Summer Of Between

Summer of Between

I rolled her soft hand in between my dirt grimed fingers, saying, “no you can’t have a pickle.” We crouched out in the fourth row of the garden, my bare feet in the shade of the pepper plants. Behind us the tomatoes in their tall metal cages wilted, and the sun narrated their decline.  The garden was 15 by 12 feet by all logical measurements. Only four rows deep, but with each crop I planted in the red clay, I felt the place inch inward on my life. I used to plant anything there: radishes, potatoes, cucumbers, magic beans. I even planted condoms, a social experiment to see if tha was where babies really came from. A philanthropic child, I took in cats, dogs, beavers. I started gardens, book clubs, bonfires.
        “Pull them out by their roots,” I said. “Don’t just pick off the leaves.” She plopped her head against my thigh, sending out a squeaky whimper. I continued the battle against crabgrass alone, my short kid fingers aching from the clench-pull, clench-pull pattern.
        I stood up and took Jackie with me. “Let’s plant watermelon.” We sat down between the flowering cucumbers and the potatoes. I made a mound of black dirt with one hand. “Plant three seeds. Only three.” Jackie spilled the whole bag, and gave the ground a one toothed smile. Before I could conjure up an ill-felt chastening, she ran after a butterfly. “Jackie!”
        The garden was in the middle of an empty field that had gone wild with itchy grass taller than my thigh high niece. I cut through the cucumbers and jumped over the potatoes, but all I could see was her head bobbing up and down- and a monarch maneuvering the sky.  I jogged in after her, briars poking at my ankles, insects crawling under my toes, and the grass, always tickling the tops of my thighs.
        Then I heard her high voice yodel, and ran faster, finding her hanging onto two clumps of grass, her feet dangling into a hole four feet across. Grabbing her forearms darker then mine, I cradled her into my shoulders. She was missing one flip flop. I peered down into the chasm, and saw it, bright pink against the mud. “Let’s go back,” I said, that uneasy feeling of near disaster sliding from my throat back to my stomach. “Do you still want a pickle?”
        I carried her up the wooden steps, with Puss, the tom cat, rubbing against my bare legs. “You’ll catch one some day,” I said, and set her down to stand on her own two legs. I wiped her tears with the back of my hands, and left a dirt streak on each cheek, telling her that she looked like a warrior child, and warrior children don’t cry.
        Later in the sticky kitchen, I pounded dough back down to rise again, listening to her rummage through my fridge. With each clink of glass against glass I cringed. “They’re in the cheese drawer.” I slid the dough into the oven, and we let the dog out.
        We walked past the pecan tree and the metal shed and the wilting garden, Junior loping along. He was tired and hot and shedding. We all were that summer. Jackie still held her pickle with both hands, the juice on her lips, neck, between her fingers. I laughed at her antics, her six-year old smile, her screechy voice mouthing words I could barely understand.
        Down the gravel alley, with its median of grass, surrounded by mulberry trees and Arkansas summer, we reached the eerie forest where once my brother found a full set of clothes and a reel of duck tape. We walked farther, and we heard the Spanish music from the trailer park while Jackie asked questions. “I don’t know. Ask your mom.” I had no answers for her tilted moon face, covered in pickle juice and dirt. 
        Junior squatted near a bush, and we laughed. He was already one year old, and it looked like he would always piss like a pup. He stood up, barked at me and ran home. Jackie dropped her pickle and ran after him, kicking up gravel with her two bit legs. I tossed some dirt over the abandoned pickle and walked on after them.
        Back in the garden, with the sun to the west of us, the old pecan cast its shadow over the tomatoes and peppers, but the zucchinis and the potatoes and the cucumbers were still flecked with golden evening sun. Jackie held an Easter basket, skipping through the rows. I smiled at her. Yet I wanted to play Pokemon Gold, read Nancy Drew novels in a closet with a flash light, and steel eggplants from the hotel on main street. 
        I guided her to the good fruit, said, “Don’t pick the green ones.”  While she filled her Easter basket up with fruit I had worked too hard for, I walked to the shed. Always dark, always smelling of moth balls and kitty litter. The three strays, Puss, Ebony, and White Chic meowed and scratched and rubbed against my feet with their tiny ears. Sometimes my brother and I would bang the metal siding with a bat just to see them dart across the fields. Then, that night I would leave them milk, a peace offering, and they would always come back, oblivious.
        In the shed, with the cats at my feet, I found a piece of old wood siding from the house. I dragged it out across the field, ignoring the splinters digging into my thumbs and the itch of landing mosquitoes. I glanced down the hole and saw the little pink shoe. Then like the roll of titles at the end of a bad movie, I slid the wood slab over the old well and walked back to the garden.
        “Come on, Jackie. Let’s go inside.”
       
        I sat down in the high stool, the house rich with the smell of fried zucchini, rising bread and cinnamon buns. Jackie walked into the kitchen. “Where’s my mommy?”
        “Between husbands.” It’s out of my mouth before I remember that she’s six. Wide-eyed like she knows what I’m talking about. “Where’s your mommy?”
        Slowly I sink to the cool tile floor, back against the stove. “Between jobs.”