Spy Pond

The railroad tracks that cut across the street where I lived went toward Cambridge's industrial section in one direction and toward Spy Pond in the other. There weren't many trains that I remember and we used to walk the tracks on the weekend, then cut through to the four lane divided highway and walk back - going nowhere and in no particular hurry.

Sometimes we would catch high school kids necking along the edge of the pond but more often they were smoking stolen cigarettes and reading movie magazines. It wasn't a pretty pond - the banks were muddy and torn up with uprooted trees, littered with trash and debris and the water was cloudy. It smelled of moss and ferns, a damp underground kind of smell that made you think of frogs and snakes and gnarly, mishapen little creatures dwelling in the tangled roots of the trees - evil creatures who preyed on unsuspecting children. I had recently read about trolls who lived under bridges and it wasn't much of a leap to imagine such nasty little things living near the shoreline, hiding just under the water and waiting to pounce on a passing child and drag them off. We walked carefully, brave enough to chance it but mindful and scared enough not to get too close to the murky waters edge.

Now and then a body would be discovered in or near the water, the victim of some random violence by a streetgang or worse, or just someone who had drowned. Kids would flock to the scene, hoping for some opportunity to sneak under the yellow crime scene tape and catch a gruesome glimpse of death. Gangland shootings were not unknown so near to Boston and once a beat up old Lincoln was pulled from the water, containing the body of a well known gangland figure, shot - so the next day's newspapers said - squarely between the eyes and at very close range.

There was danger lurking around every corner, according to my mother. Men with guns, trolls, teenagers on drugs, serial rapists and child molesters, all prowling for children who refused to mind their parents. Stop trying to scare them with such nonsense! Nana told her impatiently, They're good children! But she kept on with tales of the Boston Strangler and the Mafia and the untold evil that was everywhere but only for the children who were disobedient. Think, Nana finally said to me, the impatience having turned to anger, How would this evil know the difference between good and bad children?

I came to believe that in every human dynamic, there must be an upper and lower hand and that my mother, like all good alcoholics, needed to have the upper hand in all things. It gave her some sense of control in a world where she otherwise was controlled by her addiction - it allowed her to victimize others and in doing so she maintained the illusion that she was not the victim of her drinking.

Perception often rules the world.