too two am

I used to be used to loud knocks in the middle of the night.
I used to be used to being scared by strange men standing on our porch.
I used to be used to big men asking my husband to step outside and "talk" in the middle of the night. To falling on my knees and begging God to protect my husband as he drove a mentally off-kilter man to his trailer at two in the morning.

But not anymore, not two am this Monday morning.
I am not used to this. Not any more.
Can it please stop?

At least this big man on this Monday morning was a big police man.
And officer friendly had banged on our door to ask if we were doing okay.
And if by chance we had recovered our stolen license plate.

Our license plate. Oh, that.
We had forgotten about it, almost.
It had been stolen two months ago, and we reported it, but didn't think too much about it. We didn't think too much about it, because we thought we knew "who done it."

Right before the stealing, Ben and I had been helping a young professing-to-be-Christian man, sometimes providing work, sometimes providing money and food.

And then, increasingly, we were providing rides to unusual places in the middle of the night. We grew suspicious. How ended he up on our side of town most nights when he didn't own a working car and lived on the other end of town? And what was that smell, that smell always on him in the middle of the night?

Then we picked up another person in the middle of the night. A person weaving, and singing, and crying, and walking in the middle of our street. We picked her up so she wouldn't get hurt and drove her all the way across town to her home. And she had this smell, this smell on her body like our other middle-of-the-night friend.

We finally understood. And we had funded several hundred dollars of our middle-night-man's habit. The last time he asked for help, we offered counselling, offered GED testing, offered things to get him back on his feet and back off the drugs. He got angry. He and his smell never came back. For a month, I didn't sleep well. I kept thinking about him coming back one night with too much smell--too much smell to control. Thinking about my husband being not nearly so big as that man and his powerful smell.

Then our license plate went missing.

I struggled with whether or not to report it. If they take from you your coat, give them your cloak also. But we were afraid of someone using that license plate to hurt people, to make more people take the smell. So we reported.

Two months later, after I learn to stop expecting the smell,
Big-Man-Officer bangs on our door to say,
"I found your plate.
I found it last night.
Do you have any idea who stole it?"

I start to open my mouth,
but he swings his flashlight around,
points it across the street,
across the street at our neighbor's house.

And there it is, our tags on their car.

"I'm going to get it back for y'all."
He says and leaves,
and we see that there are three police cars,
and more officers.

This is the last thing that I see,
because I run to the bathroom,
sick.

We never never never even met those neighbors.
14 months in our house.
We have Christ. We have life.
And we never never never even TRIED to meet them.

It's a grandma. I know that.
A grandma raising her very ill grandson.
With loud and irresponsible grown children
coming and going and coming.

And I am in shock.
And Ben says, she's outside now.
And very angry.
Flailing at the Big Police Man
until another of the many Big Police men
pulls out his gun.
And then she is very quiet.
And they take the license plate
to test for finger prints.

And the three cars, and the non-smelly highly efficient middle-night-police-men disappear to wherever it is they go after they disrupt sleep and life.
And we, we neighbors on opposite sides of the street pretend to go back to sleep.
But we don't.
And I wonder all night
what-is-she-thinking?
How can I know her now?
Now she has a record, a sick grandson,
AND a distrust of the Christians across the way.
Please, Lord, help her sleep,
keep my stomach inside my body,
and protect us both from the middle of the night.

Posted by stephanie at July 26, 2005 03:05 PM | TrackBack