Creep
BY LISA KNOPP
About ten years ago after the Thanksgiving festivities had ended, my son and his partner said they wanted to show me something. Dessert after dessert, so to speak. I hopped in their truck. Curiously, we drove less than a mile from my house to “Carriage Park” Manufactured Home Community. Then, I had a vague fear of that neighborhood – something about old, rundown “trailers,” noisy vehicles, loose dogs, and the certainty among my neighbors and me that the crime rate was higher there than in our neighborhood. Even though I rambled several miles a day in various parts of the city, I’d never walked in Carriage Park.
My son drove up the main thoroughfare, turned onto a side street, and stopped. There, in double lot before us, was a garish hodgepodge of lawn ornaments, a less surreal, kitschier version of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. And like Bosch’s crowded panel, I didn’t know where to set my eyes or how to take in the scene. While I don’t remember any of the specific items I saw that day, I do remember the three of us joking about the frivolous excess, the maximalist tackiness of the place. I asked my son’s partner, who’d spent part of her childhood in Carriage Park, if she remembered when this packed canvas had been blank. “It’s always been this way,” she said. “Full of junk. The people who live there would yell at any of us kids who got too close to their precious yard.”
Since that long-ago Thanksgiving Day, I’ve often walked in Carriage Park, because there, I find what my neighborhood lacks: children playing in yards and streets; the feral cats (each one neutered) that several neighbors care for; diverse tree species (I especially admire the cottonwood, mulberry, and willow trees), and the double lot chock-a-block with bright trifles. Now I can rattle off a long list of items that I’ve seen in the Garden of Earthly Delights. Gnomes. Cherubs. Geese. Rabbits. Roosters. A windmill. A lighthouse. An iridescent gazing ball. A faded flock of flamingos. A plaster man in a sombrero leading a burrow next to a plaster man resting his head and arms on his bent knees, his face hidden beneath a sombrero. There are no pastels in this yard. All the bowling balls are turquoise. Lime green fake ferns clash with the turquoise pots from which they dangle. The butterflies affixed to the house, carport, fence, trees, and on spikes in the ground, the parrots, lanterns, flowers, mushrooms, and whirligigs are bold shades of red or gold or turquoise. The bird feeders are topped with turquoise roofs. A lovely, geranium red, crescent-shaped creature, part fish, part bird on a stake hovers above the feeders. A ray flower the size of a hula-hoop is wired to the chain link fence, both the flower and the fence spray-painted hot turquoise. An American flag stands above it all.
Winding through the yard are green-carpeted paths lined with red, paving stones, reminding me of a putt-putt golf course. But creeping myrtle, a pretty, mat-forming evergreen with dark, glossy leaves grows everywhere else. This adaptable plant that some call “periwinkle” because of its five, phlox-like, purple-blue petals, thrives in shade or sun, spreads through runners, crowds out other plants, and never needs mowing. If you plant creeping myrtle at a six-inch spacing on the side of the garage where nothing else grows, within a year, it will have blanketed the area, slipped beneath the fence, and begun conquering your neighbor’s yard. Some cities, parks, and homeowners’ associations have banned this invasive species.
The lawn art display at Carriage Park probably began with a single item. The creator of this garden then added one after another, acquired from yard sales and garden centers, as well as from friends and family members who never wondered what to bring on gift-giving occasions. Perhaps the curator dreamed of life in a different neighborhood. But when they considered what a colossal task it would be to pack up, move, and set up their earthly delights in a different garden, they chose to stay, rooted, anchored, tethered to this plot of earth.
***
I long wondered about the creator of this sculpture garden. Then one day, I saw an unremarkable woman with gray-blonde hair, strolling through the maze while carrying a watering can. I had so many questions for her. How did this creep of lawn ornaments begin? Was it to express something essential about you — your rebelliousness, extravagance, whimsy, or obsessiveness? Was it a colorful, defiant response to the beige landscape and low, gray skies of Nebraska winters? Was it a symptom of a personality disorder or an unapologetic profession of the “more-is-more” credo? Is this project a deep, nourishing expression of your heart and soul or has it been just enough to keep you from delving into something that could be?
“You have an amazing yard!” I shouted.
The woman stopped and looked at me. “It’s taken a long time,” she answered flatly.
“I pass by here all the time. My name is Lisa.”
“‘Virginia,’” she said.
Virginia! Such a beautiful, old-fashioned name. I was about to ask her which objet d’art she placed there first. But she’d already returned to her journey through the labyrinth.
***
A few years ago, I realized that some objects that I’d assumed Virginia had randomly placed, actually formed a tableau. Next to the two plaster “Mexican” men were two live yuccas and a plaster cactus. Planted in the middle of this scene was the American flag. If the grouping was intentional and recently assembled, what was the creator hoping to communicate in a neighborhood that, in the past decade, had become increasingly Hispanic? But if this tableau predated the demographic shift, it might have been the result of the owner’s attempt to add an international flavor to her garden on the Great Plains. Perhaps there was a narrative, logic, or message to be found in the arrangements of other items, as well. And perhaps there was significance in what stock ornaments weren’t there – a kissing Dutch couple; glaring gargoyles; a sitting Buddha; a bathtub Madonna; Jocko, the African American jockey. I took several photos on my phone, so I could study the arrangements and absences and deduce something of Virginia’s selection process and organizing principles.
As I approached the intersection of Virginia’s street and the main thoroughfare on my walk home, two girls were sitting on the ground near the curb, digging in the dirt with sticks. “Why’d you take a picture of my house?” the older one asked.
“That’s your house?” Perhaps she was Virginia’s granddaughter.
“We live next door. Why’d you take a picture of my house?”
“I like all the pretty stuff in your yard.” My answer seemed to satisfy her.
Once home, I Googled Virginia’s address. I can’t say what I was hoping to find other than that I wanted to know something more about the women who’d created her own plastic and plaster Land of Enchantment. Certainly, I hadn’t expected to find as much about her as I did.
The first facts to pop up were real estate related. Through them, I discovered when Virginia’s house was built, the square footage, number of bedrooms and baths, the monetary value, and the year purchased. From Neighborhood. Report, I learned the names and ages of the current owners: Virginia and “Edward,” both age 74.
But Neighborhood.Report was wrong about Edward’s age. According to his obituary in the local newspaper, he’d died a few years earlier. “Bix” was a veteran of the military, a college graduate, and he’d held several managerial positions. Though Bix and “Ginny” had been high school sweethearts, they’d married and divorced other people before they became couple and eventually married. Of great pleasure to Bix was the koi pond he built in their yard and kept stocked with fish. At the bottom of the obituary was an image of an older man with short, dark hair combed across his forehead, a wide, toothy smile, and a knobby Adam’s apple. There was no mention of a religious affiliation or of clergy officiating at the funeral.
Bix spent the last several weeks of his life in a hospice facility. Ginny fulfilled his dying wish by bringing him home; he died there the next day. I imagine that on their last day together, she bolstered him with pillows so he could see their sculpture garden through the window. If it hadn’t been winter, Ginny might have found a way for them to sit by the koi pond, as they’d done on so many mild evenings. On the last night of Bix’s life, they slept in the same bed. She awakened to find him dead, though still warm. Or had she held him as he died? She keeps his ashes close by in a gold and turquoise urn on the dresser by their bed. Or had she packed his coffin with whirligigs, butterflies, and other grave goods from the garden that would accompany him on his journey into the afterlife and decorated his grave with the geranium red bird-fish? I’m touched by the stories I’ve created about their last day together; I’m uneasy about having mentally trespassed into their private space.
Even so, I didn’t stop searching and imagining. I found the announcement of their marriage license listed in the archives of the local newspaper, along with their ages and address (they were living together in Carriage Hill) at the time of their application. Through various sources, I learned the dates of their first marriages and divorces, the counties where both occurred, the high school they’d attended, the names of their parents, and their mothers’ birth names. Bix’s obituary listed the names of his progeny, but I found no mention of children, children’s spouses, or grandchildren for Ginny.
From the county genealogy website, I learned they type of clerical work that Ginny had done for a governmental agency. At the top of the website homepage is a bold-faced proclamation that “Public information, by definition, is not private.” Was that to make me feel better about myself as I crept on my neighbors, since this cautionary reminder suggested that many others were also creeping? Was it to remind me that someone might be creeping on me?
The facts I’d collected were nothing but brain clutter, as useful to me as a yard full of gewgaws and creeping myrtle. And yet, the more I learned and imagined about my neighbors, the more I wanted to know and imagine. Once I decided to write about Ginny’s and my obsessions, I dug deeper into the research than I otherwise would have. How do you stop creep once it’s begun? How do you stop creep when you’re the creeper? Which do I find more compelling: Ginny or my pursuit of her?
Despite my research, I’ve learned little about Ginny’s character or personality, so I can’t say that I continued searching because I admired her or desired her company. Rather, I continued because I’ve long found it pleasurable to peek into the lives of others. When I was ten or eleven, I was so captivated by Harriet the Spy, Louise Fitzhugh’s novel about an 11-year-old misfit, rebel child who spied on her neighbors, friends, and classmates and recorded their activities in her secret notebook, that I did the same. From my teens on, I’ve enjoyed walking just after dark because as I pass houses with lights on and shades or curtains open, I can observe the presence or absence of books, what’s on TV, and what hangs on the walls, and I can imagine what the lives are like of the people moving within or seated at a table, sharing a meal. Autobiographies, memoirs, and biographies are my preferred reading material because they grant access to the types of people I rarely meet on a typical day – adventurers, saints, iconoclasts, connoisseurs, mystics, martyrs, criminals, inventors, eccentrics, and cultural icons. But surely, if I met any of those into whose lives I’ve crept, whether that of Ginny or the subject of a biography, I’d be struck by the differences between what I know of them based on reading, observation, research, or imagination and their ineffable essence. That, too, excites me.
***
The verb “creep” is derived from the Old English “creopan,” which means “to move with the body close to the ground” like a reptile or insect. This old word is derived from a Proto-Indo-European root that means “crooked.” To creep is to move silently and inconspicuously, while twisting and slithering like a snake. Over time, this verb also came to function as a noun; metaphors spun off from the literal. “Creep” is the skin tingle you feel in response to something scary or disgusting. “Creep” is a person who prowls and stalks. To “creep out” someone is to exhibit behavior that they find frightening, appalling, or unsettling. “Creep” is an undesirable situation that slowly, unobtrusively sneaks up on you. Can creep ever be good?
Usually, creep happens without our permission or awareness of it until the invasion is well under way. When we finally notice the extent of human-made climate change, our loss of privacy, the reach of Artificial Intelligence, the erosion of trust in facts and experts, the shifts in U.S. foreign policy, the efforts to dehumanize immigrants and refugees, and the deepening rudeness and hostility in the language of political debate, most of us are resigned, since the creep and related conquest have become too extensive and established for us to reign in, much less stop.
I also see creep in my own life, both in the long, slow stiffening in my once strong and supple posture and movements and in my waning willingness to follow through on plans great or small. For instance, while I’ve long intended to leave Nebraska, indeed, the Midwest, for some warmer, more progressive Southwestern place, I’m still here. I blame my velleity – the will but none of the carry-through – for keeping me tethered to this place. But, too, the years have crept by so easily, so unobtrusively, that I’ve barely noticed. And so, the house that I’d planned to live in for three years has been my home for sixteen.
Over the years, I’ve acquired a houseful of objects that once belonged to loved ones — my mother’s dark, hulking, memento-filled secretary that takes up too much space in my dining room; my father’s beautiful but outdated woodworking; three antique rocking chairs; three sewing boxes; a piano; my son’s drum set; a pile of hand-stitched quilts; a shelf-full of mid-twentieth century cookbooks; five file cabinets crammed with my teaching and writing papers; my children’s toys, books, stuffed animals, art projects, clothes, and more. I never intended to have the type of house that I’ve always disliked: that of an older person who’s accumulated and kept what they don’t use, can’t let go of, and don’t even see anymore. Perhaps Ginny feels this way about her yard. Perhaps she dreams of mowing a fence-to-fence expanse of Kentucky bluegrass, just as I dream of a Marie Kondo-ized version of my home.
I began snooping on Ginny because I wanted to understand her. But I, too, experienced mission creep. While I didn’t discover anything that revealed why she’d created her wonderland, I did discover facts that I’d rather not know: her credit score (it’s pretty good); her income and net worth (both less than the national median); and that she reports her political donations to a party whose candidates I always vote against. While watchdog groups issue warnings about those devices, apps, vehicles, businesses, agencies, and more that know so much about us, there’s far less concern about the type of privacy invasion I can too easily conduct on my phone and laptop. Stalking someone through their social media, which is, after all, their crafted and curated version of themselves, isn’t as creepy as stalking someone through real estate, people search, and genealogy websites, which contain information which the subject might not be aware of or can’t correct if it’s wrong. Ginny doesn’t appear to have a social media presence. If she did, I might not have turned to these other sites and gone into them as far as I did. While the only identifying information I’ve included here about Ginny are details about her yard, that isn’t enough. She is a private person. Unless I’ve gained information about her by speaking with her in person or by gossiping in person with folks who do know her, I don’t have a right to any of this. I’ve crossed a line.
***
During the past twelve or so years, Ginny surely noticed me pausing (or might she say, lurking?) by her fence and gazing too long, too intently at her yard. Perhaps, she has questions for me. But just as likely, she’s never noticed me, and so, our knowledge of each other is lopsided. Such an imbalance happens easily because of the vast amount of information that one has access to through the internet. But it can come through other means as well.
Several years ago, when my washing machine was broken, I met a man in a laundromat with whom I such had a lively conversation that we agreed to meet for coffee. After leaving the laundromat, he bought and read one of my more autobiographical books. When we met, instead of the slow, mutual revealing I expect and usually enjoy when becoming acquainted with another, he’d interrupt the facts and stories I was offering about my childhood, my loved ones, my career, and my dreams by saying that he already knew about that from my book. Also frustrating was that he talked too long about himself in an effort, I suspect, to create balance, so I’d know as much about him as he already knew about me. But a pleasurable, enlightening conversation involves more than just the transfer of information. Much of the delight and satisfaction is in how you reveal yourself and in how your disclosures are received and in noticing how the other reveals themselves to you and in how you receive their disclosures. Consequently, I found little pleasure in my conversation with the man from the laundromat. Now I discourage anyone I’ve just met from reading my writing until after we’ve become well acquainted. So that we’ll be on equal footing, I sharply limit what I learn about them through online creeping.
***
I imagine Ginny and Bix digging the koi pond and setting the flagstones in place. I imagine their satisfaction as the structure takes shape. They position turquoise swans with gold beaks about the perimeter. They’re delighted when they introduce into their pond the red, orange, yellow, black, and white ornamental carp, each a swimming jewel. Eventually, the fish will eat Cheerios out of Bix and Ginny’s hands. Koi. A Japanese symbol of abundance, prosperity, and good luck.
I imagine these high school sweethearts sitting by the pond in their treasure-filled cocoon, as they often do when the weather is fine. They’re chatting about whether to cook or go out for dinner that evening, how to handle that difficult family member, and where to go fishing next weekend. They complain about and grieve over the changes at Carriage Hill now that it’s owned by an out-of-state investment corporation. So many of their longtime neighbors – military veterans, folks on social security or disability – have been forced out by the new owner’s substantially higher charges for lot rental, utilities, and services, hikes that came with barely any notice. Because the new corporate owner makes it all but impossible through regulations and occupancy rules for residents who can’t pay the jacked-up rent to sell their homes and because those residents can’t pay thousands of dollars to a moving company, they leave their homes behind. The new management at Carriage Hill remodels some homes and clears away others, replacing them with pricier, newly manufactured ones. To me, the park seems safer and better maintained with the new management and residents. But Ginny and Bix don’t know their new neighbors, young families, many of whom speak Spanish as well as English, and so, they don’t find their neighborhood as homey as it used to be. Even so, Ginny and Bix have vowed that no out-of-state robber barons will ever drive them from their sanctuary!
What I’ve imagined is plausible. But there are other possibilities. Perhaps Ginny found Bix to be a miserable old cuss. Though she stayed with him for decades and fulfilled his dying wish, she found his company so vexing that she wouldn’t have sat and chatted with him by the koi pond or any other place, for that matter. Or maybe Bix found Ginny and her devotion to her plastic and plaster junkyard to be tiresome, at times, unbearable. He’d sit by his koi pond only if he could be there alone, his back turned on the bulk of the clutter. But neither of these perhapsings seems right to me. It’s the couple enjoying each other’s company while sitting by the koi pond that seems consistent with what I’ve learned of them and with what I feel about them.
Bix is gone, but Ginny remains. In the winter, she covers their pond with a tarp. But the rest of the year, she keeps it open, water trickling. I imagine her feeding the fish; skimming leaves from the water with a basket; maintaining the pumps and filter; monitoring the Ph levels; draining, power washing, and refilling the pond; and caring for the fish in tanks in the guest bedroom during the cold part of the year, all as a memorial to Bix. But, too, I imagine her wanting to seal up the pond, because it’s too much work for just one person. Even more, it’s too painful to enjoy without the love of her life.
***
Last week, I saw Ginny step out from behind the two, starfish-patterned shower curtains that hide her patio from view. I wanted to say “hello,” chat about the weather, and see where our conversation went from there. But I didn’t. If we talked, I’d have to be on guard not to let something slip that would give her the creeps (“I’m sorry for the loss of your husband.”). If we talked, I’d have to strive to see past what others have said about her, what I’ve projected onto her, and what was actually there. I wished that I could unknow all that I’d learned and speculated about Ginny. But I couldn’t.
I waved; she waved back. Then, I walked on by.
