I failed as a mother; my kids never come visit, even forget to call. I guess it follows
I'm a bad gardener -- I can't even nurture a plant.
The things that grow in my yard are the jungle dandelions. I swear I have one that's
four and a half feet tall, as tall as a teen-age child. It never flowers, just puts out
brownish purple, jagged leaves going down to an immense root that must touch the center of
the earth. Somehow it goes directly to seed, even though it seems to be immortal, and
every year, its descendants appear, growing up everywhere.
It thrives with only a little accidental nurture, a little water from the rinsing of
the sidewalk, and I don't even give it a kind word.
Each spring I hire Manny to hack down the jungle in my yard and make the house
presentable. I tell him how much I will pay him and he works until we agree he's earned it
-- always less than I want done, more than he'd like to do. This has been going on for
seven years now, since he was sixteen, and living in Mrs. Arbuti's house as a foster
child. He doesn't live there now, of course, doesn't visit her that I know of, never
mentions her to me.
I might have been the one who got Mrs. Arbuti retired from foster care, but no one
knows about the anonymous phone call I made to Social Services. She may suspect, but she
doesn't know.
I used to hire the kids from her house -- she usually had two or three -- to do chores.
Hell, I made up things for them to do. Her kids had to earn their own spending money, and
they beseiged me for odd jobs. Manny was the most persistent; I let him mow my scraggly
lawn with my old hand mower.
After awhile, he was at my house all the time. I finally told him I couldn't afford
him, he's better go somewhere else, and I lent him mower to use on other people's
property. But he still kept coming, and when I told him for the second time I couldn't
afford him, he said he didn't mind doing a few things for free. "Your yard needs a
lot of work," he said.
Well, tell me the sky is blue.
But I noticed that he didnt't want to go home. When a teen-ager would rather pull weeds
than go in for dinner -- you start to wonder.
Each March he shows up at my place, and I give him some soda -- Diet Dr. Pepper, and
last year it was the sixth of a six pack I bought two years ago, I hate the stuff -- and
he tells me about his winter, and waits for me to say "Well, Emmanuel, are you going
to help me fix up this old place again?"
One time when I ran into Mrs. Arbuti at the Safeway store, I asked her how was Manny
doing, and she had to think before she even remembered who I was talking about. She wasn't
sure, she said, she thought he was working with animals at some vet's, he always liked
animals, but she really didn't know.
I didn't tell her I see him every spring. She could see him herself working in my yard,
if she showed any interest beyond her own front door. But it made me think to ask him
about her, and he remembered her all right, without much affection, I could tell. He
didn't say much though. He pursed his lips up and "I never see her," he said.
"Is she still taking kids?"
And I said, "I think she retired. There's no more loud music coming from that
house, anyhow."
He grunted, and shoved the orange outside extension cord through the window. I went in
and plugged it into the outlet, and Manny proceeded to whack down the errant green stuff
all around the yard.
He doesn't do a very good job, but then I don't pay him very much either. There are
always a few of that big dandelion's descendants still standing, and I always have to tell
him to mind the details and get it all.
Last year, he looked pretty seedy when he came around. His only coat was his long
sleeved denim shirt, as far as I could see. His shoes were old. When he took his shirt off
in the sun, the Tee Shirt he had on was grungy, that was the only word for it.
Then I noticed he didn't have the Walkman he always had before. I asked about that; he
said someone stole it.
So I scrounged around to find some old clothes of Bill's. That was hard, too, though I
made it out I still had a lot of stuff lying around, and I went outside and told him he
was grungy, and I didn't want a grunge working in my yard, someone would think I hired
tramps, and then I'd get robbed and murdered in my bed, no thank you, and he'd better come
in and take a shower and wear these things while I washed his stuff.
So he did, and I gave him dinner that night, and as he left I said, "Go on, take
the flannel shirt if you want it."
I figured I'd seen the end of him for another year, but Monday next he showed up again
with a little six-pack of orange daisies from Orchard Supply, black-eyed Susans, he told
me, and said he was going to plant them around my walk, and all it would take to keep them
pretty would be a little water once in awhile. "It's a shame," he said severely,
"how you always let your yard go brown every summer."
"I know," I said, "and I try, I have a hose and everything. But then I
forget and then it's always too late."
"Well, don't forget these," he said.
I didn't, and they grew all summer. The leftover water put the giant dandelion up over
my head, the only thing in the yard alive, besides those orange flowers.
Then it was winter, and everything started turning green and wild again. Darned if
those black-eyed Susans didn't reseed themselves again, came up and started to bloom. I
bought another six-pack of Diet Dr. Pepper, towards the end of March, but Manny was never
this late before.
So, the day after Easter, I marched up to Mrs. Arbuti's and asked her straight out if
she's heard from him, because he usually works my yard in the spring.
She didn't ask me in, just looked at me through the screen door, and sniffed. "I
didn't know you ever had anyone work on that yard of yours."
I didn't say anything, and she added, "Well, that's what Manny's work looks like
-- like no one did anything."
"Well," I said, matching her friendliness, "Do you know where he is, or
not?"
"I don't keep in touch with every kid who passed through here. But I heard was
living at the Rescue Mission for awhile. He can never keep a job very long." She
sounded disgusted.
"The mission." I tried to sound neutral.
"Then I heard he was in jail around New Year, at the county facility." She
pronounced it carefully, "Fa-ci-li-ty."
"Did you hear why?"
"Heard it was a bar fight. But I don't know, haven't seen Emmanuel since he turned
eighteen. Trashy kid." And she moved to shut the door; she was finished talking to
me.
It's the end of April, and I haven't hired anyone to work on the yard this year. I took
out the hoe and whacked the top off my old enemy dandelion myself, but I'm just going to
let the yard get brown and die out by itself. I'll get Mr. Bradley's boy to run over it
with the tractor mower before it's a fire hazard, if Manny still hasn't come by summer.
I still water those little flowers, though. If Manny ever comes back, he's going to see
little orange daisies in my yard, even if I have to go to Orchard and buy another six
pack.