My wife had taken to calling her “Scuz Lady.” She looked like the kind of woman who would have been homeless had it not been for our neighbor, Earl. Earl, who could be anywhere from thirty to fifty, had lived with his mother until she died and left him the house. Not long after that, he took in Scuz Lady and supplied her with drugs in exchange for sexual favors.

Earl liked to brag; that’s how I knew of their arrangement. I wasn’t comfortable as Earl’s confidant, but it seemed whenever he saw me outside mowing the lawn or weeding the flowerbed, he’d mosey over to chat. He never spoke of Ms. Scuz by name. To this day, I don’t know it. He referred to her as “she” or “her,” and usually complained about her friends or how much her drug habit cost him.

I remember asking why he let her stay with him. He looked at me like I was from Mars.

“The sex, man. The sex.”

All I could think of was, “The disease, man. The disease.”

Despite Earl and Ms. Scuz, we live in the kind of neighborhood that is respectable to the point of boredom, where lawns are kept mowed and bushes trimmed. Mr. Norman, well into his eighties, shuffles up and down the street soon after sunrise, picking up trash and tossing newspapers closer to the front doors. Occasionally, he pulls a small shovel from his back pocket and digs up a weed that dared grow in the crack of the sidewalk.

But, of course, the talk of the neighborhood was Earl and his friend, especially when it became obvious she was pregnant.

“They neuter bitches,” my elderly, churchgoing neighbor whispered to me one sunny morning. Scuz Lady passed by sporting newly bleached blond hair, a cigarette dangling from a mouth stained with cherry-red lipstick and a stomach protruding from her skeleton-like form.

My neighbor made clear her disapproval towards our neighbor by grimacing and shaking her head and tsk, tsking as she passed. Then, she turned towards me to proffer her kindly, Southern grandmother smile, and wish me a blessed day.

We all watched Mz. Scuz’s stomach grow and feared what might become of her and her child. Some of the neighbors considered calling the authorities, but who–child welfare? the police? No one seemed willing to talk with her directly.

As Earl’s new-found friend, my wife encouraged me to talk to him about the danger to the baby her drug habit presented. The next time I saw him, I approached the topic.

“No problem,” he assured me. “I told her she can’t do no drugs while that baby’s inside her. I only let her drink beer and wine and smoke a little pot.” He sounded so proud of himself, I offered no more advice other than my hope that she see a doctor.

“Oh, the doc says she’s doing just fine. Just says to be sure she eats.”

Not long after that conversation, while my wife and I dozed in front of Letterman, we heard a pounding on our front door. It was Scuz Lady.

“Earl throwed me out,” she slurred. “I got no place to go. Could I stay with y’all till he come to his senses?”

“No,” my wife said, standing between her and the front door.

“Just let me have some water, then. For the baby.”

I kept her on the front porch while my wife rattled around in the kitchen. She returned with a bottle of water, a banana, an apple and something wrapped in tin foil. I bet it was the chicken left from dinner. “This is for the baby,” she said. “But you have to go.”

When she left, I locked the front door, listening to the bolt snap into place. My wife reached for her cellphone.

“Who are you calling?”

“9-1-1. She can’t stay out all night in her condition.”