34

To fill their silence, Miriam said: Tonight we are trading plants. Ah, it’s that time of month again, Joey said, joining her in filling it. What do you mean, Miriam pretended to exclaim, don’t talk smart and don’t talk schmutzig to your mother, who, by the way, is well past that point and doesn’t need you to poke up my monatliches like the cinders of a fire. I meant …, Joey said, pretending in his turn to be perplexed, that it’s your meeting with the girls of Woodbine—Don’t do spitzige, I said, she said, we are women and women of one mind, not a one with childish curls. Does it take that many of you to make one mind, replied the smarty, now too young to be in pants. She threw an empty crumple of seed packet at his head. What is this month’s subject?

Weeds, Miriam answered, laughing at something, possibly a thought. Who weeds are. What weeds do. Why weeds are so hateful. And therefore why weeds exist. Finally, how to rid your lawn and garden of them. How to pull them from their dirt. Root them out. They’ve grips like fierce fists. Ausrotten ihnen! And how to poison their progeny, kill their kids. She wagged a warning finger at Joey. Don’t give me your racial-cleansing speech.

I was admiring your cruelty. And your speaker is?

A former weed—now reformed—making up for an evil life with warnings to the rest of us.

But don’t you have all this information already? Ladies and gentlemen! In this ring, introducing Weed Number One! from Bulgaria! It is the Aster-Eating Rabbit! Who will perform death-defying hops! Ta-da! Weed Number Three is … is the Bed-Digging Dog! An Austrian breed!

Who does number two?

Number Two is when—

Ach. You have tricked me. Your Mutter. You made me ask of it.

What I was getting at … well … what I meant was … Don’t you know all about weeds already?

Not just any weeds … they are not the topic—nein—but invaders. Multipliers. Chokers. Carriers. Carnivores. Fremde. Seedy intrusives.

Immigrants, then, who arrive unasked and take the space of native Austrian primroses; immigrants who multiply like rabbits, inconsiderately sucking up nutrients and choking the natives in the throats of their stems—

You are uncorrectable. A naughty smarty. They pretend, you see. They wear pretty leaves like sheep’s ears, or win you over with nice blooms like violets and such, deceive by smelling sweet—honeysuckles humming in the heat—or the way that grosse bamboo grows, faster than bean stalk, and including what they call here bind, or bishop’s weed, because it is so relentless and uncorrectable a sinner it would make even a bishop curse.

Joseph realized with wonder how well spoken his mother had become. He was trying to add Austrian to his speech while she was Ausrotting hers of most things foreign. English with a twist of pepper. Her German had become a sneeze. Today her sneezing was nostalgic. Instead, he said:

Just the same, dear, don’t you know everything about them already?

Most of it, I imagine, but we like to listen, like children, to the story told samely and samely. It warms me, anyway—like mulch—with memories of summer, now it’s winter.

Well, you should be careful going, the paper says it may be snowing. Whose house is it? where you’re meeting, I mean?

Maybelle’s.

Maybelle. Do I know a Mrs. Maybelle?

Wife of that fat professor of geography. You know, the one with the watch chain. Oh yes, and the three chins. His ears are wattles. Well, when we meet at Maybelle’s he sometimes sits in. Sits down. Smooooch. You can hear his rear when the air leaves the pillow. He sits not out of the way in a big chair you’d think had been built for him but in a rickety ladder-back you worry is going to break and stick him like a roasting pig. Sits right in the middle of the living room and listens most attentive to everything.

The club has never met here has it?

Not yet. I go in fear of when it will be my turn.

We’ll have to beat some neat into this house. I shall accompany the buffet on my pianola.

You shall be banished to the belfry.

Does Maybelle do anything?

Nails. She does nails. At that beauty parlor on High Street. She also marcels, perms, and trims.

I meant about her heavy husband.

He is immovable.

They can afford to live around here?

Oh, the fat one is well-off. He owns the furniture store—Leonard’s.

The store that’s always going out of business?

Derselbe.

My goodness. Which house is it?

The one with the glads.

A welcome mat?

The red front door. Her garden is a confinement for die Gladiole. She’s in business for them, too. Sells armloads to funerals. In bunches—one for every sorrowed friend.

Ah … Bouquets that once seemed a measure for sorrow.

She plants them in military rows the way, you remember, I used to arrange my plants—all of them from bulbs to bushes—in her big backyard behind the house, fenced in and everything. There are kinds and kinds of kinds. They look pretty big and brave lined up against the boards, but I don’t like that icebox lover much. A glad stands stiff as a soldier and flowers like a ladder.

Icebox lover. Yes, I imagine he is.

No, dummster. The gladiolus … gladiola … gladioli … They are always in the florist’s icebox.

So Maybelle has a week of big bloom, and then it’s bust for the rest of the year?

You can plant some, wait some, plant some more.

Stagger?

Ya, and they don’t all grow at the same speed either. Lots of various. Kinds, like I said … of kinds.

Aren’t they all orange? I seem to remember—

Nein, mein Kind. It has cultivars in all kinds of colors.

“Cultivars,” Mother? what a word is this? Incorrigible? Confinement? Cultivars?

I never uttered a word of incorrigible.

Uncorrectable.

You lack all education, Joey. You snoozed while you were being—what do you say? “self-taught.” A cultivar is a new plant from an old plant taken. A various. Is what it means.

Variations on a theme.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

– – – – – – – – –

Your mother is even on a committee.

Is that what has made you nervous? There’s more German in your speech when you are nervous.

Which is it going to be—too fine English or too much German?

I thought you said this Leonard taught geography? … sells furniture? Maybe he’s living in a gift house like us.

That’s what Mr. Three Chins said when I asked him. He said he taught geography at the college and owned the furniture store. Nothing from him about free rent. Three Chins knew the exact number of miles from here to Columbus, anyway. It came up in conversation. And how far our speaker will have to come from Urichstown. She is staying overnight with Maybelle. Old friend maybe.

Not Gwynne Withers.

I have no idea.

Gwynne Withers sings. It was she who wanted the piano tuned, remember? Well, how many miles is it to Columbus?

I am a member of one of our committees.

Funny. I’ve never seen or heard of him. Odd combination—fat, furniture, and maps—maps and manicures. I shall have to look into it. Maybe he was just leading you on. I don’t think we even teach geography anymore. At the college, I mean. That’s what he said?

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

So … ah … Your club has committees?

What club doesn’t have committees? They’re the reason for clubs.

Well … I just thought … your society is so small, couldn’t you conduct all your business as a committee of the whole? The twelve disciples were enough for Jesus.

They made a mess of things. They needed a few committees.

Wasn’t the great flood supposed to wash away all committees.

I admit, when we meet, we mostly gabble, but we aren’t replanting the earth. Noah went by twos, we go by threes. I am on the plant exchange committee. They honor me with that. I know how to trade.

Do you dicker then?

– – – – – – – – – – – –

– – – – – –

We are the flowers’ friends. When we have overachieved, we are ready to harvest, so it is easy to give one to get one. I have too many iris, I think. I’ll know those weeks they bloom. So when I dig up the corns I can set some aside for trade. They go in plastic bags labeled VIOLET or WHITE.

So Mrs. Maybelle will trade her extra glads for what?

No “missus” to Maybelle, ninny. Maybelle Leonard. She is double trouble. No one wants the glads because they are too hard to grow here. You have to dig them every fall, winter them over, plant them again, and what do you get? flowers for your funeral. Their kids—what do they say … offspring?—feed on their moms. I bet you didn’t know that. That’s how they grow—not in their moms but on them. Like goiters. It gives me the shivers. Glads are picky about soil, glads freeze easy, they want full sun. Want want want. Sniff one—you smell nothing but your own air.

What do you mean? all moms feed their kids.

They do not. Not all moms are as milky as your sis.

– – – – – – – – – – – – I guess, but that’s the intention of nature.

Whoo! Look who knows the intentions of nature. No one knows the intentions of nature. Nature does everything ten tons of times. Nature runs in all directions at once like a blown bomb.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – Okay, Nita, you win. – – – – – What is it I don’t know?

The newborn corn sucks the old one dry. The mother dies of dryness in an earth of plenty.

I believe that’s corm.

– – – – – – – – – – – – Sometimes there are more little corns than one. Then they take two years gnawing on her before growing off on their own.

You could think of it as the old body fashioning a new one for the same mother who just steps from one incarnation to another.

– – – – – – – – –You could think. But not is the fact of it. So everyone offers Maybelle their plants for free—a one-way swap—

I think it’s called a gift.

Like this house? – – – – – – – – – – – – – Anyway Maybelle’s feelings get hurt because of all the excuses she has to hear—you know—excuses: Sorry, I have no room for big plants like glads—or Sorrry, I’m no good at wintering over—or Sorrrry, I can’t compete with your garden, you are the glad-growing lady among us—und so she thinks we don’t like her.

And do you like her?

No. We dislike her like a tight shoe. All ten of us toes.

Is that the double in trouble?

Or treble. I lose count. She cheats. She has free brown paper bags of bulbs to hand around like jelly beans, but they are rogues and she knows it.

Rogues …? Colorful idea.

The use is special for gardeners. You wouldn’t want to understand. Her corns are scabbed. She is giving us her diseased stuff. Mrs. Maybelle? Nein. Mrs. Stingy, maybe. We like to be nice so we say, Thank you very much, Mrs. Leonard, some other time because I am devoting myself totally to peonies or—I don’t know—to bushes of lilac, to Chinese lanterns, I need dry sticks to stake my peas.

Veggies? Snap peas?

Nein, nein. Sweet pea, not snappy dragons either. Just a flower. Ha, as she is—May belle—herself … a flower … her daughter wears dandelions braded in her hair, and Mrs. Hursthouse, too, my, what a lady she sells herself for, bosom like a river bridge, she moves about on all fours among her tea roses looking not so grand from the rear and not so nice neither. She says she studied to be a gardener and has a little framed brag-and-lie certificate to prove it. Probably got it by coupon from a catalog, I would bet a posy on its purchase through the post, I could smell violet ink when she held it under my nose, still she has to crawl around like the rest of us, naturally not looking too lovely when dirty-kneed and not dressed in big hats and heavy dresses. She likes to hang strings of things around her neck. I must say, though, her roses are lovely resting in their fancy vases with just a shot or two of fresh mist glistening from the petals on the bouquet that’s always glorifying her buffet when we have meetings at her house—slide shows sometimes, Millicent has a machine, Hildur has the screen—quite a grand place, true as glue and stuck up too, with enough colored glass for a cathedral, including Jesus in a long white robe and upraised palm so serene in the stairwell bidding us be good and peaceful or else. Hursty has a rose in her garden that looks so like one in one of her windows she has to show it off, but she is right in this particular to be proud of the pure light-filled pink petals it has as if lit even in the dark, how did they do it? the workmen? how did God for that matter? always a wonder.

Hild her?

Hil durr. Nice lady most of the time. Unless she feels thwarted. But then, most of us are like that—angry—when things don’t go our way. She is a skinny blond lady who teaches, too, at the high school, didn’t know you, though, came after, teaches numbers of some sort, the ones made of letters, x and y und so weiter.

Does she have a specialty?

Most of us just do our gardens, bit of this, bit of that, a bush, a potted plant, a bed beside a fence, a few vines, more columbine than we need—but I shouldn’t say so—such a lovely flower, columbine. I also believe in the bleeding heart.

I think that is a chapter of the Catholic church.

Order, smarty.

Order is good.

– – – – – – – – – – – – You called me Nita just now.

– – – – – – I guess.

– – – – – – – – – – – – You haven’t called me that in years, since you were a kinder.

It’s okay, Mom. Don’t cry.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – I wish I were the Nita that I was.