The fence separating us from the Grothman’s yard was now boarded up. Dad nailed new six foot strips of redwood over the spaces in between the wider slats. Not long after Dick’s exodus from Millie’s world, a new man appeared. The good news being he diligently cleaned their pool. Taking time to thoroughly sweep the sides with a brush attached to a long aluminum pole. Unfortunately, the uniform he wore to enjoy this task was, simply, a plaid hat.

“Louie, you’ve got to do something,” mom pleaded. Relatives were coming over later that day.

Dad, the reluctant ombudsman of Birdhaven Court, had been dispatched to deal with an uncomfortable activity. He picked up the yellow wall phone over our desk in the kitchen where a complimentary calendar from a Shell gas station hung. “There are children in this neighborhood. I don’t care what you do in the privacy of your own home, but, good god, man, put some clothes on!” he scolded Millie’s boyfriend.

A large vegetable garden grew on our side of that fence. A step or two down from the main yard, it’s southern-facing position held the heat in as a perfect incubator for seeds and starts. An elderly arch supporting climbing roses in sunset reds and oranges led from the lawn where the fruit trees grew down into this garden room. Corn grew in a small alcove beside the vegetables at one end. Glowing orange globes of pumpkins lay fattening in the sun at the other just waiting to be carved for Halloween.

Earthworms roamed the compost pile. My mother stood turning its layers over with a pitchfork, steam rising out of it’s baking center. I was nearby with the hose. “Dampen it down as I turn it,” she instructed, heaping a forkful around the berry bushes.

Mother had a love/hate relationship with that raspberry patch. Sometimes the crops came in as hoped for, with large, pink, fuzzy fruit, which she turned into jam or pies. At other times they were attacked by a virus or borer, stunting their growth and turning the young fruit into stubby nubs of inedible flesh.               

She was a wizard with plants. “Cut it here, down to the outward facing bud,” as she pruned the roses. Marigolds, chocolate cosmos, mom nurtured each and every one. And whether the season was full of crickets winding up their maracas in warm weather, or cooling down and into frosty Fall, we could walk out there, barefoot on the good, dark earth, through rows of Early Girl tomatoes or string beans, reach out, and pick something to put into our mouths.                                                           

The vegetable garden was different than the upper garden’s clean-cut edges of grass and tended beds. On hot days, I would stand with the garden hose and irrigate the furrows running alongside the zucchini plants who had opened their yellow blossoms to the sun and the working bees. Now and then I drank from the hose, letting the water run down my body and into the dirt, squishing the warm mud in between my toes. Warm breezes blew my hair around, birds flew in and out, a lizard sunned himself on a rock. I turned towards its wildish, salubrious nature with that of my own and a freedom took wings inside me.

.  .  .

Mom took one oversized squash, halved it, and filled it with sausage, some tomato and onion. Baked golden with buttered breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese, it sat on the picnic table in the company of deviled eggs dusted with paprika, in the company of potato salad yellowed with mustard and flecked with sweet pickle and fresh parsley. A baked ham rested nearby. My mother’s family was about to arrive for a picnic and swim in our backyard.

.  .  .

“Your hair looks stringy. Let’s cut it in a pixie-cut,” mom said brightly a few days before. Facing the end of Summer and the beginning of junior high, I wasn’t curvy like some of my friends, and took after my dad with olive skin and dark hair, my eyes the color of seaweed. I had fully sprouted and knew only one other girl in my school who was close to my height. At five foot ten, some of my friends nick-named me, Eiffel Tower (which I did not mind). Petite was not an option for me, and I agonized that no boy would like me seeing that I did, literally, tower over most of them.

I followed her into the beauty parlor feeling skeptical. I walked out not feeling like me. I’d hoped my new coif might look like Twiggy’s slick, straight hair on the cover of Vogue, but my frizzy curls fought it every step of the way. A new bathing suit lay on my bed, though, so I pushed aside disappointments about my hair and slipped it on, not quite filling out the top. Embarrassed, I quickly changed into t-shirt and shorts.

Surprises frequently appeared at the foot of my bed when arriving home from school. That week, after Summer school classes, was a tiny tube of pale pink lipstick. An exciting sample left by a visit from the Avon Lady my mom saved for me.

“Sande, run a dust-rag around the living room before everyone gets here,” mom called from the kitchen.

After helping I walked outside into the garden, the lawn was freshly cut, the pool shimmered silver and blue. I leaned against the railing by the deep end waiting for everyone to come and the picnic to begin. A pair of dragonflies flew across the face of the pool; white light hitting the prism of their wings, glinting into a spectrum of sapphire and violet. The air was tinged with the faint smell of chlorine, and water trickled soothingly from the fill-spout. I closed my eyes. The sun felt warm on my skin.

“Your nipples are showing,” mother’s voice cut into the softness of the moment. I opened my eyes to her standing in front of me, her two index fingers pointing outwardly from her forty-four double-D chest. My lips folded inward and my arms tightened reflexively. I swallowed the bad.

“Go change.” The salt of her words crawling up inside my newly forming shell of pretending things didn’t hurt, shriveling me.