A True Almost-Crime Story

Very pregnant me with Mom, just a week before The Incident

“I’m gonna kill you, and your pregnant wife, and that Jesus you keep praying to!”

So screamed our neighbor Ed late one evening, down in our apartment courtyard.  How did we know he was referring to us? Well, I was nine months along, and we had been praying the rosary aloud every evening. You could say it was a lucky guess.

When I was expecting Sheridan 36 years ago, Steve and I said the rosary frequently. It felt like a form of holy insurance, our repeated prayers reminding (even nagging) the Almighty to protect us and the baby. At the time, we were living in an apartment building in the city.  The wall between units was thin, and as a result we could hear much of what went on with our next door neighbor, Ed (and, naturally, he could hear us).

Ed was a strange one. He was home by day, and at night he had a constant stream of visitors, who only stayed a few minutes each. We thought he might be a drug dealer. We would nod to one another in passing, but that was the extent of our relationship.

One night late in pregnancy, I couldn’t sleep. That was the night Ed picked to host a wild party. By 3 AM we couldn’t stand the noise anymore. Steve went out in the hall, knocked on Ed’s door, then came back inside. That seemed to work: it got quiet almost immediately.

The next night came the threat from the courtyard. We dialed 911; two officers arrived, just as Ed was running up the stairs, armed with a baseball bat. When the police confronted him, he said he’d been at softball practice (at 10 PM. Right). After some prompting, Ed mumbled to us, “I’m sorry.” I was hoping that he’d be arrested. But he was just told to leave us alone.

One officer explained, “We can’t arrest him, because he didn’t actually attack you. He was angry because your husband didn’t wait for him to apologize for the loud party. That guy seems really unstable. You probably should move out.” On that happy note, they left.

I went into labor two days later. All we could think of was a crying newborn baby—if that wouldn’t set Ed off, nothing would. So while I was in the hospital, Steve found a new apartment; we moved that same week. We never saw Ed again.

I think about Ed sometimes. I’ll open the newspaper, half-expecting to read that he had committed a crime (maybe with that baseball bat.) But I never find anything—not even when I Google him. Maybe his explosion at us was a once-and-done event. Maybe Ed wasn’t even his real name. We’ll probably never know.

I still say the rosary when I’m feeling stressed. Only now, I whisper my Hail Marys. Because you never know: somehow, some way, Ed might be listening—Ed, who had showed us, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the power of prayer.

I still pray them. Quietly.