Ashley Elliott and her mother Nora moved into my apartment complex on a Saturday afternoon, four doors down from me.
There were no rental trucks or trailers or a throng of friends and family helping to unload the two women's' material possessions with care. There was simply a mother and a daughter with everything they owned between them stuffed into a beat up station wagon.
Granted, a few days later a truck from one of those big rental furniture companies, that rent things at ungodly high monthly rates, showed up at the Nye residence and dropped off one bed, two tables and a very small sofa. My mind would constantly wonder what kind of life those two ladies were enduring inside that cramped apartment.
Rebecca Nye appeared, at first glance, to be in her late 40's but I would later find out she was over 10 years younger than that. Her weathered face and slumped posture indicated that she had led a very difficult and arduous life to that point. Her daughter, Belinda, also seemed to have the look of a woman that was older than her calendar years. In her case, despite the fact that she was only 13 when she moved in, she could have easily passed for 20. There was an inherent bleakness in Belinda's brown eyes that spoke of great turmoil in her life as well. It appeared that Belinda had seen more in her 13 years than anyone should in a lifetime. She was definitely mature for her age, in more ways than one. Her long brown hair was often pulled back into a pony tail but when she teased it on the rare occasions that she went out and added some makeup, she took on the radiant glow of a young groupie that wouldn't have a problem making it backstage at any concert. On the rare occasion I happened to see Belinda and her Mom go somewhere together, there was a tangible aloofness between the two that spoke of a mountain's worth of festering, unresolved conflict. When I would see each woman on their own with their own friends, both Rebecca and Belinda seemed like complexity different people than they did when Mother and Daughter were hanging out together. As the months wore on, I slowly pieced together some of the tendencies of their relationship and frankly I came to believe that the teenager was keeping better and more stable company than her Mother was. It was an interesting dichotomy.
Children are naturally rebellious and frequently react unpredictably in the face of authority. When no authority is put forth, children can go in one of two directions. It appeared that Belinda Nye had chosen the path of being the responsible one while her Mother went about her merry way, living life in the really fast lane. Still, bound by the mores and laws of society, my 13 year old neighbor was trapped in her predicament and I sensed that she would eventually fall victim to the same vicious patterns her Mother was living out in front of her, unless she could somehow escape from it.