Not nearly as irritating, though, as her practice of turning on the light Ricky had mounted for baseball games. At two or three in the morning, our bedroom would suddenly be flooded with light. When I tried to talk to her about it, she flipped me the bird and slammed her front door in my face.

The next day, on my front lawn, I found a pile of dog droppings so large, it could have been collected from a kennel. The war, it seemed was on. Thinking of her gesture at the door, I decided to buy a bottle of herbicide.

On the next trash day, my husband put the trash out. From my kitchen window, I could see that the lid was propped open. I walked out to the curb, and sure enough, there were extra bags of trash in our container. Consumed by curiosity, and ready to prepare for a little payback, I surreptitiously pulled the two Nabbit bags out and took them to the backyard.

Donning my trash-searching outfit again, I began carefully removing items from one of the bags. Most of the garbage was food waste that could go directly into a new bag. That done, I studied what remained, paying more attention to the contents this time. I began to know Nola Nabbit.

She smoked Winston filtered cigarettes and whatever she rolled up into ZigZag cigarette papers. She drank a variety of budget beers, and had polished off one bottle of cheap white table wine. She had been late on her mortgage payment this month. She drank a lot of coffee and her family ate a lot of fast food. She had been to see a podiatrist, and apparently hadn’t paid him on time. She had been invited to a wedding. She had received a reminder card for Daisy’s next dental appointment.

She had thrown away a pair of medium black stockings with a run in them, and replaced them with another pair of the same expensive brand. Apparently, a good pair of stockings were important to her. Objectively, I had to admit that Nola had nice legs. She knew it, too.

She had written notes while on the phone, mostly first names, but on one sheet, a misspelled reminder: “Pay $30 by the 10th to Ricky’s psichologist.”

A list caught my eye. Stained with coffee grounds, I could still make out its title: “Ruls of the House.” Beneath that,

1. Chors must be dun befor you play ball.

2. No going out at nite w/out teling me were you are going and who.

3. Crewfew is at ten.

4. No lies.

Braking of ruls will be delt with.

I stared at the list for some time, thinking of all the parents whose children become impossible strangers. Even Nola, poor example that she might be, had struggled with this problem.

My curiosity was stronger than my sympathy. I opened the second bag. It was from Daisy’s room. Here was scratch paper with seventh grade math problems on it, and several false starts on a report on California Indians. There were notes from a Bible study class on Corinthians. (In her neat printing: “Now comes a time to put away childish things…”) Hidden in some of the wadded up sheets of notebook paper were foil candy wrappers. I pictured a terrified Daisy sneaking chocolates from a hidden candy-sale canister, finding some solace in forbidden sweetness.

At the bottom of the bag was a letter:

Dear Cathy,

Sorry we can’t come to the wedding. There is big trouble with Ricky. Mom took money he had been saving and paid for a window he broke. It made him mad, and you know Ricky. He robbed our neighbor. He’s done it before but this time I think he will be in jail a long time. I know what he did was wrong, but I will miss him so much. He makes me laugh.

I guess I shouldn’t be writing sad news to someone who is getting married.

The letter stopped here, and I imagined her suiting action to word, discarding this letter and writing a happier one. Living in that household, what could she possibly write?

I sat there in the winter sun, staring at the letter for a long time.

I gathered the Nabbit’s trash together and put it in a new bag. I took the bag out to the curb and shoved it down into our container. After that day, my husband always took the trash out. I made room for whatever the Nabbit’s brought our way.

The Suburban Avenger was laid to rest. I put away childish things.

Mea Culpa

It was going to be my turn next, and I should have been thinking about my sins, but I never could concentrate on my own sins-big as they were-once Harvey started his confession. I tried not to listen, but Harvey was a loud-talker, and there was just no way that one wooden door was going to keep me from hearing him. There are lots of things I’m not good at anymore, but my hearing is pretty sharp. I wasn’t trying to listen in on him, though. He was just talking loud. I tried praying, I tried humming “Ave Maria” to myself, but nothing worked. Maybe it was because Harvey was talking about wanting to divorce my mother.

It was only me and Father O’Brien and Harvey in the church then, anyway. Just like always. Harvey said he was embarrassed about me, on account of me being a cripple, and that’s why he always waited until confessions were almost over. That way, none of his buddies on the parish council or in the Knights of Columbus would see him with me. But later, I figured it was because Harvey didn’t want anybody to know he had sins.

Whatever the reason, on most Saturday nights, we’d get into his black Chrysler Imperial-a brand spanking new, soft-seated car, with big fins on the back, push-button automatic transmission and purple dashlights. We’d drive to church late and wait in the parking lot. When almost all the other cars were gone, he’d tell me to get out, to go on in and check on things.

I would get my crutches and go up the steps and struggle to get one of the big doors open and get myself inside the church. (That part was okay. Lots of other folks would try to do things for me, but Harvey let me do them on my own. I try to think of good things to say about Harvey. There aren’t many, but that is one.)

I’d bless myself with holy water, then take a peek along the side aisle. Usually, only a few people were standing in line for confession by then. I’d go on up into the choir loft. I learned this way of going up the stairs real quietly. The stairs were old and wooden and creaked, but I figured out which ones groaned the loudest and where to step just right, so that I could do it without making much noise. I’d cross the choir loft and stand near one of the stained glass windows that faced the parking lot and wait to give Harvey the signal.

I always liked this time the best, the waiting time. It was dark up in the loft, and until the last people in line went into the confessional, I was in a secret world of my own. I could move closer to the railing and watch the faces of the people who waited in line. Sometimes, I’d time the people who had gone into the confessionals. If they were in there for a while, I would imagine what sins they were taking so long to tell. If they just went in and came out quick, I’d wonder if they were really good or just big liars.

Sometimes I would pray and do the kind of stuff you’re supposed to do in a church. But I’m trying to tell the truth here, and the truth is that most often, my time up in that choir loft was spent thinking about Mary Theresa Mills. Her name was on the stained glass window I was supposed to signal from. It was a window of Jesus and the little children, and at the bottom it said it was “In memory of my beloved daughter, Mary Theresa Mills, 1902-1909.” If the moon was bright, the light would come in through the window. It was so beautiful then, it always made me feel like I was in a holy place.

Sometimes I’d sit up there and think about her like a word problem in arithmetic: Mary Theresa Mills died fifty years ago. She died when she was seven. If she had lived, how old would she be today, in 1959? Answer: Fifty-seven, except if she hasn’t had her birthday yet, so maybe fifty-six. (That kind of answer always gets me in trouble with my teacher, who would say it should just be fifty-seven. Period.)