The Neighbor From Hell—or at least, I’m pretty sure she’s evil
When you DO NOT “love thy neighbor,” but instead: wish thy neighbor all-bad-things
My neighbor-from-hell owns not one but two houses abutting our shared back fence. So you might say she’s our neighbor-from-hell x2.
I watch her now, idly tending a wayward bush as I eat one of my kid’s Neapolitan ice cream sandwiches on one of my much-needed mommy breaks (while my summer children run around feral inside screaming) and remember the time before homeownership and kids.
Before we figuratively experienced the baptism into hell our she-devil neighbor submerged us under and seemingly held us down laughing.
Man, what a completely horrible time that was…
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“Can you imagine? I couldn’t possibly live in a house next to a little yappy dog,” I said irritably as I peered through the sliding door glass of another for-sale house in our hunt for a home. Outside, a particularly grumpy dog barked at me—his little body fiercely jumping up and down with each exclamation.
The real estate agent who was showing us the house, a squashed lady (who in hindsight matched the yapping and growling dog’s energy much more than ours) tutted and grumbled, “That’s not something you can choose. People move in and out. You get what you get with neighbors.”
I remember feeling annoyance bubble up from my chest in response to her reply, and threaten to leak out into my expression. I attempted to keep a composed face—even with the dog and the agent matching levels of growl, seemingly in my direction.
Shouldn’t a real estate agent be the one attempting to paint pictures of hope and dreams for a potential home buyer, not the one stomping and kicking them over?
But as it turns out, the house we would purchase—with young, starry-eyes full of nievity and dreams—would turn out not only to have one yappy dog (new neighbors did indeed come and go) but four.
And the only neighbor our lot butted up against, that did NOT have loud yappy dogs—or constant cigarette smoke, or blaring music—would turn out to be the neighbor from hell.
When we first moved into our sweet little broken down hundred year-old house, full of promise, the first thing we wanted to do was play in the big beautiful backyard.
Related: When Spring Brings Death Instead Of Life, our backyard had reminded me of The Secret Garden when we bought this house.
Sitting on nearly a quarter acre (something not too common in the area we live in), the backyard was one of the things that drew us most to this particular home. I grew up on eleven acres, so it was my dream to raise my children in the garden, eating tomatoes in the summer and playing chase through the sprinklers.
But just as the kids and I began to live out this dream, an unsettling presence began to make herself known. An older lady, thin with grey messy hair and back a little bent, would coincidentally make her way outside, each and every time we did.
She drew closer and closer to the fence and soon, I could almost see the quiet fire behind her grey eyes between the slats.
This “watching” became regular. And I would “feel” her eyes and her angry expression. It felt as if she was ensuring we knew who was in charge. Ensuring we knew we were under her thumb and she would know if even a toe was out of line. Further, I got the impression that she deeply disapproved of us as her new neighbors—as if the previous owners had known who was in charge here, but we didn’t...yet.
I started looking up fence screens on Amazon, but we were so tight on money (after all the things we needed to do to the house) that it was hard to think about pulling the trigger. And about that very same time, I realized that even when she wasn’t peering through the thin gaps between boards (because she usually was), my nervous system was like a cat’s: hair on-end—looking for her anxiously, waiting to meet her malicious gaze.
“I can’t take it anymore,” I said one night as my husband and I cleaned up the kitchen together. Surprised, I realized I was almost in tears, “The kids notice now. They are even having a hard time playing outside. We haven’t gone out all week, even though it’s so beautiful. I want to be able to play in our own backyard.”
“What’s the big deal—so, she’s some old lady that stares at you guys. Can’t you just ignore her?”
This is my husband’s response to so many things. He’s a neurotypical enneagram seven—and I love that about him and also it can be frustrating.
No—I could NOT ignore this. But what could I do about it?
Soon, things would escalate even further.
The evil-neighbor-lady and the chickens
One of the things I dreamed of MOST when we bought our first piece of land was to have chickens.
Okay, you might roll your eyes but I LOVE chickens. Growing up, I raised them—for pets and not eating (that likely makes all the difference) and showed them in 4-H. When I’ve told people this, they’ve actually laughed and asked me what I meant, as if this was some sort of Midwest fairy tale people say alongside: we use a horse and buggy and don’t have electricity.
Like you can show dogs, you show chickens: for their anatomy, color etc. There are standards of breed and everything. I know, I know—it’s super corny and weird but I loved it. I had little Mille Fleurs and we won everything. That is, until my sister left the coop open and they got eaten by coyotes in the middle of the night.
I haven’t had chickens since. I think I was too heartbroken as a kid. And it was my dream to have them again someday.
One of the first things I set upon doing after we purchased our house was to research buying a coop and chickens. I poured over the details and little laced Wyandotte eggs arrived at our door. We set up the incubator, watched them hatch with the kids squeeling in joy and everything.
But evil-neighbor-lady didn’t like the coop we had put together. Nor did she approve of the clucking little things inside the coop.
I gritted my teeth in absolute anxiety the week after we had moved the pullets into their brand new home outside when I saw evil-lady with evil-husband and a BIG evil camera peeking between the slats. It was pointed right at the coop. And even more incriminating, she wasn’t even trying to hide her pointing arm and finger, directing her husband on what angles to take with this very long lensed camera.
The camera stayed out longer than I was comfortable—I watched in anxiety as it was brought out day after day. But I made sure to do everything I could by the book: looking up the ordinance once again and going through it line-by-line, measuring and when one pullet turned out to be a he—I got rid of him that very same day, before he made so much of a squeak (roosters are not allowed in our city).
But before too long, we had foxes—and a hawk—smashing against the cage, doing everything they could to get inside that coop. And they did. No matter how I reinforced it with the correct gauge or piled pavers around it—they dug and gnawed, even straight through boards.
As if they were possessed.
It was so bad, that they ate almost every one of our chickens. Just like they had when I was a kid. The last remaining two, I sadly gave away to a friend. It was only a matter of time before they became chicken dinner as well. And I didn’t want to find their little bodies in our backyard.
I couldn’t fight anymore. In terrible defeat, I gave up. To this day, I still go out on our deck and imagine our sweet little chickens running around.
We loved them.
And I wasn’t one-hundred percent convinced she hadn’t done some kind of evil seance to summon the wild animals against the non-approving coop. Maybe when she sent the photos—the chicken police hadn’t found anything incriminating, so she took matters into her own evil hands.
Soon, things would escalate even further than this—beyond the tears and blood of my poor dead chickens…
The evil-neighbor-lady and the weeds—of control
Weeds had grown now so tall in the back that they toppled even my husband’s height at 6’1”.
Ahah! At least she couldn’t peak through the slats in the back fence!
We were new homeowners and that meant we didn’t know how do much. One of the things that we didn’t know about? Weeds.
“We didn’t even know that ya’ll had a pond—the whole thing was that grown over.” One of our neighbors once said to us (the only good one we had that moved away).
Apparently, the previous owners had boarded dogs and just let the backyard go. Which meant Midwest weeds. I don’t know what’s tougher and more stubborn: Midwest people or Midwest weeds.
Lambs quarters (I found out from an app in my phone) was growing all along what looked like used to be a very large garden bed lining the back of our yard. It layered out just as thick. We didn’t know what to do because the whole thing looked like garbage.
“You guys should really take care of that,” a family member said to me, his tone laced with judgment as he gazed out on our backyard from the deck—just short of shaking his head in parental disapproval.
I sighed—not just at his remark but also at the giant pile of things we were struggling with at that time. Our life had been falling apart since the move. Soon, my husband and I would be separated. With a baby and a toddler, living in a new place with no support system—that was no small thing.
“I guess I just figured with the weeds, it looks like crap. And without the weeds, it looks like crap. Might as well pick the crap that’s less work,” I replied. He laughed, seemingly surprised at my candor. At least, the judgement was dropped.
But she-devil neighbor did not find it in the least bit funny. Her view from between the fence was blocked. And this would not do. Remember, she was in control.
Soon, we were delivered a warning from the city for the weeds and a threat of a fine in the hundreds that we could not pay.
“How can they fine us for weeds in our own backyard? No one can even see them but our neighbor!” I exclaimed.
My husband handed me the paper, “It says that she reported they were ‘sticking out into her yard’.”
I rolled my eyes. My husband looked at the yard and frowned, “I’ll have to take them out.”
I was furious. It felt like a power play. And she was winning. I suppose I wasn’t that kniving.
He did pull the weeds in that yard. It took him HOURS. And guess who sat with her arms crossed and watched every second of him pulling those weeds with the smuggest, most evil look on her face?
I’ve won, her face said. The smirk was so arrogant and cold—daring us to step out of line again. She won by scaring us out of our backyard. She won with the chickens. Now, she won with the weeds.
I said a lot of swear words that night.
I was convinced that since our move from Colorado to the Midwest, we had been cursed. It was as if a hurricane of almost everything bad that could happen, was ripping through our lives.
The evil-neighbor-lady, the electrician, the tree and the fence
In the time following that fateful weed-pulling day, we would have several other encounters of malice concocted by evil-neighbor-lady:
- An electrician, reporting that we called in about: “A plant climbing up the light pole?” He looked at me confused. “Who’s the name of the person who called in?” I asked—already knowing the name. When I told him, he rolled his eyes and left.
- Her telling me through the fence how she did not like our walnut tree (we didn’t either but the quote was over 5K to take it down) and how she finally had “won” against “the previously people who lived in your house” and they “had to take their other one down.” She scoffed, crossed her arms and nodded as if the universe was hers to authorize and I would see that in due time.
- Our shared fence that mysteriously fell down on her side (which looked like someone had pulled it) and her saying angrily, “Do you know who’s fence this is?” And when she realized I wasn’t certain, went on to tell me that the previous owners installed it—insisting we replace it promptly. That fence ran (and currently still runs) all along the back of our neighbor’s yard all the way down the block. Some time ago, the alley was acquired on our side. And she made sure to tell me (while scoffing) that she should have been the side that got the yard. “Ya’lls was big enough as it was!”
The breaking point
During fence-gate, I finally broke and told evil-neighbor-lady everything we’ve had to do with the house and how we had no money—because none of it had showed up in the inspection:
New roof, new furnace, new hot water heater—“and now our basement leaks. I’m sorry, but we have no money to fix this fence.”
“Ya’ll should sue!” She barked angrily. Maybe then she would get the money she was looking for in order to fix the fence? But I saw her angry gray eyes softening. Did evil-neighbor-lady actually have a heart?
I nodded, “We don’t have the funds for that either.”
I’m not sure what broke me enough to be so transparent to her. I think I was bone weary. My marriage had been on the brink, I had been painfully canceled from my church group, I had no friends, no family—no one because I moved to this God forsaken place and the universe was cursing me. Now I was confiding in evil-neighbor-lady? How low could one go?
Maybe she could teach me how to do seances.
Conclusion: the shoes of my evil-neighbor-lady
My Neapolitan ice cream sandwich is now long gone. The strawberry ice cream part is my favorite. I rub the stickiness between my fingers. The kids are causing a ruckus inside. I hear the screaming and shouting. My much-needed mommy break is at an end.
It’s been years since all that pain and misery. I watch as our evil-neighbor-lady opens the steel metal gate, moving into to her second yard and begins tending some weeds that had long grown over. Some poke out into our side. (Don’t worry—I’ve never reported her).
Between the slats, evil-neighbor-lady confided in me once about this yard. Her tone suprised me. I had never heard pain in her brisk and barking voice before.
When the house next to hers went up for sale, she had purchased it for her son. But he does not live there.
“Sometimes his grandkids come,” she said and I heard the sadness lacing her normally icy words.
What might it be like to have purchased the house next to yours in hopes that you would have your child live next to you and your grand children—only for it to sit empty?
I see her walk over to clean the empty house sometimes.
And the grandkids come play two or three times a year.
She takes all-day before her son and grandkids come, setting up elaborate toys and play sets for them. It takes her days to take it all down and organize the toys. She buys new things all the time for this and recently purchased an additional storage shed.
Just for the toys to collect dust for most of the year and for the house to continue to remain empty.
So she is a she-devil neighbor, but maybe she’s also just a sad lady, who wasn’t shown enough love in her childhood. And consequently, never understood how to share love in return.
How she treated us was unkind and borderline abusive—that was not okay.
And also—maybe I can have some measure of compassion for her pain and understand why she might have done what she did.
At that time, maybe her world was falling apart just as much as ours was.
Maybe it still is—beyond her control.
I’ve seen her walking alone around our neighborhood.
She’s always alone.
And I offer her a smile.
Wildflowers Grow
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I admire your strength and fortitude
Oh my goodness, Alice. That sounds stressful, and I can absolutely relate. I wrote a humorous piece about my experience with a whole cast of wacky neighbors a few weeks back. But it glosses over just how distressing so much of it was. In the end, though, I came to the same conclusion as you. That the rudest among us are often the loneliest. It's rare to find people who are able to extend grace and some understanding to those who've wronged us. ❤️