Yesterday afternoon, a junk removal service emptied out the apartment of a neighbor who died almost a month ago. An appropriate metaphor.
Coincidentally, she died on the same date that my father tried to hurt himself two years in a row prior to the intervention. I saw her brought out of the apartment on a stretcher, supposedly still alive with her head tilted back and hooked up to an IV. She appeared dead already though it wasn't verified until a few days later when I was browsing the obituaries. I didn't think to turn on the police scanner online so I don't know specifics.
This neighbor was a townie hick that didn't work - apparently for disability reasons as she was only a couple years older than me from the information I gathered - yet could afford cigarettes and the strength to come outside for a smoke on her back porch and play community watch in synchronization with the MBTA buses throughout the day as she came and went. Smoking on the back porch in a project where smoking was banned by the city, then calling 911 complaining that she couldn't breathe as I once heard over the police scanner broadcast as I watched an ambulance pull up outside.
Many times when this neighbor thought I was beyond earshot, I heard her call me a weirdo in a raspy voice between drags of her cigarette, standing with hunched shoulders as though she was playing tough in the courtyard at Salem High School in the days before smoking was banned. One night as I was heading to the bus stop to go to work, some Latino twink on a moped was visiting her - probably there to buy weed - calling me a weirdo loud enough for me to hear it clearly. There were two reasons I didn't turn around and confront the scrawny bitch. 1. I didn't want to miss my bus and be late for work. 2. I didn't want to do something that could have gotten me arrested or committed, leaving my father alone in the house with Prince Kidneydiddler.
This neighbor had a couple of other hicks in the neighborhood monitoring the bus stops as well, always coming outside and sometimes walking down the street as the buses came and went. I often observed one of them make packie runs - the same store that enabled my father - as I waited for the bus in the afternoon. His gait made it obvious that he was already drunk. More than once, I caught him slugging nips in front of my kitchen window. It didn't surprise me when I heard that he died not too long before my father. They should ban alcohol in public housing.
I'm wondering if it was him that dropped the neighbor's empty medicine bottle in front of my basement window. I learned her name by reading the label. I always assumed that she had been snooping around but maybe she was selling her meds for cigarette money. I don't recall ever seeing her ever walk in the neighborhood beyond her porch.
Or maybe it was her half-retarded friend with the distended belly that lived a couple doors down, another one who waddles around the block in sync with the bus arrivals. They were like Peppermint Patty and Marcie with the hair colors switched. She was always waddling by the bus stop on Sunday mornings when I got home from work after 7 in the morning. I haven't noticed Marcie waddling by the bus stop since Patty died.
Something else that didn't surprise me since her death is that I've seen less police SUVs driving past me while I wait for the bus, something I made a habit of recording for social media. I was suspicious of that, especially after the time she watched me from the porch as she made the sign of the cross. Now she's crossed over, out, and off. Ashes to ashtray.
