GARDEN

This is the story I was told: she doesn’t remember when the yellow house was new, when the backyard, formerly a farmer’s plot, was a mess of thorns and weeds. She doesn’t remember when the first rains fell in autumn, when the weeds grew a grown-up’s waist high. She doesn’t remember how the soil was so rich, how the worms were so juicy, wriggling, and fat. She doesn’t remember how the pechay just grew there, first tiny leaflings, delicate stalks. She doesn’t remember, but the pechay grew hearty, its stalks thick and fibrous, leaves dark green and curly. She watched Mama pull those pechay right out of the earth; guisado, sinigang, nilaga bulalo.

 

This is what I remember: she cleared away the weeds and thorns, mulched and composted lemon tree branches. She helped lay down brick, and riverine pebbles. She dug up the earth, though decades had passed, the yellow house faded and painted anew. She dug up the earth, warm under her nails, still wriggling and juicy with worms. She planted tomatoes, parsley, and squash. She planted eggplant and yellow bell peppers. So long ago, Mama withered away, a skeleton, dementia-stricken. But she planted, and the tomatoes grew to her waist, beside deep pink rosebushes, blooming, full.