“Do you want me to call the police? I saw the whole thing.”

That was my first inkling. I’d missed the tussle because I was inside at the climactic moment. As I opened the casement window in my bathroom I heard Jerry’s voice. Yet another episode in the degenerating Bertilda debacle.

We’d all been told the police couldn’t do anything until she hurt someone or damaged property. At first it was “unless,” but we neighbors all knew it had become “until.” There was no way Bertilda was getting better.

The woman is in her 80s and losing her memory, but that’s not the main issue. She’s no doubt suffered from at least borderline personality disorder all her life; she’s frequently hostile to the extent of viciousness, angry to the level of demonic. She had to be consistently awful to have no friends, no friendly relations. She’s a lifelong bridge-burner. And with every week it’s like she’s condensing and becoming a more concentrated version of herself. Her bad self.

I headed next door. Anne was still outside, obviously shaken. Bertilda is slight – maybe 5’2″ and 100 pounds – but when she goes thermonuclear her evil aura permeates the surrounding environment. Talk about negative energy. Bad vibes. Dreadful karma.

Bertilda owes Anne money. Their little HOA doesn’t collect monthly dues. Instead, Anne pays all the common expenses and then seeks retroactive reimbursement from Jerry and Bertilda. The casual arrangement dates back to when the house was first organized as a TIC, even before the condo conversion. Bertilda is the only resident who was there then, so it’s kind of ironic that she’s the one welshing on the deal now.

She’s owes Jerry too. He’s a sweet guy and when Bertilda came to him last month and asked if there was a power outage, he realized she’d been shut off yet again. This is the third time she’s lost electricity in a year; apparently no prior episode has taught her to pay her next bill. Jerry called PG&E for her, tried to protect the poor power employee from Bertilda’s verbal vehemence, and advanced $704.93 to get her lights back on. We can’t figure out how she ran up a bill that high in about two months – she must be running her electric space heater 24/7.

So the old woman owes Jerry $705. Her debt to Anne is $515.11.

They’ve tried twice to collect. They went to Bertilda’s door together the first time, and the second occasion was in the yard, where I was a witness. Each time Anne gave her the paper with the split-up expenses and the bottom line bold type. Each time Jerry tried to get Bertilda to remember the blackout in her apartment and the telephone call to get the lights back on. We all saw it was useless. Bertilda would look momentarily confused and then lash out with epithets. She’d ask how would she get paid back, she’d insist that her PG&E bill was for the whole property, and then she’d snarl, curse, stomp and slap.

I guessed the current conflict was about Bertilda’s financial confusion, and I was correct. When I got to the yard, the neighbor on the other side of them, Jill, was gently guiding Bertilda away from Anne’s garden, saying “It’s time to go home now, Bertilda,” soothingly/firmly, like to a skittish animal.

Anne was standing still, emanating the aura that only a victim of Bertilda’s venom acquires. She was looking down at her right hand, flexing it into a loose fist. Grimacing. “Ow,” she said. “I think something happened to my little finger.”

“Can you move it?”

“Oh, it’s not broken. Probably sprained.” She worked the digit some more.

“Maybe we should call the police.”

“I might, if I hadn’t touched her. I didn’t hit her or push her, but I did touch her.” She winced as she said that, because she was again trying to flex her little finger.

“What happened?”

“I came home to an about-to-detonate situation between Bertilda and Jill. I put my body in between and chatted a little with Bertilda. She seemed almost normal. I asked if she’d found her checkbook. She started blowing up at me. I got away but then she showed up at my back door with a fat wallet and some bills in hand. Went really nutso on me, telling me that she pays all the bills and acting like I’m some sort of usurper who always gets my way. Crazier talk than ever. I told her to get out of my yard. She swore at me louder. I raised my voice, I’ll admit it – deliberately – and yelled at her to leave right now. I remember placing my hand on her shoulder and providing direction. Not a push, but I put my hand on her. I think I even said she was evil…

“She started running away from me. Her style of running – you know – kind of a fast shuffle. She tripped and fell sideways, to her right, into that.” Anne pointed at soft ground cover and clump grass. “I’ll admit: I had a moment of panic. All I need is for Bertilda to injure herself here. I rushed forward to hoist her up. She resisted. Screaming and kicking. On her back like a beached crab! I persisted in pulling her up. Along the way I acquired this.” Anne showed me her finger. It was starting to swell and purple. “It got pulled away from my other fingers. Oh lord, Bertilda smelled so bad.”

I believe it. She’s thoroughly loathsome. All of us are repulsed by her body. We detest her personality, and I wonder if our abhorrence transfers to her skin and hair and posture. What if she were comely? Could we bear to touch her then?

I think not. When I consider her body, she has no deformity. No disability except something with one of her legs, like its knee doesn’t bend enough, so she lurches a bit, cants slightly, when she walks. Her features are regular. Her bare toes have thick old nails, but they don’t look dirty or callused.

I’m reminded of a college neighbor. A sloppy-fat monied blonde named Linda, whose last name rhymed with “foolish,” and who lived next door to my roommate and me. She was the most self-referential individual I ever met. Everything was about her. No one else had the right to, well, anything, to hear Linda rant. She tried to make me and my roommate believe she had some rare health condition, so the fat wasn’t her fault and she was entitled to extra consideration.

Maybe there was something to that, because one day we responded to wall thumps, entered Linda’s apartment, and found her trapped in her narrow bathroom. She’d lost her balance and fallen so that her blobby body was wedged between the wall and the toilet, partly under the sink. We called for help and while awaiting the ambulance we tried to get Linda up. I’ll never forget how unhealthy her skin felt. Whatever we grabbed came away from her skeleton, stretching and dimpling with subcutaneous fat, but the bulk of Linda remained on the floor till the EMTs arrived.

I’ve given birth. I’ve cared for sick family. I’ve even been vomited on before, by a stranger on a plane and right before landing, so I was trapped in my nauseous condition for awhile. But I’ve never been as grossed out as I was trying to lift Linda off that floor. And Bertilda’s worse. I’d rather wash a corpse.

Bertilda continues to be our problem. Anne’s and Jerry’s financially, but socially she’s a shared neighborhood blight. Adult Protective Services has been called and has a file, but those wheels turn slowly. We’ve heard that there’s a brother in Germany, but he’s older than Bertilda and we don’t have an address for him.

And we worry about more than debts and slaps. Bertilda still has a car and sometimes drives it – but our debate about whether to report her to DMV diminished when local police helped her locate her car the last time she took it in for servicing and forgot where it was. Our fears that she will start a fire in her place, during one of her bouts of no power, are eased somewhat by observing that she has such a hoard in her kitchen that she can’t use her stove.

Maybe Anne should have called the police. I shot a picture of her hand in case we need it in the future. But we all know Bertilda will strike again. She has hit Jerry with the stick she uses to keep her window open for her cat. She smacked a workman at Jill’s place for stepping on a plant – that was the event that led to the almost-altercation that Anne prevented just before her own injury. Probably one of us is going to have to sustain a bruise or a sprain before we get any corrective action. Probably another injury to one of us is the best we can hope for now.