When Women Were Dragons(25)

In any case, my mother insisted that the garden was mostly for Beatrice. She was, back then, a whirlwind of motion and noise, and needed something to keep her occupied. From spring until fall, the two of them spent most of their time in the garden. My mother dressed Beatrice in coveralls that she had sewn herself—

(I had to catch my breath; she looked so much like my aunt.)

(What was I saying? I had no aunt. I never had an aunt. Beatrice was my sister. She had always been my sister.)

—and sent her to work digging out a square of grass, or pulling dandelions, or pushing her wheelbarrow from one end of the yard to the other. My mother planted peppers and tomatoes and carrots and beans. She planted herbs and eggplant and squashes of all kinds.

The summer after sixth grade, the garden dramatically expanded. My mother added new beds and built trellises by hand. She pickled endlessly, and canned constantly, and made whatever she possibly could into jam. Even carrots. And beets. (Both surprisingly delicious.)

The next year, as seventh grade wound to a close and summer opened itself to us, nearly two-thirds of our backyard had been tilled and tamed. Beatrice was now five, and still tiny. Still a whirlwind. She zigzagged between my mother and me, like a firefly, all light and heat and speed. My mother built complicated lattices with complex knots made from willow boughs for peas, and macramé cradles for squash and melons. Cucumbers grew over delicate domes made from balsa wood and chicken wire. Her tomato vines curled around sturdy wood scaffolding. She raked wood chips into neat rows and put in three benches in case she got tired. She worked all day. The house suffered—more so in each successive summer. Her shoulders grew. Her skin browned. She developed freckles across her nose, which made my father wrinkle his.

“This can’t be good for you, outside all day,” he said. “And where’s my lunch?”

His lunch was in the icebox under a doily. Again. My mother told him so. He muttered something about cold food and ill health and my mother ignored him.

It was a Saturday in late June, and very hot. The garden was just beginning to produce. We were still eating the jams and pickles and dried herbs from the summer before, and I was at an age where I just didn’t see the point of any of this. Had my mother never heard of a greengrocer? Why must we do all this work?

That day, I had become uncomfortably aware of the fact of my sweat, and worse, the smell of my sweat, in a way that I never had in summers previous. I had certainly sweated before. I knew I had. But I had never known to be embarrassed. The fabric under my armpits was soaked, as was the back of my shirt, as were my underpants. My mother sweated as well, in great gleaming rivulets down her arms, as she turned the mulch and hauled the piles of weeds away. Sweat pooled in the two wells next to her collarbones. I was mortified just looking at her.

My mother had given me a list of chores that I had to complete before I went to my friend’s house. Sonja. Sonja Blomgren. Even her name was thrilling to me, with its hidden letters and its ability to coax a smile by just uttering it. Sonja, Sonja, Sonja. She didn’t go to my school, because her grandparents were Lutheran. She never mentioned her parents. She never said what happened to them. But I guessed.

Sonja’s grandparents used to live on the south shore of Lake Superior. They both worked as artists, and made beautiful paintings for children’s books, among other projects. They moved to our town because it was easier to get Sonja to school if she could just walk there on her own, and because Sonja’s grandfather suffered from bad lungs, requiring frequent doctor visits. They rented a house across our alley and down the block—seven houses away from the house where I first saw a dragon (still, all those years later, boarded up and tangled by weeds—home only to the generations of chickens gone happily wild in the remains of the old coop, and the occasional band of feral cats who hunted those chickens).

(Sonja asked me about the house, on the first day we ever spent time together. Of course she did—Sonja was not one to be undeterred by generally accepted silences. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to tell her about the little old lady with the beans and the strawberries and the eggs. I wanted to tell her about the oppressive heat and the coming storm and the quiet, awestruck Oh! I wanted to tell her about the silence after, and of my terrible sense of loss. Instead I said, “I’m sure I don’t know.” I could tell she didn’t believe me.)

Sonja had white-blond hair and long, wide-spaced eyes—dark hazel startling the paleness of her skin. She was the only person I wanted to talk to most days. I didn’t know why. I only knew I wanted to see her. Or maybe I needed to see her. In fact, the need of it was both palpable and insistent. I didn’t have words to understand it. I didn’t have context. I just needed to see my friend.

I trudged through my endless list of chores, maudlinly imagining myself as Sisyphus rolling that boulder up the mountain. My mother, after years of fatigue following her illness when I was small, now was in possession of boundless energy. Her work in the garden was unceasing, as were her expectations of me.

“Can I be done now?” I said, as I crouched down at the tiny trench I had drawn in the dirt with my finger into which I placed maddeningly small carrot seeds. Beatrice marched through the garden rows, announcing to the world that she was having more fun than any little girl in the whole wide world.

“Bully for you,” I muttered.

Beatrice didn’t seem to notice my bad mood. Instead she walked over next to me, coming very close, and squatted down, resting her bum on her heels. She folded her hands over her knees and rested her chin on her knuckles. She stayed there for an exceptionally long minute. I didn’t look up. I just placed the tiny seeds in the groove in the dirt, one after another after another, cursing them as they stuck to my fingers. I clamped my molars together and flared my nostrils as I bent over my task, trying my best not to scream. Beatrice turned her head, resting her cheek on her knuckles instead. She didn’t move.