Authors: Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
Mom wants me
to love school like she does,
follow her lead to college,
make my mark:
the first astronaut with
cerebral palsy,
or at least
a doctor or lawyer,
something with a title or abbreviations, I guess.
But Mom’s dreams for me
are a heavy wool coat I
wear, even in summer.
I’m using the hand spade to plant
zinnias Granny started weeks ago
when I unearth a whole peanut shell
in the dark soil.
Gran’s told the story
dozens of times—
how in the 1920s the nasty boll weevil
nearly stole the note to this farm.
Gran’s two oldest brothers went off
to the factories in the north
to keep paying the taxes
while the little ones tried
to pick the plants clean
of the nasty devils. Hopeless.
So Great-Grandpa turned to peanuts.
One of the first to try the new crop—
a rare old bird, he was, too—
believing King Cotton could be overthrown
by a beetle.
Still, he saved this farm
when most around these
parts were lost.
But now
his big dreams, all lost,
empty
as the shell in my hand.
I’m hidden
beneath the willow tree,
spying out her dress of leaves,
counting the roofers
on the latest house
that grows
behind us.
Suddenly
the dark parts.
A wedge of light and a boy
slip through,
the air sucked from my lungs
like a vacuum.
The boy’s face freezes like stone.
I cough uncontrollably.
“Sorry. I was following
a
Danaus plexippus
and thought it flew in here.”
When I try to speak
my voice is on vacation
and a high-pitched squeak
comes out instead.
“I didn’t mean to scare you …”
he says,
backing out.
“No. It’s okay,”
I finally stammer.
“Is it a bird?”
“No. A monarch butterfly.”
“Oh!”
My voice like new chalk,
but surprised by my bravery,
“Come on. I know
where they’ll be.”
“You do?”
“Sure—on
Buddleia
,
butterfly bush.”
And that’s how I meet Jordan,
the boy who just moved
into the rich neighborhood
that keeps spreading
behind us.
I follow Jordan
as he examines leaves
from plants,
looks for insects on their undersides.
He pulls out his plant guidebook
to search for names
I already know.
“How do you know the name
of every plant?”
I shrug. “Always have.”
Jordan catches an inchworm,
puts it on my palm.
We watch it fold itself
again and again
up my arm
to my smiling face.
On the east side of the house
is Gran’s formal garden.
She always meant to visit
France or England,
but never got the chance
or the money.
Widowed at twenty-five and
working at the paper factory
didn’t buy plane tickets,
and raising a girl by yourself
was hard enough without dreams
of your own.
So she planted rows of boxwoods
in diamonds and rectangles,
lined the paths with crushed bricks
that crunch as you walk along.
Then planted Grace Darling teacup roses
and placed a wrought-iron
patio table in the center
of the shapes.
When Granny serves Jordan and me
Earl Grey tea
and butter cookies
but insists we call them biscuits,
Jordan doesn’t even roll his eyes—
and my heart leapfrogs
with the word
“friend.”
Jordan’s yard (and all his neighbors’, too)
is so serious:
lawn buzzed down like
a Marine recruit’s cut
and each house has:
two terra-cotta pots
perfectly placed on the porch—
color-coordinated bouquets
(like purses and shoes that
grannies and little girls wear
for Easter Sunday)
that match the front door—
and nothing more.
Our house is a crazy quilt of color
pots of every shape and size
nestled everywhere—
some hand painted,
others mortared with mismatched
chipped china,
all bursting with at least
three different plants—
sweet potato vine,
caladium,
lamb’s ear—
Gran’s palette
of color and texture.
The old shed
wears a half-done mural of the Eiffel Tower
made out of broken glass
and the sun dances across it
each day.
Baskets get tucked into
elbows of tree limbs,
window boxes painted navy blue
to show off the tuberous begonias spilling out
against the peeling gray clapboards.
Even our mailbox chokes
with a tangle of vermillion trumpet vines.
Our new neighbors
might call this a hillbilly’s cottage
and find our mix of colors
unfashionable.
But Gran says when she sold off
all but a slice of this old farm
she didn’t sell
the imagination of the Wyatt women with it,
though I wonder
if we could bleach it—
just a bit.
Gran calls Jordan’s dad at work
so he can go with us.
His dad says from now on we don’t
even have to ask.
We pile into her Jeep filled with
two-inch starter pots—
off to Lazy Acres,
where we help hands knotted
like asparagus fern roots
remember the feel of soil and spring.
It’s the only place
where I don’t stick out
like a dandelion
in a purple petunia patch,
and I like Jordan seeing me
in a place I belong—
everybody’s granddaughter.
I dream of the lives
my hands
might know,
like all of those
I help here.
Today, the most popular girl in seventh grade,
Natalie Jackson,
slipped invitations between the vents in lockers,
passed them across my desk in algebra,
dropped them in laps as she glided
back to her throne
in the last row on the bus.
But this time
I didn’t have to study tornado drill directions
in the cafeteria
or pretend interest in the road signs,
because Jordan
filled that ever-vacant seat at the table
and then the canyon of green vinyl on the bus too,
then skipped his own stop and followed me on
home
like a stray.
Each year
since I could walk
Granny’s built me
a hiding place.
But I’m embarrassed to see her
poking the bamboo poles in the ground,
tied at the top like a teepee
with leftover yarn.
She’ll plant them with scarlet runner beans
that will curl and dangle,
twisting their way
to the top—
shading my secret spot.
I wish she’d realize
I’m really much too old
for one now,
but the words get stuck
to my tongue
each time
I try to tell her.
Granny cuts orange yarn for us—
left over from lap quilts
she crochets
for the folks at Lazy Acres.
We loop the yarn in the plot Gran tilled today,
stepping back
to check our work—
even once from my window upstairs.
Finally, we slit open the bank envelope—
the marigold seeds’ winter home—
and we drip them
along the orange lines
in the cool dark soil
and dream of our signatures
blooming by summer:
Josie and Jordan.
Jordan knows
odd facts
about everything,
like how a day on Saturn is ten hours long
or how many people rode the first Ferris wheel (2,160).
But each day Jordan reminds the other seventh graders
that this kid who is a whole year younger than them
knows so much more—
it makes him about as popular as a pop quiz.
And even though he lives in the largest
of the brick mansions behind us
(where most of the well-liked rich kids live)
his house looks like the moving truck
just pulled away.
No pictures on the walls,
dusty boxes still stacked
in the corners of rooms,
no curtains
on any of the windows.
It even smells empty.
I learn Jordan’s mom died in an accident
when he was just a toddler,
and his dad really is
a rocket scientist
who works seventy hours each week.
So Jordan never had a shot to learn
some of the basics:
Don’t correct a teacher in front of her class
or launch up your hand with every answer.
He stands a little too close,
and his catalog clothes
might cost a bunch,
but they don’t match much.
His brown curly hair
drapes over dark chocolate eyes
and when he smiles, all his teeth
and even some gum
show besides.
He’s always excited
about some new experiment
to try in the garden
or at the lab in his
new basement.
But I’ve learned this fact for myself:
Days spin faster than a whirligig
in a spring storm
by the side
of my new friend.
The path to the creek
isn’t too far,
and the bridge
Grandpa built
when Mom was just a baby
still solid as stone—
six doors down from that is Jordan’s house.
Each morning now
Jordan shows up on our screened-in porch,
munching from a baggie of cereal
before I even have my shoes on.
After school,
Mr. DeLong, the bus driver,
makes him get off in his own neighborhood,
but he’s waiting on our screened porch
by the time I get home.
The golden bushes out front
called forsythia are blooming now—
their long arms
trying to waltz with wind.
Granny, Jordan, and I cut
their dance short,
arrange them
in colored glass vases for
Gran’s old friends at Lazy Acres.
We turn the leftovers into
bracelets, crowns, necklaces:
jewels
that wilt by afternoon.
We go
to Jordan’s house
to pick up beakers, his microscope,
and graph paper
to set up another experiment
(this one measuring spores
on different kinds of ferns).
The foyer echoes
like the gym at school,
and it feels like nobody lives here
and almost,
they don’t.
A maid cleans.
A crew cuts the lawn.
Even the groceries get delivered.
Jordan’s dad is home, for once,
but he barely lifts his head
from his laptop to meet me.
His eyes
flicker in surprise,
but he slams
his attention back to the screen
and coughs to dismiss us.
In ten minutes we fill a big box,
and I don’t see the inside
of Jordan’s house
again for months.
Between bites of PB and J
Jordan is telling me
about poisonous snakes
when
Natalie Jackson and her followers
arrive like royalty
a few seats down
in the cafeteria.
They start teasing us
about being in love—
the genius and the ’tard.
My throat feels like
I’ve swallowed an orange
whole.
But Jordan
goes on and on
(though the tips of his ears turn
crimson),
even repeats himself some,
about the preferred habitats of each species,
how you’re really not
supposed to suck out the venom
like in the movies,
and how they keep the rat population
in check.
Finally, Natalie and her tribe
leave to dump their trays, find fresh prey.
“You never know when you
might run into a snake,”
Jordan repeats.
“That’s true,” I agree,
as we watch some slither
on past.
Afternoons
you can always find Granny