPY with his professional opinions about how filthy her place was.  He was extremely RUDE to my cleaner and told him he had to move his truck and leave the premises. I told him to go all the way to hell with his nonsense and that my cleaner would leave when we were finished for the day. He then said something so dehumanizing and cruel towards my cleaner that I could not believe it.  We went back inside and I apologized profusely for Phil’s RUDE behavior towards him.  Joel seemed, suddenly, understandably really irked about how RUDE Phil was to him and what he had said to him and he indicated to me that he was now concerned Phil might do something malicious to his truck so he felt like he needed to wrap it up.  So he finished my floors and took both before and after pictures of them - to show how gleaming, smooth and perfect they were when he was done.  I paid Joel and tipped him well and then returned to the local Hilton for my last night away and my Big Return to living at Peninah’s again  - in my newly cleaned and deeply sanitized room. 

  In preparation for this, I ordered new bedding entirely, all white, with help from Rochelle from NJ Twitterfam and I returned to my room at Peninah’s Inn.  It was a sunny Monday afternoon and I just opened my new all white down comforter from Amazon that had been waiting for me in the foyer of Peninah’s and then I sat down at my desk to take a phone call.  In a rarity, Peninah had not returned the heavy draperies to the windows yet (she claimed they were being professionally cleaned); consequently, bright sunlight was just spilling into the room in a greenhouse effect and I remember thinking to myself ‘how cheery this room <could be> if only Peninah did not insist upon keeping ALL LIGHT OUT.’  But, as they say, sunlight is a powerful disinfectant and Peninah gave each room at her icky Inn 1 dim bulb and heavy drapes PRECISELY SO you would never see the filth that my professional cleaner had unearthed there.  

I was beginning to see things anew for the first time at Peninah’s. 

And then, I could not have predicted what happened next even if I had had an accurate Magic 8 Ball with me.     

While on a phone call, sitting at the desk, I vividly saw a bright red bug crawling across my bright new all WHITE comforter in the bright sunlight of the now cleaned room.  And then another.  

I screamed. And then screamed again because at THIS point, I was going to lose my mind with these bugs at Peninah’s.   

I somehow, to this day I have no idea HOW, gathered the presence of mind to BAG some of the bugs and I took a video of it crawling in the bag with the sunlight making for a VERY CLEAR VIDEO.   I dropped the bag on the desk and I, again, fled the premises and ran to my car.

I messaged Rochelle in NJ because I was near a full blown panic attack from the ongoing stress of this all.   She was as alarmed as I was - and as puzzled.  I sent her the video of the bagged bugs. 

How was this even possible?  We had just spent HOURS deep cleaning that room the day before and had not seen ANY bugs - because trust me - I looked.  Lots of dirt and filth and grody throw rugs stuck to the floor and filthy fan blades and windows sure - but no bugs!  I called the local office of Orkin in that town and they instructed me to email their pest control expert the video I took of the bugs. 

Verdict: Peninah did not have LICE in her fleabag flophouse.

She had BED BUGS. 

Oh. My. God.  

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

And no wonder my medical team ultimately told me I should stop treating for a lice problem I did not have.   

How was this possible? This nightmare just kept getting so much WORSE by a factor of a thousand. Every. Single Day.

But it sure explained why I never found a single louse in my hair and why the medicos confirmed I did NOT have lice.      

And in my silent and out loud screams, images of that old yellowed and filthy pillow on the bed and someone else’s clothes in the dresser/closet flashed through my mind from my first night that I moved there back in New Years Eve December. 

Oh. My. God. 

Peninah likely knew ALL ALONG why that woman seemingly fled so quickly leaving clothes and shoes behind - which meant Peninah ABSOLUTELY already knew she had a bed bug problem. No doubt about it. 

I was text-sobbing to Rochelle and she was trying to convince me that maybe Peninah did NOT know and while it was no doubt caused by the filthy conditions my cleaner and I found in that room AND the fact that Peninah made no REAL effort to clean between tenants, it was best that I not immediately GO OFF on Peninah when I told her.  Rochelle cautioned me to assess NO BLAME and just stick to the simple facts of the situation at hand when I told Peninah.

She was right, of course, which is why I so valued her friendship and counsel.  I ordinarily would NEVER blame someone else in the midst of a crisis but I was not breathing well from my panic attack, my OCD mind was reeling realizing I likely had bed bugs IN MY HAIR that whole MONTH it was itching like crazy and I was essentially just NOT OK in that moment.  So thank GOD Rochelle walked me through the best next steps IN THAT VERY FRAUGHT HOUR.  She told me to go to a hotel again and she would cover it while Peninah handled the bed bug problem at her boarding house of bugs.   

 And thus and so, I fled to at DIFFERENT local hotel because, at this point, I was terrified I may have transported bed bugs to the handicapped hotel room at the Hilton in which I had stayed for the MONTH that I lived there while treating LICE THAT I DID NOT EVER HAVE.  I would, of course, CALL the Hilton to inform them when I got this NEW twist of the problem sorted so they could properly safeguard their guests too - from any bed bugs that may or may not have been in that room.  I doubted that there was - as all of the Hilton linens are ALSO all white and I looked DAILY for lice while I stayed there and I never saw a single bug on the bed, in the all white bathroom, on me or anywhere. 

It was bizarre.

It was TRULY as if the plague of the bed bugs affected ONLY Peninah’s place.    

So I drove clear across town and checked into a rather nice and oddly affordable hotel that was strangely EMPTY - again, courtesy of Rochelle in New Jersey from Twitterfam.  If you think she saved my sanity when I was, in effect, misdiagnosed over Zoom with lice, you cannot FATHOM how much she saved my life and my sanity in this latest hour of acute trauma and need amidst the bed bugs revelation.

Without her ever-present help and support during this catastrophic crisis, I likely would not have been ok, folks.  It’s just that simple.  My OCD germaphobia was in overdrive and I was having a nearly fatal panic attack and I just needed to be anywhere I had NEVER BEEN BEFORE and somewhere far away from Peninah’s flophouse.    

But THEN I had to inform Peninah of the latest turn of events with her bed bugs.  

I was literally TERRIFIED of her reaction to this latest twist of news - of what the REAL problem was and that it was, in fact, not lice - and it never was.  Rochelle gave wise counsel in that she told me to flee FIRST  - and tell Peninah once I was safely tucked away - far from Peninah.   This was yet another reason WHY I chose not to return to the Hilton - for Peninah  knew that I had been staying there previously with the alleged lice issue.  If she really flipped her cork on this bed bug problem, I didn’t need her knowing where I was now.

And I just <knew> that no matter HOW I tried to tell Peninah - this bed bug problem was going to land like an exploding balloon full of gasoline and firecrackers…

There was just no GOOD way to tell someone like Peninah about something like THIS that was very clearly HER FAULT and HER FAILING.

So I sent her a text about finding the bugs the minute I laid my newly purchased white comforter on the bed at her place and the video of the bug Orkin had identified as bed bugs and I gave her the phone number to Orkin. And then I simply TURNED. OFF. MY. PHONE.

For my own mental health and wellbeing. I was going through ENOUGH. I would not be bamboozled into coddling Peninah through this crisis.  At least not THAT EVENING I would NOT.     

As the landlady, this whole ordeal was NOW squarely hers to cure - LEGALLY.  My stay at the Hilton with a lice misdiagnosis was arguably the fault and imputed cost of Urgent Care to cover but anything from that night forward was LEGALLY on Peninah.   I was DONE having Rochelle pay for the many sins of Peninah and for the fact that Peninah’s dump  was riddled with filth and pests.  It would be all up to Peninah now. 

But from an intellectual standpoint, I was curious about bed bugs. As with the lice, I had never had any experience with them.  What was THE cure? I had obviously never lived through this nightmare of bed bugs before so I had literally almost NO KNOWLEDGE about the problem.  Google ANY inquiry about the remedy for bed bugs and you get a thousand different answers from all across the web. Well THAT was maddening.  

 So, I then fully geeked out on the “REMEDY SOLUTION” to the problem and became immersed into the task of FINDING THE CURE - no matter how long it took.  Because as a person with OCD, who suffers from germaphobia, I would NEVER be able to return to my newly cleaned room rental there until and unless I knew that Peninah had fully HANDLED the crisis using PROFESSIONALS and the proper REMEDY to fix it ONCE AND FOR ALL.  

So, the next day when I turned my phone back on, I was stunned to realize that Peninah was seemingly having a mental breakdown over the matter and was telling me that she had NO PEST CONTROL PROTOCOLS IN PLACE AT ALL - EVER - at her Inn and thus she also had NO IDEA how to solve this problem. 

None at all.  

Oh. MY. God. 

And she blamed me, cursed my mother and everyone who ever met me and said I was the sole cause of every problem in her life and now I had brought this horrendous problem into her life and she could not fix it because she did not know how and she didn’t know what she was going to do besides blame me, blame Haga, blame former tenants, blame God and blame, blame, blame….

Well, at least I could say I had FINALLY met THE REAL Peninah in that momentary crisis…

And my how ugly she was.  The Biblical Peninah teaches us many lessons about the true nature of bullies and haters who are insecure and ultimately unloved.  Peninah was aptly named INDEED.  

Hearing all of that come out of her mouth, I was so, SO glad that Rochelle reminded me <NOT TO BE THAT PERSON> in the heat of the moment - the person who chooses to BLAME and ACCUSE and YELL & DISPARAGE rather than just put all energies towards SOLVING the issue. Thank God I was nothing like Peninah in this crisis and that Rochelle kept me from saying anything I may have regretted in the midst of my spiraling panic attack when fleeing Peninah’s place AGAIN - for the THIRD time in 2 months.    

So,  there I had it - from Peninah’s own mouth.  The woman who breathlessly and so easily passed herself off to me as a seasoned, professional landlord, experienced in all facets of being a good landlord for over 10 years - she never thought that with a communal boarding house with tenants constantly rotating in and out of there - and no cleaning ever occurring - that having a scheduled and regular pest control protocol in place would have been a good idea.  

Oh. I see. 

 Peninah was borderline hysterical and told me that “I WOULD HAVE TO SOLVE IT and pay for any required treatment - on TOP OF the $500 I had just had to spend to get my room professionally CLEANED because this was just TOO MUCH for her and she could NOT deal with this crisis AT ALL and all of this was going to cause her to have a (faked) heart attack etc ...”    

Literally - JUST NO. 

You simply just do NOT get to abdicate your obligation to be a responsible adult and professional landlord just because you are (understandably) upset at the moment of it all.  

She was a 70 year old woman, crying foul and like a toddler, all while suggesting that she was going to curl up in the fetal position until someone else (me) solved her problem FOR HER.

Full transparency? I lost a TON of respect for Peninah in this moment of her intentional and willful ineptitude and clear LEARNED helplessness.  I wasn’t blaming her or accusing her of wrecking my life or wishing bad things for her - as she was me - but I was seeing her in a new light, the Truthful Light of Peninah at long last - and I did not like what I saw.    

I was mostly OK with it all by that next day from the sheer PANIC perspective of it all- but then, I was in a clean, safe new setting - AND I was having the hotel staff check my bedding, luggage and room DAILY for bed bugs.  (I told them I had an irrational fear of bed bugs in hotels and I just liked being reassured whenever I stayed at a hotel that there were no bugs and they were only too obliging to help me in this regard.)  And again - NO BUGS EVER found in my hotel room or in any of my personal belongings because gosh did they look. Daily.  At one point, I’m sure they thought me INSANE that I kept asking them to check and recheck each new day.  But they did it and there were never any bugs where I was to be found.  The problem of the bed bug plague was clearly Peninah’s and ONLY at Peninah’s.   

I told her that I would find the solution but that the cost of implementing it and ensuring it was done properly was her LEGAL OBLIGATION under the law as the landlord.  I was immovable and very firm on this. 

And to my surprise, she relented and agreed.  

Because that’s the thing about bullies: they WILL bully you until you lay down clear boundaries and draw a hard line in the sand. 

And I had just done that. 

Thank God.  I was so tired of having to battle this woman to do a single right thing in this moment and pull up her big girl britches and get on with it as any true adult WOULD.

She later admitted in a text message that it was her problem to solve since she was the property owner and landlord - so THAT would be compelling evidence if she ever decided to change her mind on the fact that this was ALL HER FAULT.  And ALL her responsibility to FIX and FIX IT PROPERLY.  Not with her disabled maid who could barely walk - but with legitimate professionals.   

So then I just had to find the actual REAL CURE.  I found a local guy named Jeff who went there and did a bed bug inspection throughout the whole compound.  He told me the infestation was BAD and likely had been ongoing for at least 6 MONTHS - likely much longer maybe even years - given how extreme it was.  I asked him how it was POSSIBLE that I just had the room professionally cleaned and we did not see a single bug during the 5 hour cleaning.  He said that bed bugs are largely nocturnal and that unless we separated all the bedding (mattress from box spring and took apart the bed, piece by piece, along with all the furniture - it was unlikely that we WOULD HAVE seen any during the cleaning.  He also told me that he found bed bugs in several places in Peninah’s property including in Judas’ next door room and other spaces. So, the infestation predated my arrival there by many months. Which means that the lady who left her clothes, shoes and grody pillow there likely encountered them too and just opted to flee rather than deal with Peninah through such a nightmare. Who could blame that former tenant, really? 

And then it happened: Peninah lied to me.   

She did not know that I, too, was speaking with Jeff about the problem since it affected me, as a tenant there, and she told me that Jeff ONLY found the bed bugs in my clothes so I was the cause of the whole problem. 

Oh. I see. 

Still determined to play the blame game….

How discouraging. Truly. 

I told her what Jeff had told me and that he had even shared pictures with me and predated her infestation of bed bugs to over a year prior to my arrival. She then promptly stopped speaking to me.  And then I found out that she immediately got on the phone and told Jeff he could never speak to me again because she, not I, was paying for his services.  I only found this out when I called to ask him WHICH bed bug pesticide he used so that I could research it and know it was the kind that worked specifically for bed bugs.  And he told me that “Ms. Peninah told him not to speak to me again or share any details of his treatment plan at the property with me.” He also mentioned that what he used was considered “proprietary” and he didn’t tell ANYONE that info. 

Great.  So Peninah was cutting me, the one person most adversely impacted by this disaster off from knowing what was being done to cure it or why AND she had chosen a guy who was not very forthcoming with his methods and protocols. 

So, I did some local research and due diligence into HIM.  And, as it turns out, he had contracts with businesses who wanted “recurring treatments on a monthly basis” so that he had a consistent source of regular income.  So, even if what he used only killed the bugs for a week, no worries, for he would charge via contract to come back monthly, all year, every year. 

You have got to be kidding me. 

There was literally NO WAY I was going to lose ALL OF MY BELONGINGS (again in this pandemic) which were currently still at Peninah’s just because she was too “collapsed into cluelessness” to make a sound business decision in that moment.  And to be clear, ALL of my things would be a TOTAL LOSS if this bed bug issue was not handled rapidly and fully properly by REAL professionals.  

And just to THOROUGHLY cover my own bases, I also had Jael’s home tested for bed bugs.  Peninah knew that I had spent time in a DV Shelter so I was concerned she might try to INSIST that was how her property came to have the bed bugs - in spite of what her own pest control guy told her about how long the infestation had been going on at her property.  Consequently, I decided I had to run offense on this to protect myself from Peninah and so I advised Jael about what was happening and she immediately told me that I needed to “bag that rude old hag (referring to Peninah) and just come back and live with her again” because she, Jael, absolutely did NOT have bed bugs.  

Funny, but not a viable option for all the reasons I listed for you when I left her temporary home. 

But just to be on the CERTAIN side of this - because I just <knew> Peninah would engage in another round of  The Blame Game in this matter again at some point - so I had Jael’s home professionally inspected and tested for bed bugs. 

 It was conclusively FREE AND CLEAR of any bed bugs.  

And I had left Jael’s home that day in December 2021 and, stopping nowhere, went straight to Peninah’s property that day.  Therefore, the source of the bugs could ONLY be Peninah’s dirty flophouse.  

The source was absolutely Peninah.  She could TRY to blame game all she wanted but it would never fly with me nor prevail LEGALLY in Court.   

And thus and so for the entirety of the next 4 days, I immersed myself in all things bed bugs diligently trying to find the ACCURATE resolution to the bed bug problem. The problem was literally EVERY post or web page recommends something different and then the next one tells you that the former thing you just read was no fix at all and it never works ever.  The internet is but a dumpster fire with total misinformation on the topic of bed bugs -  and THAT was totally maddening to me. I worked tirelessly, 14 hour days, for 4 days straight until I FINALLY landed upon the solution.  It is important to note that I spoke with Peninah each day to tell her of my ongoing problem solving on the matter, just to touch base and let her realize that I was spending every waking moment trying to solve this seemingly unsolvable riddle and she, in turn, had decided to take to her bed amidst this ongoing crisis  - claiming that she had a weak heart and I was going to give her a total heart attack with this problem I caused her.🙄😡🤡

People like Peninah are why I pray to God every day to have increased patience and forbearance in this life sometimes.    

And that CORRECT answer to the bed bug problem I finally found from an exterminator in Kentucky who has a lot of informative bed bug YouTube videos.  And after 5 full days of me bombarding him with questions, concerns, panic, my frustration and asking for help, he finally relented.  And he gave up the name of the bed bug permanent solution. He claimed the same “proprietary business secret” that Jeff did but, eventually, I convinced him that I was not in Kentucky, I did not know anyone who was and, therefore, me knowing the answer would not cost him any business he would otherwise receive payment for from my particular bed bug crisis.  He reasoned that that was true.  And I also think he realized I was just not going to stop needing to find the right answer to know what would be done in treatment would actually SOLVE THE PROBLEM. And for him and his patience with me, I will forever be grateful.   

  It is a nontoxic, residual pesticide that kills ALL bed bugs in under 12 hours, including eggs and the nest.  It was invented by scientists at Ruger’s University and 1 application lasts AT LEAST a year. 

 THANK GOD. 
I would tell you the name herein but I promised him I would not widely share it as it is proprietary trade secrets, of sorts, in that line of business.  But on the other hand, there are a large number of unsavory mucks WITHIN that industry who charge people thousands because people will pay almost price to get rid of bed bugs - and these guys KNOW THIS - so some of them simply exist to take ugly advantage when this catastrophe happens to someone.  And THAT I do not understand nor do I support it.  So, if you are reading this in the future and you find yourself in the same nightmare of being unable to find the REAL SOLUTION to the bed bug problem, you can email me at ladyjustice314@aol.com and I will privately provide the answer to you - fully free of charge.  Because it is offensive to me that some charlatans are making so many thousands of dollars, essentially from people’s fear and panic, when the solution is literally $75.   So I will always help anyone else trapped in a similar bed bug quandary.  Have you no doubt about that, my friends.  

And thus and so, I gave the SOLUTION and CURE information to Peninah and she immediately had her maintenance man obtain and use it throughout her boarding house. I was a little concerned that she gave such an important task to her maintenance man boyfriend who was, objectively speaking, not very good at maintenance things and who did NOT inspire confidence as someone who had any clue what day it even was.  As an example, he was asked to fix a wobbling and screaming ceiling fan in my room and he fiddled and fuddled with it for about 20 minutes, declared it fixed and promptly left.  I then went to turn it back on in its now “repaired” condition and the whole thing flew off the ceiling entirely and went crashing into the wall opposite me. Had I been anywhere else than where I was standing in that precise moment, I could have been decapitated by the flying blades on the thing.  

And THIS was who Peninah was putting in charge of the bed bug eradication task. 

May God help us all…   

But that’s the thing about Problem People like Peninah: She always has to surround herself with half-wit employees who are experts at nothing, not up for any real task of any measure; and yet, they were who she made responsible for most of the critical functions within the whole property. I reasoned this was likely because Problem People do not like to be questioned and, so, surrounding themselves with people far less intelligent than themselves, guarantees them a chorus of sycophants who never question them nor outwit them.  Because full obedience to her coiled-too-tightly, simmering anger and control freak tendencies was simply mandatory.

Also, while I was displaced during this whole tumultuous trauma of the bed bugs, Peninah and I were discussing a conversation we had already had back in February 2022.  Back then, she told me that a different and bigger room was coming available to rent DOWNSTAIRS at her property  on March 1, 2022 and so she had agreed back in December that I would move to that downstairs room on March 1, 2022 on the downstairs - without all of the many stairs causing my Huntington's issues.   

The upstairs was hard for me, physically, to safely navigate both because of my Huntington’s Disease balance issues AND because of my ongoing shattered left knee - which was literally obliterated in a violent assault back in February 2020.  It causes me lots of pain and my ability to navigate many steps is PRECARIOUS and ill-advised AT BEST.  I have a torn ACL, PCL, meniscus and a shattered knee cap.  In short, my knee is barely holding on by 2 thin threads.  But with the surge in surgeries post-COVID, the wait list is long to get the total knee replacement recommended by my orthopedic doctor - and that wait is even longer for Medicaid patients.  

And then the bed bug fiasco happened for all of February and March 2022.  

   But now, it was the end of March 2022  and we were conceivably about to put the whole bed bug nightmare behind us and so the conversation was how I would just move into the downstairs room straightaway upon my return.  Peninah said she would have all of my belongings packed up and moved into that downstairs room and I would be good to go.  And I agreed. 

Truthfully, I was glad to not have to return to my old room upstairs.  Even though I had found the bulletproof FIX for the bed bugs, I worried my OCD mind would never allow me to comfortably be IN that room ever again.  

And then Peninah mentioned that my “new” room had wall-to-wall really old emerald green carpet that was AT LEAST 30 years old.  

Oh gross.  

30 years old, likely never cleaned either and with who knows WHAT stains in it.  

Not ANOTHER funky room at her flophouse full of YEARS of God only knows what kind of disgusting IN THE CARPET.  It was already annoying to me that Rochelle in NJ had to pay $500 to have my OLD room professionally cleaned - and I would now never benefit from that deep cleaning because I had been gone for a month since it was completed and I was not scheduled to move back into it - EVER.  It struck me that if Peninah were an honorable business woman, she would offer to pay for that professional cleaning her new tenant in my old room was going to be the beneficiary of.  But true to Peninah form, she made no such offer. Her filth, my bill. That is who Peninah is.  When people show you who they are - believe them.  

And so here we were NOW with filthy carpets I may have to pay to TRY and get professionally deep cleaned.  And right when I was about to tell Peninah that my OCD germaphobia likely wouldn’t fare well without a deep cleaning of them BETWEEN tenants, she told me that she had long wanted to rip out those smelly old carpets and put in new hardwood floors. 

Yay. Problem solved. 

And then Peninah did one of the absolute dumbest things any alleged “professional landlord” can do. : 

She broke our written contract for my tenancy in the downstairs room beginning March 1, 2022.  Having already rented out my old room upstairs to some new tenant, the downstairs tenant  abruptly told her that his start date for his new job had shifted to later and he would need to stay ANOTHER MONTH - if that was OK with her. 

And Peninah agreed to let him remain another full month - in full breach of OUR contract.     

So because Peninah has literally NO IDEA how to professionally run a rooming house business as the landlord  nor any LEGAL knowledge of what her obligations under the law ARE to ALL of her tenants, she managed to disregard MY NEEDS fully and effectively render me HOMELESS for another whole month in Spring April 2022.  

You have got to be kidding me. 

So, this was Peninah’s covert, under the table, backbiting, “silent revenge” at me for, in her victim mentality, CAUSING her bed bug problem.  

She was cravenly covertly cruel.  

She was just a COVERT Jezebel with a murderous spirit who lies, steals, kills & destroys. 

I will at least give Delilah credit: in her moments of pure lucidity - she would absolutely brag to you about how evil she was and how she enjoyed it.  But Peninah was the inverse: she HID her cruelty towards others while projecting a “devout, constantly helping and  praying Christian” false persona to the world. 

Just wow.  

And thus and so I was STUCK STRANDED at the hotel FOR ANOTHER MONTH.  Why I agreed to return on April 30, 2022 to Peninah’s AT ALL after this is a question I will ALWAYS ask myself.  But the answer is the same as it ever was, friends: because there is simply NO available affordable housing stock anywhere in Downstate IL and these kind of places with these disordered Jezebels and lunatic landlords working out their own mental health crises on unsuspecting tenants is just “all that’s left” to live at in Illinois - because NO ONE is tackling the lack of housing crisis here in Illinois as a POLICY and FINANCIAL crisis & failure - so it just keeps spiraling into an increasingly unsolvable full blown catastrophic HOUSING CRISIS for thousands of people in Illinois.  

But, there was GOOD NEWS in this: I was getting a new room with new, and presumably clean, hardwood floors and I could thoroughly clean everything else myself that came in the furnished room.  The other good news was that thankfully, Rochelle in NJ from TwitterFam paid for me to remain in the hotel beyond March 31, 2022.   By this point, she had spent THOUSANDS on keeping me safely housed during the first and second  misdiagnosed lice debacle and then the bed bug nightmare.  She paid for hotel meals and the treatments I ultimately did not need to treat lice I did not have.  She paid for three months to continue to have all of my clothes professionally laundered at the local dry cleaners - but MORE THAN ALL THAT - she kept me sane during these successive traumas.  She was an ever present FRIEND to me in this turbulent time for me and I have no idea how I would have survived it all without her help.  She was a true hero amidst all of these catastrophes and I just cannot say enough good things about her.   

If you are paying attention, you likely wonder why I speak of Rochelle in the past tense.  Well, shortly after telling me she would pay for me to stay in the hotel through April 2022 until I could move back to Peninah’s, we had a detailed conversation about my housing.  We actually found an apartment that WAS AVAILABLE and was actually part of the hotel I had been staying in.  The apartments were BEHIND the hotel and really nice.  The hotel people LOVED ME and they were working with me to get approved to rent one of their apartments.  And that is when I came face to face with the ugly and grim realities of housing in America today:

You must make 3x rent to even qualify to apply to live in ANY market rate apartment in Illinois.  And because this apartment was $900 per month, pretty typical for a one bedroom in Central Illinois back in 2022, I would need to have an net income of essentially $3,000/month to even APPLY to live in those or ANY normal apartments in Illinois.  And upon realizing THIS math and how it just doesn’t MATH for ANY market rate rental in Central Illinois for me - I was just STUCK returning to Peninah’s.  Because as bad as it was there, it’s all that was and is available to me.  

I will never be properly housed again with this “Fair Housing Computation of 3x rent” and that is the grim reality, too, for tens of thousands of my fellow Americans right now.   The whole damn system is guilty and broken as hell.  

And so upon realizing that the solution to my personal ongoing housing crisis could not be fixed and that my life is a dumpster fire and an unsolvable riddle when you factor in the 10 year wait list for affordable, handicapped housing in Illinois -  Rochelle of NJ just quit me. 

She simply walked away.  She said something vague about needing to care for her mother more and focus on herself more and I just never heard from her again. 

And THAT loss of her, her friendship, her positive, good radiant light in my life is a grief I still feel today.  I considered her one of the dearest friends I had ever made.  And I don’t know if I was just a “project” to her until she got bored and or realized my particular “project” is much more vexing than most -but she just straight up left my life.  She did, however, keep me on her cell phone plan with the iPhone she had sent to me back in January 2022 and for that I will ALWAYS be grateful to her.  But I miss her. I miss her intelligence, her calm demeanor, her witty comebacks, her beautiful radiant light in this life that can sometimes be so dark.  I just miss her so often on so many days…that it’s hard to explain.

And I honestly don’t blame her for quitting the marathon of trying to help fix my unsolvable life. I really don’t.  I blame the State of Illinois and Governor Pritzker for making it so IMPOSSIBLE to live and actually thrive in Illinois if you are not a billionaire.  The Governor is leaving thousands to die in this housing nightmare all while he takes victory laps banging on about how His Administration will achieve ZERO HOMELESSNESS in 2024.  Dude, please.  You, together with your new Homeless Czar and all of your so-called housing experts have fully failed to house even just 1 handicapped girl over the span of 4 YEARS TIME. And trust me when I tell you, the Governor knows exactly who I am because I write to him all the time telling him each time someone dies of homelessness in Illinois.  He can’t even house me or the people MORE vulnerable than me that I begged him to help these past 4 years.  How on earth does he honestly think that the billions he has appropriated for this homeless crisis will go to anything but feathering the nests of all the HOAs, nonprofits and homeless outreach agencies for THEMSELVES - people who never effectively rehouse anyone. EVER.        

To all of this I can only say: I am so sorry, Rochelle. I am so sorry that my life is such a broken, slow-motion tragedy that the sheer UNFIXABLE nature of it proved too much for you. No one understands why you walked away in defeat more than I do.   For, I too, have wanted to just throw my hands up and say “this is hopeless and it can’t be fixed because the State of Illinois is just too dysfunctional.”  I actually never question why you left; I wonder why you stayed so long, Rochelle…    

But the immediate logistical problem of Rochelle abruptly ghosting me amid her fed upness of my broken life however was this:  I was being safely housed in a hotel during all of this “Peninah’s bed bug tumult”, which was being generously paid for by Rochelle. And now it simply was no longer being paid for - by anyone.   I had no way to pay for the month of April now that Rochelle just abruptly abandoned my sinking ship - and the first week was due and owing from April 1 - April 8 and I had no way to pay THAT much nor to remain there for the rest of the month until I could move back to Peninah’s on April 30, 2022.  

What was I to do? 

This was a true crisis.  Hotels legally can and absolutely will prosecute and put you in jail for failure to pay under a criminal act known as “theft of services” so Rochelle’s abrupt abandonment literally COULD HAVE landed me in jail.  And then I would have just become another statistic of a disabled unhoused woman, incarcerated for poverty, because the State of Illinois simply will not acknowledge this dire affordable housing crisis is absolutely connected to mass incarceration and spiraling homelessness in Illinois. Nor is the government of IL ACTING in any fast manner to try and attenuate this hemorrhaging housing crisis. 

This is how people’s lives are just ENDED and RUINED by poverty.  You likely have no idea just how many people are currently incarcerated for the simple crime of not having housing.  And that, America, SHOULD break your heart.  

This sudden disappearance of Rochelle also taught me a very valuable lesson though: TwitterFam is GREAT and they will absolutely help you but NEVER believe them when they say that they will help you, long term, get to secure housing again.  They may mean it - and for whatever reason people are just often fully unreliable in this regard - so welcome people into your life who offer to help but NEVER count on them to stay - no matter how sincere their promises may seem.  Because everyone has a “fed up” point and when they walk away because ultimately your problems are not theirs and giving up is simply easier than hanging in there with you - your reliance upon them can absolutely derail your whole life when they opt to quit on you.  Do not believe their promises.  Love them for their kindnesses towards you but never ever rely upon them to be there for you for more than as long as niw lasts. Because I did that - and THAT was MY mistake - as that foolish reliance on a total kindhearted stranger to stay and continue to help me COULD HAVE literally landed me in jail.   

So, what did I do?   

I told the hotel of the sudden issue with payment for my room, trying to be fully transparent and honest with them, and they were understanding about it all - to a point.  And by that I mean, I still owed them $700 and they absolutely wanted to be paid but they agreed NOT to call the police on me if I left without incident and paid them by the end of April 2022.  That seemed fair. 

And thus and so, I was AGAIN living in my car which, if THAT has to happen to you, April is a good month for it to happen. And April 2022 in Central Illinois was actually BEAUTIFUL.  And so I found a local nature preserve and I hung out there for a few days and learned about the area in which that Nature Preserve is.  I loved EVERYTHING about this town and this tranquil nature spot.  It was bad that I was living in my car but honestly, the heat of the Summers on the Central Prairie or the frozen tundra of the Winters would have been much worse.  Things were bad but one thing I have learned: No matter how bad it is, it can ALWAYS be worse.   

And as I was doom scrolling at a local coffee shop I fell in love with there in that town on my 3rd day of living in my car homelessness, I came upon an ad for a part-time gig to house-sit a house that was on the market for sale. I emailed them and inquired and they responded.  The house was currently vacant pending finalization of the sale and the owners of the home were out of state but their realtor warned them that vacant houses <can be>  targets for vagrants and/or rental scams and that it was best to keep it, at least marginally lived-in looking.   And so on the advice of their realtor, they needed someone to live in their empty house until April 28 when the new owners arrived. 

I could do that.  

And I would then not be living in my car for a MONTH in a nature preserve, albeit a beautiful, serene place.   

And so lest I appear like the vagrant I was and the vagrant they were trying to protect their home from, I pulled out my best dress from my car trunk and then I prettied my hair and makeup in the coffeeshop bathroom. I used a dash of some expensive perfume from the clothing boutique attached to the coffee shop and I went to meet the realtor at the house and the owners via Zoom WITH the Realtor.  

On the way there, I prayed. I prayed harder than I remembered praying for anything.  I told God that if he carried me through this sudden housing crisis TOO and planted me somewhere safe, that I would one day tell the World what He did for me.  And so here I am telling you, TwitterFam, and the world what God did for me. How his miracles ARE real - even now - and they STILL happen every day.  

My meeting with the realtor went very well.  The realtor actually recognized my “borrowed” expensive perfume by brand and commented that it was one of her favorites. I met the homeowners via Zoom and they were really nice people just really worried about something bad happening to their home, in their absence, prior to the sale.  I told them that I was good with the timeframe as I had my own new housing happening for me at the end of April so it seemed like we could help each other out.  Everyone agreed that it seemed like a good fit and I was in.  I had a home until I moved back to Peninah’s. An empty home, but a home with running water, a shower and a kitchen I could keep and cook food in.  Compared to life in my car - this was a Godsend. 

I was counting my blessings, not adding up my complaints - TRUST ME.    

And I decided straightaway that I would keep a “normal routine” that MOST people keep in order to make it seem like everything was fully NORMAL in the house. The homeowners LOVED this idea.  I would go to the coffee shop with my laptop each morning and work until noon and then I would spend time in the nature preserve in the afternoons - just enjoying the natural beauty there - for it would do my soul good.  I would then return to the home around 5:30p to make it look like I was one of the neighbors living in that house.  The homeowners had the realtor remove the For Sale signs and added a potted plant on the porch - to make it APPEAR lived in - and, to serve as a WELCOME gift for the new owners. Nice touch, I thought silently.       

We were all set and so my first night there I parked in the driveway and went inside.  I grabbed a lawn chair I had found at a yard sale for $4 from my trunk to be my furniture in this empty house and I had some blankets in my car that I could use to sleep on - so I could swing this no furniture thing in an empty house circumstance just fine, I reckoned. I returned to the home around 6pm that night and went inside with the door code given to me by the Realtor. 

And I literally dropped my purse and yelped as I walked through the front door. 

I thought we’d been robbed. Or a strange REVERSE home burglary had occurred.   

But THAT foolish thought made no sense because things had been ADDED and not stolen.  Suddenly, there was a living room with furniture - not a lot but an oversized sofa, an end table and some lamps and a desk was in the far corner.  

Had the new homeowners begun moving into the home early and was  I now trespassing? And just when I was about to dial the realtor to ask what was happening, I saw a note with my name on it on the desk. It read:

“Dear Chandler: Thank you so much for taking care of our home.  We did not want you to have to be without “the comforts of home” for the whole month you are here so we had some rental furniture delivered today for you to use while you are here.  We know you are a writer so we hope you can make good use of the desk.  We also had the local market deliver some food for you to stock the kitchen.  We are so thankful to you for being such a good caretaker of our home. Please let us know if you need anything else.” Signed, Husband and Wife.

In total disbelief and STILL THINKING maybe the house may have been oddly robbed where the robber somehow ADDS things to the house, I walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator and therein were cheese plates, and fruit plates and sub sandwiches and sushi, and salads, and teas and literally anything one might want to ever eat or drink. 

And I literally hit the floor. 

I fell down on my knees and began to weep uncontrollably.

God did it!

God had delivered me from a certain horrific fate of jailed due to car homelessness with nowhere to go and planted me somewhere that I could be SAFE, well fed, and, at least temporarily, part of a nice community.  

And THIS is WHY I always tell people that God is my portion and that has always been ENOUGH.  Because all of this was nothing short of a miracle to me.  

And just like that, the month of April flew by.  I did some writing, I explored the Nature Preserve, in depth, walked along with neighbors walking their dogs on evening strolls after work and even fell in love with the LIBRARY in this small town.  The degree to which the head librarian there treated me with such kindness, compassion and generosity of spirit will not ever be forgotten by me.  He was an uncommon man doing an extraordinary job in an otherwise ordinary place.  And I think people like that deserve some recognition and applause.  He helped me with several vexing research projects and even gave me a library card. A library card is much harder to get in Downstate Illinois than you might imagine.  They tie your right to a library card to your address - to PROVE you are eligible as a taxpayer. So with my OFFICIAL address being in Chicago due to the DV Confidentiality Program I am in, libraries in Downstate IL ALWAYS fight against me ceaselessly in my quest for a simple library card.  Dale Carnegie would be appalled by the state of affairs and the rigid, elitist mentality promoted at the Downstate IL libraries which his legacy began so many years ago.  The poor man is probably rolling over in his grave at the horrible tyrants gatekeeping so many OUT of his libraries he wanted to be accessible to ALL to expand access to knowledge.  Shame on them all who act that way in Downstate IL libraries.  But much gratitude towards the one librarian who truly personifies the living embodiment of Dale Carnegie’s Library Mission Statement: 

“A library outranks any other one thing a community

can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in

the desert. Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and 

wit; reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental

energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark…In any library in

the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed.”

Thank you local library for being a welcoming oasis who helped me when I needed help in Spring 2022.  You are angels among us.  And I shall never forget that Manager Librarian gentleman who decided much of what prior Downstate IL libraries had done to me was repugnant and likely immoral and probably broke some IL inclusivity laws and, in kindness, was nothing like them and only offered me kindness.       

And thus and so, April 28th came quickly when the new homeowners were to arrive and start moving into the home.  So, the whole night before I spent emptying out the kitchen, scouring EVERYTHING clean including the inside of the frig and oven, cleaning the living room and leaving literally NO TRACE of my presence there.  The Rent-A-Furniture folks came and retrieved the living room furniture at 10am that next morning and as I was about to leave the house for the last time, the realtor walked in to the house. She came inside and saw everything cleaned and in proper order and just kinda gasped.  I asked her what was wrong and she replied: 

“Oh nothing is WRONG. It’s just odd how RIGHT about you the homeowners were. You sure did right by them and their home. Just WOW, girl.”

I told her that I always try and leave a place better than how I found it, whenever possible.  She said her clients, the (former) homeowners, were now in Italy for the Summer but they wanted her to give me a thank you card. 

Seriously?  

(I should have written THEM one for saving me from a month living in my car - was my silent, interior dialogue) but I just smiled and said “It was my privilege to help them.”

  I accepted the thank you card and grabbed my purse and was on my way back to Peninah’s.  I stopped for one last coffee at my favorite local coffee shop in that small town and I sat down to read their thank you card - primarily because handwritten thank you notes are such a lost art that receiving one is a rare gift in this life nowadays, in my opinion.  And as I opened the card, hundred dollar bills started falling on the table.  

Oh. My. God. 

What the?

And then I read their note: “Dear Chandler: Thank you for taking such good care of our (former) home when we were unable to do so.  You were such a blessing to us AND a welcome presence on the street that we had several neighbor friends call us hopeful in asking if you were the new homeowner who had moved in.  They were all disappointed when we told them no.  Anyway, you helped us out so much and I know we didn’t really talk specifically about any payment for your help but we hope that $1,000 is enough to compensate you for your loving care of our home. We wish you all the best and cannot wait to read your book. Fond regards.” 

I nearly cried again. 

In public. In a coffee shop.
But instead I just prayed.  I thanked God for sending me Destiny Helpers and for AGAIN keeping me safe on this very important journey He has me on.  

Then, I bolted to my car and drove to my bank.  I deposited the cash and drove directly to the hotel I had to abruptly leave in early April and I was able to PAY THEM IN FULL - as agreed by the end of the month of April 2022.  

Such a relief that I was able to do this AT ALL because I honestly had no idea HOW I was going to pay them for my first week in April there.  All the money I had I had to pay to Peninah for May 2022 rent when I got back there.  So being able to put this whole sordid “couldn’t pay my hotel bill matter” behind me was an enormous load off my shoulders.

For those of you who may be reading this Memoir and who may be generous millionaires wanting to buy me a humble house, THIS community where all this happened and where that great coffee shop is and that beautiful nature preserve is and which gives restoration to lost souls - THAT is where I aspire to one day live.  So, if any y’all feeling generous and want to buy me a house, please know that Mahomet Illinois will always be a cherished memory for me.  (Please know that I say this in jest - in less of course someone truly ACTUALLY WANTS to buy me a house in which case I’m deadly serious!) <joke>😉

I had 1 night left until moving back to Peninah’s officially so I used the remaining cash and my Hilton Rewards Points and stayed there until 1pm on April 30th when I then traveled back to Peninah’s boarding house.  All I could do was hope for the best….

PART V:  Back to The Bates Boarding Pit of Central Illinois a/k/a Peninah’s Flophouse