The foundation was a raised structure, typical of 1920s California bungalows, designed to float just above the earth to protect it from creeping moisture. Decades of poor drainage had defeated that intention.
The soil, parched and cracked in some places, swollen and waterlogged in others, had shifted beneath the house, pushing and pulling the foundation until it settled at an awkward tilt. It was noticeable to the eye and undeniable underfoot. In one corner, where the concrete had entirely crumbled to dust, an old car jack held up the house- as if in a desperate act of defiance. Julie would have called that “poor man’s ingenuity” and smacked her gum. Would have told me, “Everything holds, even when it shouldn’t.”
Beneath the floorboards lay the crawl space—a dark, airless gap cluttered with decades of debris.
Dust-coated tools, rusted metal scraps, tangled wire. Remnants of past repairs, abandoned. The joists, long past their expiration, sagged like tired shoulders. Wood that had once been solid, chewed through by time and termites, now crumbled at the slightest touch.
Julie wouldn’t have let it get this bad.
The original cloth-covered wiring, still snaking through the walls like ancient arteries, was a relic of a bygone era. Frayed fabric insulation, peeling away like dried skin. Wires, brittle and twisted together, patched with old electrical tape that crumbled in my hands.
She kept things running.
She had been the kind of woman who fixed things before they broke. Who knew the limits of a body, of a house, of a man, and pushed against them anyway. She had built HOME into her children’s names, into her voice, into the way she threw an arm around your shoulder and pulled you in like you were one of her own.
Heating and cooling were a scattered affair at best. A hodgepodge of baseboard heaters and old window units, arranged with no discernible plan. It was less of a system and more of a collage of half-measures, patched together in a desperate attempt to keep the cold out, the heat in, the seasons at bay.
None of them worked anymore.
The house had once known warmth. Julie was warmth. She would sneak outside for a cigarette, tilt her head back, exhale, and laugh—long, loud, and unafraid. She wasn’t a mother to me, but she was something. Something solid in a way most people aren’t.
She threatened to slit a guy’s throat for fucking with me once. And she meant it.
She held everything together—until the world took the choice away.
With the walls stripped down, the floorboards lifted, there was no more hiding behind the faded paint and quick fixes that had kept the house standing—if barely. Julie wasn’t the kind of woman who pretended things weren’t broken. She called them out, laughed about them, gave them names. She would have looked at this house, at its crumbling beams and sinking bones, and asked, “You fixing it, or just standing there staring?”
She would have made the choice simple.
The smell of damp earth seeped up from the crawl space, mingling with the scent of sawdust and aged wood. Standing inside, it was hard to say whether I was looking at a house being torn down or rebuilt.
But even in its exposed state, something solid remained.
Beneath the layers of decay, there was a framework, a shape that suggested something resilient. Something worth saving.
Stripped down to its frame, there was no more illusion, no more veneer of stability. It was bare, but it was standing.
Mireya Gonzalez-Looby is a Northeast LA–based writer, builder, and community strategist. Her work lives at the edge of memory, recovery, and structural collapse; shaped by years in public education, housing, and community organizing—fields that taught her how to read what’s broken and listen for what’s still breathing underneath. Her writing moves through abandoned spaces, fractured inheritances, and the quiet labor of staying. Mireya holds a B.A. in American Studies from Brown University, and is an alumna of the 2025 PEN America Emerging Voices Workshop and The Heart of It Writing Retreat.