GOOD NEIGHBOR by Gabriela Valencia

I’m learning how to be a good neighbor. On my walks to work I turn and turn again, charting through the network of neighborhood dogs. Set on edge by the unfamiliar click of my heels, offended by my proximity, they bark. Sometimes one will scramble up to me in a huff, leaping and scraping at plank and chain until even after I am long gone. Occasionally an embarrassed owner will pop out of a side door, hurry them inside, and apologize to me. And I apologize too. Sorry with the yawning canyon vowel of alright. We mean no harm. We keep our distance. I’m learning which sides of the street to walk on and which streets have dogs on both sides.

I often wonder if our dogs at home know the word sorry. As in, Sorry, treat later, or Sorry for bumping into you, buddy. Working dogs, they need their space and yet keep close. Always ready for direction, they know lots of words. In the country, so rarely would anything come near that when something did—a dozen wild turkeys crossing the gravel easement, a shifting of deer at the misty edge of tree line, an unfathomable truck of Jehovah’s Witnesses—they’d bark to alert us, one foot raised and angled toward it like the needle of a compass. When we moved into town, the word squirrel came easily to them. We are still working on neighbor. Still working to teach them not to bark and not to bark at neighbors. 

We like neighbors. Good neighbors, I say petting their soft sloped heads at the wide front windows draping sunlight through our living room, as they nose the glass that separates them from the world. The dogs go from bark to puff to circling a quiet loop at my feet. And I often wonder how they boundary not just the world but the word. In their minds, are all people neighbors? Or do they suppose neighbor is a command, as in good sit or something closer to leave it? When the teenager burns out his Mustang in the alley on a Friday night, the seashell curves of white smoke curling up around the bumper as it skids into the dark, isn’t it better not to give it too much attention? After all, it may be a misunderstanding. Neighbors. This goes for the dogs and for us.

On the phone my father means to ask how we are by asking, How are the neighbors? 

When we say, Good, he says, Good. Then he tells us the story of the next-door neighbor who complained that berries from one of his trees were falling into their yard. The neighbor said these berries attracted animals from the forest, and they didn’t want any animals. Their yard a well-kept block of lawn—no birdbath, no flowers, no chairs. My father told them they could cut the branches if they wanted. The branches on their side of the fence, impossible to safely reach without venturing over the property line with a schedule, a ladder, a saw, and a helpful son. The neighbor said nothing else and never cut the branch. 

I thought about that tree, its rivers of branches and twigs extending in the sky, reaching beyond the fence over the neighbor’s faultless edge. On the other side, at its trunk, my father and I drank coffee in the summers, eating bowls of raspberries and blackberries straight from the vine, watching robins and cardinals at the feeder, how they snipped or shared. The lush green in that yard buzzing with bees and the occasional rabbit or chipmunk was so phenomenal it was almost a sea. It was easy to forget, in the midst of it, in the midst of our lives, that even seas had boundaries. The tall willow on the opposite end swaying like seaweed over everything possible. I imagined the backyard fence the forgotten shore on all sides. Just beyond that shore, I suggested only for my father’s sake, A whole bunch of crabs.

He laughed generously, like spreading honey on a heel of bread, then came to their defense. Así son los vecinos.  And I consider the word vecino. Vecino como vicinity. Vecino como, A ver si nos aceptan. Language as a curved surface snipped and shared on a flat plane.

On windy days, the dogs keep alert between their naps. Ears turning one at a time like satellite dishes. Wide expressive eyes almost human. I imagine they hear the cardboard box rolling down the alley. The shriveled leaves scaping eddies in the street like mice. The creaking contour of our home and of the neighborhood homes. The swaying snaps of branches whipping up and around us, their shadows an imaginary caress on the dome of everything they know.

In good, do the dogs hear the safe, hard end of food? The tender, wondering middle of look? In neighbor, the anticipation of later, of wait? The rote obligation of stay? The brief rumbling intrusion of train? The wild sprawling countryside of play? 

In the mornings, my fingers on the handle, I try to outline the invisible. Sorry. Work. Be good. Play later. A car door closes across the street as someone gets in. Good neighbors, I say. I try to keep my voice low and soothing. To draw the words out slowly like a map. I wonder if they understand the words at all. If it is just my voice that does it, close and familiar, the crooned pursing of lips toward and toward again like rings of sonar. 

How I figure como as the closing in of home. The limitation of no, not quite, but nearly.

Gabriela Valencia’s writing is forthcoming in Image Journal. Her work has been longlisted for the Peter Porter Poetry Prize and named finalist for the CRAFT Hybrid Writing Contest and Orison’s Best Spiritual Literature Award. She lives in Nebraska with her husband Josh and their two herding dogs, Rainer and Zola.

15 May 2025