Pio’s wife, Chi, came from Africa to live with him in England. During winter, the weather went down to 10 degrees. She had never lived in such cold weather. The subleased house they were staying in was not stable. It was subleased to them by a Pakistani immigrant who had gone back to Lahore, running away from the cold. Pio could not afford to pay for the full house; Chi worried about being evicted. She did not want to be thrown out in the cold.
Desperate because he did not want his wife to suffer should they be evicted in such cold weather, Pio decided to look for a better place.
“We are looking for a house,” Pio told a landlord on the Kijiji rental site.
“Shahida Yamin, that’s my name, and you have come to the right place. What’s your budget?” said the person on the other side of the digital chat board.
Pio sighed. He didn’t want to offer a large amount and tie himself to a rental figure that would force him to sell his car.
“$1000 a month,” he typed, with his fingers trembling.
Shahida held off from typing for a while before her words flashed again on Pio’s cellphone.
“For $1000, you can move in today,” she said.
Pio pumped a fist in the air, excited. At last, he and Chi were leaving the horrible room they subleased from the Pakistani guy. Shahida’s house would be a breath of fresh air, he reasoned. At least he would get peace of mind and his wife would stop grumbling.
Little did they know that the new living arrangement would land them into serious trouble.
Pio and Chio had never met Shahida. But they trusted her. She gave them the address, 1461 Heatherington Road. They packed a few clothes and an Uber came to drive the couple to Shahida’s home. Soon they would be meeting their new landlord.
“Um, sorry Pio, I won’t be there at the house—but you’ll meet my two boys who will usher you into the house, and you can give them the rent,” she said.
This sounded weird to Chi.
“I thought she was right there at her property,” she said.
Pio patted the back of her neck and calmed her.
“Most landlords are absent in person but present in spirit nowadays,” he said.
Shahida’s boys were filthy and unkempt. They looked huge, like bouncers. They quickly ushered Pio and Chi into a four-room house in the Orleans woods. The house was not occupied by anyone except two chain-smoking single men living in the basement and using a door at the back of the house to go in and out. Pio and Chi would occupy the upper floor, and the smokers were none of their concern, Shahida promised via text.
“Can I offer you cash and you carry it to Shahida?” Pio asked one of Shahida’s boys.
“No, no,” he said. “Send it electronically to her via the Interac bank app. I haven’t seen Shahida this year.”
They exchanged pleasantries—and the two boys banged doors and quickly dashed out of the house. Pio and Chi were left in charge of Shahida’s vast, silent, and still house. The house was old, rundown, and grand. A playground of squirrels. The smokers in the basement kept coughing loudly from tobacco pulls. Every two minutes they would bang their basement door and climb out of their rooms to take smoking breaks in the backyard garden.
“Pio, I thought we could finally talk,” Shahida said after calling Pio’s phone for the very first time.
“Great to hear your voice, Shahida. Yes?”
Shahida cleared her throat on the line, sounding agitated before lowering her voice.
“Pio, if you go to the back of the house, there are dozens of trash bins. Ummm, they haven’t been emptied in a year. Thanks, Pio. Would you clean it up and place it in front, the garbage truck comes every Monday. Thanks, Pio,” she said.
It was a bit strange for Pio that Shahida, who had never met him, was already thanking him for taking out mountains of abandoned trash without giving him a chance to say “yes” yet. Pio was stunned and simply told her, “I will go around and see what I can do.” He was hoping Shahida would give him the £15-an-hour legal minimum wage for every 60 minutes he spent clearing the garbage bins.
He strolled to the backyard where the smokers’ doors were situated. 20 tins of trash, beer, and Coke cans were stacked inside a small shed, and it was a messy sight as he began to shift the tins to the front of the house for the garbage removal truck. Pio was tired and could only manage nine of the 20 heavy tins.
“This was not the arrangement. We simply agreed to be her tenants, pay $1000 a month for a room, and not be her trash shifters,” Chi told Pio bitterly.
“It’s only once this time, my wife,” Pio assured him. “A one-off job.”
The one-off job gradually turned into a weekly garbage cleanout for nine months. The two smokers were messy and never willing to help out. Shahida said nothing of paying Pio for his work until one weekend in September, when she called and visited the couple.
“Pio, Chi—you must carry your bed and move to the downstairs room; you can live for as long as you want downstairs.”
“To the smokers’ floor?” Chi interjected angrily.
“Sammy and Noah don’t smoke in the house; they smoke outside,” Shahida said.
“Over our dead bodies,” Pio shouted at Shahida.
Shahida brightened her eyes and frowned.
“The deal was you would stay at my house for a short time, doing the garbage, and move out to a permanent place; you are still here, you must go live downstairs.”
Pio and Chi were surprised, because they never had such an agreement.
“You’re a manipulative woman, Shahida,” Pio growled at her. He pranced around the lounge. “We are your tenants, paying rent, not your garbage guys. We would rather move out of your house to the homeless shelter than go down and live with smokers in your rundown basement.”
“You don’t know me!” snarled Shahida, strolling out of the house to her car.
“Do your worst, Shahida, and we won’t be moved,” Pio shouted at her from the window sill.
Moments later, Shahida came back with her two bouncer sons. The two carried Pio and Chi’s belongings to a separate room in the basement and new tenants moved in. Every time they threatened to move, the bouncer sons would come and force them to wire the rental money. They thought of a way out of the situation and started taking their belongings to friends bit by bit.
One morning Pio and Chi went out of the basement apartment. They carried only a small bag with a few toiletries and escaped to a homeless shelter. The next time they looked for a new place through a professional estate agent.
