Passage I

PROSE FICTION: This passage is adapted from the novel Agassiz by Sandra Birdsell (©1991 by Sandra Birdsell).

My grandmother Omah supplies flowers for weddings and funerals. In winter, the flowers come from the greenhouse she keeps warm with a woodstove as long as she can; and then the potted begonias and asters are moved to the house and line the shelves in front of the large triple-pane window. She has no telephone. I am the messenger. I bring requests to her, riding my bicycle along the dirt road to her cottage.

A dozen or two glads please, the note says. The bride has chosen coral for the color of her wedding and Omah adds a few white ones because she says that white is important at a wedding. She does not charge for this service. It is unthinkable to her to ask for money to do this thing which she loves.

She has studied carefully the long rows of blossoms to find perfect ones with just the correct number of buds near the top, and laid them gently on newspaper. She straightens and absently brushes perspiration from her brow. She frowns at the plum tree in the corner of the garden where the flies hover in the heatwaves.

“In Russia,” she says as she once more bends to her task, “we made jam. Wild plum jam to put into fruit pockets and platz.” Her hands, brown and earth-stained, feel for the proper place to cut into the last gladiolus stalk. “What now is a plum tree but a blessing to the red ants and flies only?” While she steps into the house, I search the ground beneath the tree to try to find out what offends her so greatly. I can see red ants crawling over sticky, pink pulp, studying the dynamics of moving one rotting plum. I recall her words as I pedal back towards the town with the glads in my wire basket.

Laurence is waiting for me at the river. “Drat, wild plums, that's just what I need,” Laurence says and begins pacing up and down the riverbank.

“What do you need plums for?”

“Can't you see,” he says. “Wild plums are perfect to make wine.” I wonder at the tone of his voice when it is just the two of us fishing. He has told me two bobbers today instead of one and the depth of the stick must be screwed down into the muck just so. Only he can do it. And I never question as I would want to because I am grateful for the world he has opened up tome.

I have loved you since grade three, my eyes keep telling him. I defy my father and play with you anyway. It is of no consequence to Laurence that daily our friendship drives wedges into my life.

“Come with me.” I give him my hand.

Omah bends over in the garden picking tomatoes, her instep swollen, mottled blue with broken vessels, her beautiful white hair hidden beneath a kerchief.

Laurence stands away from us, his arms folded across his chest as though he were bracing himself against extreme cold.

“His mother could use the plums,” I tell Omah. Her eyes brighten and she half-runs to her house. When she returns with pails for picking, Laurence's arms hang down by his sides.

“You tell your Mama,” she says to Laurence, “that it takes one cup of sugar to one cup of juice for the jelly.”

I beg Laurence silently to be polite in front of her. Her freckled hands pluck fruit joyfully.

“In the old country, we didn't waste fruit. Not like here where people let it fall to the ground and then goto the store and buy what they could have made for themselves.”

Laurence has sniffed out my uneasiness. “My mother makes good crabapple jelly.”

She studies him with renewed interest. When we each have a pail full of the fruit, she tops it with several of the largest unblemished tomatoes I have ever seen.

We leave her standing at the edge of the road waving. I am so proud that I want to tell Laurence about the apple that is named for her. She had experimented with crabapple trees for years and in recognition of her work, the experimental farm has given a new apple tree her name.

When we are well down the road we stop to rest. I sit and chew the tender end of a foxtail. Laurence chooses the largest of the tomatoes carefully, and then, his arm a wide arc, smashes it against a telephone pole.

I watch red juice dripping against the splintered gray wood. The sun is dying. It paints the water tower shades of gold. The crickets in the ditch speak to me of Omah's greenhouse where they hide behind earthenware pots.

What does Laurence know of hauling pails of water from the river, bending and trailing moisture, row upon row? What does he know of coaxing seedlings to grow?

I turn from him and walk with my face reflecting the fired sky and my dust-coated bare feet raising puffs of anger in the fine warm silt.

“Hey, where are you going?” Laurence calls to my retreating back. “What did I do?”