the short sale

My mother is a pastor who moonlights as a real estate agent. Or a real estate agent who is sometimes a pastor. In the eight years since she was ordained I've never been clear. But lately, she's been doing something called BPOs, or Broker Price Opinions, to earn extra money when houses aren't selling. These basically involve her visiting houses that are going through a short-sale and giving a quick appraisal of them. This is so that banks in other states that don't know what our real estate market is like can price them appropriately.

As a result she and I have become like scavengers picking through the detritus of the recession. A lot of the houses we've visited are large, respectable-looking Colonials in new neighborhoods in Olney and Germantown. They're usually empty, and what we have are the signs of the occupants' former lives: abandoned cable boxes, old pictures, a dresser with "I [heart] my family" scrawled on it in crayon. There was the house in Bowie with an elaborate deck that, after months or years of deterioration, came to look like Roman ruins.

The houses are almost always unoccupied, and if people are still living there, they're usually out for the day. But last Friday my mother had to look a little kid in the eye and tell him he's losing his house.

The house is this little cinder-block deal off Route 108 in Damascus, white with black shutters and a casually overgrown lawn. Across the street are a couple of McMansions with brick fronts and vinyl sides sitting in the middle of a field that seems to go on forever. I turn into the gravel driveway and am surprised to find that it goes behind the house, into a loose cul-de-sac with a shed, an old truck, and some people. Two young men carrying things into the shed who look up momentarily when we arrive. A boy about ten, my brother’s age, and a younger girl in a pink dress who stumbles across the yard clutching a doll, watching our car curiously.

I wanted to leave right then and there. The Realtor told my mother that people were home, but I was expecting to see them through the window, seated in front of a TV, oblivious to our presence. And they still were, sort of.

My mother gets out, taking pictures of the house, as I turn the car around, trying to be invisible. As she holds her camera up, the boy strides up to her. “What are you doing?” he asks. “I’m taking pictures of the house,” she says. Why, the boy continues. As she explains to him that his family is losing their house, another truck pulls into the driveway. It has the name of a landscaping company on the side and two ruddy-faced men in the front. We face each other; I’m blocking them, so I back up, slowly, into the yard where the little girl is still clutching her doll.

As the truck passes me, the two men inside nod at me and I nod in response. Unlike the kids, they know why I’m here, this city boy in a blue Honda and a woman taking pictures. “Do you want me to get my mom?” the little boy asks my mother, and before she can say yes he takes off to get her. My mother slides into the car next to me and we wait. A few minutes pass and no one comes out. She calls the Realtor. “I went to the house and the little boy asked me to speak with his mom,” she says, thinking out loud, “but you already told them I was coming, so I guess I don’t need to stay.” We drive away.

We live in one of the wealthiest counties in the wealthiest state in the wealthiest metropolitan area in the country but, still, there are people whose lives have fallen apart just like that. When we are back on Route 108 my mother becomes a pastor again. “It’s hard to watch that little boy and know his family is losing their home," she says. "They want me to take their hand, and I want to as well, but all I can do is put them in the arms of God.”