The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden

by Karina Yan Glaser

  Jessie sighed and glared at Hyacinth. “Are you feeding the mice down here again?”

  Hyacinth looked down and focused her attention on finger knitting.

  “Is Mr. Beiderman afraid of mice?” Laney could not imagine anyone being afraid of mice. They had such cute noses and whiskers!

  “Maybe he’s feeling sad about his family,” Hyacinth said. “You know how he gets sometimes.”

  Laney thought about this. Mr. Beiderman didn’t really talk about his family much. Laney knew that his daughter, Luciana, had died six years ago, at age sixteen, along with Mr. Beiderman’s wife, when a taxi had hit them as they were crossing the street. Isa had told Laney that the deaths of his wife and daughter were what had made Mr. Beiderman shut himself inside his apartment for so many years.

  Sometimes Mr. Beiderman got so sad that he stopped coming down for dinners and didn’t answer his phone, even when Laney dialed his number five times in a row and left “I love you” messages each time. Mama said that he needed to be alone, but Laney always felt like crying when he shut himself inside his apartment for days at a time. She loved when he joined them for dinners or came downstairs in the evening to read her a bedtime story.

  When Mr. Beiderman acted like this, Laney wanted to do something for him. When she fell down, her parents and sisters kissed whatever body part was hurting. Laney put her hand over her heart and felt it beat out a rhythm against her palm. What could she do to make Mr. Beiderman’s heart feel better?

  * * *

  After Laney had changed out of her pajamas, the Vanderbeeker siblings filed outside and headed west toward the church. There was silence as they walked past the row of brownstones on 141st Street. Jessie always felt a little in awe walking down their block. She liked to imagine the people who had built the brownstones from the ground up over a hundred years ago, and then all the people who had lived there since. Her next-door neighbors had cool jobs: one was a physical therapist who worked with dancers on Broadway; one was a custodian at the local high school; one was in construction, working on one of the huge office buildings going up on 55th Street and Third Avenue; and another worked as an educator at the Bronx Zoo. In the evenings, she would hear them coming home, along with laughter spilling out through the windows and music drifting from radios propped up on the windowsills as people prepared dinner or washed dishes.

  At the end of the block, the gray stone church stood proudly with gleaming stained-glass windows and one impressive spire that rose above the height of the brownstones. Right before the church was a patch of weedy land surrounded by a chainlink fence covered in thick ivy, with a sign that could barely be seen through the overgrowth.

  “See!” Laney said, standing on tiptoe and pointing at the sign. “It says No Pass.”

  Laney’s siblings glanced at one another. Could Laney read?

  “And that’s why you get turned into a gremlin if you pass the gate,” Laney concluded.

  Oliver eyed her. “Where did you get that gremlin idea?”

  Laney squished up her face. “I just know.”

  Jessie poked her finger through the thick ivy, trying to look beyond it. The land used to be a play area for kids who went to the church’s nursery school, but when the school closed down ten years before, there was no one to maintain and use the space on a regular basis. The church had closed off access to it; now the lot was the one neglected area on the block.

  “Are you sure you want to do that?” Hyacinth took a big step away from the fence.

  “I wonder if there’s a way to get inside,” Jessie said. “Like a gate or a door.” She scanned the fence, looking for an opening.

  Oliver tried to pull at some of the tangled vines, with little success.

  “Man, this ivy is really tough—ARGHHHH! MY ARM!” Oliver started thrashing against the fence, trying to free himself.

  Hyacinth and Laney screamed and started grabbing Oliver’s other arm, trying to pull him from the fence, where a gremlin was undoubtedly snacking on his fingers. Jessie jumped in, yanking Oliver so hard that they all tumbled to the sidewalk in a big heap.

  Then Oliver started laughing. His eyes teared up and he blurted out, “Fooled you!”

  His sisters glared at him, but Oliver was cackling so hard, he didn’t notice.

  Jessie stood up and held out a hand to her sisters. Laney pointed at her elbow, and Jessie brushed off the gravel and gave it a kiss.

  “Come on,” Jessie said, glaring at Oliver. “Let’s go visit Triple J.”

  Hyacinth glanced at her brother, who was lying on the sidewalk, still laughing. “What about Oliver?” she asked Jessie.

  Jessie rolled her eyes and said, “Leave him there,” then started walking toward the church.

  The pastor, a man named James Joseph Jackson who went by the nickname Triple J, had led the church for more than forty years. He was known throughout the neighborhood as wise and sensible, and even people who didn’t go to his church found themselves stopping by to chat with him during the week.

  Jessie, Hyacinth, and Laney walked up to the church and knocked on the solid wood door. When there was no answer, Jessie knocked again just as Oliver rejoined them. Still no answer, so all four kids pounded together. Triple J’s office was far from the church door; plus he sometimes took out his hearing aids when he worked.

  Their diligence was rewarded when the heavy door slowly opened and a cheerful voice greeted them in a big baritone. “Hello, my dear Vanderbeekers. Are you having a blessed day?”

  Five

  Triple J wore round eyeglasses and a white T-shirt with drawings of animals that kids from the Sunday school had made for him a few months ago when they’d been studying Noah’s Ark. He was followed by a short, balding man whose baggy brown suit pants pooled around pointy brown shoes that looked as if they squeezed his toes.

  “How is everyone today?” he asked, passing around fist bumps. “Have you met Mr. Huxley? We were having a budget meeting, so I’m especially glad you interrupted me.” He winked at the kids.

  Huxley? Oliver glanced at Jessie.

  Mr. Huxley gave a bland wave.

  “Are you Herman’s dad?” Oliver asked.

  “Yes,” Mr. Huxley said.

  “We’re in the same class,” Oliver told him.

  “Uh-huh,” he replied. Then he pulled out his phone and started typing away on it.

  “Any word from Isa?” Triple J asked. “How does she like orchestra camp?”

  “She’s having a great time without us,” Jessie told him, frowning. She handed him her cell phone. “Want to text her?”

  Triple J took the phone, switched to his reading glasses, then pounded on the keys with his thumbs, dictating the message as he typed: “Hi there! Triple J here. Say your prayers. Eat vegetables. Tell your parents you love them.” He pressed send and handed the phone back to Jessie. It buzzed almost instantly. Jessie glanced at the screen, then held it up to Triple J. Isa had already replied. “Triple J! Thanks for writing! I miss you!”

  “Jessie texts Isa a billion times a day,” Oliver informed Triple J.

  “Sisters are the greatest gift,” Triple J said amiably. He ignored Oliver, who mumbled, “Ha!” under his breath. “What brings you kids by the church today? Am I lucky enough that you came just to visit me?”

  “Actually, we did come to see you,” Oliver said. “We have a proposition.”

  “That means it’s a really great idea,” Laney chimed in.

  Triple J nodded, encouraging them to continue.

  Oliver took a deep breath. “See, we were thinking of doing something here.” He pointed toward the neglected lot next door. “We wanted to make it into a garden.” Oliver caught the skeptical look on Mr. Huxley’s face. “Or something.”

  Triple J’s phone pinged, and he took it out of his pocket and squinted at the screen.

  “Are you saying you want to play in there?” Mr. Huxley gestured dubiously at the trashed lot. “Wouldn’t the park be better?”

  “It
wouldn’t be for playing in,” Jessie clarified. “We want to clean it up and make it into something everyone can enjoy.”

  Triple J said, “Mmm-hmm. That’s a nice idea, nice idea.” Then his phone pinged again, and he said, “Hold on.” He answered, then said, “Is everything okay?” into the phone. He gave an apologetic wave to the kids and whispered, “Mr. Huxley can help you,” before stepping back into the church and leaving them with Mr. Huxley, whose attention was already back on his phone.

  “So, can we do this?” Oliver asked him.

  Mr. Huxley dragged his eyes off his phone. “Do what?”

  “Use the lot next door,” Jessie said.

  “Wait a second,” Mr. Huxley said with a pinched look on his face. “As far as I know, there isn’t even a way to get inside that lot. Even if we could, I wouldn’t give you kids a big piece of land to play around in. Think about the liabilities. What if you get hurt? The church can’t afford a new boiler, let alone a lawsuit.”

  “But Triple J just said we could use it,” Oliver said, fudging the truth, since Triple J had seemed a little distracted. “We could sign a release—you know, like the ones they give us at school when we go on field trips.”

  “Yeah,” Jessie chimed in. She had brought home so many of those field-trip permission slips that she had memorized the language. “I’m happy to type out a release form and have us all sign it in triplicate.”

  Mr. Huxley shook his head, and his phone buzzed. Apparently something urgent had come up, because he said, “Triple J and I have a lot of budget items to discuss,” before turning around and going back into the church.

  Oliver yelled at Mr. Huxley’s retreating figure. “But what about our garden idea?”

  The answer was the church door closing in their faces.

  The Vanderbeekers stared at the door.

  “Now what?” Oliver asked.

  * * *

  The Vanderbeekers figured they needed to wait until Mr. Huxley left the building before they asked Triple J about the lot again. Mr. Huxley was such a downer.

  Hyacinth watched Jessie and Oliver pace back and forth in front of the fence while she and Laney sat on the stoop of the neighboring brownstone, a respectable distance away from potentially grabby gremlin hands. Laney was lining up pebbles along the edges of the steps.

  Under her breath, Hyacinth sang the introduction to “Come Sail Away,” a song she had learned in chorus at school. From inside the lot, branches of a large tree hung over the fence, creating shade on the sidewalk. Hyacinth finished singing the last line of the second verse, But we’ll try best that we can to carry on, and she couldn’t help but think the branches were swaying exactly to the rhythm of her song.

  Hyacinth took a pause before the chorus, and the branches stilled, as if waiting for her to continue. When she began again, the leaves rustled in delight and the branches stirred once more. She jumped off the steps and walked toward the fence, all thoughts of gremlins and grabby vines and haunted gardens gone from her mind. One of the tree branches arching over the fence danced in front of Hyacinth. When she reached out to graze it with her finger, a gentle summer breeze blew down the street, rustling the ivy. A glint of gold sparkled in the sunshine among the dark green leaves.

  Hyacinth brushed the ivy aside. Nestled inside a tangle of vines was a brass lock.

  Six

  One of the last technology classes Oliver had taken before school ended was about how to create secure passwords. His teacher, Ms. Okeke, spoke about the importance of creating strong passwords so hackers couldn’t steal your personal information or read your emails. Oliver and his best friend, Jimmy L, couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to read their emails, which were mostly filled with homework questions or basketball stats and links to YouTube videos, but they did enjoy trying to create complicated passwords that they could never remember, using random combinations of the symbols above the number keys.

  So when Hyacinth showed everyone her find, the four-digit brass combination lock, Oliver knew just what to do. He thought about Ms. Okeke’s list of passwords not to use because they were too common, and started with those numbers right away. Surely the person who had locked the land up tight ten years ago wouldn’t have bothered much about lock security. Ten years ago was before he was born! Did they even have computers back then? Starting with 1-1-1-1, Oliver cycled through 2-2-2-2, then 3-3-3-3, and then all the same digits up to nine with no success.

  “My confidence in you is fading,” Jessie said as she watched over his shoulder.

  “Stop hovering,” Oliver muttered.

  Next door, they heard the telltale creak of the wooden church door opening.

  “Oliver,” Hyacinth said uneasily, looking past him.

  Oliver glanced over his shoulder to see Triple J emerge with a suitcase, Mr. Huxley right behind him. They faced the street, but a turn of the head would put the Vanderbeekers right in Mr. Huxley’s sight line, and they did not want Mr. Huxley knowing what they were up to. Oliver frantically tried his next combination idea. At least Laney was unusually still; she was crouched down on the sidewalk, observing ants carrying a piece of apple to their colony.

  “Maybe we should go,” Jessie whispered.

  Oliver felt a slight click as the numbers rolled into place and the lock disengaged. He slipped the lock off the latch and pushed the gate open. “C’mon!”

  “Hurry!” Jessie whispered as a taxi rolled up in front of the church and Triple J walked toward it with his suitcase, Mr. Huxley still following.

  Oliver slipped inside and turned to grab Laney and Hyacinth to yank them in, hoping their voices were muffled by the car engine running. Jessie entered last, pulling the gate closed behind her.

  They heard a car vroom off down the street, and then Mr. Huxley’s toe-pinching shoes tapping a staccato rhythm against the sidewalk toward them. He stopped almost directly in front of the gate; the kids could hear his coarse breathing on the other side of the ivy-covered fence. Oliver’s heart was beating so loudly that the thump echoed in his ears. Laney had buried her head in Jessie’s chest, and Hyacinth had nestled into Oliver’s side. The sound of a garbage truck on the avenue covered Laney’s whimpers.

  After what seemed like hours, Mr. Huxley marched away from the lot, his steps accompanied by what sounded like happy humming. They listened until his footsteps faded away.

  Then the Vanderbeekers slowly turned around to take their first look at the lot.

  * * *

  “Ew,” Oliver said, his face wrinkling in distaste. “Is that a toilet over there?”

  Jessie followed Oliver’s finger to where there was indeed a toilet.

  “Maybe the gremlins live in there,” Laney said uneasily.

  “In the toilet?” Oliver was skeptical.

  “There’s a bathtub too,” Hyacinth said, pointing.

  Jessie didn’t respond. Her eyes scanned the land past trash and weeds and neglect. There was a tree next to the fence with sprawling, begging-to-be-climbed branches, and near the back of the lot was another tree with a vinelike trunk that had woven itself through the fence, reaching for the sky. Ivy covered the fences and boxed in the lot on all four sides, scrabbling up the sides of the church buildings and serving as a barrier to busy city sounds. A host of sparrows must have been tucked into the branches of the tree, because chirps filled the air, as if the birds were having a disco party. The lot was beautiful and wild but also very neglected.

  The sight reminded her of a hike in the Palisades she had taken with her family the year before. They had spent a glorious day wandering beneath majestic trees, slipping off their shoes and stepping into icy streams, and venturing through overgrown vine- and moss-covered pathways.

  Jessie glanced at her siblings. Hyacinth stood up against the fence, fumbling for the latch to the gate.

  Oliver, however, was already trying to pull up some of the ivy and weeds from the ground so he could make a path to the bathtub.

  Hyacinth stepped into the garden and tried t
o pull Oliver back. “Don’t go any farther!”

  “I’m trying to clear a path,” Oliver said. He yanked at more weeds. “Ouch,” he said, dropping a weed with skinny thorns along its stems.

  “Be careful,” Jessie cautioned.

  Hyacinth grabbed her brother’s hand and turned it over so she could examine the injury.

  Jessie, seeing an opening for getting Hyacinth to embrace the garden, swooped in. “Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a secret spot for Mr. Jeet and Miss Josie? Think of what we could do to this space.”

  Oliver, who understood Hyacinth best, clinched it. “It would be the best present for them, don’t you think? Plus, it would be a huge surprise.”

  Jessie watched Hyacinth process the information. Giving surprise gifts was her weakness.

  “I guess it wouldn’t make sense for gremlins to be in a garden,” Hyacinth finally said, looking up at the tree next to her. “In the Roald Dahl book, the gremlins were up in the sky dismantling the airplane, not on the ground.”

  “Exactly,” Oliver said with a snap of his fingers. “What about you, Laney? This is pretty cool, right?”

  Laney was searching through the dirt, looking for rocks for her collection and utterly unconcerned about gremlins.

  “We need gardening gloves,” Hyacinth said, looking at Oliver’s hands. “And gardening supplies, like a trowel and a rake. Mandy had a trowel.”

  “Who’s Mandy?” Laney asked, instantly suspicious. She prided herself on knowing all her siblings’ friends. “There’s no Mandy in your class.”

  “No, Mandy from the book Mandy. She lives in an orphanage and climbs over a wall every day to walk to an abandoned cottage where she has her own garden.” Hyacinth looked around at the tumble of vines and plants.

  “We definitely need gardening supplies,” Jessie said. “Who has allowance money? Ooh, Oliver, you’re rolling in cash!”

  Oliver frowned. “I’ve been saving for my bike.”

  “I can give all my money,” Laney said. “I have forty-three dollars.”