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       "This ashtray is not my mother's womb.  I don't know why I'm getting so worked up over it," Edith says.  "I just need to throw it away."
       Thank God, I think.  She needs to throw something away.  Her apartment can't hold everything and the fire marshal is inspecting later today.
       "Oh, but I can't throw it away.  I'll feel awful.  Did you know that this was made by HAND in the Philippines?"  I shake my head.  "Not by child labor, but by hand."
       She doesn't smoke and I can't imagine why she has an ashtray, much less one she can't bear to part with.  The ashtray goes back on the end table, right on top on a bunch of nickels she dumped from it a second ago.  The table is just big enough for the ashtray; it also has a yellow phone book on top, a faded beige bra hung from the corner and a red reading light with half its base over the edge.  Nothing has enough room in her apartment.
       "You're so quiet.  Why is that?" she asks.
       It's because I get quiet when one person dominates a conversation.  It's because I don't want to her to start talking about anything.  It's because she does enough talking for three people, and we're the only ones here.  "Nice ashtray," I say.
       "Here," she hands me the ashtray, "you can have it.  I don't know if you smoke."  I don't.  "If you don't, I don't know, you can put change in it or something.  I hope you like it."
       I hate it.  "Thank you," I say.  At least now it'll get thrown out.  I'm doing my work for the twenty dollars she agreed to pay me.  The ashtray is heavy red clay, the cigarette slots look like the size and shape of a child's finger.
       Edith is old and needed someone to pack up a lot of her things then haul them to a storage locker one mile away.  I'm young and I have a van so she agreed to pay me twenty dollars a day for two days.  I thought it would be a good use of a couple afternoons of my winter break; helping my neighbor lady.  I hadn't seen her apartment before yesterday and forty dollars is not enough, but we had a deal.
       Some coins get knocked off the table when she turns back and bumps the edge.  It doesn't surprise me, there's no room to turn, much less walk.  Right now she's standing on a pile of Boston newspapers and a red children's shirt.  Boston is 1,400 miles east and her only daughter lives the same distance to the south in New Orleans.
       "Oh shit!  Shoot I mean" she tries not to swear at the lamp which finally fell, "shoot, SHOOT!" as though shouting and shaking her head will erase the swear word.  Her eyes glance at a crucifix on the wall.  It doesn't matter because the lamp falls on a clear plastic bag filled with what appears to be clothes, I can't tell for sure.  She plants the lamp back on top of the coins and ignores everything else.
       "Look at this place.  The inspector is coming today," she reminds herself every twenty minutes.  Hysterical, Edith, not the situation.  "Today at four."  She sounds beaten, as though when the inspector comes he will wave his hand and she will be forced to live on the streets, just like that.
       She can't stand to throw anything away.  Her walls are lined with cheap wooden shelves packed from corner to corner with papers.  Newspapers, magazines, recipe books, manuals, pamphlets, brochures photographs and anything else she might want to look at again before she dies.  I don't know if she's read everything on the shelves, I doubt it.  For book ends she uses cardboard boxes with a couple sides removed, they all say "United States Postal Service" on the side.
       "Here," she hands me a bundle of at least ten newspapers, "put these in that box over there and label it."  She points at a small post-office box; the kind they let you have for free.
       I balance the newspapers on my ashtray and put everything down on top of a Rubbermaid container.  I stuff the newspapers into the box, they make a crinkling sound because I don't care about them.  "What do you want me to label these?" I ask.
       "Huh?  Oh," I interrupted her rambling to herself, "label it 'Newspapers to scan.'"
       She bought herself a computer and scanner a couple months ago with the idea of scanning everything: streamlining her hoarding habits.  She might not be in this mess, literally and figuratively, if she had scanned everything and then tossed it out.  The fact is; she is too easily overwhelmed by computers.  When I first tried helping her scan at my apartment she kept notes but quickly lost them.  The second time I tried to teach her it was obvious she hadn't learned anything.  She got upset, swore at the scanner, swore at the computer and covered her swearing with louder shouted words.
       "Here," she hands me another wad of newspapers, these are from Colorado, and I put them in a different box while she rifles through her other things.  "You have no idea what it's like having ADD," she says.  "You feel like your mind is skipping between so many things.  I have to...I have to buy clear plastic bags for everything.  I have to be able see what's inside.  Do you know anyone with ADD?"
       "Yeah.  I know a guy," I say.  Three of my friends have ADD or Asperger's Syndrome, which is similar.  I just don't want to hear about her case.
       "Oh, some days it gets so bad."  Dammit.  "I didn't get it until I was older.  That's not common.  I think it's related to my Lyme's."  Edith has Lyme's disease, she got it from a tick in Minnesota.  "It's so...difficult to adjust to something like that when you're my age."
       If I didn't know she had Lyme's disease I would have thought she was just a crazy lady next door filling her apartment with garbage.  I guess she is, but at least I know why she is crazy.
       "Did you finish putting those in something?  They're very important."  Everything must very seem important to her; everything except nouns.  Unless I know where she is looking, or what she's holding I never know what she's talking about.  On top of that my hearing is bad and on top of that she has National Public Radio playing every hour of every day from a different radio in each room.  She has a clock radio in the kitchen, a shelf-stereo in her living room and a boom box in the hallway.  The two bedrooms don't have radios because she doesn't go in them.  They are filled to the ceiling with her stuff.  Even her bed is a dumping ground, or filing platform.
       She can't watch movies like a regular person.  I loaned her "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," and she spent half an hour telling me how Matthew Broderick played a compulsive liar.  That segued into a lecture about her ex-husband who is a compulsive liar which was segue to a lecture about how he continues to ruin her life and spy on her.  He lives in a different, state, Colorado I think.
       "Next, I want you to take care of these."  She hands me a bag, it's the kind of bag fresh produce comes in.  I can see a soup label and some other colorful scraps of paper.
       "Garbage?" I ask.
       "No.  I've been reading labels.  I educate myself so I know what I'm eating."
       Holy shit.  She is literally saving her garbage, at least the newspapers might serve a purpose.  I thought this was something people joked about: old ladies who save all their garbage and live in it.  They're the kind of story you want to hear about, but not something you want to touch with your bare hands.  I don't want to make a fuss so I just put the labels in a post office box.
       "Do you think that's enough?"
       She's being vague again, I don't know what she means.  If I don't say anything she'll start talking again, or forget her question in a few seconds; it's the Lyme's disease.  I don't want to be rude but she doesn't take offense because she's so far gone and offense doesn't register with her brain.
       "I think we should take this to the storage locker now," she says.  She means I should take it to the storage locker.
       "Sure, I'll carry this down."  I know where the locker is, I helped her arrange it yesterday.
       "Don't forget."
       I don't know what she's talking about until she extends the clay ashtray to me, I take it in my free hand and hope she can't read my expression.  It gets tossed on the couch in my apartment before I leave.
       I'm not a neat-freak, but I'll do anything to get outside for awhile.  In fact. part of me wants to stop helping because she really could lose her apartment.  Being in that place makes me grateful I don't live like that.  It makes me want to take pictures, like people won't believe it unless they see it with their own eyes.  In my apartment I'll step over a dirty rag on principal, in her apartment I have to step on clothes because there's no other place to put my feet.
       My refrigerator is cleaned twice a month.  Every two weeks, on Sunday, I pull out all the food, throw away anything which isn't fresh and wipe down the racks with Lysol.  In Edith's apartment the fridge hasn't been opened in over a month because there is a pile of winter coats and shoes in front of it.  She keeps it running and can get to the freezer, but her milk and eggs are stored near the back door where a draft can keep them cool.  I crushed half a dozen eggs when I entered this morning, she didn't mind.
       The storage shed where I've brought everything is protected by a cheap padlock and a thin steel door.  If I were her I wouldn't bother with the padlock.  She's protecting old newspapers and a few tacky baubles.  Things like plastic Easter eggs with soccer ball patterns and yellow cartoon angels on a blue picture frame.  In the frame is a smiling girl's face and the price: 2 for $1.
       Every box and bag she's put in this locker has a sheet of Bounce fabric softener in it.  She says it's supposed to keep mice away and she's allergic to them.  Heaven forbid mice chew up her stuff because then it would be useless garbage.
       I hurry to put everything I brought into her locker.  I'm not eager to get back but it's cold and windy.  Yesterday she gave me a pair of brown canvas gloves.  I tried to refuse but she insisted and I wore my own gloves instead.  Today I wore the canvas gloves just to keep my own gloves clean.
       After unloading the rest of her stuff I hop back in the van.  When I leave the parking lot of the storage lockers I consider driving around to kill time before I go back.  Diligently, I head back to bite the bullet.
       Back at Edith's I stomp the snow off my shoes, to protect the newspapers on her floor.
       "Oh, Brian, you're back.  That was fast."
       I probably could have driven around for awhile, she wouldn't have noticed.
       "I need you to clean this out."  She hands me a decorative plaster box.  The lid is broken off, making it useless.  "My mother made it, see," she turns it over for me and reads what is written in pencil; "'Edith's Originals 1976.'  That was my mother.  Mice got into it so I need you to clean it out."
       "Where is the Lysol?" I ask.
       "Lysol would be too harsh.  It's lacquered, see?"  The outside is smooth.  Under the lacquer is a painting of a summer lake.
       "What should I clean it with?"
       "Ah, um, just use some snow from the porch."  I can't use water because her kitchen sink is filled with dishes and half-eaten food.  Her bathroom sink is under a foot of periodicals, so I don't argue about the snow.
       On her porch are two bags of garbage; proof that she's capable of throwing something away.  She says they're on the porch and not in the dumpster because she doesn't want fruit flies in the dumpster.  I can't fathom her train of thought.  It's too cold for fruit flies to live outside and why is the porch a better place for her imaginary fruit flies.  I roll some snow on the lacquer box and brush it off with the canvas gloves.  I do the same with the inside of the box.
       Back inside she has changed into pajama pants.  "Brian, take a look at this."  She hikes her pant leg up.  "See this bruise?"  There is a purple bruise on her veiny leg.  There is also an arrow which points to the bruise, I think she drew it with a black Sharpie.  "The Lyme's researchers want me to document the bruising.  It's important because these bruises are on my stomach lining and throat lining and the lining of my brain."  It's a scary thought; growing old.  "But I don't have a digital camera," she says with a sigh.
       I think of my digital camera in my safe apartment or the camera in my phone, but I don't volunteer anything.
       "They want me to document how the bruising, um, progresses."  She tells me about how her headaches coincide with the bruising and the bruising on her brain lining is important.  I tune out the rest and instead look at a salt shaker on the window sill.  It is a stout angel with a drum.  I wonder if the pepper shaker is a devil with a guitar.  Thank goodness, she put her pant leg down.
       "I think we should make a clear path in the hallway next," she says.  It's a good idea; the inspector probably can't fly over the clothes, newspapers and an inflatable mattress.  "How should we do this?" she asks.
       I think we should throw it all out.  Maybe burn it.  She seems pretty liberal; I guess recycling would be the best course of action.
       "Hmm," she starts to herself, "let's start by deflating the mattress so it'll fit in the bedroom closet."  The closet doesn't have enough room, but she won't believe that.  "Hold these."  She hands me an armload of photographs.
       She used to be a really good photographer.  On the top is a picture of a couple standing in the doorway of a wooden shack.  His arm is around her shoulder and she is smiling.  They are a pretty young couple captured in black and white.  Not a great a photographer, but her pictures are good enough to appear in dollar store picture frames.
       The next picture is her daughter and it's in color.  This picture could be in a fashion magazine or even on the cover.  I can see Edith's eyes and cheekbones on her daughter.  The rest belongs to the girl's father, who I've never met.
       When she is done deflating the mattress she takes the pictures back and hands me the heavy plastic.  I can't see where I'm walking so I can only hear what I'm stepping on: crinkling paper, plastic bags with clothing and something soft which doesn't make any sound when I step on it.  The only thing I can avoid is the boom box playing NPR.  After I finally make it to the bedroom she starts talking again, but too quiet for me to hear over the radio.  I make room in the closet by crushing a box half filled with Christmas cards from a different decade.
       While I can tell where she is I pull out my camera phone and take a picture of the room.  It has to be seen to be believed.  The bed is barely visible under a dozen boxes which sag in the middle.  There is a child's doll; stained from years of love.  On a desk is the computer and scanner; both are turned off and covered in the magazines and newspapers she had hoped to scan; like they're waiting in line.  The shelving along the rest of the walls are densely packed and bordered with post office boxes.  For a second I feel like I'm invading her privacy, like her ex-husband might do.
       Back in the living room Edith is still talking.  When she sees me she says "Would you put these in the other room?"
       I don't know which room she means so I take them to the room which doesn't have a bed.  This room has a closet which is perpetually open due to the mess spilling out of it: Rubbermaid totes, cardboard boxes and clear plastic bags; all filled with clothing.  She is still talking in the other room so I snap another picture with my phone.  From this room I can see the bathroom which matches the rest of the house.  There is no floor, at least not a visible one.  The bathtub is filled with materials for making flower arrangements and more plastic bags.  I raise my phone and take a picture of that too.
       "Brian, what're you doing?" she asks from the doorway.  She is looking at the phone.
       Fuck.  I don't say anything and neither does Edith.  I feel like a deer right before it becomes highway-venison.
       "That's a fancy phone, is it one of those computer phones, the kind all the kids have nowadays?"
       "Yeah.  I was," I choke on my lie, "texting a friend."  I feel guilty, but I don't delete the picture.
       "Can you go grab the bag in the room?  Bring it here."
       I don't notice that she couldn't be any more vague, but I go: to hide my guilt, to put distance between us.
       She starts emptying a Rubbermaid container onto the floor, no doubt looking for something important.
       In the living room there are a hundred bags, I wonder which one she wants.  Over the radios I can hear her talking to herself about what she found in the Rubbermaid.  I take the phone out of my pocket and hesitate before snapping a picture of the cluttered living room, but I take it just the same; then another and another.  Her mess, which is her life, is captured on a digital memory card and she's not even aware; captured so that others will believe me when I tell them how I had to help my crazy neighbor clean her disaster.
       The funny thing is that she's not cleaning because her place is a mess; she's doing it because an inspector will come and see.  She's happy living in her mess, like it's a replacement for her family.
       The clock on my phone reminds me that it's time to go.  Thank God.
       "Edith, I have to go, it's three o'clock."
       I don't hear anything but the radios.  In the room where she is I find her sitting on a bag filled with clothing, it looks like she's sitting on a beanbag chair.  She is looking at photos and crying.
       "What time is it?" she asks.
       I pull out my phone to check the time, the camera is still operating and pointed right at her, my finger hovers over the shutter button, but before I press it I look at what I'd be taking a picture of.  Edith, sitting on a bag of old clothes, tears running down her face and into her mouth.  Her hair looks like a black and gray peacock which has been hit by a car.  The clothes she's wearing are in the same shape as the apartment, disheveled and the pockets are filled with useless baubles.  I can't take the picture, it's too hard to look at, and I don't want to remember.  "It's two minutes after three," I say.
       "There's money on the counter," she says.
       I fight my way to the kitchen and find a twenty lying on top of an open cookbook.  It's opened to the recipe for soufflé.  When I look at the oven I know she won't be making it anytime soon.  The oven is inaccessible, her milk and eggs are cooled by a door draft.  I wonder how long ago she looked at that recipe.
       I take a picture of the kitchen and get a close-up of the slow cooker which probably hasn't been washed in weeks and then I leave.
       That night I show people the pictures of the crazy old lady's house.  They still have trouble believing someone could live like that.  The pictures don't show what it was like being there and they didn't see Edith crying on top of a bag of clothes.

Description
       "This ashtray is not my mother's womb.  I don't know why I'm getting so worked up over it," Edith says.  "I just need to throw it away."
       Thank God, I think.  She needs to throw something away.  Her apartment can't hold everything and the fire marshal is inspecting later today.
       "Oh, but I can't throw it away.  I'll feel awful.  Did you know that this was made by HAND in the Philippines?"  I shake my head.  "Not by child labor, but by hand."
       She doesn't smoke and I can't imagine why she has an ashtray, much less one she can't bear to part with.  The ashtray goes back on the end table, right on top on a bunch of nickels she dumped from it a second ago.  The table is just big enough for the ashtray; it also has a yellow phone book on top, a faded beige bra hung from the corner and a red reading light with half its base over the edge.  Nothing has enough room in her apartment.
       "You're so quiet.  Why is that?" she asks.
       It's because I get quiet when one person dominates a conversation.  It's because I don't want to her to start talking about anything.  It's because she does enough talking for three people, and we're the only ones here.  "Nice ashtray," I say.
       "Here," she hands me the ashtray, "you can have it.  I don't know if you smoke."  I don't.  "If you don't, I don't know, you can put change in it or something.  I hope you like it."
       I hate it.  "Thank you," I say.  At least now it'll get thrown out.  I'm doing my work for the twenty dollars she agreed to pay me.  The ashtray is heavy red clay, the cigarette slots look like the size and shape of a child's finger.
       Edith is old and needed someone to pack up a lot of her things then haul them to a storage locker one mile away.  I'm young and I have a van so she agreed to pay me twenty dollars a day for two days.  I thought it would be a good use of a couple afternoons of my winter break; helping my neighbor lady.  I hadn't seen her apartment before yesterday and forty dollars is not enough, but we had a deal.
       Some coins get knocked off the table when she turns back and bumps the edge.  It doesn't surprise me, there's no room to turn, much less walk.  Right now she's standing on a pile of Boston newspapers and a red children's shirt.  Boston is 1,400 miles east and her only daughter lives the same distance to the south in New Orleans.
       "Oh shit!  Shoot I mean" she tries not to swear at the lamp which finally fell, "shoot, SHOOT!" as though shouting and shaking her head will erase the swear word.  Her eyes glance at a crucifix on the wall.  It doesn't matter because the lamp falls on a clear plastic bag filled with what appears to be clothes, I can't tell for sure.  She plants the lamp back on top of the coins and ignores everything else.
       "Look at this place.  The inspector is coming today," she reminds herself every twenty minutes.  Hysterical, Edith, not the situation.  "Today at four."  She sounds beaten, as though when the inspector comes he will wave his hand and she will be forced to live on the streets, just like that.
       She can't stand to throw anything away.  Her walls are lined with cheap wooden shelves packed from corner to corner with papers.  Newspapers, magazines, recipe books, manuals, pamphlets, brochures photographs and anything else she might want to look at again before she dies.  I don't know if she's read everything on the shelves, I doubt it.  For book ends she uses cardboard boxes with a couple sides removed, they all say "United States Postal Service" on the side.
       "Here," she hands me a bundle of at least ten newspapers, "put these in that box over there and label it."  She points at a small post-office box; the kind they let you have for free.
       I balance the newspapers on my ashtray and put everything down on top of a Rubbermaid container.  I stuff the newspapers into the box, they make a crinkling sound because I don't care about them.  "What do you want me to label these?" I ask.
       "Huh?  Oh," I interrupted her rambling to herself, "label it 'Newspapers to scan.'"
       She bought herself a computer and scanner a couple months ago with the idea of scanning everything: streamlining her hoarding habits.  She might not be in this mess, literally and figuratively, if she had scanned everything and then tossed it out.  The fact is; she is too easily overwhelmed by computers.  When I first tried helping her scan at my apartment she kept notes but quickly lost them.  The second time I tried to teach her it was obvious she hadn't learned anything.  She got upset, swore at the scanner, swore at the computer and covered her swearing with louder shouted words.
       "Here," she hands me another wad of newspapers, these are from Colorado, and I put them in a different box while she rifles through her other things.  "You have no idea what it's like having ADD," she says.  "You feel like your mind is skipping between so many things.  I have to...I have to buy clear plastic bags for everything.  I have to be able see what's inside.  Do you know anyone with ADD?"
       "Yeah.  I know a guy," I say.  Three of my friends have ADD or Asperger's Syndrome, which is similar.  I just don't want to hear about her case.
       "Oh, some days it gets so bad."  Dammit.  "I didn't get it until I was older.  That's not common.  I think it's related to my Lyme's."  Edith has Lyme's disease, she got it from a tick in Minnesota.  "It's so...difficult to adjust to something like that when you're my age."
       If I didn't know she had Lyme's disease I would have thought she was just a crazy lady next door filling her apartment with garbage.  I guess she is, but at least I know why she is crazy.
       "Did you finish putting those in something?  They're very important."  Everything must very seem important to her; everything except nouns.  Unless I know where she is looking, or what she's holding I never know what she's talking about.  On top of that my hearing is bad and on top of that she has National Public Radio playing every hour of every day from a different radio in each room.  She has a clock radio in the kitchen, a shelf-stereo in her living room and a boom box in the hallway.  The two bedrooms don't have radios because she doesn't go in them.  They are filled to the ceiling with her stuff.  Even her bed is a dumping ground, or filing platform.
       She can't watch movies like a regular person.  I loaned her "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," and she spent half an hour telling me how Matthew Broderick played a compulsive liar.  That segued into a lecture about her ex-husband who is a compulsive liar which was segue to a lecture about how he continues to ruin her life and spy on her.  He lives in a different, state, Colorado I think.
       "Next, I want you to take care of these."  She hands me a bag, it's the kind of bag fresh produce comes in.  I can see a soup label and some other colorful scraps of paper.
       "Garbage?" I ask.
       "No.  I've been reading labels.  I educate myself so I know what I'm eating."
       Holy shit.  She is literally saving her garbage, at least the newspapers might serve a purpose.  I thought this was something people joked about: old ladies who save all their garbage and live in it.  They're the kind of story you want to hear about, but not something you want to touch with your bare hands.  I don't want to make a fuss so I just put the labels in a post office box.
       "Do you think that's enough?"
       She's being vague again, I don't know what she means.  If I don't say anything she'll start talking again, or forget her question in a few seconds; it's the Lyme's disease.  I don't want to be rude but she doesn't take offense because she's so far gone and offense doesn't register with her brain.
       "I think we should take this to the storage locker now," she says.  She means I should take it to the storage locker.
       "Sure, I'll carry this down."  I know where the locker is, I helped her arrange it yesterday.
       "Don't forget."
       I don't know what she's talking about until she extends the clay ashtray to me, I take it in my free hand and hope she can't read my expression.  It gets tossed on the couch in my apartment before I leave.
       I'm not a neat-freak, but I'll do anything to get outside for awhile.  In fact. part of me wants to stop helping because she really could lose her apartment.  Being in that place makes me grateful I don't live like that.  It makes me want to take pictures, like people won't believe it unless they see it with their own eyes.  In my apartment I'll step over a dirty rag on principal, in her apartment I have to step on clothes because there's no other place to put my feet.
       My refrigerator is cleaned twice a month.  Every two weeks, on Sunday, I pull out all the food, throw away anything which isn't fresh and wipe down the racks with Lysol.  In Edith's apartment the fridge hasn't been opened in over a month because there is a pile of winter coats and shoes in front of it.  She keeps it running and can get to the freezer, but her milk and eggs are stored near the back door where a draft can keep them cool.  I crushed half a dozen eggs when I entered this morning, she didn't mind.
       The storage shed where I've brought everything is protected by a cheap padlock and a thin steel door.  If I were her I wouldn't bother with the padlock.  She's protecting old newspapers and a few tacky baubles.  Things like plastic Easter eggs with soccer ball patterns and yellow cartoon angels on a blue picture frame.  In the frame is a smiling girl's face and the price: 2 for $1.
       Every box and bag she's put in this locker has a sheet of Bounce fabric softener in it.  She says it's supposed to keep mice away and she's allergic to them.  Heaven forbid mice chew up her stuff because then it would be useless garbage.
       I hurry to put everything I brought into her locker.  I'm not eager to get back but it's cold and windy.  Yesterday she gave me a pair of brown canvas gloves.  I tried to refuse but she insisted and I wore my own gloves instead.  Today I wore the canvas gloves just to keep my own gloves clean.
       After unloading the rest of her stuff I hop back in the van.  When I leave the parking lot of the storage lockers I consider driving around to kill time before I go back.  Diligently, I head back to bite the bullet.
       Back at Edith's I stomp the snow off my shoes, to protect the newspapers on her floor.
       "Oh, Brian, you're back.  That was fast."
       I probably could have driven around for awhile, she wouldn't have noticed.
       "I need you to clean this out."  She hands me a decorative plaster box.  The lid is broken off, making it useless.  "My mother made it, see," she turns it over for me and reads what is written in pencil; "'Edith's Originals 1976.'  That was my mother.  Mice got into it so I need you to clean it out."
       "Where is the Lysol?" I ask.
       "Lysol would be too harsh.  It's lacquered, see?"  The outside is smooth.  Under the lacquer is a painting of a summer lake.
       "What should I clean it with?"
       "Ah, um, just use some snow from the porch."  I can't use water because her kitchen sink is filled with dishes and half-eaten food.  Her bathroom sink is under a foot of periodicals, so I don't argue about the snow.
       On her porch are two bags of garbage; proof that she's capable of throwing something away.  She says they're on the porch and not in the dumpster because she doesn't want fruit flies in the dumpster.  I can't fathom her train of thought.  It's too cold for fruit flies to live outside and why is the porch a better place for her imaginary fruit flies.  I roll some snow on the lacquer box and brush it off with the canvas gloves.  I do the same with the inside of the box.
       Back inside she has changed into pajama pants.  "Brian, take a look at this."  She hikes her pant leg up.  "See this bruise?"  There is a purple bruise on her veiny leg.  There is also an arrow which points to the bruise, I think she drew it with a black Sharpie.  "The Lyme's researchers want me to document the bruising.  It's important because these bruises are on my stomach lining and throat lining and the lining of my brain."  It's a scary thought; growing old.  "But I don't have a digital camera," she says with a sigh.
       I think of my digital camera in my safe apartment or the camera in my phone, but I don't volunteer anything.
       "They want me to document how the bruising, um, progresses."  She tells me about how her headaches coincide with the bruising and the bruising on her brain lining is important.  I tune out the rest and instead look at a salt shaker on the window sill.  It is a stout angel with a drum.  I wonder if the pepper shaker is a devil with a guitar.  Thank goodness, she put her pant leg down.
       "I think we should make a clear path in the hallway next," she says.  It's a good idea; the inspector probably can't fly over the clothes, newspapers and an inflatable mattress.  "How should we do this?" she asks.
       I think we should throw it all out.  Maybe burn it.  She seems pretty liberal; I guess recycling would be the best course of action.
       "Hmm," she starts to herself, "let's start by deflating the mattress so it'll fit in the bedroom closet."  The closet doesn't have enough room, but she won't believe that.  "Hold these."  She hands me an armload of photographs.
       She used to be a really good photographer.  On the top is a picture of a couple standing in the doorway of a wooden shack.  His arm is around her shoulder and she is smiling.  They are a pretty young couple captured in black and white.  Not a great a photographer, but her pictures are good enough to appear in dollar store picture frames.
       The next picture is her daughter and it's in color.  This picture could be in a fashion magazine or even on the cover.  I can see Edith's eyes and cheekbones on her daughter.  The rest belongs to the girl's father, who I've never met.
       When she is done deflating the mattress she takes the pictures back and hands me the heavy plastic.  I can't see where I'm walking so I can only hear what I'm stepping on: crinkling paper, plastic bags with clothing and something soft which doesn't make any sound when I step on it.  The only thing I can avoid is the boom box playing NPR.  After I finally make it to the bedroom she starts talking again, but too quiet for me to hear over the radio.  I make room in the closet by crushing a box half filled with Christmas cards from a different decade.
       While I can tell where she is I pull out my camera phone and take a picture of the room.  It has to be seen to be believed.  The bed is barely visible under a dozen boxes which sag in the middle.  There is a child's doll; stained from years of love.  On a desk is the computer and scanner; both are turned off and covered in the magazines and newspapers she had hoped to scan; like they're waiting in line.  The shelving along the rest of the walls are densely packed and bordered with post office boxes.  For a second I feel like I'm invading her privacy, like her ex-husband might do.
       Back in the living room Edith is still talking.  When she sees me she says "Would you put these in the other room?"
       I don't know which room she means so I take them to the room which doesn't have a bed.  This room has a closet which is perpetually open due to the mess spilling out of it: Rubbermaid totes, cardboard boxes and clear plastic bags; all filled with clothing.  She is still talking in the other room so I snap another picture with my phone.  From this room I can see the bathroom which matches the rest of the house.  There is no floor, at least not a visible one.  The bathtub is filled with materials for making flower arrangements and more plastic bags.  I raise my phone and take a picture of that too.
       "Brian, what're you doing?" she asks from the doorway.  She is looking at the phone.
       Fuck.  I don't say anything and neither does Edith.  I feel like a deer right before it becomes highway-venison.
       "That's a fancy phone, is it one of those computer phones, the kind all the kids have nowadays?"
       "Yeah.  I was," I choke on my lie, "texting a friend."  I feel guilty, but I don't delete the picture.
       "Can you go grab the bag in the room?  Bring it here."
       I don't notice that she couldn't be any more vague, but I go: to hide my guilt, to put distance between us.
       She starts emptying a Rubbermaid container onto the floor, no doubt looking for something important.
       In the living room there are a hundred bags, I wonder which one she wants.  Over the radios I can hear her talking to herself about what she found in the Rubbermaid.  I take the phone out of my pocket and hesitate before snapping a picture of the cluttered living room, but I take it just the same; then another and another.  Her mess, which is her life, is captured on a digital memory card and she's not even aware; captured so that others will believe me when I tell them how I had to help my crazy neighbor clean her disaster.
       The funny thing is that she's not cleaning because her place is a mess; she's doing it because an inspector will come and see.  She's happy living in her mess, like it's a replacement for her family.
       The clock on my phone reminds me that it's time to go.  Thank God.
       "Edith, I have to go, it's three o'clock."
       I don't hear anything but the radios.  In the room where she is I find her sitting on a bag filled with clothing, it looks like she's sitting on a beanbag chair.  She is looking at photos and crying.
       "What time is it?" she asks.
       I pull out my phone to check the time, the camera is still operating and pointed right at her, my finger hovers over the shutter button, but before I press it I look at what I'd be taking a picture of.  Edith, sitting on a bag of old clothes, tears running down her face and into her mouth.  Her hair looks like a black and gray peacock which has been hit by a car.  The clothes she's wearing are in the same shape as the apartment, disheveled and the pockets are filled with useless baubles.  I can't take the picture, it's too hard to look at, and I don't want to remember.  "It's two minutes after three," I say.
       "There's money on the counter," she says.
       I fight my way to the kitchen and find a twenty lying on top of an open cookbook.  It's opened to the recipe for soufflé.  When I look at the oven I know she won't be making it anytime soon.  The oven is inaccessible, her milk and eggs are cooled by a door draft.  I wonder how long ago she looked at that recipe.
       I take a picture of the kitchen and get a close-up of the slow cooker which probably hasn't been washed in weeks and then I leave.
       That night I show people the pictures of the crazy old lady's house.  They still have trouble believing someone could live like that.  The pictures don't show what it was like being there and they didn't see Edith crying on top of a bag of clothes.