Doughnut Garden

Cheerios. They look like tiny donuts to stupid people. (Urban Dictionary)
"What’s wrong with you?” the little girl asked when she saw what I had done. She hadn’t really meant it as a question, and because I wasn’t too sure myself, I didn’t answer. There’s nothing like looking stupid in front of a kid, so I patted her head in a vague, grownup sort of way and assured her it was for her own good. This was before the police cruiser in my driveway drove off, before she stopped wailing long enough for her parents to take her home. “What did you do to her?” the other neighbors kept asking, wondering what kind of person could make a five year old cry like that, but I told them that it had only been an accident. That I had not seen Taylor playing in the field earlier that day. That I had merely been gathering some goldenrods when I accidentally uprooted her garden. As I recited these lies, I picked at the dirt that had collected under my nails and tried to remember that I had saved her.

Perhaps one of the reasons the Bloxbys were so certain I was guilty of some unspeakable crime was that they had just moved to Marlott Drive three weeks ago. I’ve lived on this street for thirty-four years—my mother sold the old house on Blake Street after dad left—so most people here know me. But to the Bloxbys, I was a stranger with mismatched slippers and the intensity of one too accustomed to watching, who lived by herself in a four-bedroom house and, for all they knew, most likely spied on unsuspecting neighbors from behind one-way windows.

Every afternoon after school, before her father called her in for dinner, Taylor entered the goldenrod field.

The houses on Marlott Drive all face a field of goldenrods that stretches from one end of the street to the other. A goldenrod on its own is pretty unremarkable, but take a couple thousand and spread them until they are all the eye can see, and the scene is breathtaking.

The goldenrods that grow in one corner of the field are different from the others. Their stems are not thin and straight, but swollen at the nape with perfectly spherical growths, bowed as though pregnant. Once, I cut one of the swellings open on my kitchen floor. Beneath the layers of crusty, fibrous shell, I discovered a tiny maggot, a baby goldenrod gall fly, nestled within the silky white lining of the stem.

And though I know the maggot eats the plant from inside and eventually emerges with the plant's death, I sometimes like to think that the maggot is not gnawing away, but merely dreaming, safely unborn in its womb.

I’ve studied goldenrod gall flies for twenty years, so it’s stupid of me to think this way. Then again, there is always a tension between knowing and dreaming—the way things are, and the way things could be. It's like being in one of those spinning cups in Disneyland--as long as you keep spinning, all the world's a blur, and for all you know, the things you want to see really could be there. But once the cup stops spinning, everything comes into painful focus. If being stupid means twirling in the cup a little longer, if being stupid means not having to face the gap between knowing and dreaming, then I don’t mind.

Such thoughts did not immediately occur to me when I stumbled upon Taylor Bloxby that afternoon. I had been my way to take notes on the flies, which were beginning to emerge with the end of summer, when I caught sight of a small figure in one corner, the tall stems bowed over her like a green womb edged with yellow. She wore a plain blue Wendy dress already soiled at the knees, her dark hair had begun falling out of its ponytail, and she was digging with a intensity that indicated she was not there for play, but had been charged with some sort of mission that needed to be executed with the deliberation of an architect planning the hanging gardens of Babylon. Was it coincidence that she had chosen the spot where the goldenrods bowed? As she dug, she kept her other hand closed tightly over something. She abruptly stopped and looked up, my presence having disrupted her sacred work.  

“What are those?” I asked.

"Seeds," she said.

A handful of Cheerios in a Ziploc bag.

Before it occurred to me to rescue her, I envied her.

The week before dad left the house for good, a rumor began circulating among the kids in the neighborhood about Donny Hamelin, a kid who had lived in the second to last house on our street and had once grown a doughnut tree in his backyard. The tree had sprung from a couple of Honey Nut Cheerios, and bore glazed doughnuts with sprinkles until his parents cut it down. Though I had already bought some cabbage seeds for my science project, I decided that there were already enough vegetables in the world,  and so the week before dad left, I planted doughnut seeds in my mother’s vegetable garden. While there was no way of knowing whether the doughnuts that grew from plain Cheerios would have sprinkles, I hoped that at the very least, they would be glazed. I did not think to ask anyone. By that time, dad had stopped coming home every night, and my mother had stopped getting up in the mornings. As my mother slept, I dropped golden O's into the dark, crumbly earth, occasionally licking the sweetness from my fingers. The thought of a doughnut garden kept other thoughts at bay, and I told myself that if the doughnuts grew, there was still a chance.

I told myself there was still a chance when they forgot I was there and started screaming things. Close the door, my dad would say when he noticed me. Close the door.

When we got home from Grandma's that Saturday, his car was gone. The cabinet in the master bedroom no longer held his crumpled handkerchiefs and gray-white socks. The photograph of me in my sun hat at the local farmer's market had vanished from the telephone stand, and his favorite armchair no longer sagged against the living room wall. My mother had despised that chair because it clashed with everything else in the house, and he had loved it precisely for that reason. When I saw that the armchair was gone, I went out into the backyard and tore up the garden with a shovel. I moved systematically from row to row, crushing gourds and cabbages as my mother watched from the kitchen window.

But when I saw the Cheerios that lay exposed in the overturned earth, I sensed there was more at stake. I lay down the shovel and began picking my crop out of the carnage, searching from one end of the garden to the other six or seven times, crawling through vegetable innards and casting aside fistfuls of dirt until the smell of death and fertilizer clung to my fingers, until I had retrieved every single one. I cradled the still dormant doughnut seeds in my hand and breathed on them the way I breathed on dead batteries, willing them to work. 

The screen door creaked. I felt my mother kneel beside me. "These won't grow, honey," she whispered, closing her hands around mine, and I cried then, as we rocked back and forth in the cabbage leaves, for the things that could not be grown, and for the things that could not be saved. 


She would never know that her garden had been doomed from the start, because I destroyed it for her.

There was no need to continue flinging dirt after Taylor had discovered me, but it was hard to stop. There was something perversely satisfying about tearing up that garden, something empowering about saving someone, even against their own will, and I didn’t stop clawing at the earth until she began to shriek and her parents came running, yelling “We’ve called the police! We’ve called the police!” I was saving her, I wanted to tell them. It was then that I realized that the world I was trying to protect was one I was intruding on, and the thought that I no longer belonged bothered me. But there was nothing I could do. I had done for her what no one had done for me, and yet it was funny to realize that I had been as helpless as her all along.

A few days ago, on a whim, I looked up doughnut seeds online. I didn’t find much: an entry on Urban Dictionary and an ad. Some guy was trying to sell tiny packets of Cheerios, two dollars per pack. I ordered a couple of packets, but I don’t intend to start another garden. Instead, I keep the seeds on my shelf, beside two halves of a goldenrod gall. At times, I find myself wondering how his business is going, and wishing him well—hope doesn’t sell nowadays.

Long after the police cruiser in my driveway had driven off, after she had stopped wailing long enough for her parents to bundle her up and bring her home, after the pace of life had resumed and there was no time for regret, I finished collecting all the Cheerios that had been scattered throughout the field. I imagined as I knelt beneath the goldenrods, alone in a green womb, dreaming flies suspended overhead, that I had saved her. I imagined that her hands cradled the seeds, and that my hands were closed around hers, and I imagined rocking her back and forth amidst the ruins of our garden.

"What's wrong with you?"

I say the only answer I can think of. Not so much an answer, I suppose, as a prayer.

"You’ll never have to know."

Doughnut Garden

Exercise: Describe someone watching someone else doing something he/she should not be doing. At some point, write, "But what I've always wondered is," and continue with the action. 

The goldenrods that grow at the edge of the soccer field are not like the ones in A Guide to Naming Herbs. Their stems are not thin and straight, but are swollen at the nape with spherical bulbs, and the plants arch their backs as pregnant women do. Here is the poetry: within each bulbous swelling, or gall, nestles the beginning of a goldenrod gall fly. And though the fly eats its host from inside and eventually emerges with the plant's death, I like to think that the maggot is not gnawing away during its months of seclusion, but merely dreaming in suspension, safely unborn in its womb.  

I was heading down the path to these goldenrods when I saw this little girl of about five or six hunched beneath them, the tall stems bowed over her protectively like a domed womb. Her disheveled appearance, to be expected when children her age are permitted to play outdoors, did not suit her. Rather, stick in hand, she shoveled with a intentness that indicated she was not there for child's play, but had been charged with some sort of mission that needed to be executed with the deliberation of an architect planning the hanging gardens of Babylon. The intensity of her concentration fascinated me, and when I peered through birdwatching binoculars to observe her, she paused and looked up, as though my presence had somehow disrupted her sacred work. 

She tossed the twig aside and rummaged through her backpack, rummaged until she gave up and turned it upside down, the contents spilling out beneath the green roof. A tattered folder, a spelling book and  a sweater too heavy for late summer, and then she had it--a handful of Cheerios in a Ziploc bag. She crouched over the garden bed she had fashioned and sowed her crop, patting soil over each golden-colored O with surprising gentleness for one who had just been tilling the earth with such ferocity. As she wiped her hands on the back of her I could feel the thrill of dirt beneath my nails.

The week before dad left, I planted Fruit Loops in my mother's squash garden. Two months of summer vacation had exhausted my usual pastimes, and after flipping through one of the gardening magazines in the bathroom while on the search for something to color, I decided to turn to gardening. It occurred to me that if cabbage seeds could sprout into cabbages, why couldn't the Fruit Loops I ate on the mornings mother didn't feel like getting up (and dad had not come home yet) become doughnuts? While my mother slept, I poked holes in the dark, crumbly earth, dropping multicolored O's into the shallow indentations as I went, occasionally licking the sweetness from my fingers. 


When my mom and I got home from Grandma's that Saturday, his car was gone. The cabinet in the master bedroom no longer held his crumpled handkerchiefs and gray-white socks. The photograph of me in my Sunday best at the local farmer's market had vanished from the telephone stand, and his favorite armchair no longer sagged against the living room wall. Once I realized the armchair was gone, the one my mother had despised because it clashed with everything else in the house, the one he loved precisely for that reason, I went out into backyard and tore up the garden with a shovel. I moved systematically from row to row, Demeter in her wrath, crushing gourds and cabbages as my mother watched from the kitchen window. 


But when I saw the Fruit Loops that lay exposed in the overturned earth, I lay down the shovel and began picking my crop out of the carnage. I searched from one end of the garden to the other six or seven times, crawling through vegetable innards and casting aside fistfuls of dirt until the smell of death and fertilizer clung to my fingers, until I had retrieved every single one. I cupped the still dormant doughnut seeds in my hand and rattled and breathed on them the way I rattled and breathed on dead batteries when I willed them to work.


The screen door creaked. I felt my mother kneel beside me. "These won't grow, honey," she whispered, closing her hands around mine, and I cried then, as we rocked back and forth in the cabbage leaves, the casualty of our ruined garden around us. I knew then that some things could not be planted, and others could not be saved.

So I could imagine what those Cheerios were. Gold coins to be discovered on a later treasure hunt. Gifts of friendship for the gnomes living underground. Seeds for a doughnut garden. I once sowed my own crop, and am content to leave the meaning of those mounds to her. 

But what I have always wondered since that day is why she chose the goldenrods for her shelter. Why she chose to deposit her treasure so far from her mom's vegetable garden, so obscured from the rest of the world; why she planted her garden in secret. What did she already know? What had been said, what inauspicious warnings of "That's not the way doughnuts are made, dear" had been given to make her sense that this was the only way, kneeling alone in a green womb, dreaming flies suspended overhead? Perhaps she needed solitude as much as I did, needed to be nestled away from the oppressiveness of knowing, secure in the sweetness of a world where doughnuts are not made but grown, with apple juice and a handful of Cheerios in a Ziploc bag.

The third installment

An automated voice chirped "Thank you for starting your day with Start Mart" as he crept through the sliding door, knocking over the stack of bright green shopping baskets that stood beside the entrance. Five minutes late. But maybe Marge had not taken roll yet. Maybe he was still in time for the Sample Wars announcement.

Every work place has certain traditions, intended to inject vitality and ambition into an environment where the day often falls into plodding routine. These traditions usually involve competitions, tournaments that, like marathons or jousts, allow individuals to compare skill and showcase impressive talents. But while most contests are held in good humor, with an understanding that the entire thing is not meant to be taken too seriously, the weekly Sample Wars at Start Mart often escalated into something much more desperate. In a realm where work mainly consisted of unpacking oranges, sweeping aisles of canned goods and arranging packages on hooks, there were few such chances for anyone to satisfy their need to conquer, to prove their own superiority.

Contrary to its name, the Sample Wars depended a great deal more on your luck in the food draw than on any pea flicking abilities. As long as the slip you drew from the tray was a popular item, as long as enough people decided to purchase, for example, frozen chicken wings after visiting your sample stand, you would be crowned King or Queen for a day. But whereas victory was sometimes easily attainable, failure was at times just as certain. Once assigned something like lima bean dip or brussel sprouts, you understood from the beginning that it was a lost cause.The rest of the afternoon would be spent watching hordes of people gathering in front of other stands, emptying the sample trays the moment the potato wedges came out of the microwave and carting away shopping carts filled with frozen pizzas. 

It sounded comical, but these contests came to mean more than frozen foods or being crowned SMart King or Queen. They came to symbolize agency, the power to influence some course of action, if not his own, and his inability to sell lima bean dip seemed to him to summarize everything that was defective in him.

While Marge Lionel did feel it was necessary to enforce her authority as Head Manager, she did not take particular pleasure in reprimanding her staff or humiliating latecomers.  But as is often the case when it comes to human interaction, her treatment of Boggs that morning was driven by a series of circumstances that were not all directly related. She had run out of eggs and toast and so ate nothing but crackers for breakfast. After taking the elevator down to the basement she had remembered that her sister had borrowed her car for the day, and in the time it took her to remember this, she missed the bus. As shipment of bottled water was missing. There was a leak in the bathroom downstairs. 

Then there was the fact that it had been Boggs again.

His repeated tardiness despite threats of earlier shifts and extra hours confirmed what she already knew: that he would not continue to be late despite her warnings, and that there were other factors in his life that wielded more influence than she did ever could. These reminders of the one-sided nature of her feelings hurt her, and though she suspected that most at Start Mart held little respect for her, his continued disregard struck her as betrayal. That he could not see how she protected him, how she hid his tardiness from the owner though twelve late slips far exceeded the limit, how she had had a crush on him since his arrival at the supermarket two years ago seemed to her a sort of rejection. 

Nevertheless, for all her insults and threats, Marge had never planned to turn him in. But the late slips were adding up, and she could not protect him for much longer.

The second installment

Like cleaning windows for a living or eating fettuccine with a spoon, being a full-time coward was no easy feat. He could no longer remember when he first realized that was what he was, but the signs had always been there, and he had been bound to catch on eventually. Who but a coward could not admit to his mother that he had been the one who unearthed her potatoes fifteen years ago to make potato stamps for his print collection? (She still suspected the postman.) And who but a coward would pretend not to notice when Mrs. Boggs from Building C dropped her quarters into the last washing machine, even though he had gotten there first?

    

Unearthed potatoes and washing machines aside, he believed he handled it well. As well as any disability, and the frustration and isolation that came with it, could be handled. In his mind, his cowardice was a disability because, much like a missing toe or hearing impediment, it made life unfairly difficult. There were too many things to avoid, too many people to hide from, too many reasons to stay crouched behind his umbrella stand.While others took buses to new towns and auditioned for parts in plays, he could not even bring himself to try buy a new brand of deodorant. He went through each day at the supermarket surrounded by reminders of his uselessness and yet constantly gave himself new reasons to despise himself, collecting vague insecurities like a lint roller until had no stickiness left and could only retreat to books of valiant knights, desperate to avoid further contact with a world that had become too much.

Pathetic. Breakfast was not even over yet, and already he had begun to feel sorry for himself. Shifting his arm to cram the last of his cucumber sandwich into his mouth, he glanced at his watch. 7:14. Eleven minutes before everyone who worked at Sam's Market gathered behind the gardening section, before Brenda began roll call and announce the Sample of the Week. Sixteen minutes before he was marked for his 55th late slip. It took about ten minutes to bike from the apartment to the supermarket-if Ms. Kendricks left No. 201 in the next six minutes, he could beat the elevator downstairs and still have a chance. 

  

Or he could just tell her about the slippers.   

It occurred to him that Ms. Kendricks might not even care. Perhaps she had not even noticed. They might laugh at his mistake, make a few jokes about his carelessness, and then chat for a while about the comforts of casual footwear. All would be well then, and he would be able eat breakfast at his dining table again, blissfully unaware of whether his neighbors had left their houses yet.

But still he remained in the dirt and bread crumbs, stooped between the wall and shoe cabinet. 

The first installment

Had it not been the slippers, it almost certainly would have been something else.

Even now, as he squatted behind the wooden elephant umbrella stand and candy wrappers that had somehow gathered inside his front door, he smiled at the way things had turned out. Smiled to himself as though this routine of lurking behind the umbrella stand, listening for the footsteps that would leave No. 201 so that he could finally begin his own day, was merely a game he happened to be playing. As though the 54 tardies he had collected since the first Tuesday of March and the discomfort of eating breakfast wedged between a shoe cabinet and the wall were things to be dismissed, even laughed at. As though he were kneeling in dirt and bread crumbs simply because he wanted to.  

In truth, he had been driven to this particular spot behind the umbrella stand by a series of incontrovertible truths. He could not arrive at the supermarket before eight because he could not leave the house until he had heard Mrs. Kendricks, who lived in No. 201, step out into the hallway, water her pea plants, jingle her keys, and lock her door. He could not leave the house until he heard these sounds because he could not chance an encounter with Mrs. Kendricks. And he could not chance an encounter because he could not bring himself to tell her about the slippers. It was all as logical and as inevitable as the progression of a chemical reaction, and he had no choice but to look on.