The Garden

The most difficult part of it all is the digging - filtering through the garbage and the sludge. It's even worse after it rains. I usually do my digging very early in the morning or once the sun begins to go down, although I've found that once it gets too dark, I can rely only on my sense of touch to find what I need. I'll reach my hand blindly into the rusty dumpster until I can feel the heap of trash. Slowly, I rummage back and forth; sometimes so confident that I got what I came for, only to end up pulling out a mess of spaghetti or some leftover hamburger. Nothing beats the satisfaction of a good find. Something fresh - possibly less than a day old!

There was this one time when I was walking home from school, and I heard all sorts of commotion when I passed by the alley on 32nd Street. There wasn't really anyone around at the time, and I decided to see what all the fuss was about. As soon as I got in sight, the woman at the end of the alley screamed, stood up, and grabbed the man next to her by the arm. The man must've been startled too, because he dropped everything - the hanger and all - and just took off running with his lady friend. Both of them were much bigger than me, and I looked very cute in my nice school dress, so I don't know why they were so afraid of me. Either way, when I walked up to where they had been sitting, I was in for a great surprise - there was a fresh new seed, just sitting there in a puddle on the ground. This certainly was my lucky day! I grabbed an old bag off the ground and scooped the seed into it - I got a little bit of the drippings from it on my dress, but the stains came off in the wash, so it was well worth it. When I planted it, it grew faster and healthier than anything I' ve ever seen before. It was the only breather I have ever found.

Mother says that I shouldn't be fiddling with the garbage bins in the dark alleys. "There's too many dangerous folks out there that will do the most horrible things to little girls," she always tells me, but those dirty, stinky alleys are where most of my seeds come from, so I have to sneak around and sometimes lie about where I get them. I'm a very good girl, and I hate lying to mother, but there's really no other way - besides, every time mother sees one of my new harvests, she's always so proud of me.

Mother sets aside a place in her vegetable garden for me to do all of my planting - right between the tomatoes and the zucchini. Sometimes I get worried that the roots from her plants will get tangled up with mine, but she assures me that it's just not possible. Mother taught me how to make my garden, just like grandma taught her, and just like I'm supposed to teach my little girl someday. Mother says my garden is a special kind of garden that adults can't create, and that's why she needs me to keep planting as much as I can.

Every time that I see one of my seeds start to emerge from the ground, I give it a name.