Fighting For My Life In The Grocery Store
In the framed summers, the months of May to August, when I used to go home. When I could finally breathe. Inhale my expired youth, feel the bittersweet familiar in my lungs. Suffocate somewhere else, somewhere I could be still. I would spend my thick summer mornings on the back deck that hangs off the back of the house, watching my mother tend to her garden. The sun would already be high, erasing any licks of pink or hydrating drops of dew. The lives of my suburban neighbors would bleed into my yard, their laughs as they crashed into their pool echoing into the wide open space. Lawn mowers lawn mowing, basketballs thumping against the asphalt next door. Their distant sounds became meditative. I’d have to squint before the sun, but it felt good to use my face in a different way. Not as a scowl or a deadpan stare, not as a payment or a soundboard.
My mother always woke early. Earlier than me, earlier than our neighborhood, earlier than the deer who made their trek across our lawn, earlier than the birds who sang the new day song. She’d brew her dark roast, and drench it with vanilla coffee creamer. White swirls licking at the earthy liquid. Quietly, she’d make her egg whites loaded with spinach, careful not to slam a cabinet or drop the pan against the metal sink. She did so either out of courtesy or preservation. Not to wake us or to savor her mornings alone. She’d have her breakfast on the deck, where I’d sit lazy hours later. My mother’s head was loud, so she medicated with morning’s promised quiet solitude.
As the sun hung low on its journey towards the pinnacle of blue sky, my mother would gather her gardening tools in the garage. Worn gloves that reeked of soil and stretch-marked leather, a sharp hand-held shovel, a rusted-watering can, a cushioned pad for her knees that crack everytime she kneels, and her container of composted fertilizer. She’d make her way barefoot down the steep slope of our backyard towards the border between grass and forest where her garden grows.
For a couple of hours before the world around her woke, she’d hand plow soil and sprinkle her fertilizer over her crops. She would trim back overgrowth and prime the base of her produce. Zucchini, cherry tomatoes, red peppers, yellow peppers, green peppers, cucumbers, radishes, romaine, strawberries, spinach, and the occasional carrot. Her purple-gloved hands plucked her harvest and arranged it in a woven basket. The basket would always be on the kitchen counter whenever us late sleepers came down stairs. The vegetables wet from their rinse, perched on display. At the end of her ritual shift, her fine blonde hair would be matted to her forehead, swindled with sweat and sweet dirt. Bare legs outstretched in the center of her garden, her skin wrinkled from fifty-five years of sun. Her eyes would close. The fruits of her labor shone their bright colors of health around her body. Under the wash of the rising sun, she looked so natural in her garden surrounded by lush greens and golden dust.
After her meditation, the produce would be washed. Her big wrist would swing the can, sprinkling a shower over her fresh picks. Pearls of mud rolled off the fruits and vegetables. If I was lucky, my late wake would let me catch her in this process. Her vision would catch me on her uphill walk back to the house. She would smile. Her big-toothed mother smile.
Yesterday I called my mom when I was grocery shopping. I was at the market around the corner from my apartment. Rain puddles made their way through the aisles as pedestrians’ wet commuter shoes squeaked on the tile. The Lower East Side was gray, and the collection of raincoats made everyone look the same. Wet and distant. My mother’s voice poured through the speaker wedged between my flushed ear and cold shoulder bone. As I pushed my cart, she was talking about someone at work who’s always in a mood and displaces their tasks on the other nurses. I oo’d and ah'd to sympathize. She asked me what I was up to.
“Oh, nothing. Just fighting for my life in the grocery store.” A man’s cart bumped against my elbow causing me to fumble my phone. He shot me a look that said move. My posture stiffened as I readjusted my phone, and my look tried to kill him.
“Mmmm.” She vibratoed into the phone, not really listening as her keyboard clicked on the other end of the call.
“You know, I really miss your garden.” I turned over a chipped and bruised excuse for a zucchini in my hand before setting it down and ultimately giving up on the produce section.
“No you don’t. You miss not having to do any work and reaping the benefits.”
I closed my eyes in the canned foods aisle, trying to find the warmth of that Pennsylvania morning sun.
“Alright mom, I’m about to check out. I’ll call you tomorrow…” I hung up, head hanging down to look at my empty cart. Tears welled up and started to stream down my face, blending in with the rain drops still hanging onto my coat. I gave my cart back to the clerk and stepped back underneath the endless spill of Manhattan’s spring rainfall
She’s right.
I cherry-pick other peoples’ gardens. A bulbous rose, the edges of petals just starting to curl over to reveal the intricate web of veins on the red open face. I’ll snip the stem with shears only to place it in an empty liquor bottle right next to the air conditioning unit to wilt and die, leaving my trail of blood from the thorns all over the carpet. Out the hall, down the stairs, across the street, all the way back to another’s garden. Someone else’s berries will blossom conveniently just as my stomach churns from hunger. I’ll pop them into my mouth against my cheek, smashing their blue tartness between my teeth. What am I to do when everything is so delicious, but everything I touch wilts a heavy death?
My own garden exists in the back of my mind where it never stops storming. Sometime in April I came into this world, and the rain never stopped. The weight has been pouring long before me. My roots are swollen and waterlogged, and the seeds of my intuition and hope were flooded away long ago. The soil pours over into the grass, and whatever grows and lives before it drowns is mowed over by pests or hungry wilderness.