Sputterpub's Blog

Things have risen or sunk to a crazy level in the neighborhood. We’re beset by cops and counselors. Carol is beside herself with psychological concern about her teenage pyromaniac son, and her husband John isn’t much calmer. My friend Anne is deeply concerned in her own special ed way. Neighbor Jerry has been seen giggling inappropriately, but it doesn’t seem like insane giggling. I feel like an anthropologist attempting not to interfere in the tribal habits I’m trying to observe.

Jason says 84-year old Bertilda molested him. Regularly. Bertilda claims 15-year old Jason has raped her more than once. We all know she has spent time in his room, tutoring him in German. That could support his position. On the other hand, Bertilda’s wrists show marks of restraint and the complementary evidence is in her bedroom, and we also know that Jason used to visit her there, especially Anne, who got to suffer his heavy footsteps on the uncarpeted common staircase.

So all bets are off. Or odds are… Or something.

No one seems to know which offense – child or elder abuse – is more heinous. All seem to understand but not speak about how hulking Jason is not the kind of kid we have in mind when we enact protective laws. Most of us assumed elder abuse included bruises and bed sores. The consensus in the neighborhood is that child abuse has more money and more clout.

It’s enough to draw the media. We’ve had the out-of-body experience of reading our physical descriptions and catching bad angles of ourselves in video clips. I’ll admit I’m the aging lady in the gingerbread cottage by the creek. I’d be a stereotype if I had cats.

Bertilda is as frail, skinny, and skewed as ever. She has an orthopedic problem and lurch-walks with a stiff left leg. She kept her hair brunette until a few months ago; right now she sports a bowl-shaped crown of gray-white hair above uniform shoe-polish brown.

Anne, who lives below Bertilda, appears mousy but isn’t. She’s a woman of undeclared sexual orientation, a divorced mother of one daughter who is not known to date. She’s in her mid-60s and heads up special ed for the local school district. She doesn’t wear makeup or style her hair (pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck, medium brown streaked with white), and she wears sensible shoes, but she’s not overweight and not overly fearful.

Jerry is the third resident of their little condo association, and he looks more like the amateur punk drummer he is some nights than the landscaper/gardener by which he makes his living all day. He’s narrow-chested and thin-limbed, clad in baggy waist-long black shorts and a band T-shirt. He wears black socks and black low boots, and a black tractor cap turned backwards so his stringy long hair bells out below it. He’s pushing 40 but his skin looks older. This is mostly due to his chronic sun-aggravated eczema.

We’re all out of our houses at times, fair game for the reporters. One or the other of Jason’s parents makes a dash in their Prius to the market or something, but mostly that family is staying inside. John resembles Dennis-the-Menace’s father through the windshield of the car; you can make out the shape of his head and glasses. Carol just looks short and blonde.

No one but the principals will ever know for sure what happened. Jason will enter intensive therapy. Bertilda will be taken away for evaluation which will lead to assisted living. She will not be happy with this result but we neighbors will be. We always wondered how we’d get her out and what would happen with her place. Anne and Jerry and even I will work with Social Services to clear out her hoard and list the condo for sale, but that won’t happen for months yet, and not till after we all give up on her unresponsive (maybe dead) brother.

But I’m going to do my own addition. I’ll put together the lovely singing I sometimes heard at night, and attributed to Jason, with the occasional harmony I caught in a tongue so guttural it must have been German. Personally, I think what Jason and Bertilda had was consensual, and I’d be fascinated to learn how it went wrong.

I haven’t mentioned the neighbors on the other side of Anne. That’s probably because Ken and Jill are quiet, and normal, and not noteworthy. They live in a medium-sized house on the north side of the three-unit condo arrangement that houses Anne, Bertilda and Jerry. From where the creek turns into our back yards to where it plunges under the street, the order is my place, Anne’s, and then theirs.

Ken and Jill are remodeling. Their kids have left the nest and they’re adding a deck and reducing the number of bedrooms from four small to two big and a home office. They’re also having some sewer work done.

So there’s a portable potty and a pile of gravel on the edge of their driveway. That driveway abuts Anne’s place right at the edge of the front yard. The yard is common condo area, but crazy Bertilda thinks it’s hers because she sometimes weeds there.

Anyway, I’m writing about the gravel. It’ s mostly in a neat pile, on a big tarp of black plastic, on the concrete end of Ken and Jill’s driveway where that meets the sidewalk. Over the weekend we had some wind. And maybe a few dogs who trod on the gravel pile. Bits of it have migrated off the tarp.

Well, Bertilda has been sighted out there more than once, long handled shovel in hand, relocating stray gravel back onto the pile. She goes at like a fireman stoking the burner in a steam engine.

The first time was two days ago, mid day. She grumbled at me about the “damn neighbors – the noise is bad enough – now we get to deal with their fucking garbage.”

Then it happened this evening. Just before dark I headed out to the sidewalk to meet a friend for a walk and dinner. Bertilda seemed happy at her shoveling. She acted like it was a regular task of hers and asked me, pleasantly, if I was going to work.

I ran into Anne when I came back from dinner and mentioned the latest idiosyncracy. She told me I had seen nothing, yet. Ken and Jill have received regular complaints from Bertilda about noise and dust (the work is quiet and neat, as far as I can tell). This morning Ken answered the doorbell to find a flaming paper bag of cat shit on his front porch. He’s not calling anyone, but he’s positive about the perpetrator.

Anne heard the story from Carol, Jason’s mother, who lives with her son and husband on the south side of my house. The creek doesn’t run through their yard, but down the side between them and me. Carol and her husband are in the psychotherapy field, and totally dedicated to raising their not-very-normal boy. Jason is at least on the spectrum. Personally, especially after the fire, I think the kid has the marks of a junior psychopath.

Carol is the Mother Teresa around here. She thinks Bertilda deserves nothing other than compassion and accommodation. Then again, she’s never been the target of Bertilda’s hostility. At this point Bertilda acts like Carol is her best friend.

So at the same time that Carol filled Anne in about the cat shit incident, she told Anne that she had taken up Bertilda’s offer to tutor Jason in German. The two of them seem to get along together, she explained, and Jason can use any help he can get. Surprisingly, Bertilda seems able to teach. Even Carol joked that it might keep her off the streets. We’re all cautiously hopeful. Everyone is a little more comfortable with Bertilda walking away from the diminishing pile of gravel.