Planted

My mom visited for a few days, and it turned out to be the best visit maybe I think we’ve ever had. We built in an extra sorta flex day, so that she could leave if she wanted, or stay if she wanted. She ended up staying until Saturday, “because now I want to help you get that garden planted!” We spent Friday shopping for seeds and topsoil and just turning the whole thing over and raking it through. Heavy, black, clayey stuff it is, too. I’m afraid it’s going to be troublesome. My mom made these little markers after we planted on Saturday. More.

Cheerio betrayal

I was maybe four, and we were living on our old house on Brammell in Detroit. I spilled a whole box of Cheerios on the kitchen floor trying to get it down, the rings went skittering across the pebbly linoleum, and here comes my mom up from the laundry room, doom, doom, doom, up the steps, “Who did this?” –she demanded an answer, and I had to give one, and I’d be damned if it’d be me. “He did,” I pointed to my little brother, aged three, standing in the kitchen doorway, possibly in a t-shirt and a diaper at the time, probably in the middle of potty training. And the face he turned to me, the face that suddenly knew that this was possible, that your sister could betray you to your mother, even that such a thing as betrayal existed, that you could do nothing wrong and get in trouble anyway, and no one would find out–it knocked the denial right out of his mouth–I waited for him to protest, my heart begged him to accuse me, but the words wouldn’t come to him. It was already too late.