4: neighbors and strangers

I relax on my roommate’s hand-me-down stained couch and listen to the evenly spaced thuds growing in volume just outside my apartment door. Someone is climbing the stairs, step by step, to get to the second floor apartments in my complex. Because of the positioning of the stairs and my apartment unit in respect to other stairwells around the complex, the only reason anyone would ascend the stairs outside my door would be to get into my apartment or my next door neighbor’s unit. These stairs have been relatively silent for the year that I’ve lived here. My roommate keeps a very busy schedule on campus and usually comes home after I’m tucked under my sheets, and she leaves in the morning before my afternoon alarm clock chimes—so I rarely hear her coming or going.
But the stairs have been under considerable more activity in the past few weeks. It’s obvious that the vacant apartment next door has finally been filled after more than a year of advertising its loneliness. For as much noise as my new neighbors make, I’d think that a family of six had moved in to the two bedroom unit. If this is the case, why haven’t I seen any of my new neighbors? They’re in and out and up and down the stairs more than I come and go. Why haven’t we once run in to each other and had that initial contact of welcoming? I sit on the couch and listen to scurried footfall throughout the day and the sluggish steps at night. I imagine a young mother hurrying her children around during the day, trying to make appointments and run errands while grabbing forgotten paperwork, a quick lunch and afternoon snack, or change of clothes for soccer practice after picking the kids up from school. The husband leaves early and returns late from some job that requires a black, leather briefcase with silver buckles. Their life isn’t too far off from my roommate’s and mine. My roommate stays at “work” all day, returning with bags under her eyes to match the bag on her back packed with accounting papers. I run myself around town picking up groceries, running errands for friends, and changing for track practice while I try to squeeze in a snake at the same time—the child in me still prefers peanut butter and jelly or grilled cheese.
The other day, I opened my door into my apartment just as my neighbor opened his to walk out. I rushed inside the isolation of my apartment without thinking. I feel as if too much time has gone by to introduce myself. Had I wanted to make friends with my neighbors, why hadn’t I caught them on the stairs when I heard them descending only a few minutes before I was to leave? Isn’t that the neighborly thing to do? At least I could say hello if I didn’t have time to bake a welcome basket of muffins for our introduction. Where had the neighborly love gone? My parents talk about their childhood running around with neighbor kids and sitting with the old widow in her cottage on the corner while their parents went out for a minute. But I never introduced myself to a neighbor of mine in my life, now that I think about it. I’ve never even seen my neighbors at my parent’s home. I never went around the dorm hallways to see who I lived next to. I avoid the people in my apartment complex in fear of starting an awkward conversation I can’t get out of; and heaven forbid they ask me for a favor, a cup of sugar? I’m scared of the strangers I live closest to. But they’re not strangers at all. I know more about their lives by listening through the thin sheet of plaster that separates our living quarters than my parents know about my daily schedule.
Yet I sit here on my roommate’s stained couch, listening to the thudding footfall climbing and falling down the steps outside. I’d like to think that I would come to their assistance if I heard a disturbance, but aren’t we supposed to mind our own business?