SEEDFOLKS (7- VIRGIL) by Paul Fleischman

VIRGIL

My father, he always has a smile on his face and a plan moving in his head. We were standing together on the sidewalk while the men were clearing the lot. I was watching the rats running for their lives. They were shooting off every which way. A couple of dealers came over, the ones always bragging about how bad they are. A rat ran right up one of their legs. The dude screamed, just like women do with a mouse in cartoons, only louder. Shook his leg like his toe was being electrocuted. That rat flew off and dove down a storm drain. I looked at my father. That’s when I saw that he hadn’t paid the rat any mind. Hadn’t even turned his head. His eyes were stuck completely on the garden land being uncovered. He had a two-foot-wide smile on his face.


My father drove a bus back in Haiti. Here he drives a taxi. That night he drove himself way across town to borrow two shovels from a friend of his. The next morning was the first day without school. I was done with fifth grade forever. I’d planned on sleeping till noon to celebrate. But when it was still half dark my father shook my shoulder. School was over, but that garden was just starting.


We walked down and picked out a place to dig up. The ground was packed so hard, the tip of my shovel bounced off it like a pogo stick. We tried three spots till we found one we liked. Then we walked back and forth, picking out broken glass, like chickens pecking seeds. After that we turned the soil. We were always digging up more trash-bolts and screws and pieces of brick. That’s how I found the locket. It was shaped like a heart and covered with rust, with a broken chain. I got it open. Inside was this tiny photo of a girl. She was white, with a sad-looking face. She had on this hat with flowers on it. I don’t know why I kept it instead of tossing it on our trash pile.


It seemed like hours and hours before we had the ground finished. We rested a while. Then my father asked it I was ready. I thought he meant ready to plant our seeds. But instead, we turned another square of ground. Then another after that. Then three more after that. My father hadn’t been smiling to himself about some little garden. He was thinking of a farm, to make money. I’d seen a package of seeds for pole beans ad hoped that’s what we’d grow. They get so tall that the man in the picture was picking ‘em way at the top of a ladder. But my father said no. He was always asking people in his cab about now to get rich. One of ‘em told him that fancy restaurants paid lots of money for this baby lettuce, smaller than the regular kind, to use in rich folks’ salads. The fresher it was, the higher the price. My father planned to pick it and then race it right over in his cab. Running red lights if he had to.


Lettuce seeds are smaller than sand. I felt embarrassed, planting so much ground. No one else’s garden was a quarter the size of ours. Suddenly I saw Miss Fleck. I hardly recognized her in jeans. She was the strictest teacher in Ohio. I’d had her for third grade. She pronounced every letter in every word, and expected you to talk the same way. She was tall and even blacker than my father. No slouching in your seat in her class or any kind of rudeness. The other teachers seemed afraid of her too. She walked over just when we finished planting.


“Well, Virgil,” she said. “You seem to have claimed quite a large plantation here.”


That’s just what I was afraid of hearing. I looked away form her, down at our sticks. We’d put ‘em in the ground and run string around ’em, cutting our land up into six pieces. I didn’t know why, till my father stepped forward.

“Actually, madam, only this very first area here is ours,“ he said. He had on his biggest smile. He must have remembered her. “The others we have planted at the request of relatives who have no tools or who live too far.”


“ Really, now,” said Miss Fleck.


“Yes, madam,’ said my father. He pointed at the closest squares of land. “My brother Antoine. My Auntie, Anne-Marie.”


My eyes opened wide. They both live in Haiti. I stared at my father, but he just kept smiling. His finger pointed farther to the left. “My Uncle Philippe.” He lived in New York. “My wife’s father.” He died last year. “And her sister.” My mother didn’t have any sisters. I looked at my father’s smiling face. I’d never watched an adult lie before.


“And what did your extended family of gardeners ask you to plant?” said Miss Fleck.


“ Lettuce,” said my father. “All lettuce.”


“What a coincidence,” she said back. She just stood, then walked over to her own garden. I’m pretty sure she didn’t believe him. But what principal could she send him to?


That lettuce was like having a new baby in the family. And I was like its mother. I watered it in the morning if my father was still out driving. It was supposed to come up in seven days, but it didn’t. My father couldn’t figure out why. Neither of us knew anything about plants. This wrinkled old man in a straw hat tried to show me something when I poured out the water. He spoke some language, but it sure wasn’t English. I didn’t get what he was babbling about, till the lettuce finally came up in wavy lines and bunches instead of straight rows. I’d washed the seeds out of their place.


The minute it came up, it started to wilt. I was like a baby always crying for its’ milk. I got sick of hauling bottles of water in our shopping cart, like I was some old lady. Then the heat came. The leaves shriveled up. Some turned yellow. That lettuce was dying.


My father practically cried, looking at it. He’d stop by in his cab when he could, with tow five0gallon water container riding in the back instead of passengers. Then bugs started eating big holes in the plants. I couldn’t see anyone buying them from us. My father had promised we’d make enough money to by me an eighteen speed bike. I was counting on it. I’d already told my friends. My father asked all his passengers what to do. His cab was like a library for him. Finally, one of ’em told him that spring or fall was the time to grow lettuce, that the summer was too hot for it. My father wasn’t smiling when he told us.


I couldn’t believe it. I stomped outside. I could feel that eighteen-speed slipping away. I was used to seeing kids lying and making mistakes, but not grown-ups. I was mad at my father. Then I sort of felt sorry for him.


That night I pulled out the locket. I opened it up and looked at the picture. We’d studied Greek myths in school that year. I out book, the goddess of crops and the earth had a sad month and flowers around her, just like the girl in the locket. I scraped off the rust with our dish scrubber and shined up that locket as bright as I could get it. Then I opened it up, just a crack. Then I whispered, “Save out lettuce,“ to the girl.