The House on Malcolm Street (8 page)

“Do you want to just pick what’s hanging down in reach?” Marigold asked me. “Or are you comfortable enough with a ladder to get some of the high ones too?”

“I’ll pick whatever you want picked. A ladder won’t bother me a bit,” I promised. “As long as we give it level footing.”

“I should’ve had Josiah set it up for you. Do you think you can manage it? It’s in the shed over there.”

“Not a problem at all.”

Marigold smiled. “You’re a go-getter, aren’t you? I used to climb the ladder myself and do all of that. Might try it today, but – ”

“I can easily do it,” I stopped her. “There’s no need at all for you to.”

She nodded. “Then I suppose I might take the chair you offered. In a bit. I mean to take a load of weight off some of these low-hanging branches first.”

I wished I could caution her even about that. I was a little worried about her limp and the stability of her footing in the yard. If she were to fall, would I be able to get her up again? What if she broke something? Such fears were probably completely unfounded, and though I couldn’t quite shake them, I kept my mouth shut. Marigold struck me as an independent sort who wouldn’t appreciate me thinking like that, at least not out loud.

“May I climb in the tree, Mommy, please?” Eliza looked up with her shiny eyes twinkling in the sun.

Before I could answer, my father’s red face and roaring voice came to mind again. “You knock another apple down outta that tree, an’ I’ll be knockin’ you out of it!” he’d yell. “My customers won’t buy bruised apples!”

“Would you mind if her climbing shook a few more from the tree?” I asked Marigold, just to be sure.

“Lord, no. I want most of ’em picked so they’ll keep a while, but drops’ll cook up good as the rest. Besides, I’ve got you here to help me cut them now.”

Eliza was itching to get into that tree, and I wouldn’t have let her if there’d been any boys about. But there was not so much need to be ladylike on a job like this with only Marigold and me with her. I let her try, knowing how much I’d loved tree climbing when I was little, despite my mother’s cautions and my father’s scolding. I used to think I was trying to be like the son my father had lost, but that couldn’t be Eliza’s reason. Her baby brother had been far too little for climbing, and we’d lost him before we’d even had time to speak with her about the sorts of things a bigger boy might do.

She didn’t try to go very high. Content to sit on the lowest branch, she leaned to pluck the apples within reach. I gave her a little basket with a handle she could hook over her arm.

“I’m helping, Mommy,” she said with a smile.

“And a fine helper you are,” I replied.

It was a happy moment, but I found it suddenly invaded by my bitter thoughts. If everything were truly right in this world, Father would be a kindly sort who’d love having a six-year-old join him in his orchard. We could stay at his farm, helping with the peak of harvest, and perhaps even enjoy our time as a family. But Father had never wanted my help, as a child or as an adult. And if he cared at all for Eliza, he’d scarcely shown it. That was nothing but a dead and empty dream.

I fetched the ladder. We were here now, so there was no point thinking of anywhere else. Eliza was smiling, Marigold truly did need us, and we would do the best we could.

Marigold picked busily at the low branches while I reached as high as I possibly could on the ladder. I carried my own baskets down, so she wouldn’t have to reach up for them and then hand me empty ones.

I had just stepped from the ladder when another train went through town. I jumped at the sound and Marigold smiled.

“There’s no more than six or seven a day,” she told me. “You get used to it.”

I took a deep breath. Hopefully I could. But this one didn’t bother me much. Perhaps I was already getting used to it.
Four blocks
, I told myself.
I’ll not be able to see it, and it could not reach us even if it jumped the tracks.

Maybe something about working with Marigold made my train anxiety fade into the background a little. It really wasn’t hard at all to turn it from my mind and focus with renewed energy on the work at hand.

We filled five baskets in practically no time, and I thought Marigold must surely be getting tired. So I went to the house for a chair and a paring knife so she could do sit-down work. But she wouldn’t use them till we’d filled most of the baskets and started in on the buckets and boxes. By that time, she admitted she’d have to sit. Her legs just couldn’t keep on.

So Marigold sat and peeled and cored the bruised apples that I brought to her. Eliza shifted several times in the tree in order to reach just a few more apples, but most of the fruit was hanging way outside of her reach. I let her stay in the tree anyway. It had occurred to me that she could fall, but she stayed low and seemed far more cautious than I’d ever been, so I had little to worry about. I just kept picking, bucket after bucket, at the same time looking around the yard a bit. A garden stood in one back corner, nearly spent and covered with weeds, a sure sign that Marigold had been unable to tend it regularly and that her nephew was not enough of a gardener to have taken it in hand.

“Is that turnips you’ve got growing?” I asked from the ladder, trying to identify the healthiest deep green row of leaves among the jumble.

“Such as they are,” Marigold confirmed. “Good year for apples, but not much of a year for root crops. Hardly anything below ground on any I’ve pulled, and they should’ve been fist-sized long before this.”

“Looks like a splendid batch of greens, though,” I suggested.

“Indeed you’re right,” she said with a smile. “And I almost forgot they were there. What a waste if I don’t make us up a mess. Would your little girl eat that for lunch?”

“Oh, certainly. At least a little. I’ll not allow her to be too choosy.”

She asked me to cut some so we could have fried apples and greens at noon. That sounded good to me, and whether or not it was anywhere near that time, I was already hungry and figured Eliza might be too, though she was good enough not to say so. I climbed down from the ladder and gladly fetched a bowl and knife from the kitchen. From the ground, the row looked longer than I’d realized. I knelt at one end of it and started cutting the leaves an inch or two above the ground. If I left the roots, they might get bigger. At the very least, they’d set on new leaves for another batch of greens, or even two, before winter. Grand! Renting in the city I’d missed having a garden and the extra security of knowing there was at least some small thing growing outside that we could pick and eat when we needed to.

“Cut half the row today, and we’ll get the other half in a day or two,” Marigold told me.

Eliza eased herself out of the tree to join me. “Doesn’t look like turrips,” she observed.

“The part you’re used to seeing is still under the ground,” I explained. “We’re going to eat the leaves today. The last time we had that, you were a little bitty thing. Too young to remember, I guess.”

She reached and touched a leaf and quickly pulled her hand back. “They’re prickly.”

“Not too bad. Not nearly so prickly as some wild leaves get. And they cook up limp and soft. You won’t find anything prickly to them at all when we eat them.”

Her little nose was all scrunched, and I knew she mistrusted the whole idea. “Are they yummy?”

“They’re perfectly good. Not like cake or anything like that, but a decent enough vegetable. You’ll see.”

She knew not to question me further. She’d accept them, like it or not. There was no use otherwise. She turned her attention to the weedy garden around us, turning in a circle to look at the green growing things. “Will we eat other leaves too?”

“Oh, probably. The smartest thing to do this time of year is harvest all that can be harvested to eat or store for winter.”

“That makes food without even any money,” she declared, catching the gist of what I was saying immediately. “Purty smart. But isn’t there any pickin’ food in the city?”

“Not as much, unfortunately.”

“Oh. That’s why we was so hungry.”

Too late I realized that Marigold was listening to every word. I hadn’t wanted her to know how our last few weeks had been, struggling with so little and then nothing at all. But she didn’t look our way or comment.

“Is there more things to pick right now?” Eliza asked eagerly.

“I think those are cherry tomatoes there in the corner. Why don’t you see if there are any truly red ones on the vines? I’m sure Aunt Marigold wouldn’t mind if you were to find a few ripe tomatoes.”

“Goodness, if you find anything at all worth pickin’ out there, you’re welcome to it,” Marigold called to us. “I thought the tomato vines had died and most everything had given up, the weeds are so bad. Sorriest garden I ever had in my life.”

Eliza only found three ripe tomatoes, but there were more stubbornly coming on through bristle grass as high as my knees. “Mr. Walsh doesn’t garden much?” I asked, though such an inquiry was really pointless.

“Goodness, girl,” Marigold half scolded. “You may as well call him Josiah. Or just plain Joe. He’ll wonder at you calling him Mister much longer after you’ve been proper introduced. But he doesn’t take to gardening natural, and he hasn’t got the time anyway. You’d be surprised how much I’ve put him to fixin’ on this old house of mine, besides his railroad job. He does enough already that I wouldn’t want to ask him for more.”

I would’ve asked, I thought instantly. Just a few hours a week in a garden never hurt anyone and did a world of good. But it was none of my business to say anything about it. I finished cutting the tops of half the turnip row, and Marigold was happy that it filled my big bowl to brimming. I lifted her cane from the grass and steadied it for her while she got to her feet. Then we all went in the house with the greens, the little tomatoes, and Marigold’s bowl of cut apples.

It was a dandy lunch, plain as it was, and almost seemed festive, with a scoop of turnip greens next to a big serving of fried apples and a plump cherry tomato for color. A biscuit left from breakfast was all we needed to round the whole thing out. Though it was an odd lunch to Eliza, she ate everything, even the turnip greens. “I sure do love fried apples,” she said happily. “And I love it here where there’s plenty of dinner.”

Not again. I would have to speak to her later about such talk. Aunt Marigold would get the idea that she’d been without a decent meal her whole life. Or at least since John died. It was too late to give the impression that I’d been able to manage very well, but to keep bringing up our lack only made things painfully worse. At least for me. But maybe it helped Eliza somehow, as if voicing our struggle helped her to drive the reality of it forever into the past.

To my surprise, Marigold began singing as we cleaned up. I recognized the hymn immediately as one I had sung often enough in church with John. Eliza joined in happily. I didn’t feel like singing, especially not such a song as that, but I didn’t want to seem like a wet hen among such happy larks, so I did my best to sing along at least a little.

It made me feel like a miserable hypocrite. The words were all light and praise, not at all the way I’d been thinking toward the Almighty. Maybe I should’ve felt deeply grateful, for Marigold’s hospitality and Eliza’s cheery good health. Perhaps I did, at least a little. But in a good moment when I might have felt warm and comforted, the darkness still filled my eyes and I feared I’d never see the sun.

6
Leah

The afternoon was filled with apples. First we sat on the back porch and cut and peeled a bucket’s worth. And then Marigold and Eliza went in the house to make pies while I got back to picking. Alone with my thoughts and a fruit tree, my mind jumped to Father again. He’d grown potatoes and sweet corn in addition to his orchard fruits, and people loved his produce but not his demeanor. I’d overheard more than one customer cautioning another about the half-drunk, stony-faced farmer you had to be careful not to rub the wrong way. I’d also heard a few whispers about his awkward tomboy daughter. I’d been glad to marry, to move away and start a new life away from the wagging heads of that community.

I picked until I could see apples with my eyes shut. Marigold had said I could stop whenever I wanted to, but she’d also said she’d like to get them all picked and put in away from the squirrels, so I did all I could. There was no way I could get the top branches, even with the ladder, and the tree branches were too thin there to hold me. There were scads remaining, but we’d have to wait till they dropped and use what we could for applesauce or something. Maybe the highest apples were the squirrel’s due anyway.

There weren’t as many pears and they were still mostly green. That harvest could wait, but probably not for long if we wanted to get them while they were good and firm. “Pears like to ripen wrapped in newspaper or paper sacks,” Mother used to tell me. And they’d certainly ripened well that way for us every harvest. I wondered if Aunt Marigold had ever made pear honey, or apple pandowdy, or any of the other wonderful out-of-the-ordinary things my mother had done. John had loved apple pandowdy. The memory nearly brought back tears.

I didn’t see much sign of the squirrels bothering the pears, probably because of the abundant apple supply nearby. But with that diminished, the pears would be in danger too. Despite that, I started moving the apple baskets and buckets to the porch instead of setting up the ladder again. We had enough to deal with for now. Many of these apples would store, but equally as many, maybe more, would have to be cut and cooked, or canned, as soon as possible.

Aunt Marigold had no root cellar, but there appeared to be a generous basement under her house. I’d seen more than one window practically level with the ground. I was about to go inside and ask if she wanted me to carry some of the buckets down there when I saw movement from the corner of my eye. An old man coming from the yard next door. Just like Mari, he walked with a limp, and though his face was blotchy and practically shriveled with wrinkles, I saw the hint of good humor in his eyes as I looked his way.