Keiko stood at her kitchen window watching the woman next door struggle with a shovel. The woman—Rosa, she'd heard someone call her—was trying to dig a hole for what looked like a tomato plant. Wrong time of year for that. Wrong technique too. The shovel kept hitting the hard-packed clay, bouncing back.
Keiko turned away. Not her business.
She filled the kettle, set it on the stove. Through the window, Rosa wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, leaving a streak of dirt. She wore gray sweatpants and a faded Raiders t-shirt. Hospital badge still clipped to her pocket.
The fence between their yards was six feet high, weathered cedar. Keiko's husband had built it twenty years ago. "Good fences make good neighbors," he'd said in his careful English, proud of knowing the American saying. Three years since the cancer took him. The fence remained.
Keiko made her tea. Genmaicha today. The nutty smell filled the kitchen. She sat at the small table where she'd eaten ten thousand meals with Hiroshi. Where she now ate alone.
Rosa had given up on the hole. She left the shovel stuck in the ground, the tomato plant wilting in its black plastic pot. Keiko watched her go inside, shoulders bent with exhaustion.
That evening, Keiko worked in her own garden. Everything in neat rows. Daikon radish, Chinese cabbage, chrysanthemum greens. Plants her son David didn't recognize when he visited from San Francisco. "Why don't you grow normal vegetables, Mom?" he'd say. She never answered. What was normal?
The shovel was still there the next morning. The tomato plant too, more wilted now. Keiko looked at it while she drank her coffee. Black coffee, American style. One concession to this country.
She had too many vegetables. The garden produced more than one person could eat. David took some when he visited, polite but unenthusiastic. The rest, she composted or gave to the Japanese church, though she rarely attended anymore.
That afternoon, while Rosa was at work—she left at six-thirty every morning, returned after four—Keiko crossed into her neighbor's yard through the gate. She'd never done this before. The yard was mostly dead grass, a few struggling shrubs. A plastic chair sat on the concrete patio, cigarette butts around its legs.
Keiko dug the hole properly. Deep, wide. Mixed in compost from her own bin. Planted the tomato, staked it, watered it thoroughly. Returned the shovel to where Rosa had left it.
From her kitchen, she watched Rosa discover the planted tomato that evening. The woman stood very still, looking at it. Then she looked toward Keiko's house. Keiko stepped back from the window.
Two days later, Keiko found a paper plate on her doorstep. Four tamales wrapped in corn husks, still warm. No note.
She ate one for dinner. Pork and chilies, unfamiliar spices. Too much salt for her taste, but she ate it all. The corn masa reminded her of mochi, somehow. Different but the same—that fundamental comfort of grain made soft.
The next week, she left a basket of vegetables on Rosa's step. Bok choy, Japanese eggplant, shiso leaves. She included a note with the Japanese names and simple cooking instructions, though she wasn't sure Rosa would understand her English.
Rosa left another plate. This time, rice and beans, topped with cheese and salsa verde. Keiko had never eaten this before. She liked the brightness of the green sauce, the way it cut through the richness of the beans.
They continued this way for a month. No words exchanged, just food appearing on doorsteps. Keiko learned Rosa's schedule—Monday and Thursday were double shifts, home after midnight. Those days, Keiko left soup in a thermos, still hot at ten p.m.
One evening in November, Keiko was pulling weeds when she heard crying through the fence. Quiet crying, trying to be silent. She recognized that kind of crying.
She went inside, made tea. Two cups. Opened the gate, walked to Rosa's patio. Rosa sat in the plastic chair, cell phone in her lap, face wet.
Keiko set the tea on the small table beside the chair. Sat on the concrete step. They stayed like that, not talking. The tea grew cold.
Finally, Rosa said, "My son. He's in trouble again." She shook her head. "I don't know what to do anymore."
Keiko didn't understand all the words, but she understood the tone. The weight of it. She had no advice, wouldn't know how to give it in English anyway. Instead, she reached over and placed her hand on Rosa's hand. Just for a moment.
Rosa turned her palm up, squeezed Keiko's fingers.
They began eating together once a week. Fridays, when Rosa got home at a reasonable hour. They sat at Keiko's kitchen table or Rosa's patio, depending on weather. Conversation was minimal—Rosa's scattered Japanese phrases learned from a phone app, Keiko's careful English, lots of pointing and gestures.
Mostly, they didn't need to talk. They understood each other's aloneness, the particular shape of it. Rosa's children too busy or too troubled to visit. David coming dutifully but distantly, always checking his phone, always needing to leave early.
"Your husband?" Rosa asked once, pointing at the photograph on Keiko's shelf.
"Three years," Keiko said, holding up three fingers.
"I'm sorry." Rosa touched her chest. "Fifteen years divorced. But still." She shrugged.
Still. Yes, Keiko understood. The absence where presence used to be.
December brought unusual cold. Frost warnings. Keiko covered her vegetables with old sheets, the way Hiroshi had taught her. She noticed Rosa's tomato plant, now tall but struggling, uncovered.
She found an extra sheet, walked next door. Rosa answered in her work uniform, about to leave for night shift.
"The frost," Keiko said, pointing outside.
"Oh. Yes. Thank you." Rosa looked tired. More tired than usual.
"You okay?"
Rosa started to nod, then shook her head. "My supervisor. She wants me to work Christmas. I already worked Thanksgiving. But if I say no..." She made a cutting gesture across her throat.
Keiko knew about working holidays. Hiroshi had worked many when they first came to America. No choice for immigrants, he'd said. You work when they tell you to work.
"You have dinner with me," Keiko said. "Christmas. After work."
Rosa's eyes filled. "You don't celebrate Christmas."
"I celebrate eating." Keiko smiled. "We eat."
Rosa laughed, short but genuine. "Okay. We eat."
David called that week. "I'll come for Christmas, Mom. Just for the day."
"No need."
"Mom, you shouldn't be alone on Christmas."
"I'm not alone."
Silence. Then, "Are you seeing someone?" Alarm in his voice.
"I have a friend for dinner."
"What friend? From church?"
"Neighbor friend."
More silence. She could feel his confusion through the phone. His mother who kept to herself, who rarely spoke to anyone, having a friend?
"That's... that's good, Mom. That's really good."
Christmas evening, Rosa arrived with a grocery bag. "I brought champagne. The cheap kind. And pan dulce from the Mexican bakery."
Keiko had made ozoni soup, though it should be for New Year's. Also teriyaki salmon, California rolls because Americans expected them. Rosa had taught her to make enchiladas last week, so she'd made those too. The kitchen smelled like soy sauce and cumin, an unlikely combination that somehow worked.
They sat at the small table. Rosa poured champagne into Keiko's tea cups—the only appropriate vessels available.
"Kampai," Keiko said, raising her cup.
"Salud," Rosa responded.
They clinked cups, drank. The champagne was indeed cheap, too sweet. Perfect.
"This year," Rosa said, then stopped. Started again. "This year was hard. But you made it better. Thank you."
Keiko's English failed her for what she wanted to say. How Rosa had made the house less empty. How their shared meals had given shape to formless weeks. How kindness didn't need translation.
Instead, she said, "Eat. Food gets cold."
They ate everything. The unlikely mix of Japanese and Mexican, the pan dulce with green tea. Rosa told a story about a patient at the hospital who insisted he was Elvis. Keiko didn't understand all of it, but Rosa's gestures and expressions were enough. She found herself laughing, really laughing, for the first time in months.
Later, they stood at the fence in the dark, looking at their gardens. Rosa's tomato plant had survived the frost, would produce again in spring. Keiko's winter vegetables grew in neat rows.
"Next year," Rosa said, "you teach me to grow those." She pointed at the daikon.
"Next year," Keiko agreed.
They said goodnight. Rosa squeezed Keiko's hand before going inside.
Keiko stayed in the garden a while longer. The fence stood between the yards, solid and unchanged. But it seemed different now. Not a barrier but a bridge. A place where two lives met and recognized each other.
She thought of Hiroshi, how he would have liked Rosa. Would have appreciated her directness, her warmth. "Good fences make good neighbors," he'd said. But he'd been wrong, Keiko thought. It wasn't the fence. It was the gates. The openings. The places where you could pass through.
In the morning, she would start preparing for New Year's. Ozoni soup again, properly this time. Enough for two.
The winter vegetables needed thinning. She would show Rosa how, hands in the soil together, pulling the small plants to make room for the strong ones to grow. They would work quietly, the fence between them and not between them, understanding each other in the way of gardeners everywhere—through seasons and soil, through the patient tending of what feeds us.
A mockingbird landed on the fence post, cycling through its repertoire of borrowed songs. Keiko listened. Each call different but the voice the same. Like Rosa's Spanish and her Japanese, she thought. Different sounds for the same needs, the same joys, the same sorrows.
She went inside, washed the dishes. Through the window, she saw Rosa's kitchen light still on. Tomorrow she would make extra rice, take some over. Rosa liked it with butter and soy sauce, an American adaptation that horrified and delighted Keiko in equal measure.
The house felt different. Still empty in places, always would be. But not hollow anymore. She could feel Rosa's presence next door, the comfort of another life continuing parallel to hers, occasionally intersecting. Like fence posts, she thought. Standing separately but holding something together.
She turned off the lights, went to bed. Through the wall, faintly, she heard Rosa's television. Spanish voices, dramatic music. She didn't understand the words, but the sound was company enough. She fell asleep to it, this new lullaby in her American life.