The house across the street is being renovated. The contractor’s dirty white van has been parked in front of the end house next door to the empty house, for weeks now. 

Yesterday, though, a private trash truck was blocking the cross street, and the contractor and his helper were throwing old wood and debris into it. Later on, the contractor was throwing torn-out bricks into the white van with his helper. The contractor looked fed up. He looked Slavic and burly. Maybe Greek. A lot of Greeks do informal construction in Philly. They always look thoroughly fed-up, as if the world was being unnecessarily obstructive.

A White guy walking a big dog stopped and told the contractor that the helper has been sleeping in the white van overnight, and he can’t do that. The contractor was obsequious and agreeable, and admonished his helper. After all, it doesn’t do to offend a White guy with a big dog, because they have connections. After the White guy left, the contractor stopped giving his helper a hard time. I suspect part of the helper’s pay was having a place to sleep.  

The Black man who lives with his mother in the end house came out his front door, and abruptly the contractor began berating the Black man at the top of his voice and at length. My neighbor, whose name used to be Eric, gave amiable answers, but the contractor kept shouting. I stood there on my front step finishing up eating my bowl of soup, and after the guy finished his rant and went back to angrily throwing bricks in the van, I went over and asked Eric what was going on. 

He explained that the guy had piled up a bunch of construction debris against the side of Eric’s house, and had told Eric he would get rid of it yesterday, but he didn’t. He didn’t tell Eric anything, he didn’t explain, he just left the trash there. 

Now, Eric’s mom Janie is one of those tough little old women (she’s older than me) who sits on her front porch and has opinions. She does not let go of things. She owns the house. She told Eric to do something, and Eric called 311 (the non-emergency help line in Philadelphia).

It turned out the guy didn’t have permits for the demolition. So now the guy is in trouble with Licenses and Inspections, and he’s berating Eric while he throws bricks into his van, because Eric is not a White guy with a dog, he’s a Black man with a bad limp since the stroke, and he lives in a hard-looking row home painted red, with his tiny skinny mother, though sometimes she stays at her boyfriend’s house.  

Eric and I had a nice chat. He said he was not too upset; he said if the contractor had just bothered to talk to him, they could have worked it out. He repeated this several times. I finished my soup, leaning against the side of Eric’s porch.

The contractor ignored both of us, and eventually drove his van around the corner to pick up the rest of the bricks, because the trash truck he had hired wouldn’t take bricks, just old wood and siding. 

A beat-up old guy from around the corner who always panhandles me a bit came over, and I knew he was getting ready to ask me for money again, so my chat was over. “Good talking to you,” I said to Eric. “You know why I came over here.”

“No,” said Eric. 

“People need to know it’s a neighborhood, and we talk to each other. Anyone starts yelling at one of my neighbors like that, I’m going to come over.”

He laughed. “Thank you. You got that from your husband,” he said. 

I smiled amiably. No. No, I didn’t. I’ve always been that way. 

I used to make my husband smoke on the front step instead of inside, and that was one big reason he was in everyone’s business all the time, instead of me. Now he’s dead, I’m the one that has to come outside and say hello, so people will know I’m a neighbor and that we all talk to one another.  

I wish I could remember what Eric changed his name to. I mean, I’ve known him for twenty years. But we’ve never gotten that far. We all talk to each other, we’re all neighbors, but we’re not actually friends, and I wouldn’t trust him any farther than I could throw him, even though I like his mom.