Neighbors

Five minutes out of a day

Photo by Mario Scheibl on Unsplash

Hello, all! I’m trying to get back into it.

You might call this a journal. Then again, might be the start of a novel. Might be anything.

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Miz Mary Magdalene stands at my door.

“Reckon he sold that house.”

We both look at the newly constructed dwelling beside mine.

“The sign’s still up,” I say.

Miz Mary Magdalene squints at it.

She squints and blinks all the time, more with her right eye than her left. Sometimes I think I see a gnat perched on her eyelashes. Other times I think I’m making up the gnat, out of prejudice maybe, or because I can’t help being a fabulist.

A witch would have a gnat. A witch of uncertain intent.

But I can’t go down rabbit holes like that.

It’s not that I mind being prejudiced. I mind showing it on my face. Miz Mary Magdalene’s a neighbor. I feel proprietary about her. Protective, even. I don’t want to hurt her feelings.

Together we look at the For Sale sign planted in the newly turfed, not-yet-green yard next door.

“Yeah, guess he put it back,” she says.

Miz Mary Magdalene blinks at me a while. I wonder whether she’s going to ask me for a ride to the bus stop. But it’s a mild day and my neighbors are thoughtful people; they only ask for a ride if it’s melting hot or raining.

“He must wanna sell it; he cut our grass,” Miz Mary Magdalene says. I know she means the builder, a light-skinned man with gray hair in neat cornrows. I think he’s called Merritt. He’s always around lately.

“He what?”

“He asked if he could cut our grass and he did it. Said people were complaining about folks’ yards when they came to look at his house.”

I know, or at least he told me back in March, that Merritt was looking to buy Miz Mary Magdalene’s house, too. She lives across the road from me with a couple of daughters, the daughters’ boyfriends, and two granddaughters on weekdays plus a grandson on weekends.

“They wouldn’t tell me the name of their landlord,” Merritt had complained.

I could see why not. Miz Mary Magdalene has a broken front window, had it since January, and probably does not want any extra interaction with her landlord. If he came out here, he might notice the window.

Miz Mary Magdalene’s wearing a black wig that’s stacked in just a bit of a 1960s bouffant. She’s a wiry, dark complected woman just shy of 5 feet tall. She wears boys’ jeans and women’s dollar-store blouses and a pair of Reebok hightops. It’s a cute style, a little bit punky, I think.

“Your yard always looks nice.” I glance up and down the street. “I hope we don’t get any neighbors gonna be up in folks’ business, complaining about our yards.”

Miz Mary Magdalene shakes her head.

I shake my head.

“Mm-mm,” says Miz Mary Magdalene.

Maybe I’m not a fabulist. Maybe after a while you stop believing even in things that really did happen. That can’t have been real, you think of some particularly beautiful or lurid memory. I must have made it all up.

Or maybe you believe everything equally.

A world of infinite choice and no weight.

That’s not true, either, though. There’s weight in a car. I have one. Miz Mary Magdalene does not.

“You need a ride to the bus stop?” I ask.

“Naw.” She turns to leave. “We’ll be moving soon anyhow.”