Love Your Neighbor

I watch Norma Schaeffer burn her mail from my second story window. Norma is a “retired” school teacher. She wears her hair in a gray bun with hair wisps gleefully escaping bobby pins. She walks like a stiff wind-up toy, a little to the left, then to the right. There are rumors about her; people like to tell tales. The folks we bought the house from told me she was crazy. The husband, Bill, said, “She goes out at midnight, sometimes two in the morning” he was half giddy telling me this. “Once I followed her, I couldn’t stand it anymore¾I had to know where she was going.” He enjoyed the attention of the eyes of those around us, including mine, as he talked. “She went to Burger King for Chrissake! At two o’clock in the morning!” I remembered this as I watched her creeping, now, among the bushes next to her house. Letters fell from her hand into little burning piles under the bushes. I wondered if I should call the fire department.

Months went by and Norma’s activities expanded. I would see the headlights of her old car as she’d back out of her driveway in the late hours. She wouldn’t be gone long. There was an ever-growing pile of something in Norma’s car. We shared a driveway and when I’d go out to my own car I glanced through the grime of her passenger window and sure enough, there were the piles of empty fast-food containers. She must eat the food and toss the garbage to her side. At least she didn’t litter.

One morning I thought I saw early snow out my window. There was something white all over Norma’s scraggly bushes. I found my glasses and “Oh my God” it was Norma’s “whites”¾her panties, socks, bras, dishrags¾all neatly lain out on the bush-tops to dry, in November. The items stayed there for days, till they “disappeared”.   

Late one spring night I heard “snap” and “crack” and then a “plop”. I knew it was Norma. I crept to my back window following sounds. It was coming from her garage. Norma’s garage was once a garage, but the roof had caved in, doors and windows were missing, and strange shapes took refuge within. Creepy. What could she be doing? This went on nightly for a week. I saw cardboard boxes accumulating around an old chair in front of the doorless garage. I decided to sneak over next time she backed that grubby car out of the drive. My chance came soon. With Norma gone, I walked over to her side of the drive. I walked closer, my feet edging over boundary lines. Oh my God, there, scattered all over, in every direction, piled one on top of another were shallow cardboard boxes, the kind cat food cans come in, some filled with twigs, (once sticks which Norma had neatly snapped to smaller lengths). Others held empty cat food cans. There were mountains of them. What would she possibly want with all these twig/can filled boxes? Oh Norma, I wondered, do you think about as you sit, out in the dark, alone, snapping twigs?

Norma’s cats were always slinking around. Her cats were strange and sat on her rooftop and stared at you. One of them had kittens. Soon there were little balls of fur spitting and clawing at one another in the drive. These were possessed cats; the familiars of Norma, for I was beginning to think Norma must be a conjurer, a solitary practitioner of “the craft”. Who else would live alone, with cats, active all hours of the night and set small fires against the side of the house? She must be sacrificing something; I thought maybe the burning of the mail was just to distract me. I tried to befriend the kittens when I’d see them in the drive, but when I approached they scattered to the bushes and under Norma’s back porch.

A woman who lived down the street had a yard sale and when she found out I lived next to Norma she lowered her voice and told her gossip. “Yes”, she said “she was a school teacher, a good one once, but then problems started.” She looked around at her other “customers” before going on. “She began to have periods of depression and was “away” for awhile. After she came back from the clinic the last time she wasn’t the same. She has a daughter you know¾but she never visits. And her husband, Dave, he’s the one that pops up once in awhile to mow the lawn. He moved out when he couldn’t take Norma anymore. She just got too strange. She had him gut the kitchen, which he did, but then she wouldn’t let him put anything new in. There’s no kitchen in that house you know!” she paused, as if waiting for me to gasp. I didn’t. I thanked her and walked back home. I guess that helped explain all the take-out food.

I finally spoke with Norma. She came out of nowhere one afternoon, startling me. I was putting trash in my can. “You know, that the sticker on the plate on that trailer is expired” she said, pointing her chipped yellow-nailed index finger towards the aluminum trailer we had parked at the back of our half of the drive. My scope of vision took in her peeling-paint sad house with cracked windows, her sinking garage with its mounds of empty cat food cans, the black piles of burnt mail under her bushes and the mad strings of gray which had broke free of her bun. I settled my eyes onto hers and held them to mine. I knew I was looking into the rooms of madness and said, “Hi Norma, Norma, isn’t it? I’m Pat, your neighbor.” I held out my hand, curious to reach out and touch the hand that snaps twigs, under the stars, when the rest of the world sleeps.