I check the closet outside the bathroom first and can’t see any boxes in there, just toilet paper and towels. Then I stand in front of the hall closet, which is right outside their bedroom, and for one second I think about flushing the toilet before I try opening the door so it drowns out the click and creak, but I don’t. I just open it slowly and stop when it starts to squeak. It’s stuffed with winter jackets that hang to the floor and boots and shoes all toppled over one another. Gym bags and hiking packs and water bottles and tennis racquets. We had a closet like this in Vermont. Mom called it our catch-all closet. Dad called it a mess.
Then I see it in the far back corner, behind all the long winter jackets and under two sleeping bags. The Garden box.
The tape stretched across the top is unbroken. I lift the box over the boots and shoes, pull it through the long-hanging coats, and carry it as quietly as I can back to my room.
I close the door, peel the tape from the top, and count what’s in there.
Four trowels.
Six small pots.
Eight wooden stakes that still have Vermont soil caked on the pointed ends.
Four pairs of gardening gloves.
Ten seed packets: two tomato, two carrot, two peas, two green bell pepper, one summer squash, and one red-leaf kale.
I’m 100 percent certain it’s too late in the season to plant tomatoes and summer squash, and I tell my brain to remember to look up the rest.
I take my pen from my book bag and make a list of what we’ll need for sure on a Post-it note:
More seeds that can be planted in June
Soil
More gardening gloves
I know we’ll need at least eight other things that I can’t think of right now, and I try to tuck myself back into bed and go to sleep, but my brain can’t stop thinking about getting dirt beneath my nails.
Chapter 27
Our All
The next day at Ms. Dacie’s house we get everyone around in a circle, even Ms. Dacie, and map out our plan. Frankie explains how we’re going to keep Trevor’s idea of a bake sale, but add to it.
“Everything will be two dollars each and we’ll have two bakers rotating in the kitchen so we always have oven-warmed cookies and no one will be able to resist.”
Ana says we can make lemonade too, and everyone’s already nodding their heads and saying, “Yeah,” and they haven’t even heard the best part yet.
Then I explain the garden. How right now it’s just a tangled mess and not worth anything, but with a little love and care it could be something that produces vegetables and flowers and looks beautiful and everyone will want to visit.
Trevor asks how that will make money, and that’s when I reveal the biggest part of my plan. “We’ll rent little plots of the garden to people in the neighborhood who want to grow their own vegetables and flowers and take care of it.”
Everyone’s nodding their heads again and saying, “Yes! Good idea!”
“They’ll pay every month for their plots, and Ms. Dacie can use the money to help pay the rent since she won’t have the funding.”
Cris and Edwin high-five, and Yasmin stands right up and starts a little happy dance. Everyone else is still nodding their heads.
“W-we st-still have to m-measure to s-see how many p-plots we can make,” Amelia says.
“I can help with that!” Trevor says.
When I look, I notice Ms. Dacie isn’t nodding her head. She’s smiling, though, and looking over the top of her purple glasses at Frankie, then Amelia and Ana, then me, then at everyone around the circle. “You all are too sweet,” she says. “And it means the world to me that you want to help, but it might be more money than a bake sale and a garden can make up.”
A few kids groan, and my heart starts beating one hundred beats per minute because I haven’t thought about the plan not working.
“We at least have to try!” Frankie blurts. “We can’t just do nothing.”
“Yeah!” Casey says.
“You c-c-can’t stop us from t-trying,” Amelia adds.
Dacie smiles and I think there might be tears caught up in the corners of her eyes.
“OK,” she says. “Let’s give it our all. But if we don’t raise enough, promise me we won’t be disappointed. We’ll be proud that we tried, and we’ll donate what we do make to the library. Deal?”
“Deal!”
“I’ll make the fliers and signs!” Ana says and starts pulling out the art supplies.
“We’ll make a grocery list for all the ingredients we need for cookies!” Yasmin and Cris grab hands and hustle off to the kitchen.
Casey says he’ll start cleaning up for the guests so the house looks good and organized.
Trevor says he’ll make a big donation jar out of the old jumbo pretzel jug from last weekend’s movie night. “Maybe some people will just want to make a donation. Every little bit counts!”
Everyone says they’ll hang fliers at their schools and tell their parents to tell their friends too.
“I’ll put it online!” Edwin jumps up and turns on one of Ms. Dacie’s old desktops.
Matthew starts going through Dacie’s records because every fun event has to have music, and Alia says we should call a newspaper. “Maybe they’ll write a story and that’ll make more people want to come!”
And while everyone is thinking of ideas and jumping up and organizing, I watch Ms. Dacie, and now I’m 100 percent certain that those were tears caught in the corners of her eyes, because they’re not caught anymore, they’re running free down her face. Like we already saved her house.
Then she clears her throat and says, “Just one more thing. I haven’t touched those garden beds in years. We’re going to need someone who really knows what they’re doing. An expert.”
That’s when I pipe up. “I’ve got that covered.”
And I don’t care how my dad buttons his shirt, or what direction his hair sticks in, he’s opening that bedroom door, and he’s going through that Garden box, and walking up the street to Ms. Dacie’s, and getting his hands dirty.
Frankie nods her head at me because she knows the other part of my plan: to get them here, to get them gardening, side by side, like they used to, to push them back together before it’s too late.
Before we leave, Ana’s drawn a huge sign on poster board with colorful blooming gardens and a table of the most realistic and delicious-looking cookies.
Ms. Dacie’s House Fund-raiser and Community Event
Saturday June 16 ALL DAY
All Welcome
Jer helps Ana tie it tight to the gate out front so that everyone walking by sees it and with all of us gathering around and buzzing with energy and Ms. Dacie touching us all on the shoulder to say Thanks, with those crow’s-feet wrinkles spreading out from her eyes, it makes it feel official and real.
In exactly eight days we will give it our all.
Chapter 28
Garden Box
Later that night, under my covers, I try to think of how I can convince my dad to help, to leave the apartment, assess Ms. Dacie’s garden beds, find a planting store, stock up on supplies, and get his hands dirty in the soil again.
I think of three different ways that I could ask him, but none of them sounds right. I don’t think he’ll say no, but I think he might not say yes. He’ll say that he’ll think about it, or maybe, or that it sounds like a lot of work, an impossible job, and before he can say a yes or no, it’ll be too late and Slick Suit will sign a big check and Ms. Dacie’s will be gone.
Then I decide I’ll let him say the first words instead. I push back the covers and climb out of bed and tiptoe with the Garden box in both hands. I set it down carefully outside their doorway and make sure it’s in the exact center so he can’t shuffle around it on the way to the bathroom or sidestep it to get his coffee from the kitchen. It’ll be right there, tape pulled back and top opened, twelve inches from his feet, dead center, when he opens the door in the morning.
I ti
ptoe back to my room and pull the comforter over me, and even though I don’t think it’ll make too much of a difference, I fall asleep with all my fingers crossed.
I wake up to my dad’s voice. “What in the— Maggie, I thought I said—”
I jump out of bed and open my door fast before dad pulls the tape back across the Garden box and gives it a little kick out of his way. It slides across the floor toward the kitchen.
Mom comes out of the room, tying her bathrobe around her waist. “I didn’t put it there.”
They both look up at me and I realize I didn’t think about this part, what I would say if he kicked the box instead of opening it wider to see what he could do with what’s inside.
“Rain?”
I don’t even give myself one second to take a big breath, I just start in about Ms. Dacie’s gardens and how they’re a tangled mess and we need an expert because otherwise Ms. Dacie’s will have to close and all these kids who are so nice to me won’t have a place to bake cookies or do their homework or go to summer art camp.
“Whoa, whoa,” Mom says. “Breathe.” She gestures toward a kitchen stool and I sit down.
I take a big breath that lasts three seconds going in and three seconds coming out, and I start over.
“Ms. Dacie is losing her funding. She can’t afford to run her place on her own.” I tell them about Operation Save Ms. Dacie’s and our plan for a big fund-raiser event. How we’ll bake cookies, and make lemonade, and rent out the garden plots for people in the neighborhood to grow their own vegetables and flowers.
“You should see her house, Dad,” I say. I tell him about the math tutors, and the bookshelves, and her records, and baking cookies, and the art supplies, and how she even helped me write poetry when no one else could.
“I’m sure it’s a great place.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. “And you are very sweet to come up with a plan, but this might be a bigger job than a fund-raiser.”
He takes one step away toward the hall closet, where the Garden box used to hide behind the long-hanging coats and among the boots, and I’m not 100 percent certain where my voice rises from so fast, but I think the same place where the missing reaches up and up, and I forget about giving my knuckles a good crack and let my voice out loud.
“Stop!”
And he does. Right in his tracks.
“You can’t just walk off!”
And he doesn’t. He just stands there frozen, waiting.
“And don’t even think about putting that Garden box away, because if you’re not going to use it, I am.” I take a big breath again. “I’m at least going to try.”
“Rain—”
“You’re in or you’re out,” I tell him. And I wish I hadn’t said it that way, because I’m 88 percent certain he’s out and maybe he just needs a little more time to think about how it just might work, and even if it doesn’t, he’ll get to have dirt under his nails and make something grow.
He doesn’t say anything for three seconds and I don’t want to wait one second longer, so I take the Garden box back to my room and close the door.
I count fifty-two bricks on the building across the alley before my heart starts beating its normal beats, and when my blood is moving calm like that through my body again I decide I’m not giving up on Dad so quickly, and I know the exact place that will make him want to help. I just have to get him there.
Chapter 29
Church
On Sunday I’m up early and I’m the one pulling on my parents’ toes and saying, “Wakey, wakey!”
I don’t even know if my dad’s ever been to church before, but I have to get him to go today because Frankie and Amelia and Ana will be there and they’re going to help me convince him to help us with Dacie’s garden for the fund-raiser.
Plus, if Mom and Dad come with me to the church for community service today, it’ll be like a warm-up for Ms. Dacie’s house. Even if it’s just washing dishes or making a salad, they can remember what it was like to do something next to each other.
I open their door a crack and peek in. And I think I’m right about them making an invisible line down the middle of the bed because they are two separate humps of comforter with space between like two rows of different crops in a vegetable garden.
The door creaks a little as I open it wider, and Dad sits up so fast it scares me. “What happened? Rain? Is everything OK?”
Then Mom shoots up fast too. “What’s wrong?”
And it makes my throat get all scratchy and that burning rise up behind my eyes because I’m 98 percent certain that if a little door creak makes them shoot straight out of sleep, then they probably don’t ever fall down into that deep sleep that feels so good and takes you one million miles away and that Mom always says is so important to make your brain a more efficient learner. I’m scared of deep sleep after that night too.
“Just me,” I say. “Everything’s fine.”
They both release huge sighs, and even though it’s because they were scared first thing in the morning, and I’m the one who scared them, I’m glad they at least did it together.
“Will you come with me to help at the church?” I ask.
“I thought you were getting all your hours at Ms. Dacie’s,” Mom says.
“I am,” I say. “But I still want to go. It’s important.”
She looks at me and smiles, and I think she’s sending me a secret message that says she’s proud of me.
“I’m in,” she says.
“Dad?”
“Oh—I think I should probably . . .”
What I want to do is scream that he has nothing else he should probably do but get out of bed and get dressed and go help some people who don’t have food or homes even if it means he won’t be taking space from Mom today.
But instead I crack my knuckles and say, “You’re going,” and turn around fast before he can say anything else.
Before I get the six steps back to my bedroom he calls, “OK. I’m coming,” and I pump my fist like we already won the city championships and saved Ms. Dacie’s house.
It’s raining when we leave for the church, and the rain here isn’t like the rain in Vermont. It smells different, like hot street instead of heavy grass, and it collects in big puddles at the curbs that we hop over at each intersection.
The weather muffles the voices that sing from the church doors, like the songs are caught up in each raindrop and washing down the street. I recognize the music from last week. This time, my dad stops, right there in the rain, and listens.
“Wow,” he whispers. “It’s really something.”
The rain drips from the hood of his raincoat, and I imagine little songs traveling in streams down his face and splashing open on the sidewalk.
And it really is something. And that’s a fact, because I’ve heard church music three times before in Vermont, and the singing never sounded like this. Like great joy bursting out from darkness, like happiness that rises up and up above the tops of the tallest buildings all mixed up with sadness that sinks down below the deepest subways.
I can tell the music is singing right to my dad’s heart, because I’m 92 percent certain that tears are mixing up with the raindrops on his face and I’m 100 percent certain I know what’s trapped up in his tears and splashing open on the sidewalk and washing down the street. The songs that Guthrie used to play on his guitar, and the stories of him we haven’t told for 360 days.
I’m about to reach up and grab his hand sticking out from his raincoat and send him a little secret message that my heart hurts too and sometimes music makes it hurt worse, when Mom says, “We should get inside. Come on.” Then she’s hustling off, and Dad and I follow her sneaker squish marks up the sidewalk, around the corner of the church, and down the steps to the kitchen.
Ms. Claudia is there and she offers us a towel and hangs our rain jackets to dry. Two other women are already there washing lettuce for a salad, and Ms. Claudia assigns my mom and dad to sandwiches. Dad will smear the bread with
mayonnaise and Mom will load it with turkey and cheese.
I’m opening big bags of oranges and putting them into a basket, but really I’m watching Mom and Dad out of the corner of my eye. They’re not saying anything, just smearing mayonnaise and layering cheese slices, but I think they make a pretty good team, because the sandwiches are stacking up high on the platter fast.
Frankie shows up, then Amelia and Ana. I can tell from their drippy jackets that it’s still raining outside. Claudia greets them and they all talk in Spanish and hang their raincoats next to ours. Then Claudia says the four of us can start putting out the boxes of plastic forks and spoons and cups and napkins. We also need to fill the big coolers with water and unfold all the chairs and fit them around the tables. We put our hands up for a quadruple high five and get to work, and I know we’re a good team because we finish all our tasks before the door opens and the first hungry person walks in.
I recognize some people from last time. The little girl, Natasha, with her teddy bear and her mom, is wearing a black trash bag today, cut with holes and turned into a poncho. Rain drips from the bottom of the plastic onto a pair of adult sneakers tied tight over her footed pajamas. The shoes are worn through on the sides, and too big, and make her feet look like they’ve walked too many miles for her little years.
Claudia helps her out of the poncho, and Ana bends down and speaks to her in Spanish. Natasha smiles and shows her the teddy bear and Ana kisses its nose and they run off together, giggling, to one of the tables.
“Does Ana know her?” I ask Frankie.
She shrugs. “Kind of seems like it.”
I deliver the basket of oranges to the table where the coolers are so people can help themselves and Ana calls to me, “Toss one!”
I raise my eyebrows and point to the oranges.
She nods her head and puts up her hands. “I’m open!”
I underhand toss her an orange, and in thirty seconds she and Natasha are bowling the orange into plastic cups and watching them crash to the floor. Natasha cracks up hard each time, and when I turn back toward the kitchen I can see that her mom’s eyes are red, and not just because she’s tired.
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