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wouldn’t believe the things I see.” She didn’t look up from the paper when she said it.
     

 
Chapter Two
     
    Sometimes, no matter where you live, how nice the neighborhood is, or how friendly the people are, you’re bound to hear your neighbors fight. Parents yelling at kids, lovers threatening to kill each other for the hundredth time, so you figure if they really were going to do it, it would have been done by now. Some people get up enough nerve to call the police and hope their neighbors never find out who called. Most folks just try to ignore it rather than get involved. That’s how it probably goes in most homes: just pretend the bad thing isn’t happening and hope it’ll end soon.
    Not at my house. On an August night when it wasn’t hot enough to justify turning on the air conditioning and running up the electric bill (which in Ma’s mind meant no one had fallen over from heat stroke yet), we had the windows open and could hear an argument building next door. Our neighbor was single, mostly kept to himself and rarely had visitors. Being these were often the traits of single men who ended up on the evening news for committing some shocking crime that surprised their neighbors, I’d already decided he was slightly suspect.
    But recently he’d gotten himself a girlfriend, and their relationship must have been based on the kind of passion created by antagonism, because they often made us an unintentional audience for their bickering. The houses on our street sat on half an acre each, some more than that, so it wasn’t as if we were right on top of each other, but still we could hear them clearly. It started out like a loud discussion, quickly turned into an argument, and soon enough, it sounded like our neighbor might be beating the hell out of his girlfriend.
    There was something about a man beating a woman that agitated Ma more than other crimes. It was the thing that made her talk angrily to the TV set when she heard mention of a husband killing his wife during the nightly run-down of all the bad things that happened in Atlanta that day. The other murders, the robberies and corruption, she’d let go by with only a disgusted sigh, but wife-beaters made my mother cuss without apology. Even though she’d told me a million times how a domestic dispute was the worst call for a cop to go on because tempers are high, passions are fired up, and people do things that don’t make a damn bit of sense, Ma headed over there anyway. When I asked her if I should call the police, she said, “I am the police.” She put her gun into her hip holster and clipped it on before she left the house, for which I didn’t know whether to be grateful or afraid.
    These were the times when it was hard for me not to blur the line between my mother and the other woman. When I tried to make the distinction, I could see only my mother going into a situation that might get her killed. It was difficult to see a cop with six years’ experience, one who could kick some ass when she wanted to, according to her police friends. Still, I didn’t see why she couldn’t just call some uniforms to come over and deal with it.
    Bridgette and I ran to her room to watch what would happen from the window. Both our bedrooms were on the side of the house that faced our neighbor’s, but our house sat farther back from the road so his front door was out of sight. We had to listen to it instead, which wasn’t difficult because the neighbor was loud and Ma was loud right back at him. The conversation went something like this:
     
    Ma: Stop beating on your girlfriend.
    Man: This is none of your business. (I remember him being very proper talking, and I think he said something like “This is none of your affair,” but probably not.)
    Ma: Everyone on the street can hear you, so you’re making it everybody’s business.
    Man: So call the police.
    Ma: I am the motherfucking po-lice . (Ma liked saying this, and she could curse like nobody’s business