Reaching for Sun (4 page)
Authors: Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
reading a gardening magazine
or at least find one
blanketing her chest
as she snores
in her hammock
stretched over the unfurling face of hosta
and fingers of ferns.
The old
sycamores out back
create dollops of shade.
You can find Mom
(if she’s home)
slumped over the landscape designs
(her final semester project),
long runner’s legs
forever twitching or swinging—
the woman never sits still.
Now you can find me
with Jordan,
parked in the garden
building a trap for insects
or graphing the growth on our marigold plants
or just watching the day yawn,
noting in my notebook
all the changes I see.
We’re building
a tadpole fort
complete with fresh water
dipped from the creek
and beta food from the pet store
when Jordan asks
(like no one else will):
“You have cerebral palsy, don’t you?”
Surprised, I only nod.
“Were you born with it?”
I nod again.
“How does it happen?”
“A vein pops in the brain
and ruins the parts
where it spills.”
He nets up a tadpole,
measures it,
and writes down the data.
“What’s the hardest part?”
I don’t hesitate:
“Everyone thinking I’m retarded.”
“But Josie,
you know tons of stuff! Anybody
who talks to you knows that.”
But at school,
only Jordan knows.
One of the four
experiments
Jordan and I have running
in the garden
is a patch of dirt
three feet square.
Nothing much interesting about it—
a mint plant,
some scraggly Russian sage,
and three peonies with ants
always exploring the velvety pink blooms.
Once a week
we study this one plot of land,
count the insects,
describe and graph the changes in the plants,
take a picture for a time line too.
Jordan’s taught me
not to glance
but to
look
,
even study,
the complicated lace of a web,
the frilly holes from beetle snacks,
the dew like diamond earrings on the tips of leaves—
finding miniature miracles
I was once blind to.
Finally, for Mother’s Day,
we get Granny a gift that’s not
“too good to use”
(new slippers remain wrapped
in tissue paper in the top of her closet
with all our other good ideas).
We got her a pump
since the old well has been dry
for a year now.
She casts that twenty-pound pump
in the creek
like a left-handed pitcher
in a Little League game.
Gran will stand like a preacher
over her hollyhock, columbine, lady’s mantle,
and coneflower,
humming hymns to them
with her wand of water,
baptizing each bed
with the kiss of life.
Summer’s not far away—
I dream of
sleeping in late
with no nagging from Mom
for ten whole weeks.
But without asking,
Mom registered me
for a summer clinic
so speech and occupational therapists
can test their latest methods
on me.
But I’m sick of spending
all my time
working on what’s wrong
with me.
I don’t want to be
pruned or pinched back
like a wilting petunia.
I want this summer
to be a wildflower-seed mix.
And me, surprised
by what blooms.
The bulldozers
are at it again,
ripping out more trees
as they come closer each season.
And my favorite:
an enormous elm
who held the sun’s golden face
in her arms the whole day.
But this spring
half the branches wear no leaves,
claimed by disease or insects.
So the bulldozers
tear it from the soil
with their terrible teeth
and splatter the leaves and limbs
like garbage.
Why can’t they see
that half still blooms—
like me?
To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie—
True Poems flee—
—Emily Dickinson
Mom’s making me help her
cut the last blooming iris,
the first daisies.
Our tools talk to each other
though our lips are silent.
Jordan stops over, and she puts
him to work too.
We take the flowers on over to
the folks at Lazy Acres
nobody else goes to see.
Impatient
with Elma’s long, wandering story,
Mom’s leg under the table
sways like a metronome.
Her thoughts, I bet,
back in her books
about running a landscape center,
that half-baked attention
I recognize while she
tries to wait for my words too.
Then, she’s back—
remembering to ask Mr. Howard
about his sick grandson,
comes round beside him,
pats his leathery brown hand—
listens to him
like her favorite song.
Jordan plops next to me
on the worn pink couch.
His face smeared with an awkward smile,
like he sewed it on at the door.
He squeezes my knee
with his sweaty hand
and it throbs, like a heartbeat,
under his touch
and though I’m sure he’s ready to go
I never want to move.
It’s the last day of school—
lockers stand open, bare.
The floor is piled with graded papers,
book reports,
ripped folders everywhere.
The teachers wear easy smiles.
In between room 204
and language arts,
I meet Jordan at my locker.
I hand him
the first note I ever wrote
a friend.
In it I tell him about
that clinic
Mom signed me up for
and ask him what I should do.
The next class takes forever
and my hands sweat
and my heart feels like a million monarchs
are inside it,
waiting for his words.
I open my locker
to find his one-sentence response:
Tell her you don’t want to go.
As if she would listen
to me.
Gran hands me a gigantic
philodendron,
vines so long they wind
around the top of the kitchen cabinets,
then hit the floor.
“Tell me,” she says, “what you see.”
“It needs water.”
“How do you know?”
“The leaves, they’re droopy.”
“What else?”
“Some of the leaves are yellow; it might need a feeding.”
“Yes. Now ease it out of that pot.”
When I do, I see the roots are knotted
like cold strands of spaghetti.
“What does that mean, Josie?”
“It needs more room to grow.”
“Exactly. That plant tells us exactly
how it wants to be treated.
You might learn something
from a philodendron.”
Today is Mom’s graduation
from Tidewater Community College
with her associate’s in business
and landscape design.
She’s the first ever
in our family
to get a degree.
Gran dropped out
in eighth grade to help on the farm
when her brothers got called up
for the war.
When they never came back
Gran gave up her dream
of being a stewardess—
and traveling all over the world.
But someday
I’ll buy us a flight to France
and we’ll sit under the Eiffel Tower
sharing a croissant.
In the box of summer clothes
I find
the scrapbook I made
last summer:
tickets I created to places I’ve never been,
letters to friends that never existed,
pressed flowers from the garden.
I’m daydreaming about how different
this summer can be
when Jordan finds me—
so excited his voice snaps like a twig—
about a science camp
that lasts four weeks this summer.
“Besides,” he says, “you’ll be in that clinic
anyway.”
A slap of words across my face.
If you get good grades,
or graduate,
land a new job,
or just any small thing,
Gran will fix your favorite meal
and serve you on our
one red plate.
Mom’s had it twice this month
already,
and now with her new job
at the landscape center in town
I guess it’ll be nasty
liver and onions again.
I’m craving my favorite—
breakfast for dinner,
Gran’s biscuits and gravy.
But I can’t think of a way
to earn it
yet.
Mom surprises Granny and me
with a weekend getaway
to celebrate the start of summer,
our first-ever vacation.
But best of all—
she invites Jordan!
The three-room cabin
is built on stilts and it feels
like a tree house
hidden in leaves.
The campground has mini golf,
movies out under the stars,
and a lake!
Granny wears her goofy
polka-dotted bathing suit
with the frilly skirt;
her wide hips
slip out the side like bread dough
rising in a pan.
She doesn’t seem to care—
floats on top of the lake
like she owns the whole place.
Mom’s turquoise bikini
flaunts her taut muscles
and sculpted thighs.
Her red hair fans out
like a peacock behind her.
Jordan is pasty white
in his black swimming trunks;
his shoulders look like the nub
of new growth on a tree.
In my swimsuit I feel exposed—
a seedling in a late frost.
My bony limbs all akimbo,
gaps in my purple suit instead of curves
like all the other girls
seem to have,
but my body nearly obeys me in water.
Jordan notices my freedom
though he doesn’t seem to see the rest,
and we dunk each other
and chase,
his warm hands on my goose-fleshed
arms;
for the first time
someone touches me
like I won’t shatter under their fingers.
Ripples of sunlight
spill in my veins,
and I wish
just this once
I could stop time.
We take an afternoon to visit Monticello.
Mom and Jordan
share the pamphlet
about Jefferson’s garden,
their shadows blending, two trees.
They talk in their
scientific geek code—
genus, phylum, species.
Mom even throws her arm
around his shoulders;
he looks up at her
like
she
invented
Jefferson’s cannonball clock
we saw in the foyer of his famous home.
It makes me sick,
and maybe just a little jealous.
Jordan must wish
my mom was his,
and maybe she dreams
she’d given birth
to the perfect little genius.
I must be a real disappointment—
stunted foliage,
no yield.
In the car
Jordan taught me
Morse code.
Now at night,
through the thin pine boards
between our bunks,
we tap out messages
to each other.
My words finally able
to keep up with thoughts
off a page.
I decide
there’s no way I’m going
to summer school
no matter what
Mom thinks—
I’m spending every second with Jordan
before he leaves.
Crickets sing their lullabies
to us,
and before dawn stretches
her arms into a new day
sleep tucks me in.
Gran and Jordan
decide to canoe across
the small campground lake.
They ask me to come,
but since I can’t paddle,
I’d be stuck down
in the middle
like some baby.
I refuse.
Granny shrugs.
“Suit yourself.”
They finally find a life jacket
that fits Granny’s ample apple shape.