Darkness lived a block away at Doris’ old place.
After she died a few years ago, it moved in. I only thought about it when my connections on a neighborhood Facebook page talked about what was going on over there.
The darkness came in the form of people—zombies, as some neighbors called them—who weaved through the alley night and day, carrying backpacks. These were otherworldly ones, meth pulsing through their veins and transforming them into creatures of the night.
The zombies covered up the home’s windows, darkening their world even more, so not even a pinprick of light could pierce their abyss. I tried to fashion the truth from the scraps of information floating around me. This nuisance house wasn’t a rental situation, my neighbors said; the owner of the place lived there too, so not only did he know what was going on, he was running it all.
“He’s a dealer,” one man said at a neighborhood crime watch meeting, “so there’s no point reporting the drug use on his property to him. He’s part of it.”
“How do you know he’s selling?” a police officer asked. “Do you have any proof?”
“Some kid rode to the house on his bike not too long ago,” he said. “He had a roll of dollar bills in his hand.”
The meeting’s attendees doled out various scant pieces of information. The property looked like it belonged to a hoarder, aluminum foil and boards covered the windows, and although the place was quieter during daylight hours, the night brought out the hordes, the garbage, and sometimes the screaming.
“There’s a steady stream of traffic going to and from the house,” another neighbor said. “And they all carry backpacks.”
I envisioned termites nibbling at the wood of a home, slowly bringing it down. And maybe this pestilence would take down this particular house too—and the neighborhood with it. The alley running by the property was sprinkled with needles, evidence of the activities inside. And users littered them around the park two blocks down too, another neighbor said.
I thought of my life in our home.
While I carried in grocery bags from the car, someone was making a beeline to the drug house for a fix.
While I poured myself a second cup of coffee in the morning, someone over there was passed out from their partying the previous night.
While I snuggled with a book before falling asleep each night, someone was shooting up only a block away.
Unlike some of our neighbors, our house didn’t have a front-row seat to the activities. My ignorance insulated me. And I liked it that way.
In early August 2019, we set up for our National Night Out gathering, the event created by the police to foster a sense of community and safety among neighbors. Like every year, we pushed folding tables together in the middle of the blocked off street. And like every year, residents of four blocks came together to celebrate each other, bringing salads, chicken, fruit, beans, tacos, cookies—and more. Camp chairs circled the food tables, and more than twenty of us neighbors got comfortable with paper plates of food from our shared bounty. We updated each another on our lives. I hadn’t seen some of them in a year, our worlds running by different calendars in separate houses.
“I think about this dish all the time,” I said to the neighbor who brought his Thai noodles again, pointing the tines of my fork at the generous helping on my plate. “So delicious.”
He smiled. “It’s easy to make.”
Trees twisted over our view of the cemetery a half block away, and late afternoon sunlight streaked through them. A rosy hue colored our talk, cheering us as we went around the circle, each of us sharing one new thing that had happened in the past year. Two new grandbabies were born to one couple, one man walked twelve-hundred miles outside over the harsh Minnesota winter, one couple drove their MINI Cooper to Mackinac Island, Michigan, for the annual parade of MINIs. And the highlights continued.
Our activity over, we munched on dessert—or seconds of the main dishes—and daylight softened to dusk, the sun dipping inch by inch back into the earth. I sucked on a black cherry popsicle, remembering why I loved my neighbors. The peace. The stability. The kindness.
And then I saw her.
A young woman meandered toward our group, the silhouette of her body like another tree branch against the rosy-orange of the waning day. She looked lost, a backpack slung over one shoulder. Uneasiness trickled down my spine.
The early twenty-something halted outside our circle. She wore a thick black leather jacket and jean shorts; her bony legs were marked with bruises. She pulled her pack onto her back.
I flicked a look at Marta, always a welcoming force in the group and the one who had led us in our sharing time around the circle minutes earlier. Her gaze rested on the young woman.
“Hi,” Marta called to her, motioning her toward a seat by us. The young woman shot looks around, one eyebrow arched, and edged nearer. She eased onto the edge of a folding chair, making room for the pack which stayed on her back. “What’s your name?”
“Jo,” the young woman said, her face blank.
The word zombie flashed into my brain. Robotic movements. Lack of emotion. The undead, as they were called in movies and TV shows.
Did the others in our circle see it too? Did they guess, like I did, that this woman spent time in that house—the one we had discussed with each other and the police too many times to count?
“Where do you live?” another neighbor asked her.
Jo paused, then blurted a house number, adding, “I think.”
She thought? Was she sorry she had given that much information? Was she headed there after this? And what was in that backpack?
I lengthened my exhales. Someone had kicked in our door while we were away one afternoon. Someone else had crawled through our unlocked kitchen window while we slept one night. Those things rattled me. But the unpredictability of a person strung out on drugs jolted electricity through my fingertips, surpassing all my previous fears.
And some of you were once like that…
Unbidden, the snippet of Truth struck me to my core, bringing more with it.
But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God…
I eyed Jo—her shifty gaze, her flat affect, her bare skinny legs sticking out of biker boots.
“Help yourself to something to eat,” I said. She looked at me, her eyes vacant. A few more encouragements like mine, and she stood and sauntered to the table. She lifted a chicken drumstick and stared at all of us like she still needed permission. “Seriously. We don’t want to take it home with us. Please eat.”
She peeled a paper plate off the stack and filled it. And then I saw the space around us on the street that night.
There was room at the table for her too.
*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.