My Very Best Friend (11 page)

“You say that in the same tone as if you’re saying my mother caught lizards and ripped off their legs with her teeth.”

Lorna’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Yes, my mother worked. She helped my father run the farm.”

“She also wrote articles for the local paper on many . . . let’s say,
inflammatory
issues that we didn’t need to hear about.”

Olive flipped her white braid back, tugged on her knitted inebriated frog scarf, and said, “I liked your mother’s articles. I read them in the village I was living in an hour north of here. Some people need to have their minds opened up so they can properly join us in the twentieth century.”

“I’m in the twentieth century,” Rowena said. “Firmly planted. Go women. Boo men. Especially my ex-husband, The Big Arse. May his scrotum rot.”

I nodded at Rowena. “Creative thinking.” I turned to Lorna. “My mother wrote about women, women’s rights, women’s choices and opportunities. I’ve read her articles.” I had met women like Lorna. It was one of the reasons I prefer cats.

“I personally believe that a woman’s place is in the home, supporting her husband and children.” Lorna tilted her chin up, proud of herself in an oh-so sanctimonious way.

“Well, rah-rah for you,” Kenna said. “But not everyone shares that opinion.”

“I work,” Olive said. “I make my scarves and sell them. Not as many as I’d like, but I’m growing my business. Fortunately, I haven’t used them to gag anyone.” She dipped her head toward Lorna. “Yet.”

“I work,” Rowena said. “I recently started making rock jewelry and I’m trying to sell them, too. I call it Scottish Rocks of Love and Lore.” She tilted her chin up and held her necklace out. Proud of what she’d done. “I have four children. I stopped working to take care of them, then The Arse walks out the door. Was that the best choice? Yes. I loved being at home. But no, I gave up my career and I can’t pay my mortgage. What I can do is make The Arse’s life with The Slut as miserable as possible, and I do try my best to do that. It takes time.”

Lorna sniffed. “My family needed me at home and thankfully my husband was able to provide for all of us, so I did not have to work.”

“Why say it in such a snobby and nauseatingly superior manner?” Kenna said. “That’s not the point. Some women want to work.”

“No, they don’t,” Lorna said, shaking a finger. “They do so because their man can’t provide.”

Wow. Her ignorance was truly stunning. “Some people believe what they want to believe regardless of facts.”

Lorna shot a malevolent glance my way.

“Did you not receive my letter, Lorna, about your snippiness?” Olive asked. “This would include inane, piggish comments about women and working.”

“I cut people open with knives and sew them back together, sometimes after removing something sick from their bodies.” Kenna leaned forward. There was no fondness between those two women. “I worked and I raised my children at the same time. If I stayed home all day to change their nappies, my brain would have dribbled out of my head. Like yours.”

Lorna rolled her eyes.

Malvina, Lorna’s daughter, hadn’t spoken. She was shaped like her mother, although her lap did not have as much oatmeal in it. Her shoulders were scrunched in, her short brown hair flat on her head, and she focused her gaze on the floor. She was an assistant librarian. She and Bridget had both gone to St. Cecilia’s.

“I have not job for the many years when I live in India,” Gitanjali said, her voice music, but sad music. She was wearing a wispy, yellow embroidered tunic and yellow pants. “It was unbroken. That not right word. It not allowed for me. For girls. My father, he marry me off when I thirteen to a man my great uncle. He want me, he tell my father, my father say yes for cow. So he give my father three cow. I would have love job because it give me, ah, the word is . . . when you are strong, alone . . . Independence! Money mean independence. Independence mean power not to get hit and marry off to old men.”

Gitanjali’s words whipped into that room, swung around, and fell hard.

“I’m sorry, Gitanjali,” I said, tamping down my anger at Lopsided Lorna.

“Me too,” Olive Oliver said. “You’ve never told me that.”

“I know. Please forgive,” Gitanjali said. “Trust not come simple to me, but if you will excuse the words, Lorna, I had to give you some thinking, no not right word, I had to give you a tongue, no that not right word, no tongue. Ah yes!” She smiled and stuck a finger in the air. “I had to give my voice to this talk on the women and working.”

Lorna glowered.

“When did you leave India?” Kenna asked, pushing back a stray strand of blond hair.

“I escape from hitting husband fifteen year ago. Go to shelter in Bombay, run by American woman. Husband and brothers try to find me, kill me. Say I cannot leave him. I hide. I get new name, then stay ten years. I work in factory making clothes for America, then I a maid and man and wife I a maid for, he Scottish, he in government, he tell me, I get you Scotland. So. He got me papers and I comes three year past. They are smiles in my life to me.”

“And now you have your own spice store,” Rowena said. “I love the free recipes you hand out.”

Gitanjali bowed her head, palms together. “Thank you. Yes, spices, for me. Independence. No choking my neck.” She wrapped her hands around her neck. “No hitting on the face.” She mocked getting hit in the face. “No push up there.” She pointed to her lap. “No man say, you do that, Gitanjali, you dog. Now, I share my love Indian food with every one of the persons here with the recipes and the spices.”

“Your recipes are delicious,” Olive said. “I killed Mr. Knee to make the chicken curry and my husband said it was mouth-watering. It was worth it to kill Mr. Knee.”

“Do you have any spices that will make my ex-husband’s scrotum rot?” Rowena asked in all seriousness. “Special red peppers? Hidden Indian spices that will make it wilt?”

“No, I scared, no, I afraid, I fear, I do not. I do have spice that rumored to lower the, uh, the sex push?” Her brow wrinkled. “That not the right word. Hmm. The intercourse lay? No, not that. I have spice that take away the—how you say—the way that a man—” She lifted one finger up, then flopped it back down, up, down. “The spice can do that to the man and the stick.”

“You have spice for a penis killer. I’ll take five pounds and put it in a dinner I’ll make him,” Rowena said, triumphantly. “He’ll never know what made his pecker not peckable anymore.”

Kenna laughed. “To think of the millions spent on modern medicine to give a man an erection.”

“Yes,” Gitanjali said, her finger flopping. “Erection. Down. I have that down erection spice.”

“I haven’t tried your recipes,” Lorna sniffed. “My husband enjoys roast loin of venison, braised cabbage, lamb, puddings, and Scottish shortbread. Pure Scot, we are. His family has been here for thousands of years, at least, like mine. We are not foreign to this country and are not interested in foreign food.”

I wanted to knock my fist into Lorna’s oatmeal gut. I knew what she was doing. She was pointing out to Gitanjali that she, Gitanjali, was the foreign one, that her family, Lorna’s family,
belonged.
They were Scottish, not Indian, and they did not like Indian food, they liked Scottish food, as all their ancestors before them liked Scottish food. Nothing foreign.
No foreigners.

Gitanjali dipped her head. Her English wasn’t perfect, but she got it. I got it, too. Racism resides in all places, villages, cities, and everywhere in between. It’s subtle and it’s blatant. Tonight, it was Lorna.

“Gitanjali’s food is delicious,” Kenna said.

Lorna waved a hand. “We prefer our
own
.”

“Now I understand why there is violence in this garden club sometimes,” I said.

“Don’t make others bleed is my motto,” Rowena said. “Unless it’s The Arse.”

“If there’s blood, I would sew most of you up,” Kenna said.

“Let’s begin tonight’s discussion about garden design,” Olive interrupted, glaring at Lopsided Lorna. She was obviously agitated. She stood up and handed each of us a slice of iced cherry cake, then started pouring tea. “What should we think of when we are designing a garden or redesigning an existing garden?”

“A garden must be proper. Orderly. Organized,” Lorna said, her voice brooking no discussion, as if she was the Holy Holder of All Garden Information. “You must not allow any infiltrations by any plants that do not belong. Weeds must be pulled immediately. Native plants flourish best as individuals and for the whole.”

Was she still on the India/Scotland/Immigrant thing?

“One’s home and garden is a reflection of how you see yourself and how others will see you, therefore it must be perfect,” Lorna droned on.

Whew. “Perfect? How can nature ever be perfect?”

She laboriously turned toward me, so put out at this interruption, and lifted a gray eyebrow. “You must tame nature. A Scottish garden must show control. A profusion of color is fine, as long as it’s in the correct place, and not wild.”

“I like wild,” Olive said, her inebriated frog swinging. “My climbing roses are in charge of their own destiny, my dahlias grow wherever they choose, and I think my morning glory would take over my entire garden and cackle about it if I turned my back and got rid of my machete. Wildness everywhere!”

Lorna sniffed. “I am merely saying that a garden must be subservient to its owner.”

“Oh, bother,” Rowena said. “I don’t like the word
subservient
. Gives me the shudders. For some reason it makes me think of whipping The Arse.” She tapped her fingers together. “I like that image.”

“Subservient. Submissive. Submit,” Kenna said. “All words that should be illegal worldwide.”

“Except,” said Rowena, flipping that thick red hair dramatically as she laughed, “I would be subservient to Tom Selleck in bed.”

“Bring me that man and his hindquarters,” Kenna gushed. “He could do anything to me and I would agree and smile. I would dress in black leather and ask my husband to leave for the night.”

I laughed out loud.

“I’ll take Robert Redford,” Olive said. “He’d take charge and I’d let him woo woo woo me.”

“But that would be the only time I’d be subservient,” Rowena said. “Tom Selleck and I.”

Malvina kept her head tilted down.

“I not do that servant thing again,” Gitanjali said. “No. Not me. That man, that great uncle I force to marry for cows? He yell the word
submit
to me. Submit! Then he hit me with cane.” Her dark eyes filled with tears. “I submit to him for years. I had to submit to his mother, who hit me, hit again. I had to submit to his father. That was bad submit.”

“If I could explain myself, ladies,” Lorna said, disdain dripping from her words like garden slugs. “A garden should submit to your will. You can tend it carefully, water it well, and fertilize, but you must be in control.”

“No woman, no garden,” Gitanjali said. “I say with pleasant words, no submit. I no ask my garden submit.”

“I agree,” I said. “Submit is not in my vocabulary. I won’t submit to anyone and I don’t want anyone or anything to submit to me.”

“Me either,” Olive said. “Never.” She reached over and hugged Gitanjali.

“Please, all the ladies,” Gitanjali said as she wiped her eyes. “This is garden gobbling club and I am crying. Go on with your talking conversation as I do an embarrassment on myself with this”—she waved a hand—“sad music recital.”

She must have seen our confused expressions.

“I mean, with this sad story I sing.”

“You’re not embarrassing yourself,” Rowena said. “Embarrassing yourself is when you get caught in a car having sex with your boyfriend in the backseat by a constable with a nightstick when you’re seventeen and wearing a witch hat and he tells your mother at church the next day.”

“Embarrassing is when your children find your sex toys,” Kenna said. “Twenty years ago Devon took it to preschool for show and share. It was bring an orange object day.”

“Embarrassing is when you can’t remember what Es on the periodic table means,” I said, chuckling.

They looked blank. Shoot. I cleared my throat, forced a laugh. “It’s a joke.”

“Ah!”

“I think a garden is about freedom, not submission,” Olive said. “Freedom for us to plant, to grow and nourish, and to be in nature’s beauty. It’s something for my animals to look at before they become my meal.”

Rowena said, “I think a garden is where I’ll bury my ex-husband and The Slut who had an affair with him and led him home by the dick with her pinkie.”

“I think a garden is a place where a woman can put herself back together again,” Kenna said. “She can think, argue with herself, philosophize, speech make, tell her herself she can do it, then go back into the world and stand tall.”

“A garden gave me back to me,” Gitanjali said. “No one hurt or bang banged in garden.”

“I think a garden should be restrained!” Lorna said. “A sign of respectable people, living respectable lives.”

“I think a garden is a wonderful excuse to learn Latin,” I said. “To use the Latin words for each plant in your garden.” They all stared blankly at me again. I am such an idiot. “That was a joke.” It wasn’t. I love Latin words for plants. I forced a smile. “Ha-ha! A tulip’s a tulip.”

They laughed. “You are so funny, Charlotte,” Rowena said. “I remember your fine sense of humor from years ago!”

Lorna rolled her eyes and
humphed!

Malvina never said a word.

It was a diverse group. But it would be better without Lorna. There was always one wart.

Always.

Lorna and Malvina, the silent, sad one, scuttled out with their oatmeal bottoms, and the rest of us Scottish women—Gitanjali, who sold spices that could make a man’s penis flat; Olive, who loved her animals and eating them; Rowena, who wanted revenge on The Slut; Kenna, the doctor; and I—drank too much. We ended up at Molly Cockles Scottish Dancing Pub in the village and then in the town square, dancing and singing old Scottish songs. Many people from the bar and village joined us in harmonic wonder.

I don’t know why I ended up leading them like a choir director, swaying back and forth, arms waving, and I don’t know how I got a pink flowered hat on my head or whose it was.