Neighbor Danger

Everything changed when he moved in next door. Leon, is a registered sex offender and after he served his time, he moved home with his mother. Ida. I'm not sure Ida was thrilled about having him home again. She almost never talked about him--her only child. And while I assume she visited him in prison, we never talked about it. Ida recently retired. She worked in the lunchroom at Dayna Middle School where my children go to school.

I want to go on record as saying that I am not thrilled about having a registered sex offender living next door. Especially when I have children in my home. But I have to wonder whether all the furor the neighborhood and community has raised and is raising isn't almost as damaging to my children. The newspaper have run a story almost every day for a month. While the first story might have been aimed at informing the community---the others provided relatively no new information and served almost entirely as fodder for the flames of outrage.

There have pickets at city hall (three blocks away), around the Middle and Elementary School, and at Ida's house. The overflow has even entered my yard. My answering machine is full of messages from reporters wanting to interview me. My children are losing their friends. Their parents won't let them visit because we live next door to a sex offender.

Ida almost never comes out of her house--her garden is a mess. No one will leave her alone. Last night, at around 10:30, I heard a knocking on my backdoor. And I was startled! I'm never startled. Not in my own home. Not until recently. I can't say what caused it whether it was having a registered sex offender living next door or whether having all those lunatic reporters and community activists stampeding all over my yard and my privacy. I sat up in bed and listened. The knock came again, it was Ida. "jenny are you up?"

When I let her in, she looked horrible. She'd aged ten years in just a few weeks. "I just need to talk to someone," she said.

I knew she did. But wondered why it needed to be me. This whole thing was already the elephant in my life and I was still trying to navigate my way through this--for myself and more importantly for my kids. Later, it occurred to me that she came to my house--not because I am such a fountain of wisdom, not because I'm her closest buddy--but because I'm her closet neighbor--and she couldn't take it any more.

" I don't know what to do anymore. I love him. He's my son. I hate what he did. And I'm scared Jenny. Scared all the time. Scared he'll do it again. Scared someone will hurt him or me. I hate this. I want him to go away. I know that's terrible. I'm terrible." She was sobbing now, her head crumbled on the table. I didn't know what to say--so I didn't say anything. I reached over and took her hand and squeezed it, but I didn't say anything.

I wanted to say, it would all work out, that everything would be okay. Because frankly, I like it when folks say that to me, even though I know they are lying. But I couldn't say that to her, I don't know why. Finally, she pulled herself together and I poured a cup of coffee---If I'd really given it any thought I would have made tea instead--so I probably kept that old woman up all night. We talked about a lot of stuff that night--but not the stuff you'd think. We talked about my kids, about our yards, and how we'd have to pave them over now that the media had destroyed them. We talked about books. The books we'd read, the books we were reading.

It was after midnight when she left. She was going to the grocery store, she said. It's the only time she can go when she isn't pestered by folks. We hugged when she left and I told her to come often. I'd leave the back porch light on for her.

Leon has been living next door for three months now. The reporters have gone home for the most part--unless some kid goes missing or there is another registered sex-offender due to be released from prison. Our lives are a new kind of normal. My children stop asking if friends can sleep over. They have more fear than children have to have at this age.


I wonder what will happen to Leon when Ida dies. I wonder how long he will wear the electronic monitoring device and if anyone is even watching. I wonder why, after all these years in this house, I've had to start locking my doors.