Good Neighbor
Habiba is the first person I see in the morning, the last I see at night. Even if I am running late, by the time I leave my house and lock the door, she is in her front yard, her movements timed to some sixth sense regarding my presence. Summers she’ll be checking the rose bushes for Japanese beetles, cursing in Dari when she finds one and flicks it on its buzzing way. Fall she’ll be sweeping the concrete front step free of leaves, winter she’ll throw out handfuls of salt to stave off ice, spring she’ll be watching for the robin that has made a particular enemy of her, the plump bird perched pertly on the black mailbox, defecating on cue when Habiba glances its way.
Weekday mornings, always Habiba, a different hijab, a different coat, but the same sharpened gaze. And before I can escape into my car, my hand lifted in an apologetic wave, the same question always lobbed my way.
“Hey! You married yet?”
Since my father returned from the hospital, I stop at my parents’ house after work a few times a week with groceries or library books or things my mother needs. When Habiba first found out they live just ten minutes away, she immediately wanted to know why I didn’t live with them, or they with me. She still asks me if she catches me coming home on a Sunday.
“My boys all at home,” she says, gesturing at her house behind her, as if I don’t already know this. She and her husband have three sons. The husband leaves for work before I do, but we often return home at the same time. He always raises a hand in greeting, and sometimes he offers a distracted smile. The boys come and go at all hours, blasting bhangra and pop ghazals as their cars warm up in the driveway, running outside in basketball shorts and flip-flops when their friends pull up to the curb for a chat, leaving in the late mornings for class or work and coming back late at night, engines roaring. Only the eldest, Naveen, lives apart in a condo a few miles away. “Married,” Habiba says to me, pointedly.
My arms are weighed down with the tote bag my mother has filled with containers of undhiyu, rotli, and the spiced turkey meatballs I have loved since I was a child. Whenever I visit, my mother tells me to eat more and asks how I have been sleeping, and my father asks about Habiba. Sometimes I complain, but my father finds it funny.
“She must think we are failures, me and your Ma.”
“But you always let me do what I wanted.”
My father pats my knee. “Exactly.”
This morning, I glance out the open window and see Habiba down on her patio, spraying the plants in her vegetable garden, loudly scolding the air. I shout out hello, and she looks up at me. “You look wonderful,” I say. Eight years of being neighbors, and her appearance is unchanged. Perhaps she has gone gray; I can’t tell with her hijab.
“You working?”
She sees me driving to work every morning; I know she does. I live in this house by myself; I bought it myself. I pay my bills; the lights have never gone off for want of money.
“Really?” She sounds genuinely surprised when I tell her. “Part-time?”
“Full-time. I’ve been working there for ten years.” I am miffed. I don’t know why I feel I must explain myself to her.
“And still not married?”
My laugh comes out before I can stop it. “Nope.”
“So this is best time for you.”
“I’m enjoying myself. I only have to worry about me.”
She looks aggrieved, and I realize I’ve misunderstood. “No, no—married is better.”
“I make my own money, I pay for everything. I’m fine.”
She walks in circles, arms crossed, looking between her plants and me. “No wife makes enough money.”
That night, my father calls. He tells me he somehow deleted all his emails from his phone and spent hours trying to restore them. “But it filled the day,” he says. I try to listen, but my irritation at Habiba makes me terse, and when he asks me what is wrong, I tell him.
“She means well,” I say. “I think she tells me this from a place of concern.”
“You don’t know how to handle her,” my father says calmly. He is eating something crunchy.
“Even when I laugh and make it into a joke, she won’t let it go.”
“It’s easy,” my father says, as if I’ve said nothing at all. “When she asks, ‘Are you getting married,’ say, ‘Yes, I am! Very soon, in fact!’” He continues to crunch, and I wonder what other things I still haven’t learned how to do properly, what other tricks he knows for navigating the world that I am unaware of.
“What if she asks who I’m marrying and when it’s happening?”
“Tell her that will come later. When she asks again, keep saying that—‘Later, later.’” And then he begins to talk about how he wants to cut down the sickly birch tree in the backyard. “I want to put a Japanese maple there. Get your Ma to agree, nah?”
My father returns to the hospital, and in between sitting with him and driving my mother back home, I don’t see Habiba for almost a month. I come home in the middle of the day for a change of clothes, and there she is, standing on the grass in black pants and a green shirt, her purple-sequined hijab winking in the sunlight.
“Long time no see.” She looks me up and down, observing my tank top and shorts and messy topknot.
I rummage for my house keys. “How have you been?”
“Your mother must be very sad,” Habiba says, bending her knees to crouch closer to the ground. Last year, she’d come running over to the house, hysterical, saying that a long black snake was sitting amidst the mint that grew rampant on her lawn. By the time I came out, rake in hand, the snake was gone. I wonder if Habiba remembers this, as she roots through the soil, pulling up weeds with her bare hands. “See,” Habiba explains. “If you married, then you have babies, then babies make your mother happy—no babies mean she sad all the time.”
My father’s words linger on my tongue, but there are no pauses in the way Habiba chatters. Her tone is helpful, and I mimic it for my mother and one of the nurses later in the hallway outside my father’s room. The nurse and I laugh; my mother only smiles.
Later, I repeat the story for my father. He is quiet, eyes on the sky outside his window. “You need any money?”
“I haven’t needed money for a while, Pop.”
“What about for fun things?” His fingers tap out a silent tune on the guardrails of his bed. “Not a bad thing—throw the money sometimes! Just for fun.”
“I went out the other day. That new restaurant, the one with the patio right on the bay. Katie took me.” I hadn’t felt up to going, but she’d been texting me for weeks. “I’ll take you some time. The crab cake was really good. And they have mussels.” Those were his favorite, once. He ordered them any time they were on the menu and delighted in sipping the leftover broth using an emptied black shell as a spoon.
I wonder if he is convinced. His eyes are still on the window. There is a distant quality in his gaze that makes me look away. I pull out the latest stack of cards from my bag, well wishes from family friends, a card signed by all my coworkers, another one from my boss, one from Katie, and several from other college and grad school friends. The last envelope includes an enthusiastic rainbow crayon scrawl on construction paper, embellished with sparkle stickers, a note from my friend on the back indicating his young son is the artist. I read each one aloud, and then I stand them up on the already crowded windowsill. My father’s eyes move to glance through those paper ranks, and I feel myself relax.
“So many,” he says. “All from your people.”
“They’re also your people, Pop.”
His eyes land on the glinting stickers. I hand him the drawing, and as he stares at the waxy swirls, I wonder what he sees. He hands it back to me. “It’s good to have your own people.” He leans his head back. “God bless Habiba,” he says, after a time.
They have started letting me stay long past visiting hours. When I finally leave, the roads are quiet and empty. But as I pull up to the house, red and blue lights flash. Two policemen circle the cars in Habiba’s driveway, muttering into the walkie-talkies they pull from their vests. “Come, come,” Habiba says, and she drags me over to the officers.
“Who’s the owner of these vehicles?” one of them says, turning to me.
“My sons,” Habiba says.
“Vehicles,” the officer says, louder.
“Her sons work at a dealership,” I say, matching my volume to his.
They are forever driving home different cars—Audis and BMWs and Land Rovers. As teenagers, they were loud and shouted profanity, and they came home late at night and played hockey in my driveway. “They will grow out of it,” my father said when I called him to complain. And so I never said anything, and when I wanted to set up my old basement futon on the main level of my parents’ house to save my father from the stairs, Uday helped load it onto the rented truck. When I couldn’t remember if I’d shut my garage door, Yasir answered the phone and ran outside to check for me. When I am away for days, I always come home to a mowed lawn and newspapers stacked neatly on the front porch.
The policemen look from me to Habiba and back to me. “Registration.”
“All papers, all everything,” Habiba says. She runs to open the glove boxes. Uday and Yasir stand behind the screened front door, one still in his work uniform of tie and button-down, the other in a wifebeater and track pants, headphones slung around his neck. Some nights, when I wander the house, unable to sleep, I look through the window for the pool of light spilling outside Habiba’s basement windows, a sign that Yasir is also still up, playing video games. He is the shiest of the boys, the one least likely to say hello if we see each other, his floppy hair hiding his face. But now, he seeks me out. He catches my eye and lifts a hand to the screen door handle. I shake my head.
One of the officers follows Habiba, one stays behind. I look between Habiba and her sons. I can see the anger rising in their faces, tightening their features. I keep my eyes on them, willing them not to move, and then Habiba is suddenly at my side, gripping my waist and yanking me a full foot over to where she is standing.
“What is it? What?” I know that grip. It’s the way my mother pulled me over once when I was a teenager, traveling in Rajasthan and halfway up the mountain to Amber Fort, stopped off so the driver could stretch his legs. My arms were bare, my sunglasses pushed up on my head as I took in the view. She pulled me into the car, and as we drove away I saw a pack of men looking my way, gesturing and laughing.
“She not for you,” Habiba says. Her eyes are hard and unyielding, and the second officer’s face reddens. Habiba yanks off her hijab, her hair dark and full and without a single silver strand, and she drapes it over my shoulders, pulling the ends in a double layer over my skin, covering my chest and my throat.
The policemen look over the papers, but they are not reading anything. The first one finishes running the license plates, and he comes back and shakes his head at the red-faced officer. He shoves the papers back at us, and they get into their cruiser and drive away, lights off.
“Fuckers,” I say under my breath. All those years ago, when the boys were younger and laced every other word with fuck this and fuck that, laughing as they passed a basketball in the driveway, I wondered if Habiba knew what they were saying. Now, she smacks me on the arm, hard.
“Bad word, very bad word from lady.” She turns to put the papers back into each car.
On the final night, after it is all over, I drive home with my mother in the passenger seat. I get her settled in the guest room, and I take a long shower. In bed, my fingers hover over my father’s contact info on my phone. I stare at his picture, an old one where he is wearing aviators and a shearling denim jacket. Who’s this guy? I texted when he first sent me the photo.
Buy this kind of jacket, he texted back. Wear it, and wah—you can do anything.
I put my phone away.
The next day, late in the afternoon, I hear a rapid knock on the door. Habiba stands outside, sequins flashing, a tray in her hands. “Hot hot!” she says and rushes past me to the kitchen.
“You didn’t have to,” I say, but she ignores me and slips back out the front door. I lift the foil on the tray, and the smell of chicken and rice envelops me, smoke and fat and salt mingling in the air. She has given me enough to feed me and my mother for days.
A month after the funeral, a warning light appears on my car dashboard. I haven’t adjusted my tires like my father taught me to do whenever the temperature drops below sixty degrees. Twice a year he’d text me reminders, and I’d find him in my driveway, spare keys in his hands, getting into my car and returning with everything already done.
I use the gauge he bought me and find that all four tires are five pounds under. At the gas station the air pump has an unfamiliar design, and I read the directions twice through. On my first tire I do something wrong. The cold hiss tells me I’m letting air out, and the digital display reads ERROR. It’s dark, and I am alone at the station. A streetlight near me flickers. I lean my forehead against the side of my car, the metal frigid, and try to breathe in deeply.
I remember my father’s anger as I sat hunched next to the rear tires of our old hatchback, having let half the air out instead of getting the pressure reading as he had been trying to teach me to do. “This simple thing,” he’d yelled, his temper so ferocious it reduced me to sobs. “Even that much, you cannot do?”
I also remember the date who spent our entire dinner worried that he had a puncture and wouldn’t make it home. Instead of getting dessert we went to the nearest gas station, and he hovered near me as I measured all four tires and adjusted the pressure on each. When I told my father, he could not hide his glee.
“He asked me if I’d been a Girl Scout,” I said. “He acted like I’d done a miraculous thing.”
“Is he cute?” my father asked.
He had been, and I told my father so. We talked of other things. I started to say goodbye, and my father spoke up.
“Listen—even if he is cute. Think of someone better, nah?”
I breathe in and out, gripping the gauge in one hand, the air hose in the other. I try again, and this time I get the trick of it and inflate all four. I remember the spare, and I haul it out of the trunk and inflate it as well. As I’m putting it back, I hear a car pull up next to me, and I stiffen, holding my keys between my clenched fingers. The window lowers, and a woman’s voice calls out. “Miss, are you okay? Do you need help?”
She has a baby in the backseat, and she is wearing a hijab that frames her kohl-lined eyes. Her manicured nails rest on the steering wheel. “This air pump is horrible, the one at the next gas station is much better,” she says. “Do you have a flat? Do you need help changing it?”
I tell her I’m fine, but she waits while I get the spare secured in its housing, waits until I’m in the driver’s seat, waits until I start the car. I wave at her before I turn into the intersection, and she waves back, then goes the opposite direction.
My mother returns to her and my father’s house one last time and cuts all the blooms off her hydrangeas, even though the new owners won’t like it. “Your Ma’s real love,” my father used to laugh. “Look! Look how she takes care of them.”
At home she fills vases and bottles and tall drinking glasses with the thick green stems, the flowers burgeoning like puffs of cotton candy from every shelf and bit of counter space. And still there are more, covering the kitchen table. I gather a huge bouquet, enough to obscure my face when I knock on Habiba’s door.
“Oh,” she says when she sees me. “Oh, oh. Glorious.”
Glorious. I did not realize she knew that word.
“You come in. Tea,” she says. I follow her into the kitchen. I have never been inside her house. She nudges me into a chair, and in the silence, amidst the flowers on the counter and the warmth of Habiba’s kitchen, I am compelled to tell her the story of the tires, the woman offering to help. Habiba looks at me when I finish. “Why this surprising? Why you make a big deal, tell this story?”
I suddenly feel foolish. I wonder if I told the story only because that other woman was also wearing a hijab, though I did not mention that part to Habiba. “I thought it was a kind gesture.” I speak slowly, trying to find my way. “One woman offering to help another, without prompting.”
“But if you have husband, you don’t need other woman.” Habiba is exasperated. She sets the tea down in front of me and shoves a plate of biscuits in my direction.
The tea is too hot to drink, so I break a biscuit in half and put one piece in my mouth.
“If you married, husband does tires.”
I open my mouth to say something, then close it. I eat the rest of the biscuit, followed by two more. I wipe the crumbs from the sides of my mouth. Habiba gets to work on the flowers, stripping the leaves just below the blooms, placing stems one by one in a vase.
I try again, and this time I get the words out. “Actually, I am getting married.”
Habiba puts a flower down. “You marry? Who? When I see him?”
I take a sip of tea, the liquid still scalding. My father used to pour a bit into his saucer so that it cooled quickly and drink it from there, never spilling a drop. I never quite learned how to do it. “Later,” I say. “You’ll see him later.”
Habiba eyes me suspiciously. “When?”
“Soon!” I take another biscuit and venture another sip of tea.
“Older than you? Working where? What kind of family?” With every question, Habiba places a flower into the vase. “Your mother like him? Where is his home? Good salary?”
The tea is still too hot, but I drink until my cup is empty. Behind the warm porcelain, my mouth twitches. I look up at Habiba and wait for her eyes to meet mine. “It will be soon.”
Priyanka Champaneri’s debut novel, The City of Good Death, won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and was named one of NPR’s Books We Love. She received her MFA from George Mason University and is a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow.