Gloria’s Garden
Ms. Holbrook woke up with the sun at 5:30 am. She pulled up her bed sheets tight, until they resembled printer paper. Then she carefully covered her paper with a quilt embroidered with pink flowers, so light that they were quiet, so quiet you could barely hear them. Fluffing a round, velvet pillow, she placed it in the center of her bed. She brushed through her short, thick hair. Pausing for a moment, she watched the way her silver hair glistened and fell softly into her face. She felt pretty. Quickly she pulled the strands back and twisted them into a low bun.
Her house smelled like a mixture of cement and rain. She had left her windows open at night, listening to the rain bounce off the various tools and buckets that filled her side yard. She liked when it rained. The house was too quiet without it. Warm toast sat on a small plate decorated with a picture of a baby lamb. She had bought these plates painted with various farm animals at a yard sale five years ago. Slicing through the tough skin of a tomato from her garden, she placed one on her toast covering it with oregano, salt and olive oil. She placed her tomato in a Ziploc for the rest of the week.
The sidewalk that led to her house was already dried of rain. No one in the neighborhood was awake yet. This was her favorite time of day. She followed the sidewalk all the way around the perimeter of her house, entering the dewy branches and leaves of her garden. Ripe fruit dropped down, ready to be picked. Ready for her sharp teeth. She checked up on each crop she planted. She spoke to them: “Oh Tomato you are almost ready, next week I will eat you with my toast”, “Hello! Pretty little carrots I can see your orange heads peeking out”. Ms. Holbrook had never had children of her own, but she talked to her plants as an elementary school teacher would to her 2nd grade class. “Who is ready for a little water?”, she asked the plots of peas and cucumbers, waiting for a response. She started this garden almost 20 years ago. A project that had started nurturing a single basil plant turned into a variety of almost 40 different fruits and vegetables, as she had found time after retiring and would get bored in the house alone. She had never lived with anyone really. She dated many. She loved some. But she never married. Too messy, she thought. She didn’t mind being alone. Her heart was stained glass and when you put it up to the light, you could see the pieces glued together with cement that wouldn’t wear even in heavy rain.
Instead, heavy rain would seep into the roots of her crops who would suck it up dry. And when they were ripe, she would slice into them with a serrated blade or squeeze them into ice water or chomp them with her teeth.