A Defense

Well but what right did any old passerby have to stare into our front yard? Our yard that we paid so handsomely for, what with the upkeep and the exorbitant property taxes and not to mention the two crape myrtle trees that we planted at great expense which day by day reach for the heavens like slow exclamations? What right did they have over our exclaiming trees? Or to leer over the fence that barely reached our breasts, that stopped no gaze but that of a child or perhaps a small hound? To leer right on through the yard and onto our house, onto our home—God forbid through our windows with the blinds up? Any old passerby, and all those parking cars up and down the block, clambering out with their glances on the way to the coffee shop that the university students flocked to for its late hours, or the two-point-two-child families on walks, dragging dogs, pumping thighs, flaunting privilege— what right? To smear their obscenities all over our house our home our well-earned our handsomely upkept? 

None at all, we decided. 

So the fence needed to go. The impotent, breast-high thing, it needed to go. To make way for something up to the task which our yard and home demanded: to be defended from a world of sidewalk fascists, from agonizing death by a thousand glances. The new fence had to be tall, yes, and hewn of a handsome wood, befitting how much of it there would be. Tall indeed, and a statement piece, a piece for stating all of our truths—because what right? 

Besides, the neighborhood had already gone half to hell in all directions. Up and down the avenue, an incoherence of slobbing architecture and idiotic frills. Not like the suburb where we raised our family, oh no; a far cry from our cul-de-sac—as lovely to pronounce as it was to reside upon, a smattering of decent, respectable homes perched in polite and well-distanced conversation, our cul-de-sac, our cul-de-sac. A shared language, with no strangers stalking by to stab and leer. Oh! would we have liked to see them try. It was only if a child were to wander out of the cul-de-sac, up to the main road where cars barrelled by unimpeded, that trouble might loom—only then, only when, would trouble loom, trouble loom. 

No, not like this neighborhood of lechers and caffeine freaks. This entitled, all-over-the place place—what right did it have to speak on the height of our fence? The means of our idyllic domestic sovereignty? Because really they should be thankful we stopped where we did. We could have built a modern Jericho and been well within our rights, our God-given rights. And yes, no question, it is indeed quite tall. We drew up the plans in a heady state of grim satisfaction. Our resentment; our conviction; our love for our trees; our mourning for the cul-de-sac that we fled shortly after little Jamie tottered out of it and trouble loomed, texting teenagers and a Volkswagen loomed; our love, our unspeakable love: all went into the rising fence. And rise it did, rise and rise, up from the deep, black mulch of everything we’d become.

Well but what right does the city have to lodge three, three complaints against us? What towering entitlement could delude them into thinking that flaccid threats of code violations could cow us? Back us down from our rights? Our rights? Resign us to the ogglers and awfuls? We laughed as each letter arrived, louder as they grew more indignant. What righteous diction could they possibly summon? What divinity could they claim to ordain? Impotent, the stinking lot of it. This was our Jericho; our family and its new, handsome, yes-perhaps-egregiously-tall member that would never waver, never wander away. What right did they have to cut down one of our own? Only God could tread in those airs, and he’d stopped at cutting down one. 

No, the passerbys could pass on by, the neighbors could mutter their claims, each sequestered in their hate. Let the Gauls hurl themselves at our gates, let the hounds bay, the students burn out—why should they be allowed to grow up just to stare? No, no. We will make love with our blinds up and watch our myrtles scratch prayers onto the sky. We will rebuild what was ours, what is and ever will be, ours.