Mom sighed. “ ‘Can I help you?’ Really, Angie?” She brushed past Mo and wrenched open the door. She hit the button on her Taser again. “You’re on private property!” Mom shouted. “You ain’t never met nobody like me—” She stopped short.
“What?” I asked anxiously. “What is it?”
She stepped out onto the porch, her Taser crackling in the dark. “There’s nobody here.”
“What? No,” said Mo, rushing outside. “I saw somebody.” She quickly steered Mom back inside and closed the door, locking it. “Maybe we should call the police.”
Mom shook her head. “Do we want to do that? Do we need to? We see all kinds of weirdos back home.” She held up the Taser. “I can handle this.”
“We’re new,” Mo reminded her. “We have no idea what kind of weirdos they got up here. Could be nothing to worry about, could be everything.”
One of the handful of times I had actually seen Mo call the cops was right after she witnessed a car swerve off the road and hit a guy on the sidewalk. She was trying to get an ambulance, but the cops showed up and made everything so much worse than it needed to be. She avoided calling them unless it was absolutely necessary.
“She was there, and then she was gone,” Mom said. “She disappeared.”
“People don’t disappear, Thandie.” Mo sat on the couch, massaging her temple. “I saw somebody and so did Bri. Maybe she ran off when you came out of the house screaming like a banshee.”
“I wasn’t screaming,” Mom said. She looked at me. “Was I screaming?”
“Define ‘screaming,’ ” I said. “Your outfit was probably what scared her off.” She was covered head to toe in the salve I’d made. Her ugly leather house shoes with the heel folded down were sliding off her feet as she shuffled around the entryway. Her droopy red bonnet topped off the terrifying ensemble.
Mom looked down at her outfit, paused, then shrugged like she knew I was right. “Okay. Maybe I scared her off, but who was she, Flo-Jo? She was gone.”
I found a non-emergency number for the Rhinebeck police department online and handed my phone to Mo. We waited for almost an hour before the doorbell rang.
Mo hopped up to answer it and I grabbed the pile of paperwork Mrs. Redmond had left with us to show that that we were allowed to be there. Mom set down her Taser, then took to pacing the floor.
Mo led a tall woman into the front room. She wasn’t wearing a uniform, but had a name badge hanging from a lanyard around her neck. She was put together—black slacks, button-up, and a blazer—and had a walkie-talkie clipped to her belt. “I’m Dr. Khadijah Grant. I run the civilian Public Safety Office here in Rhinebeck. How are you all this evening?” When she caught sight of Mom she bit back a smile.
“We’ve been better,” Mo said. “Public Safety Office? So, you’re not a police officer?”
“No, ma’am,” Dr. Grant said kindly. “I’m a licensed social worker, and my department handles incidents called in on the non-emergency line.”
“I have a Taser,” Mom said, pointing to the coffee table. “Just so you know.”
Dr. Grant glanced at her, her smile like a mask. She probably used it to put people at ease while she observed everything around her. She’d already spotted the Taser. “As long as you aren’t planning on zapping me, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” Mom said. “But I’m glad I have it. Took y’all a while to get here.”
“I apologize,” Dr. Grant said. “We’ve recently begun defunding the local police department. Several officers have proven themselves to be more of a problem than an asset to the residents here. As such, we’ve cut back the number of officers on the force and diverted funding to programs that better serve the community. My department acts as a buffer between what’s left of the police and the community to ensure everyone’s safety.”
“Well, damn,” Mom said. “Sounds like y’all are ahead of the game out here in the sticks.”
“I’d like to think so,” said Dr. Grant. “No one has lived at this address for a while, so we don’t have anyone on regular patrol this far out. I’ll make sure we add a trained community patrol partner to the route. You have my word.” Her expression turned to one of concern. “Dispatch said you had a prowler?”
“Yes,” said Mo. “Someone was standing in the driveway. They took off when we opened the door.”