Neighbors
I hated leaving them. They pressed their noses against the window as I stood outside on the porch. I drew smiley faces and hearts on the iced panes for them. I rarely went out on school nights, but I had promised my student Chelsea that I would attend her basketball game. I buttoned my peacoat and waved goodbye to my sons.
As I walked towards my car, a guttural shriek shattered my eardrums. I looked up and saw Janine sprinting towards me, arms flailing. I froze. I should have run up the steps, called for James. Instead, I dropped my keys, barely hearing the metal hit the asphalt. Janine squeezed my shoulders and shook me, but I felt nothing. I only saw her breath fog between her face and mine – my ears deaf to her screams. I only saw her eyes – her wild green eyes.
Then, Janine stopped. Her arms fell to her side. We stood facing one another in my driveway as I watched her tears slide. She wore only a nightgown and slippers, no coat. I knew what she would say before she said it. She leaned towards my right ear and whispered, “He’s dead.” Her body collapsed into mine. I held her until the police arrived.
When James and I moved to the neighborhood five months ago, we nervously rang each doorbell, introducing ourselves and our two boys. I watched my husband extend his hand to each homeowner, proud to be joining their ranks. Two of the families didn’t even twitch as they looked us over – my white skin a stark contrast to my husband’s and children’s. The rest of the neighbors – all white – seemed startled. But, I anticipated the judgment. The stares. I had hoped moving back to the Philadelphia suburbs would result in more acceptance, but sometimes 2019 felt more like 1959.
After an exhausting Saturday up and down the block, James and I decided to skip Janine’s house, even though we didn’t yet know it belonged to her. The two of us had gossiped about her unkempt yard, the unmowed grass, the commotion inside. A month after moving in, we first heard them. Windows wide open, we let the September breeze cool our skin after a humid summer. But, with windows open, we had no barrier. Janine’s grown son Marcus berated her. She begged. I wanted to call the police, but James tilted his head and looked at me incredulously. “Jen, I don’t call the cops. Come on!” I felt foolish for even suggesting it. Luckily, someone else on the block called instead. I hid behind the curtain and peered out the window. James put his arms around my waist and pulled me away. “They’re white. Nothing’s gonna happen.”
James, however, was only half right. On Halloween, my boys and I met Janine and Marcus. In plastic chairs and bowls filled with Skittles, mother and son greeted us with smiles. My oldest Michael first vocalized our sameness: “Mommy, she looks like you, and he looks like me and Matthew.” I smiled and rubbed his back through his Black Panther costume. Like Michael, I felt comforted by this, but then my eyes met Marcus’. He looked lost. Distraught. I tried to shake the cries I had heard from Janine’s house over a month ago, but I couldn’t.
A week after Halloween, I supervised my boys on their bikes. Even with training wheels on both two wheelers, I bounced on the balls of my feet, ready to help up Michael or Matthew if they hit the ground. I tried to say hello to Janine, but she paced back and forth on her driveway with her head down, chain smoking three cigarettes in twenty minutes. When she crushed her last butt with the heel of her boot, she walked across the street towards us. She began the conversation as if we had already been talking for hours. “Marcus is off his meds again.” I waved her away from the boys, not wanting them to overhear whatever Janine wanted to share. After an hour, though, I knew everything. Marcus’ dad has schizophrenia, and Marcus does too. Janine’s ex left over a decade ago, but she worked two jobs to ensure that Marcus didn’t have to. Her son sporadically took classes at the community college. He liked video games and going to the gym. But, when the hallucinations happened, Janine had to bear them alone. I mostly listened or swatted her hand as she reached for another cigarette. Somehow I felt comfortable enough to do this with her. I offered ideas, like a visiting nurse or hospitalization, but Marcus had rejected all help. Now, he had a heightened sense of anxiety and paranoia. When she saw Marcus’ car pull up, she looked like a teen caught sneaking out. She darted home, shouting a nonchalant “thanks” over her right shoulder. I must have looked stunned because Michael and Matthew pedaled over and asked what was wrong. I shook my head and took them inside for a snack.
I didn’t see Janine throughout the holiday season, but, once a week, the police arrived at her house, usually around one or two in the morning. Marcus’ outbursts scared the neighbors. He was never taken away in handcuffs, but he did seem to be unraveling, at least that’s what The McMillan’s told me and James at Friendsgiving. Janine and Marcus’ life became the focus of each conversation, but, as each couple began to speculate about the neighbors, I excused myself – “Bathroom!” “Wine refill!” or “Texting babysitter.” I wanted to protect Janine and her secrets. I knew I didn’t owe her anything, but our sameness connected us. We were two white women raising black boys in an unaccepting world.
On New Years Eve, Michael and Matthew had miraculously made it to midnight. James had pumped them with sugar after dinner and then encouraged them to stay awake so all four of us could bang pots and pans on the porch to officially welcome 2020. The boys wiggled and danced and clanged my kitchen utensils for ten minutes straight. I saw Janine peek out her front door and smile. That was the last time I saw her until the night Marcus died.
Two days before his death, it snowed. Not enough to warrant a day off from school or to even build a snowman, but plenty for my boys. After a half an inch had settled, Michael and Matthew put on their snow suits, took out their sleds, and dragged each other back and forth on the front lawn. I sat on the porch steps, hugging my cup of coffee with my bare hands, laughing at my boys’ silliness, the beauty in this simplicity. This moment was short-lived, though. Marcus stormed out of the garage, cursing at no one. Maybe Janine had asked him to clear the snow from the driveway and sidewalk. Maybe he had objected. He walked barefoot to his mailbox and swung the shovel with all of his might. With one hit, he had crushed it, but that didn’t stop him. He continued to beat the metal with his shovel. Michael and Matthew both ran to me, frightened by the sight and the sound, inquiring why. I ushered them both in the house, but, when I turned around in the doorway, I saw Marcus swing the shovel again, this time at Janine’s car’s windshield.
James later told me that he had been on the porch that night. I had forgotten my school ID on the kitchen table, and he had followed me outside, hoping to catch me before I drove away. He heard Janine scream, saw her run towards me, and watched me hold her. That night, he didn’t hesitate to call 911. James bargained with our sons, he told me: “Something is going on in our neighborhood. Everything is going to be okay, but I need you guys to be safe. Stay inside, and watch Finding Dory.” They listened, he said. They had never seen their father’s eyes fill with that kind of dread.
James had given a statement to the two officers that night – one Black, one White. I was insistent. I didn’t want to know how Marcus took his life, and Janine never told me. I rubbed her back as the EMTs rolled her Marcus out on a stretcher inside a black body bag.
By February, Janine left. She hired a moving company to take most of the furniture to The Salvation Army, she said on the phone one afternoon. Everything about the house made her feel broken. Alone. I invited her over for dinner or for coffee, but I knew she didn’t want to be anywhere near the house. I decided that I would call Janine once a week, every Thursday on my drive home from school, but she never answered or returned my calls. She put the house on the market with the “for sale” sign only two feet away from where Marcus smashed the mailbox. No one has made any offers on the house, though. Mostly because of the pandemic.
One night in April, James and I sat on the porch after putting the boys to bed. He poured us each a glass of Chardonnay. We sat in silence, staring at Janine and Marcus’ house. “Do you think we will ever be able to look across the street and not think about that night,” he asked.
I sighed, “No,” then reached for his hand in the dark.