I sneak out of my house as smooth as a cat burglar, and ten minutes later I’m huddled behind a dumpster with Gabe. But no other onlookers are on the 1900 block in the Fairlawn neighborhood. No cops, either.
A few words here about Fairlawn. It’s part of Southeast, and, in my opinion, it is the nicest part. There are some pretty big houses here, sweet front porches, swing sets and seesaws and new cars in the driveways.
“I don’t see anything, Gabe. It’s a ghost town—a very clean, quiet ghost town,” I say. “No cops. No cruisers. No nothing.”
“You’re right, man,” he says. “Wait… do you hear that? I think it’s coming from over there. Come on.”
I follow Gabe as we creep down the block. Across the street, I see an old bent-over woman screaming at a man standing in the open front door. The porch light comes on, and I see the scene clearly now. The man is in his underwear. It’s not a pretty sight. He’s in torn boxers and a Superman T-shirt. The bent-over lady, well, she’s just wearing a whole closetful of clothes in all kinds of colors and states: old, torn, dirty. Both the man and the woman are agitated.
“Let me in or I’ll burn your house down and you’ll burn in Satan’s fire with all the other demons,” the woman screams.
“What is wrong with you, old woman? Why are you going around ringing doorbells at one in the morning? You’re nothing but a crack-headed old hag!”
Then the man shoves her. She stumbles backward. I understand his frustration, but he’s being really rough with her. Problem is, I don’t think he’s going to calm down.
“Get the hell out of here,” he yells.
Now we see the front porch light go on at the house next door. A young couple—she’s in a bathrobe, he’s in pajama bottoms—yells across to their neighbor. “She was just banging on our doors, front and back, screaming like a fool!”
“You know who that is, Ali, right?” says Gabe.
“Course I do. It’s just Screaming Sally. She’s not going to hurt anyone.”
“Probably not, but who would want Screaming Sal knocking on their door this late at night?”
Although I’m surprised to see her in the fancier Fairlawn section, I can’t remember a time that Screaming Sally wasn’t a part of the neighborhood. She was never exactly dressed in rags, but the clothes she wore were old-looking: a big, heavy red skirt that brushed against the dirty street, some sort of bright yellow-and-purple blanket she used as a shawl. In wintertime she sometimes walked around in three overcoats at once.
If Nana Mama and I saw her on the street, Nana would talk to her a little, and as we walked away, she’d tell me, “The woman’s had a rough time of it. You be sure to be kind to her.”
Sometimes I did try to talk to Sally. Usually she was pretty nice. Hell, she was very nice. She’d ask you about school. She’d ask if you were being good to your parents. But then, every once in a while, she’d just explode with… you got it… uncontrollable screaming and howling. Like once, on N Street, she came running up to me and began yelling right in my face.
I saw what you did! I saw you steal that car! I saw you touch that girl! You can’t fool me. You will burn for all eternity. You will turn to ashes like an old cigar butt!
I was terrified, but usually she’d scream and then run away. But I guess this was not one of those nights. Tonight she seems to be on some kind of a bender.
A police car pulls up in front of the house. I think about taking out my cell phone to start filming what happens next. But it doesn’t feel right to record Sally when she’s acting like this.
The old gal makes her way down the front steps and then crosses the front lawn and walks up the steps of the next house over. The young couple there are sort of standing guard behind their glass door. That’s not going to stop Sally. She walks right up to their door and starts yelling in their faces.
“You gotta let me in. You gotta. The cops are here! And they hate me. They’ll shoot me. They will. They want to shoot me. If you don’t let me in, they’ll kill me.”
By now the police officers have gotten out of their car and are approaching Sally and the young couple. I’m kind of worried, especially when Sally starts throwing wasted punches at the two cops, one a young white female officer, the other an older Black guy. But neither one of them touches Sally.
“Leave me alone, you bastards! Kill me. Go ahead. Kill me. Try to kill me. You think the president doesn’t care about me. He does. He does. Don’t mess with me. I know the president. Him and me are friends.”
“We’re not going to mess with you, Sal. We just need you to calm down a little bit,” says the woman cop. And now she does touch Sally, but only to put her own arm gently up and around Sally’s shoulder.
“Aren’t you living over at the Monroe Shelter?” says the other officer.
“No. They threw me out. The scum threw me out,” Sally says. She’s angry. But she’s becoming quieter. She speaks softly. “I was having trouble sleeping. So I started to sing. And then they threw me out.”
All of a sudden, Sally starts crying.
The woman officer speaks.
“I don’t think they really threw you out, Sally. In fact, they were scared when they saw you were missing. That’s why they called us. They want you back. They told us.”
I’m surprised at that. I was expecting more of a fight.