Tending Roses

by Wingate, Lisa

  The next thing I knew, I was half facing Grandma and making the most ridiculous statements. “Joshua! It’s Joshua! And you come near that baby with cereal, it’ll be the last time! No cereal, no cookies to chew on, no drops of brandy for colic! No . . .” The word ended in a gasp as something in the road caught my eye and I slammed on the brakes.

  Grandma rocked forward, catching one hand on the seat back and the other on the baby carrier as we slid to a stop.

  Heart rapping in my throat, I looked at her and Joshua, then glanced ahead at the road. Doe-eyed in our path were a big dog and a dark-haired girl crouched above an overturned bike. The car had stopped not more than ten feet short of them. We were all frozen, looking at each other agape with horror.

  My mind ran over the preceding moments with lightning speed. Where had she come from? How could we have come so close to hitting her? How long were my eyes off the road? What would have happened if I’d seen her a moment later?

  The clatter of something against the pavement shook me into action. Hitting the hazard lights, I put the car in park and got out just in time to catch a can of pork and beans as it rolled toward the side of the road. On my way to the overturned bike, I gathered what could be salvaged of the groceries that had spilled from the basket.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, stopping a few feet away when the dog started to growl.

  The girl nodded as she stood up and righted the bike, reaching across the dog to regain her groceries, her chin tucked and her face hidden. “Rowdy, hush,” she told the dog. Her voice sounded so young, it shocked me, and I realized that though she was tall, she was probably only about nine or ten years old. Too young to be biking down the highway three miles from town all alone.

  “I’m sorry. I just didn’t see you,” I apologized, wanting to touch her to make sure she was all in one piece.

  Stepping back as if she’d read my thoughts, she crossed her arms nervously over her stomach. “I shouldn’t’ve been in the road.”

  Bracing my palms on my knees, I bent over and tried to make contact with the face hidden beneath a mass of too-long bangs and tangled hair. “It was my fault. I’ll be glad to replace your groceries or just give you the money.”

  I caught a glimpse of wide dark eyes as she looked around at the spilled milk, squashed chips, and broken jelly jar.

  “I’m really sorry,” I tried again as I started picking up the remaining groceries. “Can I give you a ride home and explain it to your mom?”

  “No, ma’am.” She ran three steps and hopped on the bike before I could react. The dog followed quickly after her, and they disappeared around a bend in the road as I retrieved the last of the crumpled groceries and stood there with no one to give them to. Finally, I just carried the ripped bag back to the car and set it in the trunk, leaking jelly and all.

  “Well, let’s get on to town.” Grandma was clearly put out by the delay as I climbed into the driver’s seat. “The vegetables will be in the trash before we get there, and now we have spoiled groceries leaking all over my trunk.” I glanced after the girl, and Grandma leaned forward to follow my line of vision, adding matter-of-factly, “That little Jordan girl. It will be a miracle if something terrible doesn’t happen to her before she’s grown.”

  “What was she doing on the road?” I asked, ignoring the ire in her tone.

  Grandma tipped her chin up and righted herself in her seat like a judge at a hanging trial. “Well, probably going after cigarettes for her granny. She’s a big fat woman and too lazy to get out of the house. Has emphysema so bad she can’t walk to the mailbox, but it doesn’t stop her from buying cigarettes.” She pointed a finger into the air and then at me. “And I’ll tell you what else. They take welfare. Spend it on cigarettes and potato chips. Just white trash—that’s all. That little girl’s been sent home from school for lice probably a half-dozen times.”

  The thought made my skin crawl. “Where is her mother?”

  Grandma huffed out a long sigh as if even telling the story were a waste of time. “Ran away to St. Louis and got herself pregnant by some Mexican or Indian or maybe even a Negro man. No one knows, and she didn’t either. Then she died on drugs and left that baby for her gran to raise. They’re just no better than white trash. Hurry up, Katie. I have to get to the grocery.”

  “Where does she live?” I asked, keeping the car at a moderate speed. One near miss was enough.

  Grandma craned forward to glance at the speedometer, huffed, then gave me a blank look in the rearview mirror. “Where does who live?”

  “That little girl on the bike.”

  “Oh,” she muttered absently, her mind obviously drifting. “Down Mulberry Road in an awful little hovel that ought to be condemned. Larry Leddy rents it to them, and he ought to be ashamed. Needs to be torn down. You can see it across the river bottom from our place. Katie, Land sakes, slow down. Do you know you went forty-five around that curve? No need to rush us into an accident.”

  And so it went the rest of the way to town. Speed up, Katie. Slow down. Land sakes. Curve ahead. Joshua needs cereal, but no pacifier. And an occasional, The Jordans are white trash. Welfare ought to haul them away. Land sakes, what’s wrong with the world?

  Chapter 4

  FEW things smell worse than rotten vegetables. When we began our salvage operation in the back room of the grocery store, my mood matched the stench—completely foul. I set Josh’s carrier as far away from the smell as I could and reluctantly started sorting through some apples with one finger.

  But as we went along, I started to see the humor in Grandma and me digging through bins of spoiled fruit and bags of rotten potatoes like a couple of vagrants. No one at work would ever believe this was how I had spent my vacation.

  When Grandma found something good, she would cry out as if she’d discovered a gold nugget: “Ah-hah! Here is a perfectly good orange. Not a mark on it. Can you believe anyone would throw such a thing in the trash?” or “Um-hum, um-hum, look at how many good potatoes are left in these bags. I thought so. We can store these in the cellar and have them all winter. Terrible how much people will waste these days. In my day . . .”

  Meanwhile, I sorted through bags of apples, trying not to laugh and not to breathe at the same time. When we were done, we had netted about a half-dozen oranges, slightly bruised; two bushels of apples, rotten only in places; some yellow stalks of celery; four cucumbers, shriveled on one end; and enough potatoes to feed an army.

  Grandma was giddy. We would not starve over the long winter ahead, or go into debt to buy potatoes. She went into the store to thank Shorty, the grocer, while I loaded down the trunk of the old Buick, then picked up Josh and drove around front to wait for her. She was still inside talking, so Josh and I sneaked over to the hardware store to buy a can of paint and a brush for the utility room. I tucked it in the trunk under the baskets, then sat with Josh on the bench by the curb, enjoying another unseasonably warm day.

  Taking a deep breath of the clean Ozark air, I gazed at the town, sleepy at midafternoon on a Saturday. It looked like a picture postcard, an ancient native-stone town nestled amid oak trees on the banks of the Gasconade River. Hindsville probably hadn’t changed much since its founding over a hundred years before. The storefronts, brownstone with neatly painted porches and trim, were built around a picturesque central square with stone walkways and a gazebo where folks still came on Saturday nights to pick guitars, fiddle, and sing.

  I had vague memories of going there a few times as a child—twirling in a floral-print dress on the grass in front of the bandstand. The memory made me feel warm and grounded. There is something special about a place that smells and sounds and feels like your childhood. Hindsville was the place where I bought ice cream cones at the drugstore and sat on the curb to eat them. The place where Mom and I bought new school shoes from the dry goods store at the end of every summer visit. It was the center of nearly every tradition I remembered about my family—the only place where the four of us were together
with no one in a hurry to go somewhere.

  I’d never realized I missed it. Throughout my adult years, I’d never felt a need to return. Too slow. Too boring. No skyscrapers. No shopping mall.

  My last memory of Hindsville was of coming for my mother’s funeral at the family cemetery next to the farm. Ben and I had stayed only three days. Three quiet, solemn days in which all of us looked for someone to blame for Mom’s car accident. Three days in which we fell apart instead of coming together . . .

  So why did I now feel an overwhelming sadness that I would probably never return to Hindsville? This Christmas would be the end of it. The end of the farm. The end of that nagging guilt that Grandma was here alone and no one ever visited her. After Christmas, Grandma would be settled in a nursing home near Aunt Jeane . . .

  My mind couldn’t frame the picture.

  The chimes rang three o’clock on the Baptist church next door, and I stopped to listen, looking at the glittering stained-glass image of a dove landing in God’s hands. Brother Baker stood on the front steps and waved at me, then walked across the alley to Shorty’s. I stood up, hoping Grandma would come out before Brother Baker got around to loading on the Christian guilt about Ben and me not being churchgoers.

  “Well, your husband is all settled in with his computer,” he announced as he stepped onto the walk.

  “That’s wonderful,” I said, thinking how much Brother Baker seemed to have aged. My mind conjured a fleeting image of him in a much younger state, red hair instead of gray, dunking me in the baptismal pool behind the pulpit. “We sure appreciate this. Grandma’s farm doesn’t seem to be Internet-friendly.”

  Brother Baker chuckled, then gave me a round-cheeked smile that made the essence of my childhood stronger. “Well, you know, we haven’t quite joined the modern era around here.”

  I laughed with him. “That’s not all bad.” Strangely, I meant it. “We’re enjoying the quiet.”

  Brother Baker nodded as if he understood. “It has its benefits.” He reached down and rubbed Josh’s fuzzy head, then sidestepped to open the door to the grocery store as Grandma hobbled out carrying a half-dozen loaves of bread and two boxes of doughnuts.

  She tipped her chin up, looking triumphant. “The bread man was going to throw these away.” She peered over the stack and realized it was Brother Baker holding the door open, not me. “Well, hello, Brother Baker. How is young Benjamin getting along?”

  “Just fine, Mrs. Vongortler.” Brother Baker stood at attention like a foot soldier addressing a cavalry captain. “He’s all settled in one of those offices off the fellowship hall.”

  Grandma nodded approval. “Well, very good. I guess that’s a problem solved, then.” She squared her shoulders so that she could look at Brother Baker more directly. “Now, if any of the church elders have a question about him using the facility, you have them call me.”

  “I’m sure things will be fine,” Brother Baker said, then told us good-bye and scooted into the grocery store, clearly relieved to be escaping the conversation with Grandma unscathed. “You ladies have a good day now.”

  Grandma nodded after him, then proceeded to the car, and the three of us headed back to the farm with our loot.

  By the time we arrived and carried the baskets to the kitchen, Grandma and Josh were both exhausted. Grandma padded off to the little house to rest, and I put Josh in his crib, then retrieved the paint from the car and started on the utility room.

  An hour and a half later, the room was greatly improved, and I had touched up around the outside doorframe and ceiling too. It looked pretty good, except for the burn damage on the wall where the ironing board had been. Since I know nothing about replastering walls, there wasn’t much I could do about that, so I set the new stand-alone ironing board in front of the hole and went outside to clean the paintbrush and put the paint away. I heard Grandma coming in the front door as I went out the back, so I hurried to get out of sight. The less Grandma was reminded of the fire damage, the better.

  When I came onto the porch again, she was in the front yard near the rose trellis, carefully pruning the winter-browned vines with the tenderness of a loving parent. A pair of squirrels, accustomed to her throwing out corn, dashed back and forth around her feet, looking for food. Every so often, she paused and reached into her pocket, tossing out a handful of seed to keep them busy.

  Her hand reaching into the printed blue polyester brought a memory to me with startling clarity. I could see her in that very apron on some long-ago summer day, tossing bits of corn to the guinea hens that years ago roamed the farmyard. In my ears, I heard the sputter of the old red tractor and the rattle of the wagon puttering down the lane. I could see my grandfather motion to me, then stop the tractor and wait by the gate. I remembered running across the lawn with my hand in Grandma’s and laughing when she swung me into the wagon for a ride. As we left, I saw her squeeze Grandpa’s hand and give him a peck on the cheek.

  Then the memory dashed away like one of Grandma’s squirrels.

  I found myself standing with one hand pressed against the screen. The memory was one I never knew I had, from a summer visit when I was only three or four years old. It was the only recollection I had of my grandparents together—surprising in its tenderness, considering that no one in the family ever talked about how they were toward each other. I guess I’d never thought that they might have been in love, and never considered how truly sad it would be to go on for almost thirty years after the one you loved was gone. I wondered if that was the source of the melancholy that had been with Grandma ever since I had known her. I remembered her as solemn and rigid, fussy about things and critical of people, often difficult to be around. I just assumed she had always been that way. I could not remember a time when she would have burst into laughter and run across the lawn with me on her arm.

  Leaving her there with her roses and her squirrels, I went inside to fix myself a cup of tea and air out the utility room. The kitchen was quiet and peaceful, no overflowing dishwater or lakes of coffee on the floor—just long rays of late-afternoon sunlight streaming through the tall west window, and the dishes still there from lunch, waiting to be washed, and several baskets of slightly unappealing fruits and vegetables waiting to be stored, or canned, or whatever Grandma had in mind. Choosing to ignore the mess a little longer, I poured the tea, then turned to sit at the table. There, as if it had appeared while my back was turned, was Grandma’s book. It reminded me that I’d never confessed snooping the day before, or told her how much the yellow bonnet story meant to me. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t mentioned it—perhaps because I was embarrassed about snooping, or maybe afraid she’d be angry. One thing I had learned on my childhood visits to the farm was not to touch her things.

  Still, if the book were private, she wouldn’t leave it lying around. . . .

  I subdued my conscience in a flash and opened the book with curiosity and a sense of anticipation, hoping to read the story about the yellow bonnets again.

  But the pages of the story had been removed from the book as if they had never existed. Milk, bread, and oleo had replaced the words that had shown me children running through yellow fields.

  “A shopping list,” I muttered, feeling strangely let down and even more guilty. My theory that Grandma had written the story for me to read was a wash. If it were for me, she wouldn’t have taken it out of the book and put it away.

  The next page was blank except for dots of ink that had bled through from the page after. Turning the page, I found writing that quivered like Grandma’s hands.

  “Time For Tending Roses,” I whispered and thought of the beautiful rose garden that bloomed on the lawn in summertime. It had been there for as long as I could remember, carefully manicured, every bloom perfect—just as perfect and neat as everything else in Grandma’s household.

  I read the title again, then dove into the story with a strange hunger for the words.

  When I was a young woman, I seldom owned anything of which to be p
roud. When I was old enough to work in a shop in St. Louis and live on my own, most of my wage was sent home to provide for my younger brothers and sisters, for my parents had not even their health by this time. When I was married, I came to my husband’s farm with all that I owned packed in a single crate. Everything I saw, or tasted, or touched around me belonged to my husband. I felt like the air in that big house, needed and used, but not seen.

  God sent an answer to me in worship that spring, when an old woman told me she wanted the gardens cleaned around her house, and if I would do the work, I might have flower bulbs and starts of roses as my pay. My husband pretended to think the idea rather foolish, as I was needed on the farm, but he was patient with me as I worked through the early spring, cleaning gardens and moving starts to a newly tilled bed by our farmhouse. He was older than I, and I think he understood that I needed something of my own.

  Those roses were the finest things I had been given in my life, and I tended them carefully all spring. As the days lengthened, the roses grew well and blossomed in the summer heat, as did I. Coming in and out of the house, I would look at them—something that belonged to me, growing in soil that belonged to him.

  Even passing folk admired my roses, for my work made the blooms large and full. Once, a poor hired lady came with a bouquet of roses and wildflowers clasped in her hands. She told me that her children had sneaked into my garden and picked them for her, and that they would be punished. I bade her not to scold the children, for I was proud to give them this gift. She smiled, and thanked me, and told me that, with so many children, she had no time for tending roses.

  I did not understand her words until my own children were born. When the first was a babe, I took her outside and let her play in an empty wash barrel so I could have time for tending my roses. I was often cross with her cries while I was at my work. As she grew, and as my second child was born, I understood what the hired lady had told me—that motherhood leaves no time for selfish pleasures. Only time for tending others.