The running girl across the street

  • Last night, I had to finally look out my win­dow after I had heard some­one run­ning up and down the street for about the sev­enth time. The run­ning was spo­radic, and it was flat-footed and art­less, mak­ing a floppy, slap­ping noise as the per­son ran first this way and then, after a few min­utes, that way.

    I looked out and saw the girl next door that we’ve seen often at night. I believe she lives with her grand­mother in the house, but I’m not sure. The girl is dark-haired and over­weight, and she talks out­side at night on the cell phone for the longest time, even now when it gets close to freez­ing at night. Twice now in the last month, we’ve had mul­ti­ple ambu­lances, firetrucks and police cars in front of the house and parked around the side. The first time, the police had two police dogs with them that took them up the street and towards the school. (Not my idea to spy that much, by the way. Clemen­tine was out­raged that there were intruder dogs that nearby who didn’t have the com­mon sense to intro­duce themselves.)

    So there she was, and this time she wasn’t talk­ing on the phone, though I think she did have it in her hand. She was mak­ing a sort of right-angle cir­cuit of her house. She would stand some, then start walk­ing and then sud­denly run — or some­times go from a stand­still to a gal­lumph­ing run — and then go back the other way.

    It could have just been ado­les­cent agi­ta­tion, I sup­pose, or high spir­its. Or even a sort of exer­cise rou­tine. But as time wore on (I went to bed at mid­night and she had been doing it for almost an hour), it seemed less likely that it was any­thing but a drug-thing, some chemically-induced excuse for instinct, intel­li­gence or design that made her act sense­lessly and rep­e­ti­tiously, like a caged ani­mal pac­ing itself to exhaustion.

    It’s not some­thing that unusual, really, and hardly worth a blog entry because I don’t have any­thing inter­est­ing or con­clu­sive to add. I didn’t know what to pray — I had a hard time even remem­ber­ing that I was see­ing some­one in trou­ble. We’ve got­ten so used to the things that seem hope­less, the sto­ries that don’t seem to have any­thing ahead but dis­as­trously unhappy end­ings. I tried to think of Fr. John of Kronstadt’s strong advice to believe in what you pray for. I hope I man­aged it.

    ***

    Follow-up: In talk­ing it over with a friend who has worked as a psych tech nurse, she said it sounded more like a men­tal ill­ness like schiz­o­phre­nia. I men­tioned the cell phone that she car­ries but doesn’t speak to or lis­ten to. “She’s prob­a­bly get­ting instruc­tions from it,” she said. “Unsta­ble peo­ple often seem to have that rela­tion­ship to elec­tronic devices.”

    Lord, have mercy.


    Related posts:

    1. Mean­while, back in France …
    2. 10:09 am — “I knew some­thing like this would hap­pen someday.”
    3. The Sitka Icon (yet again)

    January 12th, 2006 | Grace | No Comments |

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