I stink at origami. Whatever I tried to make came out looking like a giraffe in a bathtub.
Poppy thought about it. He snapped his fingers. “How about this: flowers. You like flowers, don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think about them.”
“Everybody likes flowers,” he said. “You’re gonna help me landscape the backyard. Come on.”
So we went to a garden shop and came back with a bunch of plants and flowers and a pair of trowels. He told me maybe I’m a green thumb and just don’t know it.
“What’s a green thumb?” I said. I looked at my thumb.
“Somebody who’s good with plants,” he said. “Green thumbs can make anything grow.”
As soon as we went out the back door I knew I was in trouble. A dog was barking. It was in the next-door backyard. A big black dog. Sticking its nose through one of the diamond-shaped spaces in the chain-link fence and barking. I don’t mean a nice regular doggie woof woof bark. I mean a loud, nasty, growly bark. The kind of bark that’s so powerful it makes the dog’s head flop up and down. A bark that’s super excited, but not in a puppy-happy-to-see-you way. Super excited because he can’t wait to sink his teeth into you and rip out a vital organ.
“No way,” I said. I stepped back behind the screen door.
My grandfather laughed. “He just barks. He’s a big baby. Look.” He went to the fence. The dog went even crazier. “Poppy!” I yelled, but Poppy was reaching over the fence and noogling the black ears, and the beast was licking his hand.
“It’s me,” I called. “Dogs hate me. They know I’m scared.”
Poppy came back and took my hand. He didn’t try to drag me out. He would never force me. He just said, quiet and smiling and looking into my eyes, “You’re safe with me, Lil.”
I hate to say this, but I didn’t totally believe it. I went with him because I could see that he believed it, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. “I’ll work over here,” I said, and headed for the side of the yard away from the dog. Poppy laughed, and we spent the next hour digging holes and planting stuff and watering with the hose. The dog stared at us for a while, then went sniffing around its own yard. I have to admit we never heard another peep out of it. I don’t care. I told Poppy that as long as that beast is next door, my new life isn’t going to be happening in his backyard.