I used to mow lawns: ours, and Chester's rental place.
I was pushing the mower over some spindly albino grass clumps between our side yard pines when Chester scared me by tapped me on the shoulder. I had in earplugs.
He was a white-haired man, wearing an eggplant-colored button down shirt and a turquoise bolo. I could see his 4 X 4 idling in the street over his shoulder.
He explained that he needed someone to tend the yard of a property he'd just bought in the neighborhood, on Tingly Street.
'Twenty dollars an hour,' he said, as he handed me his business card. My dad at the time was giving me fifteen.
My parents were happy that I was happy to take on this after school job. I was saving every cent I earned for a video camera.
I knew exactly where Chester's property was, passing it every morning and every afternoon on the school bus. Its windows were boarded, except for two small square attic ones. Victorian in aspect, its white paint was flaking away from the wooden siding and it had a wide wrap-around porch. In the small yard was a garage collapsed to the right and a couple of old deciduous trees. In the wild lawn grew amaranth and milkweed.
The first day I mowed there, it was right after school. The house looked as soulless and vacant as ever it had. It was a gray day and I felt ill-at-ease on the property with my senses muffled by the sound of the mower. My eyes drifted up to the attic windows from time to time to observe what looked like a wispy woman's shadow swaying back and forth, back and forth.
I told myself it was just the reflection of the oscillating tree branches.
It looked as if it might begin to rain and I had a shuddering sensation that I was being watched. I pushed and pulled the mower over the long grass and weeds in nervous haste.
Removing some branches from my path, I started to toss them next to the dilapidated garage when I was surprised to find a small old woman sitting there instead, hands around her knees, calmly watching me. She motioned with her finger for me to come closer to her. I cut the motor, relieved that the source of my uneasiness was only this humble staring crone. She asked me if I was ready as she stood up, revealing a voice rich in kindness.
'Ready for what?' I asked.
'Ready for your Tollhouse cookies,' she said, 'come along inside.'
I followed her white chignon and long, black, victorian skirt hanging from her thin body toward the house.
Stepping over a door lying on the porch, she told me to watch my step, the place was quite a hovel.
I could barely see a thing. Once my eyes adjusted somewhat, I understood that she'd lit some candles in the kitchen and we were following their glow. I nearly fell on dusty boards and papers, rotting throw rugs, rusted metal tools, and what looked like canine jaw bones. My lungs suffered with each stale breathe I took in and finally sat down at an old kitchen table.
Pulling my t-shirt away from my mouth and nose, I asked her if she was sure she was supposed to be moved in yet.
'You know, it's funny,' she said while she scurried around the kitchen,'there's no electricity here, and you wanna know what else? I found a dead cat behind the stairs.'
She presented me with a plate of cookies.
Thankfully, I heard the hush of rain starting to fall and a distant rumble of thunder.
I excused myself, bounded out of the maze of debris and ran home pushing the mower in front of me.
Chester called the following week. He wanted to know why I had left his lawn half-mowed.
'You gotta finish it soon,' he insisted, 'There's a family movin' in next week.'
'You mean an old woman who's moving in?' I asked.
'No, it's a family.'
'Well, Chester, there's an old lady living in there now!'
'Impossible.'
'I'm telling you! She made me Tollhouse cookies!'
He was confused. I was too. I finally had to admit to myself that I had interacted with an apparition, it being the only explanation.
I watched the new family move in. There was a fat mom and dad, a neglected mutt tied to a tree, a daughter with a mass of tangled black hair, and a Kool-aid stained son.
I asked them if they'd seen a hag around, described her, but they didn't know what I was talking about.
Of course, I stopped mowing there. Even the idea that while I mowed, the new girl would be braiding her Barbie's hair on the porch steps, her idiot brother spinning in the yard didn't console me.
It was two years later that I was at the state fair with my boyfriend. It was a warm night and the floodlights gave the vulgar crowd a haloed outline. We were shooting hoops to win a ridiculously creepy synthetic plush toy when I noticed under a tent across the dusty alley, the face of that old woman. I shot the basketball askew and walked over to the individuals obscured under the tent shadows. It was indeed the old woman whom I had met before. It was evident that she was with a group of lunatics on their annual outing to the state fair.
