Mrs. Madison's Garden

Today’s the kind of thick August swelter that makes you feel like you stepped into a bathtub as soon as you walk outside. It isn’t even lunchtime, but sweat’s already rolling in rivets down the small of my back, and my hair feels limp and sticky against my forehead. I wish for the millionth time this summer that I was a boy so that I could run around with my shirt off, but Delia’s mom says that’s “unbecoming of a lady.” If it was up to my mom, we’d be running around the yard in only our Underoos “like the wild women of Borneo!” but my mom isn’t around right now, so I’m stuck at Delia’s house.

Delia and I huddle together out under the big, sappy tree in the backyard. I can smell stale chlorine and the saltiness of her sweat-slicked skin. Delia’s mom makes her wear deodorant, but she usually forgets to put it on. A summer bug-maybe a cicada-makes a sleepy bizz-bizz-buzzaaah sound somewhere by the road, and my thighs are starting to cramp up.

“You think she’ll find us?” Delia’s voice is high and choked with giggles.

“Yeah,” I say. “Prolly.”

Except I don’t giggle. I’m worried. We're in trouble, and it’s just a matter of time before Delia’s mom bangs out of the screen door with her wooden spoon. She won’t hit us with it, of course. The worst that’ll happen is she’ll yell and yell and yell until she’s out of words, and we’ll get a swat on the butt each and TV taken away for the night. But Madonna’s Papa Don’t Preach video is supposed to be on MTV later, and it's Delia and me's favorite song right now, so I don’t want to take any chances on upsetting grown-ups.

Delia falls on her butt into the sticky pile of dirt and pine needles and studies my face.

“Damnnit, are you gonna be a bawl baby about it, Prissy?”

She only calls me Prissy when she’s poking fun at me.

“I’m no bawl baby,” I counter.

The screen door bangs open then, and Mrs. Douglas flies onto the little tiled patio. She’s still in her bathrobe, and the curlers in her hair are dangling out of their little metal prongs. It makes her look like that Greek lady with snakes for hair. She’s holding the beige cordless phone in one hand and her big slotted spoon in the other.

“Delia Marie! Melissa Anne! You’d better get your happy behinds out here on the double!”

I pull back the tree branch that we’re hiding behind, but Delia’s long, dirty fingernails grab at my arm to snatch me back. My stomach starts doing loop-de-loops, and I get that tingly frozen feeling in my insides that usually comes when adults yell at me. Delia explodes into giggles again and lets go of my arm.

“Aw, c’mon, Bawl Baby,” she teases as she unfolds her skinny legs and slides out from under the tree in one smooth motion that she probably learned in gymnastics class and makes me jealous. I follow, but I can’t do it as pretty as Delia can.

“We didn’t do nothing, Mommy,” Delia calls. “Right, Missy?”

She pokes me in the ribs. It hurts, but I won’t show it. Instead, I stare at the faded pink laces on my grass-stained Tretorns.

“We didn’t do nothing,” I say just loud enough for Delia’s mom to hear.

Mrs. Douglas is still red in the face. “You didn’t do anything, Melissa Ann,” she corrects me. “Please talk like a lady.”

I nod and look at my feet again. I don’t understand why she didn’t correct Delia, but I stay quiet. My mom won’t be out of the hospital for at least a week, so I guess I don’t have a choice.

Mrs. Douglas takes a step closer to the lawn, but we both know she won’t come chasing after us, not until she’s got proper clothes on, at least.

“Either of you wanna tell me why Mrs. Madison found her flower garden in shambles this morning? Hmm?” She gestures to the telephone in her hand, as if it was actually spooky old Mrs. Madison standing there.

Delia puts her hands on her hips and sashays forward just a little bit.

“Mrs. Madison’s a liar. Missy and I only went over there to pick some snapdragons for our potion. It ain’t in shambles or anything.”

Mrs. Douglas rolls her eyes and turns to go into the house. “You better get over there to apologize right now, or else I’m going to tell your father when he gets home, and he’ll make you go over there.”

I see Delia flinch a little, but she keeps the tough-guy look plastered on her face.

“Fine,” she says in a sing-songy voice. “Whatever, your Majesty.”

When Mrs. Douglas’s back is turned, Delia crosses her eyes and sticks her tongue all the way out before turning on her heel and grabbing me by my chubby wrist all in one motion.

“Let’s go, Prissy,” she says as she half-drags me across the back lawn and over the wooden gate with peeling yellow paint. Delia hoists herself up and over it with ease, but I struggle a bit at the top and catch my right palm on a big splinter on the way down. A tiny trickle of blood starts to leak onto my skin, and I lick it, wincing at the penny-metal taste.

Everyone says Mrs. Madison is a witch. She sure does look like one. She’s about 100 years old and always wears big, patchwork skirts and lots of gauzy scarves, and she has a fat black cat that follows her everywhere. Some kids even think that cat is really Mr. Madison and that she turned him into a cat once because she was mad at him. And she’s really mean to all the kids on Colonial Street, always yelling at us and snitching us out to our parents and stuff. Delia is just about the only one of us who isn’t really scared of her, and because of that, Mrs. Madison is always extra mean to Delia.

But I think Mrs. Madison is a witch because of her garden. She’s got all sorts of weird-looking flowers and plants in there, and all the books I read about witches-and I read a lot of books about witches- say that you need weird plants and flowers to do witch spells. This morning I opened my big, fat mouth and told Delia what I thought, and Delia insisted we hop the fence and steal some flowers so that we could make a love potion and slip it into Nicky Deardo’s Coke the next time we go to the arcade.

The air feels different in Mrs. Madison’s garden. It’s heavy and wet and shady, and I can’t hear the summer bugs or the cars on the road anymore. It smells sweet like lavender but also a little sharp and musty like the clean dirt they sell at Stauffers Garden Store. Even though sweat is pooling in the back of my knees and my tee shirt is plastered to my skin, I shiver.

“Hi, Mrs. Madison,” Delia sings out, bold as brass.

The witch is snipping the flower parts off of a row of marigolds. She doesn’t even look up at us.

“Here to apologize for tramping all over my hollyhocks, are we?” the witch hisses. Beside me, Delia snickers. I want to poke her right in the ribs like she pokes me, but I don’t.

“What are hollyhocks?” she jeers.

The witch turns to us, and Delia grips my arm too hard for it to be an accident.

“Hollyhocks are flowers,” says the witch.

“No duh,” Delia says. She’s trying to sound cool, but her voice trembles a little. “So, Prissy and me are sorry we trampled your flowers this morning.”

Delia is so embarrassing. My guts bubble, and my face is on fire. Before I can even control it, I blurt out “Why are you cutting up your marigolds?”

The witch takes a step forward. The corners of her mouth are turned up like she might either full-on smile at me or scream at me to scoot before I tell your mother! I’m frozen like a statue, and I wonder if she just put a spell on me or something. I can feel Delia staring at me, probably with her mouth hanging open and her Kool-Aid-stained tongue hanging out like a cartoon. She does that sometimes because she thinks it's funny.

“I’m cutting away the wilted ones. It helps the other ones grow bigger and stronger,” the witch says calmly.

“Oh."

Mrs. Madison reaches out and motions for me to come closer. Her nails are painted Wet N’ Wild Orange, just like the kind our teacher Miss Whitenight uses.

For some reason, I’m not all that scared anymore, and even though Delia gives my arm a good warning yank, I shake her off. She’s not that strong after all, I guess. I follow Mrs. Madison to a row of marigolds towards the back. They’re so perfect that they remind me of paintings you see in fancy magazines about art.

“See?” says Mrs. Madison. “They grow back even lovelier, don’t they?”

“Yeah,” I say. I can’t explain it, but I know that it’s best if I talk in a quiet voice. I think Mrs. Madison’s garden likes it, even though plants can’t understand humans. “My mom tried to grow a garden once. It was pretty, but not as pretty as this one.”

Mrs. Madison smiles-like, for real smiles-and pats my hand.

“How is your mother, Melissa?”

“Okay, I guess,” I say. It’s the truth. I don’t really know how my mom is feeling. Daddy didn’t call last night, so I don’t know.

“She’s in the hospital,” Delia pipes up in the know-it-all voice she uses when she’s answering a hard question in math class and thinks she’s smarter than everybody. She’s slowly picking the leaves off of a branch that must have come loose in the storm last week. “Missy’s little brother got born last week, but it made Missy’s mom really sick, and now they can’t leave the hospital ‘til she’s better.”

Stupid Delia. It feels like there’s a giant, lumpy sponge in my throat, but I don’t want to cry, because Delia will make fun of me all day for being a Bawl Baby if I do.

Mrs. Madison plucks a marigold, a really pretty one, and gives it to me. When I take it from her, she puts her hand over mine. Her hands are raggy and jagged and covered with dirt, but it doesn’t bother me.

“Do you know what marigolds mean, Melissa?”

I shake my head. “I just thought they meant yellow.”

Mrs. Madison chuckles a little. “ In some cultures, the marigold symbolizes bravery and luck. You remember that. You don’t need the luck part, though. We make our own luck. You remember the bravery part.”

“C’mon, Missy,” Delia whined. “Let’s go. We’re going to the pool, remember?”

I look up at Mrs. Madison and really study her face for a second. She’s actually kind of pretty in an old lady sort of way.

“Thank you for the flower, Mrs. Madison,” I say before Delia shoves me towards the fence.

I clutch my marigold in my hand, and it smells like new earth and fresh vegetables. It must really be a magic flower, because the smell alone is making me brave. I hop over the fence and even though I get two big splinters from it, I run across the yard after Delia. I’m ready for a swim.